I am 27 and my boyfriend is 30. I grew up in a poor home. My father was a common labourer and my mother used to buy and sell items.

My father worked very hard, but he did not earn much. He has three children. My mother said that he had more, anyhow, my father said it is what the mothers gave him. Although we were poor, my parents took in one of my cousins. She was in a worse state than us. We were the same age, so we grew up as sisters. One day she told me that she had something to tell me, but I should promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody. I promised. She said before she came to live with us, her father’s brother molested her. She was only 12 at the time. I asked her why she did not tell her mother and she said that her uncle warned her that if she talked, he was going to kill all of them. So, she did not want him to carry out his threat. He assaulted her at least three times.

The first time he did it, he did not push his penis fully into her, but he did the second time and she bled a little. He told her to wash off, wash her underwear and put it to dry before her mother came home. He also gave her some money. Her mother did not suspect anything. But when her parents asked my parents whether they would take her, she was happy. Then she asked me if I ever had sex and I told her no. When she was telling me these things, she was 15. I was very surprised to know that this uncle who was considered to be a respectable man in the district molested his niece.