If only my mother had explained why she had warned me,
And what could have happened to me,
I certainly wouldn’t have gone.
gender violence, sexual violence, child molestation

I was around 7 or 8 years at the most.
All I knew then was that there are parts in our body that "strangers" should not see or touch.
What I came to know later is that most sexual assaulters are people who are very close to you.

I’ve been subjected to bad things ever since I was a child.
It started with the bullying I’d get at school,
Because of my thin body and dark skin.

At the beginning, I used to sit across the table from him.
After a while, he asked me to sit next to him.
He began to make a habit out of patting me...

My father was the first person to touch me.
I used to tell myself that I was imagining it.
When he’d touch me with his leg from behind,
I’d tell myself he was just being playful.

There was an uproar on Facebook a while back over the group rape of children at a school.
The children were forcefully gathered and put together in one place.
It’s said that they were put on the roof once, and in the school theatre another time.
There were a lot of rumors surrounding the incident,
So it wasn’t clear what exactly happened. 

I was eight years old.
I was playing in the streets,
Where a sixty year old man used to sell honey.
He would get us honey every month.
That time there was no one at home.

My mother used to always take us to school in a taxi,
Because she’d worry about us.
She wasn’t feeling well one day,
And she made our big brother take us to school.
When we got on the bus,
We found our neighbor.
He called for me and my sister,
And he made me sit on his lap because it was crowded.
gender violence, sexual violence, child molestation, harassment, the street, public transportation

I stopped hearing about her a long time ago.
When I found out that she was in a relationship,
With someone who was prepared for marriage,
And that they were intending to get married,
I withdrew in a nice manner and wished her all the best.
I mean I know my luck:
I am always too late.

In 2002 I was raped by my uncle for three consecutive months.
I was a 12-year-old girl. He was 54.
This happened inside my room at my parents place every day in the three months of the summer vacation.
sexual violence, child molestation, trafficking, rape, family