Beatrice FernandoBeatrice Fernando was born and raised the youngest of thirteen children in Sri Lanka. Extreme poverty forced her to seek employment as a housemaid while her parents cared for her young child. Because such work was considered beneath her family's social standing, Ms. Fernando responded to an ad from a local job agency that placed Sri Lankan housemaids with families in Lebanon. At 23 years old she left her son and family behind to earn money necessary to support them: “I needed the job badly, though taking it meant leaving behind Rukshan, my 3-year old son. […] An unbearable sense of loneliness consumed me," she recalls.
Yet Ms. Fernando was never able to send money home. Instead, she found herself being trafficked to Lebanon as a domestic slave. Her wealthy slaveholder locked her inside the home, unhooked the phone, and forbade her from going outside or communicating with others. The apartment complex guards were ordered to shoot her if she was found outside the apartment. During her captivity, she was starved, regularly beaten, and never paid. After months of torture, she escaped by the only option available to her: jumping off the apartment’s fourth-story balcony. After several months, she made her way back to Sri Lanka, never having received remuneration for her labor.
Beatrice presents Congressman Christopher Smith with a copy of her autobiography after having testified before the House Committee on International Relations in Washington, D.C.
At the hospital doctors told her the damage to her spine as a result of the jump would prevent her from ever walking again. Yet Ms. Fernando is walking as well as sharing her story with audiences across the country. She has spoken several times at Harvard, appeared on local television and radio shows, and been profiled in The Boston Herald. Most notably, she has published her autobiography, In Contempt of Fate, and was invited to testify before the House Committee on International Relations in Washington, D.C.
Beatrice reflects that being in the United States has given her the courage and freedom to talk about her past and to be proud of what she has overcome. She remarks: “The world is not out there, it is right here, with you and me. When we take a step against slavery, the world will take another step. If you want the world to hear you, listen to your own heart, if you want to change the world, the change needs to begin with you.”
More Information...
|
Interview with Beatrice:
|
