Women’s Slavery Exists in St. Mary’s Immigrant Communities; Hubby Cuts Himself to Deport Her to India
ST. MARY’S TODAY
GREAT MILLS --- “Even if I hit her, what’s wrong? She is my wife,” the 63-year-old-man from India yelled on the phone. “An Indian wife would never call police on her husband,” Rajendra C. Solomon, 63, a PhD in electrical engineering who works for the top Mitre Corporation at the navy base, declared
In the same vein, he repeatedly accused his wife of having phone and web sex with her boyfriend.
The wife Vinaya Solomon, 41, got tired of every day beatings and found sanctuary at the Catholic Charities-run Angel’s Watch in Hughesville more than two months ago. She landed on U.S. soil on May 15, 2006, but the beatings were too much to handle and left her husband's home three-and-half months later under police escort.
“For 15 days, he was okay. There was no problem. After that the problems started,” Vinaya said. "He started the abuse."
The estranged couple spoke with ST. MARY'S TODAY Saturday evening, the wife in person and the man yelling on the phone.
Vinaya said Solomon once told her, "I am going to kill you and bury you here and no one would come to know about it."
She said one of his main problems was suspicion as because of the age difference of 22 years he felt inadequate to meet her basic needs in bed. “You have slept with thousands of men, he kept on abusing me” she said. “He was having lots of suspicions that I had boyfriends.”
She said the beatings and the daily accusation that she was a woman of easy virtue made her depressed and at one point she could not eat anything for four days at a stretch, after which she was hospitalized. When the doctor asked her if she wanted to go home, she emphatically said, "No, I don't want to go home." After being released from hospital, the husband told her he would not buy medicines for her. On reaching home, she found lock of her suitcase broken.
Still, the husband insisted, “It’s not domestic abuse. She’s my wife and I love her very dearly. There was a misunderstanding. It just happened on the spur of the moment, abuse or whatever.”
A statement of charges against Solomon obtained from St. Mary's District Court gave Solomon's identification as race Asian, hair black, eyes brown, height five feet and three inches, weight 150 pounds and date of birth 12/27/43, which means 40 days are left to his 63rd birthday. He is a resident of 22061 St Elizabeth Court, Great Mills.
The police report said on 08/29/06 at approximately 2034 hours (8:34 pm), Deputy Patrick Handy responded to the home of the alleged culprit for the report of an assault with a knife.
"Contact was made with the victim several hundred yards from the house. She was very upset and hysterical. She did have a raised knot on the left side of her head underneath her hair. She advised that the defendant had punched her," the police report said.
Deputy Handy then made contact with the defendant inside the house. "His lower left arm was bleeding with blood dripping on the kitchen floor.When asked what happened, he said that his wife had stabbed him several times in his arm with a knife during an argument. He said he punched her in the head in self defense to stop her from stabbing him," the statement of charges read.
But Handy wrote, "However, the wounds on his arm were superficial and the location of them were odd which raised my suspicion." In addition, the police report said the knife was never located.
As she sat in the police car, the officer came and asked her “Where’s the knife?” Vinaya said she was stunned.
"After further investigation with the defendant, he admitted to inflicting the wounds on his left arm with a knife so he could get his wife arrested and possibly deported back to India," Handy's report said.
Handy said he then spoke with the victim who said the man had allegedly been beating her for the last three months. The report said Vinaya told Handy that Solomon was allegedly upset at not receiving dowry from her family.
Officers at the St. Mary’s sheriff’s department confirmed that wife beating is common among newly-arrived immigrants, and the situation was specially grim among undocumented Hispanic immigrants where the females have no English language skills, neither jobs outside the homes.
“I just married her on the internet without knowing her. I love her very much. I will make her my queen,” Solomon said, but at the same time she accused her of having web sex with her boyfriend.
What Vinaya had to say about her new life in the U.S. could be any queen’s nightmare, however. “He was hitting and slapping me all the time,” she said
Vinaya said Solomon blocked her emails and ordered all email by her should be copied to him.
Once previously married, Vinaya was delighted when Solomon and family came to visit her in India’s commercial capital of Mumbai, the commercial capital of India. At the time, the former schoolteacher was working as a receptionist in India's commercial and film capital.
Vinaya confirmed she met Solomon on an Indian matchmaking web site called www.shadee.com that translates into marriage.com. But one thing was not honest from the very beginning. She said he had lied to her about his age saying he was 51, when he was actually 61.
