Woman spots 'stolen' clothes on Facebook

Johannesburg - Want to steal your employer's clothes and get away with it? Then it's probably not a good idea to post selfies and other pictures of yourself wearing her clothes on your Facebook account which is on public settings.

This is exactly what Fatuma Phiri did.

Her Sandton employer got a big shock when she was casually scrolling through the "People You May Know" section on Facebook.

She saw a face which looked very familiar, but didn't recognise the name. She then became curious and decided to check out the profile.

To her horror, she discovered it was her part-time domestic helper posing brazenly in a number of her clothes, including her wedding dress.

Some of the photos were selfies taken in her bedroom, while others were taken outside the helper's home in Tembisa.

"I feel so violated. I cannot even look at my wedding dress anymore. Some of the buttons are now broken as she tried to force the dress on. This is the dress in which I took sacred vows before God," she said.

The woman says her family did a lot for this woman. "She was initially employed by us three times a week, then I had a baby and she decided that she was not comfortable looking after a newborn as she had no experience. But we still kept her on to work on a Saturday even through we did not need her. We felt that at least she would have a day's work.

"She was about to start a full-time job today with my sister. We always helped her to buy school books, clothes and groceries for her children.

"We even paid for her to do CPR and other courses to improve her skills so she could eventually become a child carer. She was a part of the family," the employer said.

Sometimes clothes went missing, but every time she asked where a certain garment was, it would reappear the following day.

"She would say she found it and that I had not looked properly," she said. "I think I probably could have overlooked the clothes, but I draw the line at seeing her posing in my wedding dress, which I designed and had especially made."

After seeing her on Facebook, the employer went to look for the clothes and found many items she was posing in were missing.

She laid a charge of theft at Sandton police station and the domestic worker was arrested on Saturday morning when she arrived for work.

Phiri appeared in court on Monday but the case was dismissed after the employer withdrew the charges and terminated her contract.