Re: Death of Vicenta Flores
Dear Chief Inspector Chu,
Thank you for meeting with us at the Tung Chung Police Station on Monday 19 May 2008. We along with the undersigned greatly appreciated that opportunity to at last express our concerns to you in person and your officers presently dealing with the ongoing miscellaneous investigation of the recent death of Vicenta Flores. We also note with further appreciation the time and effort that you and your staff took to explain not only the current status of your investigation, but also the relevant evidentiary law with respect to the hearsay rule.
In addition and with reference to your briefing, we are duly minded of the need for distinguishing as between hard facts and unsubstantiated rumor in this matter. We of course have been endeavoring to deal with this particular tragedy in the light of these procedural and evidentiary guidelines.
Therefore it was perhaps somewhat alarming to learn from you at your briefing on May 19 that your investigative team has chosen to place such great emphasis within the context of the investigation upon inquiring into certain accounts from a (former?) boyfriend of Vicky now living in the Philippines. We recall from your briefing, your account of this person supposedly telling your officer of a “vision” that Vicky was alleged to have had of a person who Vicky had apparently never met.
We also noted with some further dismay that this particular line of police inquiry seems to have figured highly significantly in the course of this particular investigation. This is both interesting but also somewhat puzzling, given that in truth, very little in the way of hard evidence or firsthand accounts appear to be available in this case. Instead, this kind of account found above is strikingly similar to the kinds of rumor and speculation that your investigative team was so adamant that we ourselves should avoid.
As I understand from your stated methodology and line of reasoning, you appear to be constructing a psychological profile of Vicky which runs as follows: Vicky had a history of belief in the hereafter and (perhaps) the occult. Your team has focused its attention on a few text (or SMS) messages found to still be on Vicky’s mobile phone in which individuals make references to dwende (dwarf-like persons found within the body of Filipino folk lore). Your team then apparently seized upon two documents both apparently written in Latin which were (according to your investigative team) found to have been among Vicky’s possessions in her room (at the house of her employer, Mr. Eric Lee).
This information was subsequently leaked by someone to the South China Morning Post and to the Filipino Globe newspapers whereupon two articles were published making heavy reference to such occult activities on the part of Vicky. When Irene then formally requested (on May 5, 2008) these same documents (or photocopies thereof) to your investigative team in an effort to determine the true nature of these documents without fear as to where any such true determination will take the matter, the investigative team refused such written request by claiming that they constitute “key documents” that were being considered in the investigation. Thus, as a result, Vicky’s name and reputation were blackened in the minds of the public while at the same time any effort to come to an objective determination of the truth has also thereby been thwarted.
We find it strange then that your investigative team has apparently then been fixated on a conclusion that from the outset it has all along been determined to reach. This (foregone) conclusion as we understand it is that Vicky was highly superstitious and prone to irrational beliefs, namely visions of dead people and a belief in mythological dwarfs. According to such reasoning and given that she was superstitious and given to irrational beliefs, it is supposedly inferred that she was also prone to erratic and irrational behavior. Given that she was given to erratic and irrational behavior (so your argument runs) she would therefore also be (perhaps) prone to suicidal behavior. Given that she was possibly prone to such behavior, it is likely that she committed suicide on the night in question. Given that the autopsy report makes the empirical claim that Vicky dies of drowning, the conclusion follows, that Vicky drowned herself on the evening in question.
This is of course an interesting theory. And it does comprise a kind of speculative inductive argument. However, we also believe that such a theory also requires several significant and purposeful “leaps of faith” in order for it to be at all plausible. Furthermore, such a theory also requires a good deal of selective amnesia, or rather of consciously disregarding several significant pieces of evidence in the matter. Hopefully your investigative team like good police officers and critical thinkers will not succumb to the crabbed reasoning inherent to such a theory.
