LAGIM: A Filipino True Crime · LAGIM Podcast

Tales of Modern Slavery + interview with Marissa Begonia of Voices of Domestic Workers (UK)

·1 hr 49 min·5 clips

Dalia was kept in a two-square-meter cage, tied up daily, and watched on camera around the clock.

The episode opens with a minute of silence for victims in Gaza and Palestine, Sudan, and Congo. It then turns to modern slavery affecting Filipina domestic workers, beginning with a Channel 4 rescue video showing two Filipinas being taken out of abusive employment in London and raising the question of how many similar cases remain out of sight. The host treats the subject as current, not something safely filed away in the past. A case in Switzerland pulls the narration back toward stories that surfaced after the Channel 4 clip, and that return sets up three linked cases. The pattern is exploitation. Across the cases, the episode argues that desperation and systems built against the most marginalized make slavery easier to hide and harder to escape. The narration stays chronological. Dates, institutions, rescue efforts, and public attention are placed in sequence so the listener can follow how each case develops and why each detail matters. The interview with Marissa Begonia becomes the emotional center. She describes the relief of gaining the right to change employers and rebuild her life, because that protection gave her a route toward decent work. Her account turns sharply when she describes what she saw in the UK. Many fellow domestic workers had been beaten, burned with hot water, sexually abused, and left barefoot, and that experience pushed her into action. She realizes she is not alone. From there, she talks through the need for workers to unite, speak out, and stop treating abuse as something to hide. The episode then traces the beginning of Justice for Domestic Workers. Begonia explains that the group first formed around a demand for justice and was helped by Unite the Union in Holborn, which opened its doors to domestic workers organizing for protection. The interview keeps returning to collective resistance. Begonia says domestic workers are living evidence of a crime, and the crime has to be faced in public rather than met with silence. The release lands a day after Anti-Slavery Day. The episode closes as a record of harm, organizing, and the insistence that domestic worker abuse cannot be ignored.

As heard by us

A serious account of modern slavery that turns testimony into context without turning the people into symbols.

Modern slavery sits at the center of this episode. It draws on a Channel 4 rescue video, Filipino domestic-worker accounts, and interview testimony to trace how abuse can follow migration and exploitation.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a Channel 4 rescue story that opens into domestic-worker testimony and organizing, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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