YUEN CHING FELL in love and married the man she adored in 1987. On her wedding day, she thought she was the luckiest woman alive. In reality, she was descending into a nightmare that would last for 13 years.
'Six years ago, my husband asked me not to be his wife, but his slave,' the 40-year-old mother of two recalls in hushed tones. 'He hurt my body, called me a prostitute and a sex slave; my dignity slipped away. I begged him, but he ignored me. Whenever I resisted, he slapped my face and used clothes to suffocate me . . . there were a few times he almost killed me.'
Yuen twice tried to escape the clutches of her husband, but in the end stayed with him for the sake of her two sons, who are now seven and 11. 'My sons were small, they did not want to leave their toys and their comfortable life,' she says. 'For them, I stayed, and to protect myself, I decided not to resist when he came home from work, even though I became more and more stressed. Every day I lived in fear of him. I couldn't sleep until he was asleep. When he went to work, I just cried. I kept thinking of all the things he had done to me - the beatings.'
Yuen's story is not an isolated one. Last month, a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Federation of Women's Centres and statistics recorded by the Social Welfare Department revealed that physical violence and sexual attacks on women have increased at an alarming rate.
In reports that make shocking reading, one in five mainland wives in the SAR said they were treated as 'sex objects','breeding machines', 'maids' and 'cheap labour'.
A forum on sexual health heard that the number of women beaten by their partners has soared by more than 40 per cent in the past year to 1,689 reported cases, according to findings from the Social Welfare Department. In a desperate attempt to find answers to this growing social problem, female rights activists point to high unemployment as one of the reasons for the dramatic rise. 'Unemployed men are under a lot of stress, and that stress easily turns to violence,' says Margaret Wong Fung-yee, executive director of Harmony House, a women's group organisation.
