OUR CASES

Abay worked for Peter Kojrian and Anny Balsanian in Beirut for three years. She alleges she had to beg and cry to get her salary, and often went 6-7 months without being paid, and even then he allegedly only paid her a month’s salary. She told her employer Anny that she wanted to return home, and Anny said she would go 15 days later. Abay says her employers refused to give her her passport.

“I was working in the kitchen and he grabbed me. I tried to fend him off but I couldn’t…He choked me and squeezed by breast. It was very painful"

Halima was a slave for Ibtissam Saade for 10 whole years – not a single phone call to her husband and three young daughters. Constant physical and verbal abuse.

Lensa reveals all about Eleanore Couture's abuse and enslavement of migrant domestic workers in order to make their dresses. This story goes far beyond dresses.

The following is a testimony from Ednalyn Almazan, a Filipino woman who came to Lebanon in August 2014 to work for Dr. Lina Dakar Mattar, a dermatologist, and her husband Dr. Jean Maurice Mattar, an orthopedic surgeon. After two years of working for the Mattars, she asked to return home to the Philippines but her employers wouldn’t let her. She says she was not allowed any days off, and she says that she suffered physical abuse from her employer after she purchased her own ticket home. She left Lebanon in October 2017, having worked for them for over three years. To this day, she is owed $1,850.

Below is the anonymised testimony from a domestic worker who came to Lebanon to work for a man named Emile Bou Farah in 2010. Her account details the sexual harassment she says she faced, and the physical abuse she witnessed at the Saliba Agency which employs domestic workers. She says that Emile Bou Farah preyed on her, made unwanted advances and sexually harassed her. Furthermore, she alleges that she worked 16 hour days and was only allowed to eat once a day.