Read on Twitter
Sometimes the level violence is such that it shakes you to your core. You turn cold listening to the experience being retold, feel sick in your stomach; the shock continues for a number of days as you try to process the awfulness. 1/14 @UKinTajikistan @UNDPTJK @USEmbDushanbe
You can’t comprehend how one human being can do this to another. And then you realise that this is your reaction to hearing about what has happened. What about the woman that this actually happened to? When you try to process this, the sheer cruelty and depravity hits you. 2/14
It’s hard to know where to start. A man has been charged by the police & sits in prison awaiting trial. He thinks maybe he’ll get let out on amnesty after a few months, but he’s been in prison before & this time looking at a long sentence; probably ineligible for amnesty. 3/14
A woman sits at home. Following the violence from her husband she was too scared to leave the home, she was too injured to move, she has her 2 year old daughter to look after; life is cruel. She didn’t tell anyone about the violence her husband inflicted. @EUinTajikistan 4/14
He recorded every terrible step on his phone and showed numerous people. He showed his male friends & showed other women. He was proud of what he’d done. At least one, maybe more, of these people phoned the police, who immediately responded and found the video on his phone. 5/14
The video is worse than any film. It’s sickening. It’s hard to imagine the terror. You’re 23 years old, your husband 22 years older. He’s always been violent, he’s short of money, you are scared. He sells you to other men for sex. That night he sold you to 3 men for $7 each. 6/14
Something is wrong. He goes crazy. He rapes you with glass bottles ripping your insides. Then he heats a pair of metal pliers on the fire & starts to burn you all over your body; your legs, inside you, your face. Finally he defecates in a bowl & makes you eat his excrement. 7/14
He threatens even worse violence if you don’t comply. The fear of the woman. The control of the man. The whole time he is recording everything on his phone. 8/14
The woman had sought help with us the previous month. It wasn’t the first time he’d been violent. He would regularly throw his wife out the house and tell her, “sell your body and bring me money, then you can come home.” 9/14
She had been wandering the streets for 6 days with her daughter when the police picked her up and brought her to us at 20:45 one night. She stayed with us for 7 days and worked intensively with our team, starting to feel calmer and thinking about how to resolve her life. 10/14
She wanted to leave, to rent a flat, to start an independent life. But she had no family to support her. When she was 15 her mother died and at the same time her father raped her. She finished school at 18 & left her family. She can’t go back. She can’t ask them for help. 11/14
She has no skills, minimal education, no way of paying rent and looking after her daughter. She made the decision to go back to her husband. Although worried, we let her go. We have to respect the decisions that women make for their own life. 12/14
We have often written about women leaving our shelter to go back to less than ideal circumstances. But this is the reality of life; there are often no good options. 13/14
For a couple of weeks things were better, it seemed like the decision was right. Following 6 days on the street & 7 days in our shelter her husband was calmer & good to her; he understood that she had protection. But then something inside him flipped & the terror unfolded. 14/14
