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For the past 21 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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The late Ruth Sigue's mother Thelma, with the help of a Good Samaritan is on a crusade to bring home the orphaned childr
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JERSEY CITY– “I will move heaven to help.” This is what Cirila Martin said in summing up her quest to find answers in the Ruth Sigue murder suicide case, and bring Ruth’s orphaned daughters home to Ruth’s mother in Cebu, where she said they should belong.
It can be recalled that on June 9, 2008, Ruth Sigue, a nurse who worked at Somerset Medical Center and a native of Cebu, was found stabbed to death by her Singaporean husband Peter Ng inside her apartment in Somerville , New Jersey.
Ng, then took their two daughters to Rowena’s restaurant in Jersey City and left them there before he killed himself by jumping into the Hudson river. Social workers then took custody of the orphaned daughters.
Now, Ruth’s mother, Thelma, is fighting a custody battle for the girls against her ex-husband’s cousin and a woman named Mimi who both live in New Jersey.
Thelma, the biological grandmother of the two girls, is losing the battle due to lack of financial resources, however, it now appears that the battle field is level with the entrance of Cirila Martin.
The Good Samaritan
Cirila Martin is not a relative of the Sigues. She is a 57-year old teacher teaching American military personnel’s kids in the American military base in Landstuhl, Germany.
She migrated to the US in 1979 and then married James Martin, an American teacher. The Martins then established a family in Arizona. They have 11 children, five of them adopted.
Being stationed in an American base in Germany, she never knew about the Sigue murder-suicide case until she went on a vacation in Cebu.
It was on June 27 at the American consulate in Cebu where she met the mother of Ruth Sigue, Thelma.
“I went to the American consulate in Cebu to process some papers, and there I met her randomly,” Martin recounted. “She told me about her daughter’s death and she seemed helpless.”
Thelma was at the consulate seeking answers to many of her questions about her daughter’s untimely demise and the whereabouts of her two granddaughters.
“She showed me printed news articles from the Internet about her daughter’s death and was worried that her granddaughters were up for adoption,” Marin added. “I was carried away with sympathy.”
After that fateful meeting at the US consulate, Martin told her American husband that she wanted to help poor Thelma. She started to call people, which included this reporter.
Martin then went back to Germany and booked a flight to Florida to take care of the Sigue case. She asked for a special power of attorney from lawyer Hilario Davide, son of former chief justice Hilario Davide, Jr., to be able to represent Thelma
Questions and threats
Martin said that when Thelma retrieved the remains of her daughter Ruth, it did not come with anything– No numbers to call, no information on her possessions in New Jersey, no word about her grand kids, not even money to give her daughter a proper burial. She was left in the dark
“There was a threat,” Martin said. She was informed that the owner of the restaurant where Ng left the girls was to give the girls out to adoption. Likewise, there was also the pressure from Thelmas’s ex-husband’s cousin (Ruth’s uncle) and the woman named Mimi to make her sign documents waiving her claim to the children. Apparently Mimi, wants to adopt the two girls.
However, Thelma has no idea who this Mimi is. According to Martin, Mimi is not even a friend of the late Sigue couple.
“ Pag hindi daw pinirmahan ni Thelma ang mga documents, mapupunta daw sa ibang lahi ang mga apo nya ( If Thelma does not sign the documents, the kids would be adopted by foreign parents).”
Thelma refused because she believes she has the right to the children being the next of kin.
Martin is adamant to find the truth about the case.
“I have to find the answers to so many questions: Where are the children? How do we get them? What happened to the money in the bag? Where are Ruth’s possessions and who is administering them? Who cleared Ruth’s apartment? Does Ruth have employee’s insurance? Does she have life insurance?”
Martin appears to follow the money trail, because she believes that there lies the motive. She said that Ruth’s Uncle for some unexplained reason is backing a non-relative in the person of Mimi to gain custody of the two girls.
“I am a Christian and I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they want the girls for all the good reasons. However, there is also the financial side. The children could be beneficiaries of Ruth and Peter’s life insurance and other insurance claims,” Martin said.
Despite her zeal to make progress and ultimately bring the children to their rightful guardian– their grandmother in Cebu, she is currently experiencing a number of roadblocks in her quest.
“I am upset that nobody wants to give me any information. This thing is going around in circles. The hospital where Ruth worked would not share information, so as the prosecutor’s office. Even the owner of Rowena’s restaurant doesn’t want to speak to me. It is frustrating.”
However, she is determined to get the job done and keep her promise to Ruth.“
“Hahamunin ko ang Mimi na yan! Kukunin ko ang mga bata (I am challenging Mimi. I will get the kids). If it is necessary, I myself will adopt the girls, then bring them to their grandmother,” she concluded.
