‘Our nightmare at welfare home’

 

The girls speaking to FMT after they were rescued from the home in which they claim they were bullied.

IPOH: Nineteen-year-old Diana and Dorothy, 15, sat quietly in the corner of their “new” bedroom, staring at the door and praying that none of the “strange” men in the house would walk in.

Earlier in the day, they had been confused. Now, the middle of the night, there was only fear and some anger. The two sisters had been sent to the house of their “father” but what they saw was a drunken man and bottles of liquor strewn all over.

“We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t really know where we were. We just wanted to run away,” Diana tells FMT, recounting the horrific day.

Diana and Dorothy had spent nearly all their lives in a children’s home in Buntong, but after being caught recording the bullying and emotional abuse kids at the home faced, they had been sent away.

The girls said the home’s caretaker sent them away at night to “live with their father”, a person they’ve never even met, in a shack in a rural village in Batu Gajah.

At the house, they said, bottles of cheap liquor were strewn on the floor, and Diana says the man they were told was their father was drunk and slurring. Another foreign couple lived in the house too.

Fortunately, nothing untoward happened that night. The next day, the two girls told their “father” they were going to a nearby sundry shop and ran off to tell passers-by of their plight. They were put in touch with an NGO that helped people in distress.

The NGO called Persatuan Harapan India Malaysia came to the girls’ rescue after being told of their ordeal, and the plight others faced at the children’s home.

M. Manimaran, the president of Persatuan Harapan India Malaysia which took up the girls’ plight.

M Manimaran, the group’s president, said he was shocked to hear what was happening in the children’s home, and since then, has managed to rescue six children and placed them in another home.

FMT is withholding the name of the home pending a comment from its management.

Manimaran has also lodged a police report and filed a complaint with the welfare department.

Diana says children at the home are often bullied and scolded by the caretakers.

“There are a lot of kind people who donate things to the home, but these items get taken away. We are also threatened against speaking about what happens at the home.”

They claimed the children are also being given Christian names and are forced to attend activities at a church.

A pair of sisters rescued from the home, Salvander Kaur Vikram Singh, 17 and Elvina Kaur, 14, also spoke of their traumatic experiences at the home.

The girls from Johor were sent to the children’s home as their parents could not afford to provide them a good education.

“My sister and I were threatened that if we did not obey (what the caretakers demanded), they would cut our hair short.” Sikh men and women do not cut their hair, as part of their practice.

“They forced us to go to church and pray. If we refused, they would threaten to call our parents. There are times our parents did call but they could not speak to us because they were told we were busy studying or not around, when in fact we were there.”

Elvina actually had her hair cut short as punishment for refusing to listen to a caretaker’s demands.

“Now my sister and I are no longer there, we are happy. We are no longer bullied.”

The rescued girls were taken by the NGO to lodge police reports against the home and the matter has been reported to the state Welfare Department. FMT has sighted the reports. - FMT