Parents seek new inquiry on Filipino woman’s death

The parents of a migrant Filipino wife are requesting a reinvestigation into her alleged suicide, believing that her mistreatment may have led to her death here, reports said.

According to a Philippine daily, the father of 24-year-old Cathy Deocades requested earlier this month that an autopsy be performed on her body after it was returned to the Philippines. He hopes to reopen a thorough investigation into her death, one that police officials here had ruled as a suicide, said officials at the foreign ministry in the Philippines.

The father had received repeated phone calls from his daughter, complaining of abuse she was receiving from her Korean husband and family.

Unable to endure the maltreatment, she pleaded last November for her family to bring her back to the Philippines.

According to the father, as quoted in the daily, Deocades had been sold to other Korean men by her husband.

The family requested help from their foreign ministry, but were told she was doing well.

Deocades had met her Korean husband online and married him soon after his visit to Manila in October 2009.

An early report by Filipino medical officials conducting the autopsy noted that Deocades had bruises on her abdomen. A final report is expected to be released this week.

Migrant wives here often face human rights violations, including physical and sexual abuse, by both their husbands and other family members, according to an official from the state-run Emergency Support Center for Migrant Women. In a report from the center earlier this month, husbands were found to have forced themselves upon their wives. In other cases, men from the husband’s family sexually harassed or raped foreign wives.

Migrant women seeking counseling for assault and rape accounted for 12 percent of all consultations at the center in 2010.

By Robert Lee (rjmlee@heraldcorp.com)