No hugs for her on Mother’s Day

Some will get gifts for Mother’s Day. Rosemarie Alcoriza got a lawsuit.

The 33-year-old mother of three was charged with child abuse in the Manila Regional Trial Court earlier this week for allegedly locking the children up whenever she left their house in Tondo, hitting her 9-year-old daughter with a monobloc chair and burning her 7-year-old son’s private parts with a candle.

In a statement to the police, the daughter said the abuses started after their father left in 2010 to work abroad. The children also said their mother had also been seeing another man whom she allowed to sleep in the house.

The children were assisted by their paternal grandmother, Edna Alcoriza, in filing the complaint.

The mother allegedly pulled her daughter’s hair or hit her with a chair whenever the child failed to obey her orders, and once burned her son’s genitals with a candle when she accused him of taking money from her wallet.

Neighbors Teresita Sumacaton and Consuelo Manuel gave statements saying they often heard the youngest child, aged 3, crying but that they couldn’t do anything because the house was usually locked. They would also find the children fending for themselves, cooking instant noodles on their own, for example.

Alcoriza denied abusing her children, saying their grandmother merely brainwashed them into filing complaints.

She also maintained that her husband had abandoned them for another woman.

But the city prosecutor ruled that Alcoriza’s defense that the children were brainwashed was a matter best addressed in a trial, noting that the neighbors’ statement bolstered the allegations of maltreatment. With a report from Sushmita Chim