WASHINGTON, D.C.: A Filipina domestic worker was awarded $1.2-million (about P49.2 million) in damages by a federal district court in Rhode Island, after winning a human trafficking civil suit against her former employer.

Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered Col. Arif Mohamed Saeed Mohamed al-Ali, a United Arab Emirates colonel, to indemnify Elizabeth Ballesteros for the “outrageous, illegal and inhumane” treatment she suffered.

“The $1.2-million judgment reflects the suffering and emotional toll human trafficking has on its victims,” said Ivy Suriyopas of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) Anti-Trafficking Initiative.

Suriyopas, who is half-Filipino, said that Ballesteros arrived in Rhode Island from the Emirates in 2010 to work for al-Ali, his wife Samah Alharmoodi and their children.

For three months, al-Ali subjected her to involuntary servitude, forced labor, peonage, debt bondage and slavery as a domestic worker in their home, Suriyopas said.

Court records showed that Ballesteros, who had worked for several years for al-Ali household in Arab Emirates for several years, was hired to care for al-Ali’s youngest child but she was never paid the contract wage.

The Emirates colonel did not allow Ballesteros a single day off work, forbade her from speaking to anyone outside the household and withheld her passport.

Ballesteros said that al-Ali sent occasional payment of about $410 over a period of two and a half months remitted to her family in the Philippines.

Ultimately, the victim was able to escape and obtain legal aid from AALDEF’s Anti-Trafficking Initiative.

US authorities are looking for al-Ali’s properties in the United States that would be subjected to garnishment to pay off the huge damages the federal court ordered in favor of Ballesteros, who is in her 30s.