MInistry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) officials in the US are scheduled to meet with members of a social welfare organization in California in an effort to help a Taiwanese woman, who was reportedly brought to the country as an indentured servant, return home as soon as possible, officials said yesterday.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said the ministry has been trying to locate the woman — identified only by the pseudonym “Isabel” — to offer her help, after media reports of her plight attracted widespread attention last week.
Officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles have contacted the local social welfare organization that has been helping Isabel, Yang said.
The woman has reportedly expressed a desire to meet with her biological mother, Yang said, adding that the ministry would spare no effort to reunite her with the family who sold her.
Because the woman has been out of contact with her family for many years, Yang said the Ministry of the Interior would try to identify them through the domestic household registration system.
Two families in Taiwan have claimed Isabel as a family member since her story hit the headlines.
A day earlier, Ho Hsiao-ying (何曉英), a member of an -Aboriginal -family in Taitung, said that Isabel was her sister and has been out of touch with the family for nearly a decade.
However, an woman in Hsinchu City, Chi Mei-chou (紀美周), identified Isabel as her daughter who has been missing for 19 years, according to local reports.
As part of the its Freedom Project, CNN highlighted the story of Isabel in the middle of this month. It was said that her impoverished parents sold her to a wealthy Taiwanese family at the age of seven. The family later moved to California.
According to the woman, she was made to live in a garage and often given spoiled food, as well as being physically abused, the report said.
Isabel eventually managed to escape the family and now baby-sits for a living, CNN reported. After filing a civil suit against the family, she settled the matter out of court and then severed all communications with them, it reported.
Since Isabel apparently used a Republic of China (ROC) passport when she left Taiwan and previously had household registration in the country, Yang said the woman would still be an ROC citizen as long as she had not renounced her citizenship.
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