Ghanaian maid in Lebanon allegedly commits suicide after enduring physical and sexual abuse from employers and begging to return home
A lady from Ghana who works a maid in Lebanon has died shortly hours after she had pleaded to be evacuated to Ghana amidst several cases of abuse. Faustina Tay who is 23-yers-old, on March 13, 2020, sent a desperate call to an activist group to help her return to Ghana as she could no…
A lady from Ghana who works a maid in Lebanon has died shortly hours after she had pleaded to be evacuated to Ghana amidst several cases of abuse.
Faustina Tay who is 23-yers-old, on March 13, 2020, sent a desperate call to an activist group to help her return to Ghana as she could no longer stand the abuse meted to her by her employers.
She sent, “God please help me,” but was found dead 18-hours later.
On March 14, Faustina’s body was found in a car park under her employers’ fourth-story home in Beirut’s southern suburbs, between 3 and 4 am.
A forensic doctor who examined her body found that her death was caused by a head injury “as a result of falling from a high place and crashing into a solid body”.
The doctor found “no marks of physical assault”. A search of Faustina’s employers’ home found no signs of a struggle, and the death was being investigated as a suicide, according to a police report.
Her Lebanese employer, Hussein Dia, whose home Faustina had lived and worked in for 10 months at the time of her death, told Al Jazeera he and his family were sleeping when she died. Adding that he had no idea why she took her own life as he never physically assaulted her – “I never laid a hand on her.”
Meanwhile, Faustina sent dozens of texts to her brother in Ghana, pleading for help in the week before her death. She also sent dozens of texts and more than 40 minutes of voice messages to the Canada-based activist group, “This Is Lebanon”, providing detailed accounts of recurrent physical abuse.
Faustina told the group that Dia and Ali Kamal, the owner of the domestic worker’s agency that had brought her to Lebanon, had each beaten her twice between January 16 and March 6.
Kamal had beaten her along with one of his employees, Hussein, she said.
In the messages, Faustina repeatedly expressed concerns that speaking about her ordeal could lead to more abuse, and the confiscation of her phone, which she said had taken place once before.
“I’m scared. I’m scared; they might kill me,” she said, in a chilling voice note to activists.
