I became a doctor long before I became involved with women’s groups. I had an excellent medical education, but formal education never taught me to handle cases of raped women and to look for signs of violence and abuse against women and children in the emergency rooms of our training hospital. It was only when I began to work with women who were desperately trying to deal with this hidden epidemic that I began to realise how neglected these women were. And, as I got a second education in the community, the biggest thing I had to do was to unlearn certain myths.