The shrill sound of babies crying shatters the silence of the birds and trees as I enter into the imposing white building. It is a bevy of activity inside and for just a minute it’s all confusion for me. But I regain my composure fast and look around. My colleagues and I are surrounded by children of all ages, shapes, sizes and forms. Some smile shyly; others hide in the shadows of the attendants now coming to welcome us. We are in the Children’s Remand Home in Galle. This is where the wounded, forgotten, damaged children get hidden away, in case they spoil serendipity for all passers by in this tourist district, also known for the ramparts of Dutch colonialism and a once monumental cricket stadium – both reminders to the offerings of those who forced rule over this country for decades, I think wryly. Galle is also known for its lighthouse and the surfers’ waves that drive most ocean-lovers to it over long weekends. Also soul-searching artsy types to brood in the concoctions of their thoughts until inspiration strikes them to award-winning literature or some such momentary achievement.
A snotty, mouse-like child of about eight tugs on my t-shirt and puts his hand on my arm, as though I were the dial-a-playmate he had ordered over the phone. Not daring to dissuade him, I step up to my marching orders from this little punk, a familiar mushy feeling taking over my usually practical and no-nonsense demeanour – I know, ridiculous for my height of five feet (and two inches, I remind myself emphatically!). Once again I try to avoid pleasure taking over my work, but fail miserably as usual. The child leads me to a circle of other children, engaged in a game of karam. Well, not quite engaged in the game, some scraping the pieces on the board in a board game version of G-force or Voltron, while others sit around squealing with laughter. That moment is bliss for me. Nothing in the world is more beautiful and intoxicating like a child laughing. What a rare thing that is in this monstrous world of ours.
After a few minutes of entertaining the kids with my antics of a clown, I pull out my notebook and pen as naturally as breathing and find a spot with one of the chief attendants to find out about the history of the institution and the variety of reasons for the presence of these children. The lady in question, a hard-nosed woman of considerable proportion, never failed to switch on the look of gentleness towards a child who would distract her for this and that in the course of our conversation. I watch her manage the balance with wonder and admiration. She tells me that many of the children here were ‘secured’ by Probation Officers working for the National Child Protection Authority while on their rounds in the villages, after serial visits to their homes found all the signs and evidences of sexual and physical abuse. Mostly from their parents or close relatives. She tells me this latter bit of information as though she has repeated it to many others before me. Obviously she has. Before police officers, magistrates and department officials. I shudder at the seriousness of her job and silently thank God for the nature of mine, feeling a little guilty for my thought.
Other children are here because their only remaining parent is in custody on charges of neglect, abuse or misconduct towards their child, or for minor offenses like theft or the illicit distilling of alcohol. The primary reason my colleagues and I are here is to investigate the prevalence of child sex tourism in certain locations in Sri Lanka, including in Galle, for a regional report. Our investigations were not as simple as we had expected, due to the covertness of operations going on where child sex and pornography are concerned in this country. Children are embraced by Sri Lankan culture. Still, there are the many exceptions that result in hateful effects on them, which I blame on the curse – poverty stoked by the global economy. Even so inexcusable, I think to myself - more than a little self-righteous and naïve for my 24 years.
I collect my quota of case studies for the report soon after. They bring to me a girl of 14 years. She’s as tall as me, and smiles but it fails to reach her eyes. I make a note of that. She sits next to me and I instantly beam to make her a little more comfortable and in an attempt to appear approachable. That’s one thing most Sri Lankans respond to – a smile. It seems to have done its work, almost. She smiles back weakly, justifiably unsure of what I would want with her. I make a quick self-study to see if I really am approachable. Generally when visiting villages I am very plainly dressed – no jewellery, no make up, my hair tied simply at the back and slippers on my feet. To elicit information from someone else, you must transform into an almost non-entity so that the subject is only aware of his or her story and you are merely the recording device. I do this well, most of the time. But often it is respect, politeness and an elevation of the subject’s person and humanity that is most crucial. I have learned this over the years.
