He Hema Committee Report Actress Sowmya has encouraged several artists in the film industry to come forward and speak openly about the sexual assaults they faced in the industry, name their perpetrators and take legal action. While the allegations and cases have so far been found within the state of Kerala, an actress has now shared her unpleasant experience with a Tamil film director. Popular Malayalam film actress Sowmya has narrated an incident from her college days when she was raped by the director for a year. Recalling the traumatic period, she also said that the director inserted a rod into her genitals for “entertainment”.
In an interview with NDTV, Sowmya spoke about how she was groomed to be a sex slave by a married Tamil director. However, she refused to reveal the identity of her attacker at this stage. She said she would reveal the man’s identity to the special police team formed by the Kerala government, which is investigating multiple cases of alleged sexual assault in Mollywood.
“I was 18 years old and in my first year of college… I came from a very sheltered background and my parents knew nothing about films. This opportunity (to act in a Tamil film) came through my contact in the college theatre. As a child, I fell in love with actor Revathy, who lived near my house at that time… I was in a fantasy world. So I went for a screen test with this couple…”
Sowmya said she had expressed discomfort about being close to the man after their first meeting. She revealed that the director told her father that they had spent huge amounts of money on her screen test and put pressure on her family to allow her to act.
Sowmya said she felt compelled to act in that film.
“During the first exterior shoots he didn’t speak to me. The agreement was that his wife would be the director, but that was something that was on paper… in reality he directed the entire film.”
“And so I was under his control… and he gave me the ‘silent anger treatment’ like a lot of men are used to doing. And because of our conditioning in the patriarchy… about authority figures, particularly intimidating men who express anger very easily, I was very scared,” she said.
Sowmya reveals that the director’s daughter had accused him of rape
Sowmya also shared that the director was claiming she was his daughter when his own daughter was gone, accusing him of rape.
“But they told me that she (the daughter) was lying. Then they took me to their house… I was a rebellious teenager at home and suddenly this couple was nice to me, bribed me with good food and smoothies, and said nice things to me. That was the grooming process… he knew exactly what he was doing,” she said firmly.
Sowmya recalls sexual assault
Sowmya then recalled the sexual assault and rape that occurred that day.
“One day, when his wife was out, this man, while calling me his daughter, kissed me. I was frozen. I was so desperate to tell my friends, but I couldn’t… I was ashamed, I thought I had done something wrong and that I had an obligation to be kind to this man…”
“So I kept going to practice, to dance rehearsals… every day I would come back and little by little, step by step, this man used my body completely for his benefit. At one point, he forced me to be with him… so he raped me. This continued for almost a year while I was in college.”
Sowmya further said that the man played with her brain because he called her his daughter and also wanted to have a child with her.
Sexual assaults continue in Malayalam film industry
In the 1990s, Sowmya made three successful films. However, sexual abuse continued in the Malayalam film industry“A co-star who sexually abused me has now been named in the Hema Committee report,” he said, adding that “directors, actors and technicians” continued to abuse me here.
“It took me 30 years to heal and recover from this feeling of ‘shame’… I encourage survivors to report all such abuses,” she said.
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