Mark Ruffalo’s shoutout gave us a boost: Trisha Shetty

Do you change your clothes depending on the kind of public transport you are taking?” When Trisha Shetty, founder and CEO of SheSays puts this question across to female students in a school, all hands go up. But when a similar question is put across to the boys: Do you refrain from wearing shorts if you are in an auto because people will look at your legs? The only response she gets is laughter. “The whole idea is so preposterous to them, but that’s when you realise that sexual abuse plays such an important part in our lives, without even realising the magnitude of it,” she says, adding that equality, safety and autonomy of our body should be our constitutional right but unfortunately, is a struggle.

Last year in August, the 26-year-old graduate in Psychology and Political Science launched SheSays, a platform to educate, rehabilitate and empower women to take action against sexual assault in India. On its website, you will find all the relevant information pertaining to sexual abuse in India, including identifying acts of sexual abuse, the procedures to be followed at the police station and in the hospital, the legal steps to be taken and more. “After the Nirbhaya case, there was a lot of discussion online on this issue but I realised that as much as people are talking about it, there was no real engagement on what one should do if one is sexually abused. What I wanted to do was address the issue of sexual abuse in India but make sure that it’s need-driven and not cause-driven,” she says. And that’s why, SheSays.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, Trisha is the younger of two sisters. “I hail from the Bunt community, which is not exactly known for its progressive attitude towards women. Right from childhood, my sister and I were encouraged by our mother to speak up for ourselves and to have an educated opinion on things,” she recalls. Trisha is often asked if there was a personal incident that led her to start SheSays, but in her opinion, that’s a narrow, restricted way of looking at things. “I don’t think Farhan Akhtar is ever asked this question,” she avers, adding that as women in India, our experience is not unique when it comes to sexual abuse.

Real issues, real work
Trisha explains that the work they are doing at SheSays is centered around four sectors. “One of them is digital advocacy. We look at our website as a living entity that is there for the very purpose of mass outreach. So we have our website in multiple regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati and Urdu and it is also translated in German,” she says. The second sector involves public safety which includes tie-ups with music festivals, schools, restaurants, bars to train the staff, school teachers and security to ensure that the safety of attendees is assured.
The third sector they focus on is education and for that, they have developed a Sexual Violence Prevention & Education curriculum to be conducted in colleges. “The curriculum looks not just at abuse, but at consent and bystander intervention skills. We look at all this as a public health issue. The last is healthcare. Even though by law, it is mandatory for private and government hospitals to take in rape survivors, on ground, it is only government hospitals that do that,” she adds. Trisha often visits government run hospitals and is dismayed to find stray dogs loitering around and the hospital staff walking about when a rape survivor is being examined. “It is really insensitive,” she says, adding that they work with private hospitals to try and put out a call for action. “In our individual capacity, we offer counselling to the survivor. We demand punishment for the rapist, but the mental well-being of the survivor is also important,” she adds.

Future plans include taking the counselling sessions to parents and to work places. “In terms of landmark achievements, we would be ecstatic if we are able to get private hospitals to call to action, where rape survivors would have access to quality health care. We also want to expand our presence, mobilising young people to know more about this issue and giving them direction on how they can contribute,” she adds. Very ambitiously, getting marital rape criminalised would be top priority for them. “We are one of the few organisations talking about marital rape and why it needs to be criminalised. If it happens anytime soon and if we have played even a microscopic role in it, it would be amazing,” she smiles.

International exposure
Trisha was one of the two Indians among 17 youth leaders, who were selected for the inaugural class of UN Young Leaders for Sustainable Development Goals held from September 19 to 21. For Trisha, it was an overdrive of an emotional rollercoaster, giving their cause an exposure of such magnitude. “We were at the UN headquarters, talking about real issues, issues that mattered. At no point did it feel that the venue or the celebrities there overshadowed the cause. It was all about the cause at the end. We were engaging with people and sharing ideas. Everyone’s spirit was ‘how can I help you’. It just showed the humility and the passion that people have to see a better world and that left us all very optimistic,” she says.
But the best part about the experience, says Trisha, was that she got to meet to some “absolutely beautiful human beings”. “We met people who are champions in their fields, formidable spirits. We had a global goals dinner where we met people like Mark Ruffalo and Queen Rania who are stalwarts in their fields. It was an incredible opportunity to meet them and ask them to contribute and dedicate their voice to our cause,” she adds.  

On meeting Mark Ruffalo
“He met me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mark’ and I was like, Oh my God, you don’t need to tell me who you are! I’m a huge Spotlight fan. I told him about our work and asked him to check out the website and he actually did that! Two days later, he checked out our work, liked what we did, and gave us a shout-out on social media. And of course, that’s a nice little boost for us. He sat there with us, we told him stories from India and he shared stories about his family. He told us how gender equality and environment are two issues he is extremely passionate about. He is an incredible human being and it was almost magical to be sitting there and speaking to him.”