When Bashwantie Dwarka moved in with her husband she was expecting a life of love, respect and most of all protection. She never expected that she would become a punching bag to the man she loved; be a victim of infidelity and live under a blanket of shame whenever she walked through the streets of Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice.
After 11 years of being beaten, punched and pulled around by her hair, “Maureen” as she is well known has decided to walk away from the relationship but she is finding it very difficult as her former partner is making her life miserable. Days before she spoke with this newspaper he beat her unconscious in front of relatives who could have done little to save her.
During the interview with Stabroek News the 38-year-old mother of five – three of the children were fathered by the abuser – said she wanted to share her story because: “I can’t tek wha this man doin to me. I want every woman in my situation to see that they have the choice to leave.”
The abuse has left Dwarka with constant headaches and countless marks on her body. All of the beatings have taken place when her husband was under the influence of alcohol. She was beaten in front of relatives, neighbours and her youngest children now aged nine, two and one.
The emotional woman said that she married the man who is three years younger that she is, according to religious rites in 2000 and they started living together. She recalled that from the start of the relationship, she was not allowed to go anywhere or speak to anyone. Dwarka was also barred from attending religious functions.
It was shortly after the relationship commenced that Dwarka decided to change her religion to that of her husband’s in the hope that his behaviour would change.
In 2009, after her father-in-law died, Dwarka recalled, things took a turn for the worse. Her husband started a relationship with a 13-year-old girl a few villages away. Because of the girl’s age, he was arrested but the girl’s parents were persuaded “to close the matter”.
Dwarka told Stabroek News that after she found out about the girl, she confronted her husband and his brother. In response, the two men beat her mercilessly and dragged her out of her yard.
The Bath Settlement resident said she reported the matter to the police and the case was taken to court. This was the first time that she had found the courage to take matters so far, she said, adding that she eventually dropped the case after being pressured by her mother-in-law and other relatives.
Her husband then continued both his relationship with the underage girl and to beat Dwarka when she questioned him about the girl. She said he told her “the police said that unless she is 18 he can’t leave her”.
Since 2009, the man has been back and forth between her home and the girl’s. According to Dwarka, he hardly slept home and whenever she questioned him on his return she was beaten.
Suicide attempt
She said the situation got so frustrating that last October while she was seven months pregnant with her now one-year-old child, she attempted to commit suicide.
While not going into detail, she said that she ingested gramaxone – an insecticide, and was a patient of Georgetown Hospital for two weeks.
Even though she reflected on and considered all the abuse she endured during the prior years, Dwarka said, she decided to take him back in January this year.
Just before then, she said, her husband had spent three weeks with the teen in neighbouring Suriname. “He come and beg meh and seh that he mek a mistake,” she recalled, the sadness noticeable in her voice.
It was soon after he moved back in that the beating started, she said, adding that the water hose, the nearest object or his fists were used. She said that she was beaten and cuffed repeatedly in the head.
She told Stabroek News that after the majority of the beatings, a neighbour would take her to the hospital. She was admitted on many occasions to the Fort Wellington Hospital and spent a maximum of one week.
Dwarka said reports were made to the police but her husband always came and begged for forgiveness, promising that he would change. “He use to seh that he mek a mistake and would try to correct it. That is how the matters neva meet court,” she said.
Mistake
The housewife said the mistake she made was never allowing any of the matters to go through the judicial process. Asked why she continued to live with him in spite of the abuse and threats to her life, she said, “Meh nah know why. As soon as he tell meh lil words ah does soften up.” She said it was like he had some sort of hold on her that she was unable to overcome.
“Quick time meh use to give in. This is a mistake. This is a big, big mistake ah mek,” she stressed struggling to contain her tears.
She said too that her husband neglected her and the children and hardly provided any financial support. Dwarka explained that at the beginning of the relationship, her husband was planting rice. But following the death of his father in 2009, he started to drive trucks.
She said that one point she became so frustrated that she started child support proceedings but “he mek me drop it after he promise to bring money for me”. The woman said that sometimes he would take a little money and sometimes he did not.
She said she plants seasoning and the money she gets from sales is used to care for her children. “Sometimes I got thing fuh eat, sometimes I don’t,” she said adding that her baby uses the bottle and as such needs a lot of milk and porridge.
She said that she sought the help of regional probation officers but they could do very little to help her. The woman said that officers had made attempts to meet with her husband but he never turned up.
Recent beating
She recalled that about two weeks ago she was walking along the Bath public road in the company of relatives when her husband drove up in a truck and blocked their path. The intoxicated man armed with an iron bar came up to her and “just start fire last at me. He ain’t ask me nothing”.
Dwarka said that the man instructed her to get into the vehicle and her relatives said they could not allow her to do that. That apparently angered the man who “hice [lifted] me and pelt me in the vehicle and they jump in too”. She recalled to this newspaper that the man drove straight to her house. On arrival he dragged her out of the vehicle by her hair and started to beat her as he dragged her into the yard.
The woman said her relatives, who were all female, tried to hold him back but were unsuccessful. She then lost consciousness and was told that her frightened relatives placed her under a mango tree, but her husband dragged “me back and put me on top the concrete” and then jumped into his vehicle.
As he was about to drive off, she was told, her relatives started hollering that she was dead and it was moments after this that she regained consciousness. When she did, she said, her husband “lift me up and pelt me down on the concrete and my whole body went numb and he start to kick me up but ah din feeling nothing”.
She said her neighbours then went to her rescue and she was able to crawl into a nearby house. Her husband, she said, attempted to follow her but was threatened by the neighbours. She said the man left the yard and started to use foul language and eventually drove off. He returned five minutes later to ascertain if the police had been called.
Dwarka said she was taken to the Fort Wellington Hospital and later transferred to the Mahaicony Cottage Hospital. She was discharged the following day and nurses advised that if she did not feel better, she should go to the Georgetown Hospital since there was “no space there to keep meh”.
She said that the police were informed about the incident, but she was unable to go to the station as she could hardly walk. She told Stabroek News that her entire body was black and blue and swollen.
Dwarka said police caught her husband two days after the attack and after spending one night in the lockups, he was released. She insists that she wants this incident to “go all the way”. The day after he was released, she said, her sister told her that the police commander instructed that she go to the police. When she arrived at the Fort Wellington Police Station, ranks told her that the man was alleging that she broke his windscreen.
She spent some eight hours in police custody where she gave a statement on the attack. She was finally released without charge after neighbours came forward and said that she did not do anything and that the windscreen had been broken about two weeks ago.
As her fear increases she hopes that one day she will truly be free.
