Indian origin child abuse survivor, Amita Swadhin, survivor of years of sexual assault by her father has testified in the U.S. Congress at the Senate hearing for confirming President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions. She has changed her name in 1998, when she was 20, because she did not want to carry the name of a man who had sexually abused her from the age of 4 to 12. She kept the name given to her by her mother – Amita — “because it means ‘infinite’ and ‘boundless’,’” she said. “And Swadhin means ‘self-rule’,” which seems just right to her.
CAG Shashi Kant Sharma takes charge as UN audit chair
Sen. Sessions said that he did not understand, how the October tapes on Trump’s alleged sexual advances on women, could be considered as a sexual assault, was “incredibly worrisome,” for an Attorney General, Swadhin said at the hearing. The tapes showed Trump referring to groping women and grabbing their genitals.
Amita Swadhin was born in Columbus, Ohio and was brought up in Bergenfield, New Jersey, in the Indian-American parents. She began to be assaulted by her father, when she was hardly more than a toddler. Her mother, who remain unnamed in deference to Swadhin’s wishes, came to the U.S. at the age of 11. Her father, probably had came around the mid-1970s. They met in Columbus, Ohio.
Indian American Congress Woman fails to stop Trump election
At 4 years old, Swadhin had told her mother about the abuse but did not have the right words. Her mother might have understood her, “But she had two children, unemployed and must have been afraid,” apart from herself being a victim of domestic violence and marital rape, she told.
Later, at age 13, when Swadhin told to her mother again about it, she immediately contacted a therapist. The case was directly send to the law enforcement because reporting was “mandated” under the law.
Swadhin said that the prosecutors threatened to prosecute her mother on grounds that she was complicit and warned the 13 year old that she would be grilled during the trial and did not refer her to any victim support services. Her father received a mere slap on the wrist, five-year probation and no jail time. Her mother suffered for 2 more years of abuse and finally managed to leave her husband.
At 38, despite appearing as an extremely confident woman, Swadhin continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. She said that her tight-knit network of LGBTQI friends in the Indian-American and South Asian communities around the country had been her mainstay. “Those are people who keep me grounded in my life and in my profession,” Swadhin said.
A graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Swadhin truly recognized her transgender personality while in London, U.K. as part of her junior year at Georgetown.
By Premji
