A 24-year-old Malayali student who has chosen to come out, with the support of the Kerala Mahila Samakhya Society, about the abuse by her father and his friends is one of the subjects of a documentary being made by film-maker Leena Manimekalai.
On Tuesday, the young woman recounted how she used to accompany her father during his work as a ‘mike announcer’ from the age of seven, but was abused by him starting when she was around 12.
She was initially apprehensive even about informing her mother. When she did, her mother questioned her father, leading to huge rows, all manners of intimidation, violence, and threats to her mother and siblings. After one such attempt that had attracted neighbours’ attention, the girl told them of the abuse. A case was filed, and it came to trial and judgement was delivered in 2009.
She was speaking at ‘Athijeevikkunnavarodoppam,’ an attempt by the society to launch programmes that would help the survivors and bring about a sea change in society.
Unanswered questions
There are nearly a hundred girls or women living in 11 Nirbhaya shelter homes in eight districts in the State and at least one case reaches the Kerala Mahila Samakhya Society every day.
Often, there are no answers to how the girls or women survived the violence, where their families are, if they have managed to stand on their two feet, or whether their attackers got due punishment. It is against this backdrop the programme was organised.
Lack of support
The woman who reached the society when she was in class 10 spoke of her worries about her academics and if she would be able to live with her family, the lack of support from extended family and local people blamed her for what happened.
In the discussion that followed, the extent of her ordeal helped shed light on the state of mind of the survivors of violence and their worries and anxieties.
After the student spoke of her desire to live with her mother and siblings as a family, one participant opined that as the government had put her up at Nirbhaya all these years, it was duty-bound to provide her with a house where she could live with her family.
People’s reluctance
The rights of women, especially in their own family, also came up for discussion. The reluctance of people to intervene in so-called private matters and tendency to close their eyes to abuse and violence till the time it affected their families was pointed out.
The need to raise children without any discrimination on the basis of their gender and sensitise boys early on in their life about it, and for women to react and have the strength to fight back was stressed by the participants. Misconceptions about sexuality were leading to child sexual abuse, a participant said.
Youth committees, it was pointed out, had a huge role to play in sensitising the people.