Manjula Datta O’Connor has been advocating for victims for years, but only when she wrote a book did she understood the oppression in her own past
n 2008, Manjula Datta O’Connor was working as a psychiatrist in private practice in Melbourne’s CBD, generally seeing lots of corporate clients, when one day a “highly distressed” Indian student arrived for an appointment. The woman told O’Connor she had a “dowry problem”: her husband and his sister-in-law were denigrating her for not giving enough dowry, wanting more cash and to control her income. When she refused, “this led to violence, verbal abuse, and castigation”.
“Most South Asian homes are peaceful and harmonious,” says O’Connor, but dowry abuse is a recognised issue.
Growing up in Delhi, O’Connor’s father was loving, kind and selfless, but also at times controlling. Writing this book, she realised, “I do think I’ve had anger about that oppression … and most of my life I think I pushed back against him in little ways all the time.
“After our campaign started,” she says, “the patriarchal structures of our community were dead-set against me because they thought I was shaming the community by naming dowry abuse specifically, and that they wanted it to be left alone. ‘[Women are] coming out and seeking help in large numbers, but we are still not reaching everyone’ says O’Connor.She has been undeterred by the resistance, which has included social isolation, whispering campaigns claiming her cause is “fake” and that she is just trying to get more patients into her psychiatric practice.“Every time I heard something like that, the next day in my practice, I would see five or six girls crying, desperate, telling me awful stories.
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