Violence and Abuse

What you are about to read is the true life story of a young girl who at the age of 15 was thrown into the world of violence and abuse. The names and locations have been changed for the courtesy of providing privacy.

As a child growing up in the remote village of Orissa, in India, Anita was the eldest daughter and child in the family. She and the other children all attended a local school and Anita was studying in Standard 5 at the time. 

Living as they did, away from the benefits of more populated areas, meant that the opportunities in their daily lives were to a large degree much less promising than those of people living in more urban areas, but they managed quite well with what they had.

Anita’s father, the head of the family, worked as a truck driver for a local company and her mother took care of the household and all of the children. Their financial condition was certainly not one that anyone would consider wealthy, but everybody worked together and shared the daily tasks of the home and they managed to live relatively comfortably, though there was never the money required to provide any luxuries.

One day while her father was at his job driving the truck, he was following another delivery truck on the way to his delivery destination. Traffic was moving slowly as there was a marriage procession ahead of them. As is common in Indian marriage celebrations one of the men in the wedding party tossed a lit firecracker onto the road and when it went off the unsuspecting truck driver that Anita’s father was following suddenly slammed on his brakes.

This sudden stop caused the load of bagged agricultural Lime loaded on his truck to shift, resulting in some of the bags of Lime to be spilled onto the roadway, with the impact causing the bags to break open. Suddenly the powdered lime was scattered everywhere, and in the huge cloud of dust from the broken lime bags Anita’s father steered his truck towards the shoulder of the road finally getting his truck stopped without any further damages occurring.

But in the course of getting his truck safely stopped, Anita’s father had driven into and through the cloud of lime and some of it had gotten into his eyes, causing him terrible pain and temporarily blinding him.

After everything got settled down Anita’s father’s assistant took over the driving responsibilities and drove to the nearest hospital to have the doctor’s care for Anita’s father. At the hospital the doctors examined his eyes, but unfortunately the damage to his eyes was already done and the doctors told him that there was nothing that could be done to save his eyesight. 

With her father now back home and blinded, Anita’s family was now faced with the inescapable reality of finding a new way to provide for their needs now that her father, the family’s bread winner, could no longer work. This was a turning point in the family’s life and their condition went from bad to worse in no time.

Her mother began picking flowers from a nearby forest and started selling them at a local flower market to earn money to feed the family. And as there was no longer enough money to pay for her school fees, Anita a child of only 12, was forced to end her education. Her younger sister, suffering from polio and a lung condition soon began to fail in her health as there was no longer the money to pay for the needed medications and she soon died.

Anita was now feeling very sad, but was always trying to think of ways to earn money to help support the family. One day she met a lady in her village that had a job working in a factory in another town that manufactured ladies hand bags. Anita talked with this lady and explained her situation and asked the lady if she would inquire at the factory to see if Anita could go to work there.

After about a week the lady came back to the village and told Anita that she could have a job at the factory. So Anita went to work there and began providing the money to allow their family to pay for their living expenses.

When Anita was 15, one day her mother’s sister came to the house. While there Anita’s aunt asked Anita’s mother why she hadn’t found a suitable husband for Anita and her mother replied that she didn’t have the money that would be required for the dowry to get Anita married. So Anita’s aunt said that she would find a man who would be willing to pay for all of the wedding expenses. 

Three months later Anita’s aunt returned with a proposal. Anita and her father both voiced their opposition to the proposal as Anita was only 15 at the time, but her mother and her aunt said that the marriage would take place and informed the prospective groom’s family that the proposal was accepted.

After the wedding the new bride and groom, who was 10 years her elder, moved to Anita’s new husband’s village and set up their home. Being only 15 and unskilled in the responsibilities that come with managing a household, Anita soon fell from the graces of her new husband and he began to take his frustrations out on her by beating her. Unknown to Anita and her family at that time was the fact that Anita’s new husband was suffering from mental illness and this only added to the severity of the beatings.

The beatings continued until one day Anita was beaten into unconsciousness. After her consciousness returned Anita made the decision that she would no longer live under those conditions and so she returned to her parent’s home. Soon Anita’s husband was there at her parents home demanding that Anita come back home with him, but Anita refused and her parents agreed that she would not be returning to the husband’s village. A divorce was soon sought and granted and Anita once again began working at the women’s handbag factory.

Soon a year had passed and Anita met a man who also worked at the factory, they became friends and soon fell in love and decided to marry and move to the house where he was currently living. They seemed happy together and with them both working their jobs at the factory they were earning enough money to live comfortably.

Shortly after six months later Anita was injured in an accident on her way to work one day. The accident resulted in a broken leg and Anita’s leg was put into a cast and she was ordered by the doctor to stay off the leg as much as possible for the next 45 days. This was an unfortunate situation and soon Anita was informed that she no longer had a job at the women’s handbag factory. 

Once she had lost her factory job, her husband, realizing that the family income was now drastically reduced, began to look for a way to get out of this unfavorable situation. He contacted the owner of a brothel and arranged to sell Anita to the brothel owner for 10,000 Indian Rupees, or about $200.00 US. He then came home and told Anita that he had found her a job in a nearby town and that in a couple of days the owner of the factory would be arriving in town to take her and some other women he had hired by train to the city where the factory was located.

Continued in Part 2