After a few general questions about her school, her friends and her favourite things, I subtly lead to the subject that brings her the most pain – her family and her home. Isn’t it amazing that the place that ought to be the most secure and pleasant for a child is for this girl and many others like her the most feared of all? I am careful to observe how she speaks softly and respectfully of her mother, almost in defense, just in case someone were to blame her for the plight her three daughters are in today. I was informed before the interview that the girl I would be talking to is mentally challenged from birth and slow in comprehension and speech. However, she had gone the farthest in school – up to Grade three, whereas her older and younger sisters were not able to go on to Grade one. The older sister, 17, was kept at home most her life to help with the home chores and learned to sweep the garden and home, to fetch water from the village well and to wash clothes. She is incapable of forming complete sentences or of expressing herself except through her mother. Her younger sister, 12, walked to school with her on most days for company and idled around the school compound until she was done, and on other days she wandered around the village paddy fields.
I gather from the simple and slow sentences the girl manages that a year to date her father had been laid off from work at the local factory, at which point the drinking became far worse. She recalls him being intoxicated most days and nights. (Galle and most parts of the western and southern coastal areas are infamous for the production of illicit hooch; Sri Lanka in the mid-nineties also had the enviable dual-title of being the country with the highest rates of both alcoholism and suicide!) He would stagger home in the night and pick a fight with her mother whenever she asked him about work or about the household finances. The ensuing fights would always end up with him striking her mother, one particular night she recalls her father dragging her crying mother by her hair, slamming her into the only room in the wattle and daub house and shutting the door from the outside. He turned on her older sister next just because she stood with her partially blind eyes fixed on him, not able to understand what was going on. The rest of these nights are a blank for her.
The attendant sits by me and whispers that the father had needed money for his drinks one evening and had asked his friends from the factory. One friend had made a suggestion to him, which he had accepted without a second thought, or so it seems. The girl relates how her father came one evening obviously drunk and, after inquiring of their mother’s whereabouts, dragged his eldest daughter with him out of the house and into the woods nearby. She had heard nothing after that. Apparently, her sister had been rented for an hour or two to one of his factory buddies for Rs.20 (US 0.20 cents) for sex. In this case, rape of a minor, not just any minor, one who is not aware of what is going on. This practice had gone on for some months, well hidden from their mother. She only found out when they had to sell whatever little furniture they had to find money for an abortion when the eldest was found to be pregnant (abortion is illegal in Sri Lanka). The experience of forced sex by strangers may have been harrowing enough for that young girl, but the trauma of undergoing an abortion has sent her into such deep shock that since she has stopped talking to anyone, even her mother.
It was the abortion that had led probation officers down the track to discover the racket, in the meantime however, their father had successfully lured both her and her younger sister into the shameful sale for sex among his former workplace buddies. The girl had only undergone this harrowing experience just once, before she spilled the beans to her mother ignoring her father’s threats to harm their mother. But before their mother could do anything about it, the child protection officers were onto them and had instantly remanded the father, but as a matter of law in this complicated case, had also separated the girls from the mother for a short period of time until their security could be assured.
I am a second child and one of three girls. My father treats each of us as though we were princesses (although I have always harbored the secret knowledge that I am the most special to my dad). It is inconceivable to me that a father could be so un-fatherly. Didn’t he help to create these three young lives? Weren’t they conceived in love? Did he not take on the responsibility to protect their mortal bodies and their honour with his life? How can the protector be the offender? How can your own children be the prey? How can a man allow it?
And yet, this happened. In Sri Lanka. I heard it from the mouth of the prey. When the two sisters were brought out to share more information if I needed any, I myself had lost the ability to talk. This was personal to me. It hurt and as I write, it still hurts. Of course, I have lived to see many days since and have had to open my ears and eyes to more dark human realities in the course of my work. But I will never forget their eyes. I remember handing a sheet of paper and a pencil to the second girl and asking her to write about anything she liked. I assured her that I would help her write it. She took the pencil and stared at the paper for a long while. Then as though there was nothing else she could write about, she wrote and underlined the heading of a brief essay, as her gift to me. She wrote the word in Sinhala: “mother”.
I don’t know where those three girls are today. I never returned to the Remand Home to follow up. But I have prayed for them often and have wished better days for their future. I pray no girl has to ever go through that kind of brutal deception and betrayal from her father. The title of ‘parent’ is one that must be deserved, desired and consciously adorned, not bestowed on one for the sake of engagement in the act of procreation or a as a matter of social obligation. There are, as in this case, many other elements that have resulted in the sad outcome related here – poverty, job insecurity and the lack of technical training and education, alcoholism and the lack of social awareness of the rights of children and the disabled. Even so, whichever way you try to understand it, our reality is blighted now, our peace shattered and our hope for the future of the children of this country disturbed. And with each experience, the more I confront my paradox: the conviction of the dire need for humanitarian response to poverty alleviation and social injustice as in my life’s calling and mission, and yet also the conviction that the impact of what I do may never be enough to put the world right. And whenever I get to the end of that sentence, ‘every effort counts’ I always tell myself…and believe.
