Written by: Anushka Basnet - 24022, Grade XI
Posted on: 30 June, 2022
The story dates back to 2018. It was December night, a cold and snowy night. I was warm in my coat and boots. I was returning home from my school. My friends had planned a birthday surprise for me. Everything was good. I remember vividly, it was 7:00 in the evening. The sun was already setting and the cold was starting to take its quick pace. A tall man started following me and before I knew it I was thrown into some corner. I screamed and cried and begged for him to stop. I still remember his face. The hideous face of a monster. A monster who was my uncle, my relative, a close person to my family who mercilessly forced himself into me, his 16-year-old niece. A monster who no matter how much I cried and screamed, raped me. And after he was finished he threatened to kill me if I told anyone what had happened. After a week of mental torture and keeping it inside me, I finally told my mum and dad everything that happened even though I was risking my life with it. I told her in hopes of getting help but I was wrong. I mean who would help a girl who had “dishonored” her family.
I was hurt and I was angry. I was angry because it was not my fault a man who was a monster in disguise forced himself onto me. It was not my fault my body was too frail and weak to have stopped him. It was not my fault my saying no and begging for him to stop didn't actually make him stop. I was sad because it had happened to me. I was sad because no one would help me and I was sad because I was completely alone in the world. I had no one who would help me. And I am sad right now because I believed my mum. I believed her when she said I had brought shame upon the family. I used to question myself: am I even worthy to be someone’s friend? Because I believed it was my fault. Just like countless people who were trapped into thinking that it's their fault that people cannot think straight from their heads. I was enraged. I started rethinking everything. So I gathered the courage to go to the police. I told them everything that had happened that night to me. I even told them who the rapist was. But I was dismissed again. I was dismissed because I was a then 17-year-old. I was dismissed because I was a girl born into a patriarchal world and I was dismissed because my story was not worthy enough. I had no hopes. I had no wish to live. I couldn't live comfortably in a world where my rapist was roaming around freely, where the person who did that horrible thing to me could do it again, numerous times to other people.
So exactly two years later, on the same month of December, on the same chilly night wearing the same clothes I was wearing two years ago, I killed him. I killed my uncle. My clothes which were ripped apart by him two years ago are hanging on my shoulders. I had shot him with my dad’s rifle. My dad was a police officer. My dad, who had refused to help me two years ago. I killed his brother with his gun. And I felt happy, finally.
As I am writing this story I am serving my years in jail. I told everything that happened to me in court but in the eyes of law, I was a murderer. I don't feel one bit of guilt for what I did. No one helped me when I begged for help. I took it into my own hands when the hurt grew too big. I wish this story was not mine but it is. And it is of countless other people. Other people who are rejected help, people who are seen as disgusting filth, who are asked what they were wearing when it happened and who are forced to keep it all to themselves. These stories exist because people like you and me ask the victims to dress properly and walk safely instead of teaching everyone how to behave like a decent human being.
