Melba regularly showed up at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2018 to accompany a child she cared for who was being treated there.
But nobody noticed — or asked about — Melba’s own suffering.
The petite Filipina was miserable, working more than 100 hours a week as a maid and nanny, earning between $400 and $550 a month from her employers, a married couple from the United Arab Emirates.
Her visits twice a a month to the hospital to accompany the couple's son were some of the few occasions she had to leave their two-bedroom Brookline apartment. She had no U.S. currency, no days off, and wasn’t allowed out of the house alone. She was fearful of the family who withheld her passport and told her she’d be arrested if she went out without them.
Melba finally escaped a year after she arrived, sneaking down the back stairs in the early morning with the help of advocates and a good Samaritan. Melba knew she was miserable but quickly learned that what happened to her had a name in the United States: labor trafficking.
“I’m not animals, I’m human," said Melba, who requested that GBH withhold her full name to protect her privacy, tearing up as she detailed her yearlong ordeal. “I thought I couldn’t cry anymore, but I remember again.”
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