A snotty, mouse-like child of about eight tugs on my t-shirt and puts his hand on my arm, as though I were the dial-a-playmate he had ordered over the phone. Not daring to dissuade him, I step up to my marching orders from this little punk, a familiar mushy feeling taking over my usually practical and no-nonsense demeanour – I know, ridiculous for my height of five feet (and two inches, I remind myself emphatically!). Once again I try to avoid pleasure taking over my work, but fail miserably as usual. The child leads me to a circle of other children, engaged in a game of karam. Well, not quite engaged in the game, some scraping the pieces on the board in a board game version of G-force or Voltron, while others sit around squealing with laughter. That moment is bliss for me. Nothing in the world is more beautiful and intoxicating like a child laughing. What a rare thing that is in this monstrous world of ours.
After a few minutes of entertaining the kids with my antics of a clown, I pull out my notebook and pen as naturally as breathing and find a spot with one of the chief attendants to find out about the history of the institution and the variety of reasons for the presence of these children. The lady in question, a hard-nosed woman of considerable proportion, never failed to switch on the look of gentleness towards a child who would distract her for this and that in the course of our conversation. I watch her manage the balance with wonder and admiration. She tells me that many of the children here were ‘secured’ by Probation Officers working for the National Child Protection Authority while on their rounds in the villages, after serial visits to their homes found all the signs and evidences of sexual and physical abuse. Mostly from their parents or close relatives. She tells me this latter bit of information as though she has repeated it to many others before me. Obviously she has. Before police officers, magistrates and department officials. I shudder at the seriousness of her job and silently thank God for the nature of mine, feeling a little guilty for my thought.
Other children are here because their only remaining parent is in custody on charges of neglect, abuse or misconduct towards their child, or for minor offenses like theft or the illicit distilling of alcohol. The primary reason my colleagues and I are here is to investigate the prevalence of child sex tourism in certain locations in Sri Lanka, including in Galle, for a regional report. Our investigations were not as simple as we had expected, due to the covertness of operations going on where child sex and pornography are concerned in this country. Children are embraced by Sri Lankan culture. Still, there are the many exceptions that result in hateful effects on them, which I blame on the curse – poverty stoked by the global economy. Even so inexcusable, I think to myself - more than a little self-righteous and naïve for my 24 years.
I collect my quota of case studies for the report soon after. They bring to me a girl of 14 years. She’s as tall as me, and smiles but it fails to reach her eyes. I make a note of that. She sits next to me and I instantly beam to make her a little more comfortable and in an attempt to appear approachable. That’s one thing most Sri Lankans respond to – a smile. It seems to have done its work, almost. She smiles back weakly, justifiably unsure of what I would want with her. I make a quick self-study to see if I really am approachable. Generally when visiting villages I am very plainly dressed – no jewellery, no make up, my hair tied simply at the back and slippers on my feet. To elicit information from someone else, you must transform into an almost non-entity so that the subject is only aware of his or her story and you are merely the recording device. I do this well, most of the time. But often it is respect, politeness and an elevation of the subject’s person and humanity that is most crucial. I have learned this over the years.
After a few general questions about her school, her friends and her favourite things, I subtly lead to the subject that brings her the most pain – her family and her home. Isn’t it amazing that the place that ought to be the most secure and pleasant for a child is for this girl and many others like her the most feared of all? I am careful to observe how she speaks softly and respectfully of her mother, almost in defense, just in case someone were to blame her for the plight her three daughters are in today. I was informed before the interview that the girl I would be talking to is mentally challenged from birth and slow in comprehension and speech. However, she had gone the farthest in school – up to Grade three, whereas her older and younger sisters were not able to go on to Grade one. The older sister, 17, was kept at home most her life to help with the home chores and learned to sweep the garden and home, to fetch water from the village well and to wash clothes. She is incapable of forming complete sentences or of expressing herself except through her mother. Her younger sister, 12, walked to school with her on most days for company and idled around the school compound until she was done, and on other days she wandered around the village paddy fields.
