Tanauan, Leyte (January 18) -- "I am glad that it is finally over," Mrs. Will Avila of Tanauan, Leyte, said upon hearing that 10 Filipino nurses were acquitted by a New York court.

"I immediately offered a thanksgiving mass," Mrs. Avila added.

Mrs. Avila's beautiful and intelligent daughter, Harriet, is one of the ten Filipino nurses who were cleared by a New York court of criminal charges after they were accused of endangering patients by resigning en masse from a Long Island nursing home to protest working conditions.

It was not easy for Harriet and the other Filipino nurses after they resigned, Mrs. Avila said. While some of them were able to find employment elsewhere, a number of them had the difficulty of getting other nursing jobs because of a possible criminal trial.

The family supported Harriet's decision to resign from her work in 2006 because "we believe that the cause my daughter was fighting for was right."

Harriet has not yet contacted her family since the court ruling, Mrs. Avila said, saying that perhaps she still have so many things to attend to.

"I am sure that many people are congratulating her and her companions," Mrs. Avila added.

Harriet left her family in Tanauan, Leyte when she, together with other Filipino nurses were recruited in order to ease the shortage of nurses in the United States. Harriet was optimistic that with the greener pasture in the United States, she would be of help to her family which belongs to the middle income group. Harriet's father is an employee of the local government unit while her mother works at the City Health Office in Tacloban.

However, after several months, in April of 2006, she together with her companions, resigned en mass from their jobs at a Smithtown facility run by Sentosa Health Care because they were made to perform tasks they deemed demeaning and below their job descriptions. There were also disputes about scheduling and pay.

In the decision issued on Tuesday, the court's second appellate division also stopped the prosecutor of Suffolk district county, where the original suit was filed, from pursuing criminal charges against the 10 nurses and their lawyer.

Acquitted, together with Harriet, were her co-nurses, Elmer Jacinto who is a licensed doctor and who topped the medical board examinations in 2004 but studies nursing to be able to work in the US; Juliet Anilao, Mark de la Cruz, Claudine Gamiao, Jennifer Lampe, Rizza Maulion, James Millena, Ma. Theresa Ramos and Ranier Sichon, and their lawyer Felix Vinluan who was accused of conspiring with the petitioners.

The New York court granted the nurses' petition to stop the Suffolk county from prosecuting them, saying that their resignation did not endanger their patients as they did it after their shifts ended.
The court also noted that the prosecution's insistence that the nurses' resignation affected the welfare of their patients, which included children, were "speculative" and that they had the "constitutional right to be free from involuntary service."

Stopping the nurses from resigning their jobs was a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, the court said.

John Riley of newsday.com described the case as "One of the most appalling cases " which "unfolded a couple of years ago when some Filipino nurses recruited by Sentosa, a nursing home outfit run by some generous political donors, were not treated as they had been promised in the US."

He added, "the legal theory was factually unsupported -- no patient had actually been endangered. It was a Yoo-like concoction pretty much unprecedented in New York -- people, even powerless foreign nurses, have the right to leave their jobs.. Real District Attorneys protect them, instead of turning into marionettes and trying to teach them a lesson on behalf of political benefactors." (PIA 8)