Concerning the whereabouts of the two girls, a source told the Express earlier today that they are in the custody of Mimi. The source disclosed that Mimi was spotted in a Jersey City bank with the two Sigue daughters. A bank teller confirmed the sighting and acknowledged the fact that Mimi indeed succeeded in adopting them even without Thelma’s signature on the waiver.
The Express, however, could not obtain Mimi or Ruth‘s uncle’s contact information for a possible statement.
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CHICAGO-- The lawyer of former Philippine Ambassador to the United Nations Lauro L. Baja, Jr. filed Tuesday (July 15) a motion to dismiss the civil cases filed against Baja and his wife and their daughter “upon the ground that defendant Bajas are diplomatically immune from criminal, civil and administrative suits from all courts of the United States and its states under the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR).”
Salvador E. Tuy told the United States District Court of Southern District of New York in a “motion to quash service of summons and dismiss complaint” that the court “has no jurisdiction over the subject matter of this case by express provision of Article 31 (1) of the Vienna Convention as upheld in a long line of decisions, notably “Tabion v. Mufti, (73 F.3rd 525 (4th Cir. 1996) and by this Court’s own decision in Ahmed V. Hoque. (Not reported F. Supp. 2d, WL 1964806 (S.D.N.Y.).”
Baja and his wife, Norma Castro Baja, their adult daughter, Maria Elizabeth Baja Facundo and LaBaire International Travel, Inc. were accused by their domestic helper Marichu Suarez Baoanan of “15 causes of action,” including forced labor, unlawful conduct, trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude or forced labor, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, Alien Tort Claims, federal and state minimum wage violation, unlawful deductions from wages, state overtime violation and spread of hours violation.
The 30-page motion claimed that when the alleged violations occurred between Jan. 13 and April 13, 2006, Mr. Baja was “the Permanent Representative to the United Nations for the Republic of the Philippines” and Head of Philippine Mission located at 15 East 66th St. in New York city and as such, he is a “diplomatic agent” defined under the Vienna Convention and the official residence is “inviolable.”
Because Baoanan is a “private servant of members of the mission," she is “not covered by all Federal and state laws with regard to employment, social security and taxes” and her employment is “subject to laws of the Philippine government but not US laws or New York State laws,” and therefore, the Bajas cannot be accused of violating federal and state minimum wages, unlawful deduction and overtime or spread of hours violations.
Mr. Tuy also accused the lawyers of Ms. Baoanan for “material deception,” “lack of candor in total violation of professional ethics” and “bad faith” for the “skillful omission by plaintiff in her complaint “of Bajas’ status as a diplomat” and the “occurrence being in the Philippine Mission,” which enjoy “the immunity provisions of the Vienna Convention” ratified by the United States President on Nov. 8, 1972. The provisions insulate Bajas from “criminal and civil suit during the incumbency of Lauro Baja as head of the Philippine Mission."
Tuy also accused Ms. Baoanan and her lawyers for holding a press conference on July 9th at 1 p.m. at the lawyers’ office in New York “for the sole purpose of gaining media mileage for this case” and use of multi-media in parading Bajas “all over the world as human traffickers and criminals.”
Tuy said lawyers Ivy Suriyopas and Aaron Mendelsohn “know and had reason to know that the case would have no standing and would be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in the light of “Tabion v. Mufti, and Ahmed v. Hoque, with facts similar to this case.
He said in Tabion, Corazon Tabion, a Philippine national, performed domestic services in Mufti’s Virginia home for more than two years. Believing that her low pay and long hours violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, Tabion sued the Mufti couple in federal district court, stating numerous complaints arising from the employment relationship, including breach of contract, intentional misrepresentations in employment, false imprisonment, violations of FLSA, and seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs. After the hearing, the district court judge found the Muftis protected by diplomatic immunity and quashed their service of process, according to the motion.
In the case of Ahmed v. Hoque, a former domestic servant in the home of defendants AHM Sadiqul Hoque, Economic Minister for the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations and Sabiha Hoque, wife, accused the defendants of forcing him “to work fourteen to seventeen hour workdays, seven days a week, gave him only occasional spending money but no salary, verbally and physically abused him and refused him access to his travel documents, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes, New York State labor laws, international law treaties, conventions and the customary law of nations, as well as common law. The defendants defaulted, claiming diplomatic immunity and such action must be dismissed. The Government of the United States agrees. For this reasons that follow, this action is dismissed,” according to Tuy’s motion.
The motion also asked for the dismissal of the case against Labaire International Travel, Inc. owned by Bajas, invoking “the doctrine of ‘derivative immunity.’” (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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