Employers assaulting domestic workers largely enjoy immunity from legal proceedings as a small sum, often as little as Tk5,000, in compensation is more than enough to make the victims keep mum.
This trend of settling violence against domestic workers by using money actually leaves victims and their families helpless as they see no justice delivered to them and other such victims. They usually take the money and tend to forget what happened.
The parents of an eight-year-old domestic worker, who was assaulted by her employer and is taking treatment at a private clinic in Mirpur, was supposed to file a case but changed their minds within 24 hours as they were given some monetary compensation. The mother of the victim Rahela Banu said she got Tk5,000 from the employer and hence decided not to seek legal assistance.
“The money is necessary for my daughter’s future,” she said.
A couple from the capital’s Tejgaon was arrested last January for torturing their nine-year-old housemaid. The victim’s body bore injury marks supposedly inflicted by a heated iron. The couple, a private tutor and his wife, was taken to Tejgaon police station but the incident was forgotten due to a lack of follow-up.
In another incident, Kafrul police arrested a housewife from East Kazipara for torturing a 10-year-old housekeeper. When the girl was rescued, both her eyes were found to be damaged. Police took her to the one-stop crisis centre at Dhaka Medical College Hospital and also filed a case against her employer.
Doctors at the hospital said, in most of such cases, families of the victims plead not to continue lawsuits after the treatment was over.
“They settle the issue among themselves and the families are given some money which is often not very much,” they said.
The 2003 National Child Labour Survey conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics found 1.3 million children engaged in hazardous work. According to the country’s labour law, employing children under the age of 18 is prohibited. However, most of the domestic workers facing torture and abuse are under 15 and are mostly girls.
Apart from torture, domestic workers, especially girls, are prone to sexual abuse which takes different forms, including physical, emotional and verbal. A study from the Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum revealed there was no safe age for boys and girls to work as domestic help.
Noted rights activist Khushi Kabir told the Dhaka Tribune if examples of justice delivered to the victims could be made and if the process of seeking legal assistance was made easy then families of victims would not accept any offers of money.
They prioritise the money factor out of the fear that their children will become jobless and that they might not win a legal battle against the rich employers, she added.
The first thing is that the victims cannot refuse the offer of monetary compensation as they know little about legal help, said Advocate Shahedur Rahman.
“Secondly, after filing cases, they often receive threats and suffer from insecurity,” he said.
“Victims thus usually face abuse and torture again as the employers use money to settle the issue,” Shahedur added.
