When you hire a domestic helper from a different country, there’s no guarantee of who you will get. All you know are some of her personal details like her name, her age, where she’s from, and what kind of household chores she’s good at or whether she specialises in taking care of kids and the elderly.
You pick and choose based on the impression you get from her, be it through photographs or through going to the agency and picking her yourself. Either way, you wouldn’t know what she’s like until you hire her and live with her for at least a couple of months.
Most people have good relationships with their domestic helpers, as did I. Some others were less fortunate and met domestic helpers who did nasty things despite being treated well.
That was the case for this 40-year-old lady who hired a 28-year-old Indonesian national by the name of Onita as her domestic helper.
What Happened
Back in February of this year, Onita was cleaning her employer’s room when she noticed a pink Chanel bag sitting atop a shelf in the walk-in wardrobe along with other branded bags.
I guess the pink Chanel bag must have been beckoning Onita to take her away because that’s exactly what she did. She took the $6,000 bag and hid it in her room. She subsequently started using the bag during her off-days.
How did the employer not notice then though?
Fast forward to May, and Onita was cleaning her employer’s room once again when she spotted a black Chanel bag in its dust cover. This time, this bag is said to be valued at $8,500.
I’m sure you can already tell that Onita has a very good eye for expensive things.
Attracted by the classy black bag, she decided to replace the pink bag in her room with this one, giving herself an upgrade from having used the pink bag the past few months.
Onita happily uses her new black Chanel bag for three months before her employer realised her black Chanel bag was missing on 16 August. She found her pink Chanel bag in the dust cover that belonged to the black Chanel bag and asked Onita to look for it with her.
Onita must have been like:
It was nowhere to be found, obviously. So her employer said that she would report this to the police because she was desperate and felt like it could have been stolen by someone else.
Hearing this and not wanting to get into even more trouble, Onita quickly retrieved the black bag from her room and surrendered it to her employer. She then told her that she took it from her room a few months prior to her finding out. She also said that she was the one who replaced the black bag with the pink bag.
Outraged by this, Onita’s employer scrolled through her Facebook on 24 August and found photographs of Onita with her pink Chanel bag on her shoulders. And she noted that the photographs were posted on 19 February.
She then reported this incident to the police.
Onita also reportedly stole $800 in cash and a $1,000 Louis Vuitton wallet from her employer.
Court Hearing
The prosecutor requested that Onita be sentenced to six to eight months in jail, but took into account that she said she would return the pink bag after she used it on her off-days. He added that while her actions were wrong, this case should take precedence from another case where the items were not returned to its owner.
The judge, however, disagreed because Onita possibly had the intention of preventing her employer from finding out that she stole her black bag when she replaced it with the pink bag.
Onita was unrepresented in court and pleaded for leniency through an interpreter.
The judge eventually sentenced her to six months’ jail and ordered that all the items that she stole were to be returned to her employer.
Onita could have been jailed up to seven years and fined for each charge of theft by servant.
It is sad that she resorted to stealing because she coveted her employer’s lifestyle. Hopefully, she learns her lesson.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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