VICTIMS OF ABUSE AND BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
EVELYN had been sitting outside the police post for the past four hours. The officer in charge was not around. Nightfall was fast approaching. Her six-year-old daughter clung closer.
Another two hours passed by, and she was finally called inside to record her statement again. The first time her statement was put on hold due to the absence of the officer in charge.
Her recounting of horrors wrought on her and her daughter took two more hours. She was told to go back home and appear again the next morning.
She knew not where to go and pleaded for help. She found a space with a few homeless women under the massive flyover and slept off the night.
The next morning, as she prepared to begin her travails of the day, the women who sheltered her advised her to stay with them. They told her that her cry for justice was all in vain.
Hence, she and her daughter became homeless and surrendered to the perpetual life of abuse on the streets.
It was not long before she and her daughter along with a few other women were rescued and put in rehabilitation facilities.
Evelyn was aware that the road to recovery from trauma was long and it might never end, still hope was all she had for the two of them.
This story had been told in a very terse manner. In truth, the stories of women who had been subjected to all forms of abuse might take reams of paper to be told.
This tale was just an instance to lay bare the helplessness of victims of abuse; they suffer multiple blows not only on their physical bodies but also on their minds.
Gender-based Violence has been a topic of discussion for many. The concrete reality has been that the rate of abuse has not declined. There has been a big gap in the establishment of laws and their enactment.
Domestic abuse, economic violence, psychological, physical and emotional violence, adult rapes, child rapes et al might just be mere words for the numerous law agencies and for the morality keepers of society but for the women who had suffered simply for being Women, these words sound like screams of the devil on their consciousness.
Why would a society permit its women to be subjected to such inhumane atrocities?
In any society, moral degradation has been apparent when the women in it are not treated right.
According to estimated World Health Organisation statistics, about one in three (30 percent) of women worldwide have been subjected to some form of abuse: What has been lacking to counter this horror?
When violence has been perpetuated against women and justice has not been provided then the repercussions travel far and wide. The immediate environment of an abused woman would feel hostility and spill over onto the people in that environment.
Considering women provide the environment for inculcating stronger value systems in their families therefore any violence against them shatters that value system.
The ripple effect has been evident in children of broken homes who grow up to be violent individuals.
Indifference to abuse has been one of the foremost crimes of our so-called progressive societies. Sadly enough, the abuse has not been relegated to the poorer sections of society.
These echelons have not been proven to be blameless when it pertains against women.
What causes violence against women? The significant cause could be the norm prevalent in most societies across the world, on the acceptability of violence against women and the strict adherence to inflexible gender identities which amusingly has to violence been defined mostly by men in patriarchal societies.
The reality of lesser physical strength in women has been twisted to generalise women as the weaker sex and the resultant reinforcement of this epithet, sadly also by women themselves causes men to feel entitled and subjugate them in all aspects of life.
“If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?”- Mary Astel (16681731).
It would be imperative to comprehend that the solution requires a complete overhaul of the basic conditioning of a society; which has been conditioned to perceive women in a certain aspect.
In this era of the high-tech world, it has become easier to bring issues to the fore provided willingness for change exists. To change gender-based roles and identities ought not only to be the interest and intention of a sole institution; a collective awakening and conscious desire to change through repeated educational campaigns initially at grassroots levels along with stricter laws and punishments could be one of the many answers sought to change the much-desired narrative of abuse (primarily against women and children).