I am Lakshmi from Tirutani Village in Thiruballur District. I was a sex worker for 34 years. I got married very young. I had one daughter. When I was 24 years old, my husband took my daughter away and abandoned me.
Being a deserted Dalit woman, I had nowhere else to go. No one else would take me in. I had no education. No jobs were open for me. I was forced into sex work to be able to eat.
For 34 years, I stood on the side of the road everyday to offer my body and sex services to different men. How many, I’ve lost count. I earned Rs500 for a day’s work. It was enough to put clothes on my back and keep myself from starving, but not enough to get me out of a job that I hated.
I was raped many times, by different men, some of them policemen. They refused to pay me and beat me up. I still have some of the scars from all the beatings I took.
A lot of times, my earnings were spent to pay for fines when police arrested me. They fined Rs500-1,000 for every arrest. The police beat me up, pulled my hair, pulled at my clothes. It was degrading. I was angry, but what could I do but endure it?
During one of these police beatings, some ladies from SRED saw me and helped me. The police also beat them up but they did not leave me. The police tried to arrest them too. Later, they bailed me out of jail and took me in.
Through my sisters in SRED, I learned about my rights. Before, I did not know how to talk to the police, now I know how to stand up for myself.
Before I met my sisters at SRED, I went 13 times to the police to complain but they simply ignored me. On the 14thtime, SRED accompanied me to the Human Rights Commission in India to file a case against a policeman who beat me up and broke my arm because I refused to have sex with him for free.
I won the complaint, the police was suspended for three months and ordered to pay me Rs10,000 as fine. It was a big issue in the newspapers. This was 2010. After that, I helped many other sex workers like me who were abused and beaten by the police to also file complaints.
That was when we started to build the Sex Workers’ Movement. We started with a small membership but now we are in many villages, in Kancheepuram, Perambakkam, Arakkonam and Tirutani.
Through our Movement and with the support of SRED, all of us are now out of sex work. They gave us livelihood trainings and provided us with start-up kits that helped us build our own fruits shops, bag shops, flower shops. There are now other options for women like us. We do not have to be forced to do sex work anymore.
Eight years ago, I tested positive for HIV. SRED helped me to have access to medication and maintenance care. They make sure that I remain healthy to battle the virus. They told me to not be ashamed of my illness, that I should not allow myself to be discriminated against because of my illness.
The Sex Workers’ Movement is also providing regular HIV testing to sex workers, old and new. We also provide medication to those who test positive. We educate them to not be ashamed. It is not their fault.
Like me, I am not ashamed anymore of my past. I still have many scars but now I wear them like badges of honour. I have survived grave abuse and violence. I helped build a movement for women like me. Together, we can overcome any challenges and change our lives.
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