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Incest has scarred their lives but these innocent victims have found a refuge in Kandy. Kumudini Hettiarachchi reports
Home away from cruel home

Safe from society’s censure, they are free to build a new life

Stigma of ‘no’
The stigma caused to babies of victims of abuse from the time the tiny newborns face the world, is something Mrs. Stephens is fighting to change.
The birth certificate of such babies has a line drawn across the space for the father's name and the clause which asks whether parents were married would throw up a jarring "No" - labelling the innocent baby as illegitimate. The issue has been taken up with the authorities but no remedy found yet.

They play, they eat, they study and they smile. They indulge in all the activities of childhood, but a closer look, especially into their eyes reveals a totally different picture. There is pain, anguish and also an intangible quality - a loss of innocence, which they themselves cannot seem to comprehend.

These are the girls, some who have not even reached puberty, but have gone through trauma, in the form of sexual and also physical abuse who have been provided a home away from home by the Women's Development Centre of Kandy run by 63-year-old Mrs. Pearl Stephens. Most of them are victims of incest, the perpetrators being a trusted father, grandfather or uncle.

Set a distance away from Kandy town amidst the tranquillity of the hill country landscape, the shelter run by the WDC is at present home to 82, ranging in age from a very young six to the early 20s. A tender 12-year-old and a 16-year-old have just had babies, making it a tragic case of children having children. Among the mothers-to-be are a 14-year-old and a 20-year-old carrying not only the physical features of pregnancy but also an unbearable mental burden.

"Most of them are victims of incest. It is doubly tragic that they have been abused by someone who should have looked after them, someone very close to them," says Mrs. Stephens, explaining that the shelter is for girls and women who are pregnant and also abused schoolgirls.

The 12-year-old mother, Latha* is a typical example of incest. Latha's mother had gone in search of prosperity to the Middle East, leaving her with her father. The father, in turn, foisted the child on her grandparents and the abuser was the grandfather.

Another pathetic tale is that of three sisters of one family who have faced sexual abuse.
The mother being absent from home with the children having no protection, and alcoholism are seen by Mrs. Stephens as the main reasons for much of the child abuse including incest, taking place on a large scale today.

She recalls the humble beginnings of the shelter back in 1990, the first she believes for such victims in Sri Lanka. At that time most girls and women taken in by the police for vagrancy went through the court process while being detained at state certified remand homes. If they had children, they were put into homes run by the state.

"We felt that separation of mother and child didn't do any good. It could also lead to the mother resorting to similar activity once out of the remand home," says Mrs. Stephens.
Working with Save the Children, UK she set up the shelter for four such pairs of mothers and children.

Thirteen years after, the work being done by the WDC has been recognized and victims are sent by the Department of Probation and Child Care, for the process of restoring normalcy in their lives to begin. "If they are minors we enrol them in school as soon as possible, because it is one way of rehabilitating them. If they are young adults we give them vocational training and try to place them in jobs," says Mrs. Stephens, commending a private school in Kandy for giving scholarships to such students and factories close to the shelter for providing the much needed jobs in a safe environment.

So there is a constant wave of children and young women who come in, get healed in every sense of the word, have their babies in peace if they are pregnant and leave. "When the court case has been dealt with, the children are ready to go home. We do thorough checks of the home and see whether the danger is still lurking, before taking them back. In cases of incest, we have to keep them long term," says Mrs. Stephens who is more like a mother figure to them than the head of the shelter. But among Mrs. Stephens’ girls are also two long-term residents whom the shelter will not put out to face the vicissitudes of the world - one is deaf and dumb and the other is blind, both victims of rape.

Benevolent Mrs. Stephens' work with disadvantaged women began in Colombo long before the shelter was set up. When her husband moved to Kandy, she accompanied him in 1979. She has four children but took in eight others from around the lake who were living on the streets, bringing them up like her own. Her thinking is that a woman falls into trouble because of circumstances. "She needs help right at that time, immediately. Otherwise she does not have a choice but to get on the street again," says Mrs. Stephens.

In Kandy, she began working with the municipality, training their staff. "It was a starting point. The core group comprised the Medical Officer of Health (MOH), health education workers and also the principals of schools they were working with. We trained volunteers to go into areas, identify problems, come back and try to rectify them. We also wove in rights education, even at that time," she says.

Plantations, camps where JVP suspects were detained, refugee centres and border villages all became her haunts, as she went around helping her less fortunate sisters. "Only a woman will understand the needs of another woman. When there is a victim there is no religion, race or caste. Most men who sit on committees do not understand the needs of a woman. Something even as simple as not having a place to wash is a problem for a woman," she says describing how her mission with women's empowerment started.

Later she formalized her work by setting up the WDC in 1986. Her life's work has seen fruition with the setting up of the shelter. "The shelter is a place a person stays because she wants to stay. She gets an education, skills training and a small payment. The medical bills are looked after. Funding for all this work is from Sweden, Germany and Holland," she adds.

When the time comes for some of the victims to go home, if they are willing to take the babies with them, the WDC provides a small monthly allowance for the upkeep of the babies. If not, the babies are placed in homes run by the Probation and Child Care Department and sometimes given for adoption by the dept.

The shelter is a place where children and young women regain their shattered lives, pick up the pieces and start over again. This is also a place where they find solace and a shoulder to cry on.

And the best thank you that Mrs. Stephens and her dedicated staff get is when these victims return fully healed. They sometimes come with their spouses, after marriage, to the shelter, which they consider the maha gedera.
* Names have been changed to protect identities

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