Impoverished Women Without Identity Documents Turn to Prostitution in Sri Lanka

Marry, a Sri Lankan woman who guesses she is in her 40s, is a prostitute in
Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. Marry knows little about herself. She does not
have a birth certificate or a National Identity Card, a compulsory document for
all adults here that must be carried at all times. So she says she made up her
own name and guesses she is around 40.
“I do not know from where I am, who my parents are, even my name,” she says.
She can speak both Sinhala and Tamil, the official languages of Sri Lanka, as
well as English. Because she knows Tamil best, she guesses her ethnicity must be
Tamil, but she has no way of knowing.
Marry says that the furthest she can remember back was working as a servant
in a rich family’s bungalow when she was 10 or 12. But a few months late she
reached puberty, and her employer started mistreating her.
“I can remember that lady did not give enough food for me,” she says. “I
started to eat whatever I stole from them. Because of that, she started to hit
and punish me every day. Finally, I decided to [leave] that bungalow.”
Marry starts to cry, then begins to speak in English.
“My story started from the date which I came out that bungalow,” she says. “I
met that heartless man at the bus stand around 6 in the evening.”
She says that at first, he treated her kindly.
“I could not remember the name of that man,” she says. “He came to me and
talk to me nicely. He promised to help me to find a job in Colombo. He asked me
to come with him, and both of us got onto a bus. After a one-hour journey, we
got down [off] the bus and went to a small room around 8 o’clock at night.
First, he gave me some food.”
But then Marry says there was a sudden change in his demeanor.
“He raped me three times in that miserable night,” she says loudly.