Plus

Plus

Kumudini Hettiarachchi meets with a pioneering group of women who are committed to helping their sisters in need
Hurt no more
Celebrating 15 years. No big deal, most people would think. It does become a big deal, when, at the very beginning, it had been untouched territory, where most organizations feared to or dared not tread. Yes, the whole landscape of violence against women with special emphasis on domestic violence.

It is also not just a celebration of an achievement for Women-in-Need (WIN) but a thrusting forward towards new goals. For, WIN hopes to mobilize the support of the vast corporate sector for this vitally important reality in the lives of thousands of people in this country.

The reality is seldom or never spoken of, especially in the middle and upper classes. It happens in the dead of night, behind closed doors. In most instances, the only witnesses are wide-eyed, trembling children, peering from behind the curtains or hiding in a corner. The neighbours pretend they do not hear or see.

The signs are covered up by the victims themselves - a black eye with a pair of sunglasses or a broken arm with the excuse that it was a fall in the bathroom. For middle class morality frowns on family "squabbles" being brought out into the open. The oft-heard comment, if a victim does seek help, is: "It's a personal matter between husband and wife. We cannot interfere."

It is this hush-hush topic of violence in the home or domestic violence that WIN decided to make its raison d'etre 15 years ago. WIN began with 10 women, including Canadian Jane Marywell and local beauty queen Caryl Tozer, first talking about domestic violence as an issue that nobody was addressing and later taking up cudgels on behalf of the victims, back in 1988.

The humble beginnings saw a small group of volunteers "befriending" anyone they heard was being battered at home. Those were also turbulent times for the country with the north-east in flames due to the LTTE and the south due to the JVP uprising.

By sheer dint of perseverance, the small group of women who started work in a home in Alfred House Avenue, moved to Edward Lane and finally to 20, Deal Place, Colombo 3, expanding their services to cover not only befriending but also counselling and providing legal services when necessary. WIN has now expanded to 35 at the head office with 12 counsellors, 14 lawyers and the rest administrative staff. In terms of numbers, whereas WIN handled only about 235 cases in 1990, last year it has on record 10,729.

"We need a permanent office, as the victims have to know where we are. So now we have negotiated with Colombo Mayor Prasanna Gunawardene and he has promised to give a 10-perch block on long lease at Tickell Road, Borella. We have to find the funding to build our office," explains WIN Executive Director Savithri Wijesekera.

Reaching out from Colombo, WIN has also opened outstation offices, the first being in Matara in 1997 because it found that there were many problems there in the aftermath of the JVP insurrection and also with women seeking employment in the Middle East. "We found a lot of young widows and single mothers in the area facing hardships," says Ms. Wijesekera.

Matara was followed by Kandy, Anuradhapura and Badulla, with hopes of another in Vavuniya soon. WIN's aim is to provide a totality of services to victims, for most of them have no one to turn to or nowhere to go, Ms. Wijesekera explains. "We do not wait for them to come to us but reach out, meeting them and their problems halfway, providing crisis counselling and also physical safety and legal services," she says.
"The victims face many issues when they are being battered. Foremost among them is the fact that they are economically insecure."

Fifty-one percent of Sri Lanka's population comprises women. Not only are they a major vote base, they are also the major income earners for this country. They keep the cash flowing in from the Middle East, the garment sector and the estates. Therefore, it is doubly sad that victims of domestic violence do not have a safety net in the form of social security support from the government, laments Ms. Wijesekera.
Adds WIN President Mala Sabaratnam, "We can only scratch the surface and are dependent on other people's goodwill."

So on October 30, as WIN celebrates 15 years of service to victims of domestic violence, it will also launch a 'Victims of Violence Fund' and throw down the gauntlet to the corporate sector to take up the crusade and be on the side of thousands of women and children who face nights of terror and days of violence.

The plea of WIN to those who sit in the boardrooms is - let these victims, struggling to face the violence not only in the humble huts in the villages and middle class homes in towns, but also in the plush mansions of Cinnamon Gardens know that they are not alone.

Back to Plus