As you may recall, during your briefing to us on May 19, you raised this (above mentioned) line of reasoning (but not yet the conclusion that apparently flows from it). At that point as you may recall, I interjected my own observations in this matter. As I recall from that same meeting, during your entire address to us, you did not once refer to Vicky’s employer, Mr. Eric Lee Foo-keung in any context. In fact, his name or even any reference to him was never made by you, even in the context of a party being Vicky’s employer. At the time of your briefing to us, you mentioned the word “stress” as a way of explaining Vicky’s state of mind and behavior.
As you yourself said, “Vicky was under a lot of stress.” Yet as we are all aware, stress is not something that grows on the furniture like mold. Instead, stress is most often caused by human agents and inflicted on other human agents. Although it is not in serious dispute that Vicky was under stress living as she did in the Lee household, you did not seem interested in examining just where that high degree of stress was coming from. If you refer to your witness statements, you will find that Vicky was indeed under stress, but it was in fact coming from the employer, Mr. Lee and not from ghosts. But let us for the moment move on to consider the night in question.
At your briefing, as you informed us, Vicky was seen on Seabee Lane by at least two persons. They also informed your office that she was dressed only in a tee shirt and pajama bottoms with no shoes and was apparently quite frightened as she did not reply to the witness. However, you did not mention the statement given by a neighbor, who heard who lived nearby, heard a woman screaming from inside the house and when he went outside to see what all of the noise was, he even heard that a woman was apparently screaming “get away from me” or “leave me alone.”
You did mention that Vicky was later seen getting on the Discovery Bay-Tung Chung bus at the Wei Lun School. As you also mentioned, the driver apparently allowed her to board, even though she did not have any fare. You also mentioned that she was seen at the Tung Chung New Development Pier by another witness as she tried to board the number 56 bus bound for the airport and that the witness stated that she was asked to leave that bus since she did not have the proper fare. Then according to your account, she was later spotted apparently one last time, walking along the pedestrian walkway near the Tung Chung New Development Pier.
Yet you never once mentioned what occurred immediately prior to Vicky’s sudden flight from the house. In your narrative, the employer seems to be written out altogether. It is interesting to note here that just last night, I was watching on television some of the horrifying scenes of the tragic earthquake that occurred in Sichuan just over one week ago. In one news clip, the film footage showed a man carrying a badly injured woman out of the devastating wreckage, and yet despite the fact that she had been badly injured, the woman being rescued still clung to her purse.
That scene reminded me of something that police investigators ought to know instinctively. A woman may feel that her life is indeed in peril but she will not part with her bag, and yet in this case Vicky did. That fact, in and of itself tell us something. In addition, you made no reference to the troubling nature of the fact that she ran out of the house (in your version it was expressed more pejoratively as, “she ran away”) without even her shoes and still in her pajamas. Clearly, anyone would admit that something dreadful happened in that house that evening in order to frighten that young woman beyond almost anything that we can imagine.
Of course, this fact on its face, would almost feed into the narrative of Vicky being, “irrational,” “crazy” or whatever. Yet at the same time, there are no accounts from any one of Vicky ever having acted in anything like this manner prior to that evening. Here, however, your own version goes into a kind of speculative overdrive about the visions, ghosts, dwarfs and spooks to try and fill in the huge gaps and inconsistencies that exist in such a theory. It’s almost like your apparent theory is of itself in fact a ghost story.
But let us for the moment then, give pause to such idle speculation into what we might fancy went on in Vicky’s mind and instead, look at what her friends and aunt here in Hong Kong have said regarding the more prosaic and yet more concrete evidentiary aspects of this case. These individuals tell about Vicky as being a calm and down-to-earth person. They tell of a young woman who had worked in Hong Kong for over twelve years, who had worked diligently and saved up enough money from her job as a domestic helper in order to pay for a house and lot in her home province of Batangas Philippines where she then allowed her mother to go and live. This was a person, who these people will tell you attended Catholic mass on a regular basis and was also a member of the Bible Society. These are not speculations, as you have indulged in, they are facts.
