To some, it might seem unreal that in the 21st century there are still women who do not own a phone, who do not know where any institution is located except the court and the police, who do not have a bank account, and who, for 35 years, have never gone beyond the yard of their house and the nearest neighbourhood unless there was some “important task” to do. After getting married, T.S. spent her entire life serving her husband and his family, raising the children she gave birth to, while her husband went to work and almost always returned home angry, entering the house shouting and complaining about everything. Beatings were his way of showing her “who was the boss, who fed both her and the children, and that without him they would perish,” while violent sexual relations were the only kind she had ever known. She endured it because that was how she had been taught.
Leaving her husband and getting divorced were never an option for her, because that would be a “disgrace” that would expose her to condemnation from the community, the family, and even her children. However, her husband wanted her to leave the house, so she went to stay with her son, just to “get out of his sight,” believing it would pass and that she would eventually return home. Her son lived with his own family and survived on minimal means.
In the meantime, her husband filed for divorce, and she was left “neither in heaven nor on earth” — confused, lost, and without direction. The only thing she knew how to do was go to court, carrying the paper she had received as a court summons. Although the marriage could have been dissolved automatically even without her consent, the judge nevertheless decided to write the name of our organisation on a piece of paper, explaining that she should contact us and that, once she came to us, she would understand why.
That is exactly what happened. Through our conversation with her, it became clear that intervention was urgently needed in the direction of securing at least some form of livelihood for her. In this regard, we realised that she fulfilled all the legal requirements, and we used the legal possibility to file a counterclaim for spousal maintenance. To both her joy and ours, it succeeded — the court fully accepted the claim stated in the lawsuit. In this way, a somewhat dignified old age was secured for her, and she experiences it as a form of satisfaction for all the years she endured and devoted to caring for her family.
