I have been pregnant with ideas, but unable to give birth. It feels so amazing that I haven't been able to write up anything. Thoughts have come and gone. Ideas, brilliant at first, exciting and exhilarating have gone unrecorded. That is why perhaps, I feel my heart so heavy with burden. I have begun to snap and shout with slightest provocation. Now that I realize, what an important therapy writing is for me. Thus, here I go, start again..............just following the strands of my thoughts.
I want to talk about hypocrisy, specially that of sexual offenders wearing a cloak of 'respectability'. I also want to explore reasons why girls/women who experience it feel compelled to be silent. I also want to know about people who are witnesses, who have observed such tendencies but still say nothing.
I want to talk about a certain class of sexual offenders, who are self-proclaimed and publicly recognized social workers, political leaders and other so called 'respectable people' of society. These people take undue advantage of the trust that people put under them. It enrages my heart to see these people being awarded, being applauded, being hailed as a leader while these people are always under the cloak of 'respectability' carrying their sins underneath.
Why can't we speak? Why don't we break silence? It is because most of the time, society blames the victim. People say, ' how can girl be abused without provocation?", ' she must have done something', ' it must have been her fault'.
How can we change this attitude? How can we unmask these hidden crimes? I want to call over all the people who read this blog to share about the incident that they have themselves experienced or have heard someone experiencing. I wish we could start the campaign of unmasking these so called social leader's guilts so that in future, they would be more aware before they think about taking advantage people who trust them.
I applaud specially one blind girl I know who openly spoke about the sexual abuse she faced from the so called renowned social worker. He had established an integrated school in Baglung and was commended for his service. He had been sexaully abusing the blind girl students under his care. Later, with the activism of Women's Committe of Nepal asssociation of the Blind, of which I was a volunteer was able to file a case against him. Neera Adhikari, my dear friend played a great role in motivating me to be involved. Later this involvement led me to write my Master's thesis on Sexual violence against disabled women, which gradually kindled my interest to be actively involved in issues relating to disabled women.
I have seen and heard series of instances of sexual harrassment occuring within the walls of a certain institution that I knew. One of these incidents provoked one youth and he nearly took offender's life. But the offender being self proclaimed social leader and social worker, dubbed himself as 'Mahatma Gandhi' ( remember that Mahatma Gandhi was killed by his own follower). This analogy worked great with him. I do not applaud the youth's action on physically hurting the offender. What we should have done collectively was to seek legal means. But Nepal being Nepal, we all know how justice is in hands of the rich and respected. Soon after that, there was a lot of buzz and rumours about the cause of incident, but nothing happened. The people affected, the peope who witnessed, the people who knew just remained silent. I know this silence may go on forever. It distresses me everytime I have to say 'namaste' to him for the sake of social etiquette. The only thing I have been able to do about this incident is write a poem about it: I present it here, all over again..........