Furthermore, as anyone who is a true Christian believer will inform you, belief in the occult is not only inconsistent but also inimical to the true faith of Jesus Christ. Your speculative allegations to the contrary therefore constitute a deep and hurtful offence to the family, the Discovery Bay Community of believers and in fact to any Christian believer. As a professing Christian you ought to have been far more sensitive to your team’s handling of this matter. We are therefore disappointed that you have stressed this aspect at the expense of other possibilities.
So then, instead of a highly speculative story told of a crazy, superstitious, irrational and suicidal woman, the facts of the matter based on the first hand accounts of several of her friends and relatives who knew her best, point to an entirely different Vicky. Instead, they tell us of a woman who was not only hard working, diligent and thrifty, but also a person who was at the same time kind generous, personable and deeply religious. This kind of person would entail a commitment to a set of morals which may not be compromised by adverse circumstances. Such a person, I would argue, is not likely to take her own life (which as you are well aware is a grave, grave sin according to the tenets Christian faith). Yet nevertheless, have you focused on this information or upon mere speculation?
Given that we look not to speculative ghost stories for an explanation of this case but instead to Vicky’s friends, relatives and peers for information about her personality and disposition, we are forced then to rethink our theory. Neither you nor we were present at the primary scene on Seabee Lane that evening, and we will never actually know for sure just what happened in that house that night. But we do know that a witness, who lived nearby, heard a woman screaming from inside the house and he even heard that she was apparently screaming “get away from me” or “leave me alone.” We know from multiple eyewitness accounts that Vicky ran out of the house without anything on her person. Doesn’t this give your investigative team some pause to wonder what that incident was all about? From the information provided by you at your briefing, the conclusion that we are forced to draw is, apparently not.
Were I in a similar position to the employer, Mr. Lee, I would fully expect to be the primary focus of a criminal investigation in the matter. Yet, as it turns out, this is apparently not the case at all. One can only speculate in this regard that this was because of an overwhelmingly positive impression that he was able to convey to the police in terms of his own good character and moral disposition.
Once again, turning away for the moment from the realm of ghosts and the occult, and examining the people who actually knew Vicky and were privy to her aspirations, frustrations and fears, one also finds a darker side of the story. One also finds from the many accounts of her friends and relatives a pattern of Vicky’s concern. And that pattern of concern was that Vicky had been the victim of a pattern of sexual harassment (if not abuse) on the part of the employer.
As you must be aware as an experienced police officer, in an investigation of this nature, the suggestion of any sexual element changes the investigative mix considerably. Yet despite all of these accounts on the part of the people that Vicky was confiding in prior to her death, your investigative team seems quite determined to overlook this aspect as though it were a kind of trivial nuisance. Yet despite such studied official denial, this troubling aspect to the matter refuses to go away.
Neither did the police investigative team seem to be cognizant of the unique conditions that domestic helpers are laboring under in Hong Kong. On April 19, I spoke on the telephone to Inspector Olivia Wong who according to you is currently heading up this investigation. She told me then that “if the maids or girls had anything to say” then they should go to the police to give their witness statements. Such an attitude can only be described as being either insensitive or naïve or both.
What the police seem not to understand at all here is that the laws of Hong Kong do in fact discriminate against foreign domestic helpers (or the “maids and girls” as Inspector phrased it) in terms of what is known as the “two week rule.” This is a policy which the Director of Immigration has chosen to follow whereby the visa held by any foreign domestic helper may be unilaterally foreshortened by her employer upon dismissal. It is also perhaps not fully appreciated by the police that an employer may dismiss his or her employee for any reason given a month in respect of wages.
Given that the worker’s visa will terminate after two weeks, the worker is effectively tied to her employer. May we suggest at this juncture that these circumstances in and of themselves add to the stress level of most foreign domestic helpers living in Hong Kong. If you are really doing investigative police work, it might be a good idea for just a moment to see things from the perspective of these individuals and not from your own point of view.
Furthermore, what the police also fail to grasp is that they are generally not trusted at all by the community of migrant workers living in Discovery Bay. The source of this distrust is probably rooted in not one but many factors, not all of which may be laid at your feet. However, I feel that given this tragedy, it is now incumbent on the police to make a sincere effort at creating bridges between itself and the migrant worker and Christian community in Discovery Bay, Peng Chau, Nim Shue Wan and indeed the rest of Hong Kong.
