Eshaal’s family knew she had been raped, but insisted she was still a virgin and arranged for her to marry
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Eshaal had a very difficult childhood and was preyed on by abusers, some of them family members.
She grew up in a Muslim family and she was blamed and shamed for being a victim.
Eshaal explains that her siblings were all born in South Asia; she was born in Britain and was the youngest in the family by several years.
When she was 10 years old, Eshaal was taken to a family wedding. She remembers she was playing and having fun when some women took her to an upstairs room. They brought in a male cousin and put him in the bed with her, saying she had to marry him.
Eshaal says that she and her siblings spent a lot of time playing out on the streets, often with no shoes. When she was a young teenager, a taxi driver, Ghulam, began following her. He would pull up alongside her when she was walking to school or waiting at bus stops.
One day Ghulam persuaded her to get in his car so he could drive her home, but instead he took her to a park and tried to rape her. Later that night, he turned up at her house, honking the horn until Eshaal’s father went out to speak to him. She never knew what was said between them, but after that she was rarely allowed to go to school.
Eshaal was desperate to talk to someone about what had happened. The only people she felt she could trust was her sister, who had been disowned by the family, and her sister’s husband. But when she went to visit them, her sister was not there. She started telling her brother-in-law about the taxi driver abusing her, but he started to abuse her too.
She describes how distressing this was, and to make matters worse, her sister’s husband started spreading rumours around the community that she was a ‘slag’ and a prostitute.
Eshaal describes how her despair and isolation made her more vulnerable to Ghulam’s advances. He said he wanted a relationship with her, even though she was in her early teens and he was older and married with children.
He began raping her, and she became pregnant. He took her to have an abortion but she refused to go through with it.
Ghulam then took Eshaal to South Asia to live with his relatives. She says that her family had no idea where she was. While she was abroad with him, Ghulam beat her and continued abusing her, and his relatives threatened her and emotionally abused her.
She remembers the name of the place she was taken to live and the hospital where she gave birth to her baby.
After this, Eshaal became very ill, and a doctor advised that she should be sent back to Britain. When she arrived back, the only place she could think of to go was a police station.
She was examined by a male doctor, allocated a social worker and told that she was going to a foster home. After some time, a meeting was set up with her parents. Eshaal was not asked what she wanted and felt that she had no choice but to go home.
She says by this point, she felt ‘I was dead anyway’. Her parents denied that anything had happened to her; they insisted she was still a virgin and arranged for her to marry a cousin.
Eshaal’s husband physically and sexually abused her. Eshaal’s family blamed her for the breakdown of the marriage and she was shunned by the community.
Eshaal feels that no one has answered for what was done to her; she feels she has ‘been passed from pillar to post’. She has suffered with depression for many years, as well as anxiety, flashbacks and panic attacks. She has had therapy but has not found it helpful.
She says she still wants to find justice and she would like someone ‘independent’ to help her. She wants ‘to know the truth’ about how such terrible abuse could have happened to her as a child.
Eshaal has since married another man who gives her support and comfort. She has been able to tell him everything that happened to her, and she says ‘I want to live a good life’.