I was quite young, perhaps around 7 or 8 years old (not entirely sure). My parents and I had gone to a famous temple in South India (could have been Guruvayur, or possibly Tirupati). There were throngs of people in the temple, as it was during some festival or other. We were all waiting for the sanctum to be opened, I guess, and the moment the priests opened the doors, there was a great surge of people moving forward and I got separated from my parents by a middle-aged man wearing the garb of a devotee who came between me and them. He got his hand between my legs and squeezed painfully, all the while chanting the praise of God, pretending that he wasn’t doing what he was doing. I didn’t like it but I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t squirm away because I was hemmed in.
Finally I cried out for my dad, partly because I was afraid of being lost and partly because I thought it would make the man stop – and luckily it did. I didn’t tell my parents anything because I didn’t know how to express it, because I was afraid I’d done something wrong… even when I didn’t know what that wrong was. I think that was the point that I began to dislike going to the temple, and being in a crowd with men.
– Shammi Edwards
Location: South India