For our part, we cannot and will not engage in any speculation as to what we think occurred that night when Vicky died. We lack the statutory authority to do so and of course this is what the police are empowered and entrusted by law to do. In the end, we as residents of this community and of Hong Kong must defer to your authority, integrity and expertise in the matter. However, as you are no doubt aware, it is the great responsibility of law enforcement to both protect all law abiding members of the public from harm and seek to bring any lawbreakers to justice. It would seem then, at this juncture anyway, that the tragic death of Vicky Flores demonstrates among other things, a failure on your part. Furthermore it is also the responsibility of law enforcement to investigate all cases in a competent manner and without regard to the status of any persons involved.
We have already voiced our grievance to you regarding the manner that Irene Flores and indeed the entire Filipino community in Discovery Bay were treated in the wake of Vicky’s death. We also appreciate your admission that the police and the Coroner’s office in your own words, “could have done better.” As such, we sincerely thank you for this degree of candor. Yet, it would appear from your briefing to us on May 19 that the employer somehow appears to have been shown an entirely undue measure of deference due perhaps to his comparative wealth, social status and position in the community.
We note with further alarm however, the precipitous manner in which Mr. Lee has recently departed from his freshly renovated luxury residence on Seabee Lane. We note that he fled with such speed that he neglected to care for his Japanese carp, leaving them to die in the small Japanese koi pond which is located at the back of his luxury townhouse.
We also are concerned about the manner in which Mr. Lee has obdurately refused to pay the long-term service pay that is owed to the survivors of Vicky. We note that he has now retained a solicitor (which is his legal right) in order to dispute this claim. As you pointed out to us at the briefing on Monday, such a refusal to acknowledge a debt owed to a long term and faithful employee does not on its face constitute a crime. As you have pointed out, this is a civil matter. However, as you have made so much of Vicky’s disposition regarding superstition, such a course of action on the part of Mr. Lee also goes to his own disposition.
As considering the position of police investigators, one might well begin to speculate about the disposition of such a man. Returning yet again to the police investigation of this matter, if a mere story told of a vision or a text message by a caller Vicky’s phone could lead to all of that course of speculation and inference into the realm of ghosts and the occult, what then would a truly objective observer make of this convoluted course of actions undertaken on the part of the employer, Mr. Lee?
What kind of moral temperament, one might wonder would go to the considerable expense of retaining a solicitor in order to avoid paying a long-term service payment (of perhaps $HK20,000) to the widowed mother of a faithful employee who has served the family for 12 long years? Doesn’t that strike your investigative team as being in any way odd or suspicious? Or rather is the instinctive recourse to preemptory litigation in your view the normal course of action for the “reasonable Hong Kong man” found to be in this kind of situation? Please, we would love to hear of your considered views regarding this matter.
We can only then live in the hope that the Coroner and the police will find that this matter involves circumstances which are in fact “suspicious” according to the relevant statutory authority. However, at the same time we are forced with deep frustration and alarm, the total lack of transparency and professional competence that has been displayed as to date on the part of the Coroner.
Then, after a remarkable 38 days since the discovery of Vicenta Flores’ body, the autopsy report was finally issued and Irene was summoned to the Eastern Court Building in order to obtain her photocopy for which she was charged. Still, after 40 days, the toxicology report is still unavailable to the family of Vicky Flores. We note with some degree of amazement that the autopsy report was dated May 7, 2008. We therefore now demand a full and transparent explanation as to why the report (a two page document) was not released to the family of Vicky until after 12 days following the report was completed and signed.
Yet the worst of it is not the gross tardiness of the report. The worst of it is that in all of this time, Irene Flores, the closest living relative of Vicenta present in Hong Kong (who by the way came to Hong Kong at her own expense following notification of her sister’s death) was never contacted at all by the Coroner’s staff until May 19, 2008. We have therefore been deeply dismayed by all this considered indifference and callousness on the part of the Coroner despite many concerted and repeated attempts on our part to merely talk with him or with his staff. This alone it is argued constitutes a course of behaviour which is on its face, unreasonable. Given then this level of performance on the part of the Coroner’s office, one might well question the competence of their findings as well.
