WUNRN
International Museum of Women - IMOW
Voices on Motherhood Exhibition
NEPAL
- YOUNG SLAVE GIRL, NOW MOTHER, SUES FORMER OWNER/RAPIST & WINS
SETTLEMENT
Journalist
Meredith May traveled to
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San
Francisco Chronicle for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting - Anita
Chaudhary has a small store, given to her by a nonprofit that helps former girl
slaves.
Carlos Avila
Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting -
Anita Chaudhary's parents sold her to be a domestic servant. Now, back in her
Nepali village, she is shunned because she has a baby. Anita successfully sued
the man who bought her for rape; the settlement will allow her to buy land to
support herself and her baby.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Anita
Chaudhary, 18, speaks as if all emotion has been kicked out of her. She stares
into the distance, her voice is barely a whisper, and her shoulders are slumped
forward in defeat.
But there's a flicker of fight
left.
Chaudhary is one of thousands of
former Nepali girl slaves - kamlaris - who were sold by their impoverished
parents for the equivalent of $50-$75 to work as domestic servants in the homes
of higher caste families. Although the Nepali Supreme Court outlawed the
practice in 2006, it continues in the remote villages of the indigenous Tharu,
who sell their daughters to feed the rest of the family or pay sharecropping
debts. Girls report being beaten, forced to work 20-hour days, and in the worst
cases, raped by their employers.
Anita, who cooked and cleaned for
a male school teacher in the Dang district of southwestern Nepal for nine
years, is one of 35 former kamlaris who are suing their traffickers.
Her life is over, she said, but
her lawsuit is for her son. Her baby, then 18 months, is the son of the school
teacher who bought her, she said.
Anita told her story from inside
a small hut where she runs a sundry store, selling cigarettes, sugar, eggs,
candy, soap, playing cards and chilies. The walls are made from a mixture of
mud, rice husk and cow dung. The roof is elephant grass.
"When I was nine, my father told me I was a big girl and it was time to
bring in income," she said. "I was scared, I didn't know who I
was going to live with."
Anita washed dishes, scrubbed the
floor and swept in her owner's home. She had to clean the cow shed and go to
the forest to collect fodder - leafy branches and tall grasses - and carry
heavy bundles on her head back to her owner's house for his goats and pigs to
eat.
Then, one day the wife went out.
Anita was 12. He took her hand, she said, and brought her to his bedroom and
began to touch her. When she protested, he told her not to worry because he had
had a vasectomy.
The visits to the bedroom
continued daily until Anita was 17, she said. Twice, she became pregnant, and
twice her owners took her to a clinic for an abortion. The third time, she kept
her pregnancy a secret because she wanted the baby. In her ninth month, rumors
started circulating in her village, and an aunt came to the school teacher's
house to see if Anita was bearing a child.
The aunt took her home, and the
next day Anita gave birth in a hut in her village.
But, because she was an unwed mother, she was kicked out of her family's house.
She now has a scarlet letter on her sari.
Society Welfare Action Nepal
(SWAN), a charity working to end the kamlari practice, gave Anita the startup
money to open her store. It's also her home, where she sleeps at night with the
baby she named Shangam Sharma Majagaina. No one in the village will take them
in.
"I'm very sad all the
time," she said. "My own family doesn't like me. They let me
down."
The Nepal Youth Foundation
assisted Anita with her lawsuit, a paternity case that if proven would mean she
would legally be the man's wife and entitled to land. The Foundation is run by
Olga Murray, an 86-year-old woman from
It's an uphill battle,
The school teacher has said in television
interviews with Nepali journalists that the child is not his.
The only time Anita smiled when I
interviewed her was when asked if she's glad she had her son. When she smiled,
years fell off her face.
"I want land so I can send
my son to school," she said. "I want to give justice to him as soon
as possible."
Despite the odds, Anita
successfully sued her attacker. She was given half his land, where she now
lives and farms wheat, rice, potatoes and seasonal vegetables. She earns enough
to send her son, now four, to school. Anita says her baby rekindled her will to
fight back, but she will always be sad that her family disowned her.
About the Author
Meredith A. May is an
award-winning narrative writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.....