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Living nightmare
The "face" of violence has gradually changed over the years in this land once known for its tranquillity. "Those days a husband would give the wife a ‘kane shot’ (a slap on the ear) but now it is slashing with knives or chopping off limbs with swords and burning with the calculated motive of harming," says WIN's Savithri Wijesekera.
The latest trend is for men to watch pornographic videos and expect their wives who have been brought up with traditional inhibitions to perform the same acts. When the woman fails to do so she is beaten, she says.

The evidence of violence and abuse was right there in the battered flesh in a cosy and safe home in the suburbs of Colombo. When The Sunday Times visited the shelter run by WIN there were five women and three children, mostly from Colombo and a few from the outstations.

A pretty 25-year-old sits with a crutch by her side. Her fractured right leg is in plaster. Even though she had been consistently beaten up by her husband who is part of the pathala lokaya (underworld) she bore the pain in silence.

"He dragged me off in my night dress one night from my grandparents' home when I was just 14. Later he married me and we had a baby. Now the little girl is four. I have pursued higher education and have a degree but he doesn't want me to go to work. He is very possessive and suspicious.

The assaults began after we married, I thought he'd change. This time he hit me with a pol paralaya (coconut beam) when I was praying. I’m lucky to be alive. Outsiders intervened and saved me," says Latha*.

Reliving the trauma, she sobs, "He kept on hitting me over and over again, shouting that he wanted to kill me. Even those who intervened were injured." A mother and daughter who have taken shelter here, tremble at the memory of the violence they fled from. Ramya*, a nurse had been married before. After they had a daughter, now 12, the man abandoned them.

Years later, Ramya had fallen in love with a martial arts instructor and gone to live with him and his family. He too had been married before. The episodes of violence occurred whenever he had his drinking bouts. The last, about 10 days ago, had taken a weird turn, with the man force-feeding beer and also beating Ramya, making her thoroughly sick.

Black and blue in the face, there is fear in her eyes. She suspects that the man has molested her daughter after getting her drunk. Even in her drunken stupor, her first reaction was to take her daughter to a safe place after the man left.

The angelic looking 12-year-old refuses to speak about her stepfather, only talking of the violence he has perpetrated on her mother. Among the women who have taken refuge is also Mala* who is dumb from birth. Now 34, she had been doing a job at an outstation factory close to her home when she was abducted and gang-raped by five men.

These women have found solace and comfort in this emergency shelter, where they are being provided the right to live in a safe environment free of violence.
* Names have been changed to protect identities

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