23 December- Bibhed Birudh Abhiyan.
Bindu Pariyar’s ex-husband forced her to trade her native Nepali dresses for miniskirts.
He tricked her into getting breast implants, hid her passport and ordered her to work in a strip club. When she didn’t make enough money, he forced her to have sex with men — and then he filmed the episodes, according to court documents.
After she left him, she said, he made her an unwilling porn star.
Pariyar explained her situation and ongoing struggles in interviews with The Dallas Morning News, court documents and a civil lawsuit she filed against her ex-husband.The News generally doesn’t name sexual assault victims unless they agree to be identified.
Pariyar, 27, says after she and her husband, Tom Randell Sewell, separated in 2012, he hounded her online and called her a prostitute on her college’s website.
She has been approached by strangers at restaurants. They’ll say to her, “I saw your video. How much do you charge?”
But Pariyar wants people to know who she really is — a young woman who came to America to attend nursing school and help her family.
‘ill just make another’
Several fake social media accounts feature photos of Pariyar wearing Lucite platform heels and panties with more strings than fabric. The tamest online videos show her spinning on a stripper pole. The most obscene show her having sex.
There are more than 2,000 Web pages with these pornographic videos or provocative images. None of them, she says, were posted with her permission. And she says nothing shown in the videos or pictures was done by choice.
When she begged Sewell to take them down, he refused.
“Doesn’t matter how many you report, ill just make another, and another, until your so famous you cant leave your apartment without muslim clothes covering your head,” he wrote to her in a Facebook message.
Pariyar filed a lawsuit against Sewell, 58, last year, asking for financial damages and for Sewell to take down all online pornographic images and videos of her.
“I just want to live a normal life,” she says. “I don’t want to be judged.”
The lawsuit, filed in Dallas County, alleges Sewell also posted comments about Pariyar on restaurant, auto shop and college websites.
“Here is where pornstar Bindu Pariyar goes to nurse school when shes not a stripper/hooker/pornstar ...” he wrote on her college’s website, according to court records.
This month, state District Judge Martin J. Hoffman ordered Sewell to remove all online videos and images of Pariyar. He also ordered Sewell to pay Pariyar more than $7.25 million in restitution, which Pariyar doesn’t expect to see.
But Sewell wasn’t in court that day and didn’t respond to repeated attempts to notify him about hearings in the lawsuit against him.
His former attorney in the case, Brian Shaw, has not represented Sewell in months. Sewell did not respond to a request for comment.
But Sewell said in a counterclaim to the lawsuit that Pariyar “is a manipulative and conniving prostitute and stripper who used Sewell in an attempt to gain U.S. citizenship.”
He also said in the counterclaim that Pariyar was using the lawsuit to show her past actions in a more positive light. In their final divorce decree, Sewell was ordered to take down all pornographic videos of his wife.
Pariyar says he continued to post the videos, and she worries he won’t stop.
A different side
Pariyar is still trying to reconcile the Sewell she knew growing up with the man she divorced.
She was 1 when Sewell married one of her relatives. He offered to pay for Pariyar’s private schooling, something her poor Nepali parents couldn’t afford.
Pariyar learned English and dreamed of going to nursing school. She wanted to help her family, members of one of the lowest castes in Nepal.
Sewell divorced Pariyar’s relative and then married another member of her family. When that marriage ended in 2008, he started writing to Pariyar.
He promised to send her to college if she moved to America. She accepted his offer.
But once in the U.S., Pariyar says she saw a different Sewell. He had a closet full of clothes waiting for her in his Montana home — tiny skirts, bikini tops, thong underwear.
She was seldom allowed to wear jeans or long skirts. She wasn’t allowed to drive, even to her GED courses. And, she says, Sewell told her to work at a local strip club.
In one online video, shown in court, Pariyar is seen wearing a short pink skirt with white polka dots that barely covers her. She struts in a store parking lot, and a man’s voice is heard speaking to her in Nepali. She spins and bends over, as if responding to commands.
She says the man in the video is Sewell. He commanded her in Nepali so no one else would understand him.
According to court records, Sewell filmed her having sex with other people, something she says he made her do. Sometimes he took part in the acts. Sometimes he just watched.
At the time, he promised her the videos he made of her having sex were just for him. She was disappointed he didn’t appear in court last week.
“I wanted to know why he did all of that, why he promised me that those videos were for his entertainment for the future,” Pariyar said in an interview after the hearing at the George Allen Courthouse downtown.
Calendar notes
Pariyar fears that people who see the videos of her will believe she wanted to have sex with the people Sewell set her up with.
But she never felt she had a choice.
She has two calendars that once belonged to Sewell. They’re filled with notes about the couple’s bills and messages scribbled in corners saying, “I love my Bindy.”
The calendars, which were introduced as evidence at the hearing, contained meticulous logs of every dollar Pariyar made as a stripper. Pariyar testified that the logs were how she learned people were paying Sewell to have sex with her.
He kept count of her customers, more than 60, giving them nicknames like, “Moe The Logger,” “Minute Boy Mike,” and “2 Canadian Indians.”
Sewell, she said, would ply her with drinks and drugs — the only one she remembers is cocaine — and make her have sex with men, and sometimes women, he met at the strip club, at the gym or through online ads.
Sewell hid her immigration papers and passport, telling her that if she was caught, she would get in trouble with the authorities.
He often threatened to send the videos to her family in Nepal if she ever left him.
The couple moved in 2012 to Dallas from Montana. She danced at Baby Dolls. One night they got into an argument about Pariyar “not going home with more customers to make more money,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Sewell pulled out a knife and started slashing her bag and clothing. He ripped off her shirt and grabbed her hair, throwing her to the ground. Dallas police also investigated him for human trafficking, the warrant said.
Sewell was charged with assault family violence in April 2012. The case was dismissed this year after Sewell served two years on probation.
Can’t escape past
Pariyar wears scrubs to school and often wears traditional Nepali dresses and jewelry when she goes out.
She is able to drive by herself and go out with friends, things she says Sewell wouldn’t let her do. She is now engaged to a man who opens doors for her and tells her she doesn’t need makeup to be beautiful.
“I wanted to be a nice person, and now I am,” she says. “I wanted to be able to drive on my own, and I have been able to.”
But despite moving on with her life, she can’t escape her online persona. She struggles to find a job. Her family in Nepal has been threatened and mocked. People would tell them the house they lived in was bought with prostitution money. Her two younger brothers have been bullied in school.
It could take years before all the videos and images of her are removed, and some are likely to stay online forever. She may never see a dime in restitution from Sewell.
But, she says, she is glad that the judge ruled in her favor. After the hearing ended, Pariyar helped Kenton Hutcherson, her attorney, pack up three boxes of documents, photos and legal filings.
After hearing her case, the judge told her he hopes his ruling sends a message. Pariyar wants the same thing.
She said reliving her experiences on the witness stand was painful, but she hopes that sharing her story publicly will put a face on human trafficking.
“I want to show that I’m brave,” she says.
source:dallasnews.com
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