No more silence: Women speak up about 'natal' family violence

NEW DELHI: Raeesa was just 13 years old when her father wanted to marry her off. Her refusal infuriated him so much that he along with her brother shut her in her room and used her dupatta (headscarf) to tie her hands and then beat her up at their west Delhi home. She is now 30 years old, no longer lives with her family, but still remembers that horrific experience.
Her's is one of 20 voices of women captured in a new study that brings into focus the worrisome issue of "natal family violence" by birth family members like father, mother and siblings.The report raises some critical question on a subject shrouded in silence and reflects on how these women became victims in their own homes and finally sought help amidst a raging pandemic between 2020 to 2021.
The report 'Unkahi-The Unspoken' shares the suffering through detailed intervIews of women - between 18 to 27 years - who reached out to Shakti Shalini that works with women survivors of violence and operates a shelter in Delhi to provide a safe space for those in distress.
In the study, one finds the case of Shanno from a colony in southwest Delhi. She left home when she was 23. She was raped, and abused physically and emotionally by her mother's male cousin. Even as she tolds her mother about it the cousin never stopped the assaults and instead condoned it. Her uncle raped her for three years, in her own home and when she finally put her foot down she was beaten badly, her books were thrown in a drain, and her clothes burned.
While the world focussed on the rise in domestic violence at the hands of husbands, intimate partners and the marital family at the peak of the pandemic, it is shared in the report that on Shakti Shalini's helpline and at the women's shelter home in Delhi in that period an unexpectedly large number of single women had reached out after facing violence at the hands of their birth family or natal kin - parents, siblings, uncles, and so on.
Data show that between March 2020 to March 2021, while 29 women reached out to Shakti Shalini from Delhi NCR and some from even other states for help in matters related to marital family violence, there are 37 women who sought assistance to escape natal family violence. Data prior to that shows that between April 2019 to March 2020, 26 women complained of natal family violence and 19 were survivors of domestic violence. The trend continued in 2021 as women continued to open up their suffering in their natal homes.
As many as 15 out of 20 women who were part of the qualitative study faced physical and verbal violence that included being slapped. The study also draws attention to the fact that the perpetrators of violence were - in equal measure - both male and female family members. A majority of these women belong to the working class and lower middle class.
It is explained that among the women who were interviewed, violence connotes a wide range of abusive and coercive behaviours by their natal family. "Some were more physically abusive than others. Emotional abuse and psychological trauma is reported by all. Economic control emerges as yet another way to establish power and control over the daughter/sister," it is stated in the report.
That women with disability face worse comes through in Karishma's case study. She left home when she was 23. A resident of Ghaziabad, she was born with a short leg syndrome (one leg shorter than the other) and her family considered her to be a burden all along. "I finally left home after my father had hit me a lot because I intervened in an argument between my brother and sister. My father hit me against the wall, the bed, and the almirah. If my sister had not held his hands, he would have killed me that day," she is quoted in the study.
Shakti Shalini makes a strong case for carrying out research on natal family violence, sensitisation in schools and colleges and exclusive spaces in communities to talk about natal violence. Asserting that there is need for campaigns to build young women's awareness regarding their right to choose and laws on property, Shakti Shalini also highlights the urgent need for creating more sustainable shelter homes for (cis and genderqueer) women survivors of violence.
(All names have been changed for securing the identity of women)