"I constantly wish I could be run over by a car and killed," said Rekha
Biswakarma, a traumatised waitress, who works at a cabin bar in the
capital, Kathmandu. She was raped by a client and threatened by her
employer to keep quiet or lose her job. Her colleagues told the
20-year-old to forget the incident, warning that she would never be
able to afford the court costs and had no evidence to prove the crime.
But forgetting such an ordeal has proven impossible. Biswakarma has
tried to commit suicide several times but stopped herself for the sake
of her five-year-old daughter.
Two years ago, she and her
husband arrived in the capital to escape their impoverished lives in
Makwanpur District where they constantly suffered food shortages for
lack of income. They depended on her husband's work for a local farm
and barely made US$1 a day. Her situation deteriorated in Kathmandu
after her husband left her and disappeared. She had some friends
working in the cabin restaurants and they offered to find her a job as
a waitress but did not tell her what the job really entailed; she only
found out when she was sexually abused and raped in her first week.
Source: www.pokharacity.com