“That was a typo,” Solomon said.
Just 15 days after her arrival her ordeal began and continued for three months before her alleged tormentor was arrested and she found sanctuary at Angel’s Watch.
“He was throwing my clothes out of the apartment all the time. One night he locked me out and left for work by locking the door. That was the first time I called police,” she said. That happened in July.
Since the man had not violated any law, he could not be booked. “After that he was even more angry with me,” Vinaya said. “‘You came for the money’ he told me.”
She said at one point he struck her with a bottle of brandy. On the night of August 29, things went out of control as the man held her down on the bed. “He started to punch me on the head.” She somehow escaped from the clutches of her tormentor and called the police.
The last hearing of Vinaya's case was held at St. Marys District Court on 26th October. But since she could not understand the accent of the judge the hearing was put off until someone who speaks her native language “Kannada” is found.
She fears that the husband has probably destroyed her Green card.
Heather Bauer, who works at the St. Mary's Sheriff domestic violence co-ordination office, told ST. MARY'S TODAY her office would try to get Vinaya her Green card if the husband refuses to return Vinaya her original one.
Solomon appeared shedding crocodile tears denying he was demanding money from Vinaya’s family. “I will say they are liars,” he said he would say in case anyone asked him why he was asking for dowry.
“That was the first time in my life that happened,” he said about his attack of August 29. “It was the first and last time. I am a PhD in electrical engineering.”
When asked if he felt remorse,Solomon said, “Of course I will never do it again.”
He said when he first met her on the Internet she sounded to be a nice person “and she is still a nice person.” He said he was very happy. “I hopped into the airplane. I trusted her blindly.”
He insists that before he boarded the airplane, he told his would-be wife that she was 22 years younger than him. “You are too young for me. Are sure you want to marry me?” he insists Vinaya replied, “Come along. I love you, I want to marry you."
He said it was absolutely a big mistake that he physically abused his wife. “I am very sorry about it."
He said he spent $30,000 on Vinaya since his wedding. “I bought jewelry for her for $10,000. I even supported her in Mumbai for one-and-half years. I gave her a new life in Mumbai. She brought police on me. Shame on her,” he said. “No Indian wife would do that.”
Solomon, who has lived in the U.S. for 35 years, accused Vinaya of being very strong headed.
“But still I love her. I cried for her for one month, I could not eat, I could not sleep. Day and night I thought about her.”
Solomon said, “I don’t think she will ever come back. I don’t think she loves me. Maybe she just used me to come to America.”
He wants Vinaya to forgive him and that he wants to start a new life with her, all over again, though he continues to cast aspersions on her sex life. “I know it’s hard to forgive,” he said. "I want her back. She’s my life, she’s my pet.
In stead of assuming responsibilities for his actions, he tries to pass the buck on to his extended family that lived with him.
Solomon said, “She used to show the email exchanges to my sister. He may be a family friend, my sister might have misunderstood,” he said “But she told me ‘What kind of woman you married? She has a boyfriend in India.”
He said, “I had been brainwashed. I was told that way. I kept on refusing. I had been brainwashed that she was emailing her boyfriend in India, which I did not believe.”
But then Solomon changes his tone, from one of apology to that of rage.
“What will you do if your wife comes and tells you she has a boyfriend with whom she exchanges triple-X sex messages. You stupid reporter, tell me what you will do? You will kill her. Muslims kill their wives,” he said, thinking this scribe is a Muslim.
He alleged Vinaya told him she lived with that man for two years. “She told me about her boyfriend. She told me everything about him,” he said in the manner of a jilted lover.
He repeats Vinaya was having web and phone sex with her boyfriend.
“For three months she tortured me. She abused me for three months. She used me. You are so stupid (for questioning me). She was hurting me, my feelings were destroyed. My soul was destroyed.”
He accused Vinaya of cheating on him. “You damn fool reporter. Why did you ask me about abuse.”
He shows no real remorse and said no blood came out from Vinaya when he struck her.
“It was just a hand scuffle. If your wife told you she was having have phone sex, what will you do? You stupid reporter."
Meanwhile, finding someone who speaks Vinaya's dialect Kannada seems like a daunting task for court officials in St. Mary's District Court. A St Mary's district court clerk, Melissa Hall, sent an email to her counterpart Donna Wood in the greater DC area, admitting it might be a difficult to find a court interpreter in Kannada. "I will let you handle that part, hehe," Hall told Wood.
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