We had on no less than three occasions gone in person to the Coroner’s Court and has on all occasions been turned away without the benefit of explanation. I wish to convey to you then, on the part of Irene, our deep disappointment at the sheer insensitivity and lack of courtesy on the part of the Coroner and his staff. Given this degree of indifference, and lack of transparency one must question their ability to conduct a fair investigation in this matter. We therefore expect and demand that despite their initial opinion or analysis of the matter, an inquest will be conducted by the Coroner to give light to what is beyond all doubt the highly suspicious death of Vicenta Flores.
As Hong Kong’s government never seems to tire of reminding us, Hong Kong apparently enjoys the rule of law. And as we all are well aware, the rule of law (like God) is no respecter of the status of persons. The foremost tenet of the rule of law then is that all stand equal before the law. Yet at the same time (and very much unlike God) the less than ideal institutional reality is all too frequently, authorities are unduly deferential and pliant to the vested interests of the rich and powerful and over those of the poor and dispossessed. We sincerely hope then that this bigoted and prejudicial outcome based on a flawed process of reasoning will not be the eventuality in the case before us.
Finally, we note that under the same ideal of the rule of law which we all hold so dear, every person is regarded to be regarded as being innocent until proven guilty and that any criminal conviction may only be arrived at after the accused’s being afforded the rights inherent to due process, including having the right to silence in the face of police questioning and having the right to legal council at all times during any criminal investigation. We note that Mr. Lee has not for a moment hesitated to avail himself of these same legal rights and as such we do not for a moment question his rights in this matter per se.
Yet, we wish to remind you that a lovely young woman, who never did anything to hurt anyone, and had everything to live for, has tragically died under horrible and lonely circumstances, only a few hundred yards from your police headquarters. While Mr. Eric Lee has had the luxury of moving far away from what for him was a only mere inconvenience to his upper class lifestyle, his good name and reputation left intact, Vicky on the other hand has apparently been accused, tried convicted and condemned not only in the news media but apparently in the minds of those public servants who have been entrusted to uphold the law and with the investigation of her death.
I am SO happy that something like this was written. Thank you for working so tirelessly on the behalf of Vicky Flores, her people and their cause. And for questioning the abismal investigative tactics of the police who are clearly conducting an incomplete and sham of an investigation. I am shocked and horrified to read of how Mr. Lee is getting away scott free, from the doubt and suspicion that is only natural in such a situation and that his tenure as an employer is not being questioned despite the fact that a member of his household- even if only an employee, was found dead.
Again, thank you for working so hard.
I am reading about “VICKY’s” case and what’s happening with her case now; it really makes me sad to think that up to now nothing happens:
I have been here in Hongkong for almost 14 years now, and it makes me sad to say that most of us believes that “LAW” here in Hongkong is much better than Philippines, but yes I do agree that the discrimination here is much worse than I have ever imagined. That if you are only a mere servant even in cases of emergency people here will just ignore you. I have experienced going to the emergency section of the goverment hospital several times with a severe stiff neck pain, and still the staff doesn’t attend to you immediately (you have to wait 2 to 3 hours before being attended with. I brought my sister at one of the hospitals yesterday as she was bleeding, but still sent home and advice by the doctor to wait for her appointment on November 21, 2008. My question here is: What does “emergency” mean!? Does emergency mean that you should be on your last breath for you to be considered as one? I really can’t understand the hospital rule here… while I saw people waiting at the emergency section with just slight problems. To make matters worse for my sister, she was immediately terminated by her employer when they knew she was to attend Emergency! They had objected to her going to see the doctor and made her continue to work even though she was in pain and bleeding.
I wish the goverment will really act on this, and not wait till the reputation of Hongkong deteriorates further.