I gather from the simple and slow sentences the girl manages that a year to date her father had been laid off from work at the local factory, at which point the drinking became far worse. She recalls him being intoxicated most days and nights. (Galle and most parts of the western and southern coastal areas are infamous for the production of illicit hooch; Sri Lanka in the mid-nineties also had the enviable dual-title of being the country with the highest rates of both alcoholism and suicide!) He would stagger home in the night and pick a fight with her mother whenever she asked him about work or about the household finances. The ensuing fights would always end up with him striking her mother, one particular night she recalls her father dragging her crying mother by her hair, slamming her into the only room in the wattle and daub house and shutting the door from the outside. He turned on her older sister next just because she stood with her partially blind eyes fixed on him, not able to understand what was going on. The rest of these nights are a blank for her.
The attendant sits by me and whispers that the father had needed money for his drinks one evening and had asked his friends from the factory. One friend had made a suggestion to him, which he had accepted without a second thought, or so it seems. The girl relates how her father came one evening obviously drunk and, after inquiring of their mother’s whereabouts, dragged his eldest daughter with him out of the house and into the woods nearby. She had heard nothing after that. Apparently, her sister had been rented for an hour or two to one of his factory buddies for Rs.20 (US 0.20 cents) for sex. In this case, rape of a minor, not just any minor, one who is not aware of what is going on. This practice had gone on for some months, well hidden from their mother. She only found out when they had to sell whatever little furniture they had to find money for an abortion when the eldest was found to be pregnant (abortion is illegal in Sri Lanka). The experience of forced sex by strangers may have been harrowing enough for that young girl, but the trauma of undergoing an abortion has sent her into such deep shock that since she has stopped talking to anyone, even her mother.
It was the abortion that had led probation officers down the track to discover the racket, in the meantime however, their father had successfully lured both her and her younger sister into the shameful sale for sex among his former workplace buddies. The girl had only undergone this harrowing experience just once, before she spilled the beans to her mother ignoring her father’s threats to harm their mother. But before their mother could do anything about it, the child protection officers were onto them and had instantly remanded the father, but as a matter of law in this complicated case, had also separated the girls from the mother for a short period of time until their security could be assured.
I am a second child and one of three girls. My father treats each of us as though we were princesses (although I have always harbored the secret knowledge that I am the most special to my dad). It is inconceivable to me that a father could be so un-fatherly. Didn’t he help to create these three young lives? Weren’t they conceived in love? Did he not take on the responsibility to protect their mortal bodies and their honour with his life? How can the protector be the offender? How can your own children be the prey? How can a man allow it?
And yet, this happened. In Sri Lanka. I heard it from the mouth of the prey. When the two sisters were brought out to share more information if I needed any, I myself had lost the ability to talk. This was personal to me. It hurt and as I write, it still hurts. Of course, I have lived to see many days since and have had to open my ears and eyes to more dark human realities in the course of my work. But I will never forget their eyes. I remember handing a sheet of paper and a pencil to the second girl and asking her to write about anything she liked. I assured her that I would help her write it. She took the pencil and stared at the paper for a long while. Then as though there was nothing else she could write about, she wrote and underlined the heading of a brief essay, as her gift to me. She wrote the word in Sinhala: “mother”.
I don’t know where those three girls are today. I never returned to the Remand Home to follow up. But I have prayed for them often and have wished better days for their future. I pray no girl has to ever go through that kind of brutal deception and betrayal from her father. The title of ‘parent’ is one that must be deserved, desired and consciously adorned, not bestowed on one for the sake of engagement in the act of procreation or a as a matter of social obligation. There are, as in this case, many other elements that have resulted in the sad outcome related here – poverty, job insecurity and the lack of technical training and education, alcoholism and the lack of social awareness of the rights of children and the disabled. Even so, whichever way you try to understand it, our reality is blighted now, our peace shattered and our hope for the future of the children of this country disturbed. And with each experience, the more I confront my paradox: the conviction of the dire need for humanitarian response to poverty alleviation and social injustice as in my life’s calling and mission, and yet also the conviction that the impact of what I do may never be enough to put the world right. And whenever I get to the end of that sentence, ‘every effort counts’ I always tell myself…and believe.
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