"He was holding my baby and punching me. I didn't know what to do. I was shouting, 'Can you just see what you are doing to my baby, my baby's gonna fall!' He was just holding my baby like you would hold a rag doll. She was barely two months old." The man Luxmi is talking about is her husband, the man who had promised to love and protect her, the father of her child.
Luxmi was the woman who inspired photographer Sonalle to shoot a project focusing on domestic violence amongst minority groups in the UK. She tells me that she wanted to expose the way cultural pressures keep women trapped in abusive relationships, but that Luxmi demonstrated the strength these women possess: "It was amazing that she was so open and positive about everything she'd been through."
When Sonalle first met Luxmi, she had been married for two years, but she had been separated for almost a year and a half. She described how the violence had started almost as soon as she was married, when her new husband interpreted an innocuous comment about her sari as "bitching about his mum". They had been married for less than 40 days. He apologized after slapping her and pulling her by her hair, but this was to be just the start of the abuse, often stemming from her controlling mother-in-law, who would tell Luxmi that she "deserved" it.
Things got even worse when Luxmi became pregnant. She expected her husband to be happy, but both he and his mother told her that she should have an abortion. She says: "I didn't even speak to my family about it because I didn't want my family to be stressed with my problems. My sister knew a bit because she would see the bruises on me and would ask me and I'd just say that I fell from the stairs or I would just fabricate a story because I didn't want her to feel that my marriage was not working."
She fought to keep her baby, and after it was born she hoped that they could become a family unit away from her controlling parents-in-law. She asked him, "Can't it be just me, you and the baby?" but "He didn't say anything. He just punched me. I was shouting and screaming. Even the neighbours came out and started saying "Is everything OK, Luxmi?" I couldn't say anything because he covered my mouth to stop me from screaming. Then he locked the back door so I couldn't leave and walked out with the baby saying he was gonna give it to social services. I was so scared because he'd been telling me that even before my pregnancy." Sonalle tells me that often women only decide to do something about domestic violence when their child becomes threatened - just as Luxmi was more concerned that her husband would drop her baby than the fact that he was punching her.
Luxmi had been a student in the UK for four years before her marriage, but was living on a spousal visa, so she was unable to claim any support herself - if she left her husband she feared she would be sent back to Mauritius and separated from her child. In the end, she called the police during yet another bout of violence, and even though her husband threw the phone away, the line stayed open and police overheard the attack. They turned up to arrest her husband, leaving Luxmi facing eviction from their shared house and an uncertain future, but now at least safe from the threat of constant violence.
Luxmi inspired Sonalle to find more women with stories to tell. She went to refuges where she encountered other women who had left controlling husbands, men who had told them "You should dress like this" or "You should be like this". She tells me that many women had developed a dislike of being seen as attractive, because they associated it with their abuse, so being photographed was a step towards rebuilding self-esteem. She tried to take the photographs in the women's houses or rooms in the refuge, to give a sense of place and a reflection of their characters, and worked with the women over a long period of time in order to build up trust. She says she also drew on her own experiences, telling me that people close to her had been through domestic violence - sadly this is hardly surprising when one in four women reportedly experience it at some point in their lives.
Sonalle hopes her project will raise awareness of this taboo subject, and is planning on exhibiting in public spaces so that people from a variety of backgrounds will be more likely to see the work, describing how many of the women who have now sought refuge never would have done unless they had seen posters describing domestic violence. You can see more of her work at www.sonalle.com
Photos: Sonalle
If you’ve been affected by similar issues, you can call the National Domestic Violence Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247