Through the Red Dot Foundation and Brave Movement, ElsaMarie D’Silva breaks the silence and shame that shrouds sexual abuse
TRIGGER WARNING: The following story discusses a violent crime that involves sexual assault and murder, and mentions other incidents of sexual harassment and abuse. As these themes may be difficult for some. please take care as you read the article.
Social activist ElsaMarie D’Silva still thinks about Nirbhaya. In December 2012, Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old female paramedical student in Delhi, India, and her male friend were making their way home after watching a movie. The pair boarded a charter bus. And then the unthinkable happened. They were attacked by six men who raped the young woman, beat her companion and, when their cruelty was spent, threw the two to the roadside. They were found by a passerby and rushed to the hospital, but almost a week later, the young woman died from her severe injuries.
Under Indian law, the media could not name the victim, so news organisations called her “Amanat” (treasure), “Damini” (lighting) or “Nirbhaya” which means fearless, undaunted or unafraid. Later on, during a public tribute, Nirbhaya’s mother claimed power for her daughter and all victims of sexual violence, sharing her name: Jyoti Singh.
How a horrific crime led to a global movement against sexual abuse
Singh’s death stoked a fire all throughout India. D'Silva, herself victim of sexual violence, the social activist joined mass demonstrations denouncing the brutal crime and demanding better protections for women. “This incident triggered a lot of memories which I had suppressed, of being groped on a train, witnessing masturbation in public spaces and being sexually harassed at the workplace,” says the founder of the Red Dot Foundation and co-founder of the Brave Movement to Tatler. “It could happen to any of us.”
D’Silva, who was then working in the aviation industry, found that the Nirbhaya case also surfaced memories of sexual abuse among her friends. And so D'Silva decided to look up the numbers: according to a statistic she found, one in three women globally would experience sexual violence at least once in their lifetime. But, D’Silva says, in her circle it “was close to 100 per cent because everyone I knew had something to share”.
How data and technology helps end sexual violence
“There was a data gap,” she says—with only a few coming forward to report their experiences, the statistics could not reflect what was happening in reality. And so, ten days after the Nirbhaya case, D’Silva launched the Safecity platform under the Red Dot Foundation, her Mumbai-based organisation that supports the fight against sexual violence. Accessed online or via its app, Safecity cuts to the heart of the matter, allowing anyone to report incidents anonymously. It doesn’t collect names, e-mails, social media handles or phone numbers, nor does it track IP addresses. What the platform does gather is the reporter’s age, gender and, of course, details of the incident, including the date and time and exact location.
D’Silva describes how people can detail everything that happened or just type one word, such as “harrassed”, in Safecity. They can also tick one or as many categories of abuse, “which actually helps you give vocabulary to your incident”. On its website, reports range from catcalls, ogling and taking photos without permission to more severe incidents such as indecent exposure, rape and human trafficking. “And the idea was to cluster this data, visualise it on a map, showcase it as hyperlocal patterns and trends and make it available as open source so that anyone can use it,” the founder explains. D’Silva, who decided to leave her career in aviation in 2013 to focus on her advocacy, says that her prior job—which included planning the route network for about 500 daily flights—has helped her run the global platform.