MAIL ORDER BRIDES international agencies
Australian men allegedly still are using international mail order brides agencies to ensnare Filipino women as "little more than slaves". Another spoke of being locked in a bedroom for two weeks with her children, while her husband was home. In the afternoons, she urinated into the bottle she drank rainwater out of in the morning FILIPINO women have claimed hundreds of their countrywomen are being treated as slaves by Australian men exploiting the international mail order bride trade. A conference in Port Lincoln last weekend heard that some Australian men had sponsored up to seven Filipino mail order brides each, before dumping them on to the Australian social welfare system. The conference included 150 politicians, counsellors and welfare workers from Australia and the Philippines. Feminist lawyer Dr Jocelyne Scutt told delegates that while many mail order brides marriages were happy, there was a trade in mail order brides from the Philippines, Thailand and, to a lesser degree, Sri Lanka.
Mail order brides from poorer countries
"This is just really bad; we've got to look at the civil liberties' concerns of mail order brides from these poorer countries as much as we look at those of these serial sponsors," she said. "This is something that crosses borders; it needs to be tackled from a United Nations perspective. It's something which is, in the worst cases, no better than slavery." Every year, hundreds of Filipino mail order brides meet Australian men and travel south to live with their new husbands. By all indications - and Dr Scutt and others emphasise - the majority of mail order brides do live happily. However, rates of abuse and complaint by mail order brides wives against their Australian husbands is above the national average. Over the past six years, at least 18 Filipino mail order brides and their children have died violently or disappeared. One of the most graphic involved Elizabeth Mary Hayes, 5, and Yohanna Rodriguez, 12. They were found suffocated in the bedroom of their Australian father's Port Kembla home after an access visit in April.
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