JHAPA, May 25 -- She tried to tell her friends several times. But whenever she mustered up the courage to share what had happened, she would instantly remember his words: "Don't tell anyone, or else..."

The first time he raped her was on the day of her cousin's wedding. She was alone in the house, getting ready to join the rest of her family at the ceremony, when a man walked into the flat and locked the doors.

The man was in his 30s, a carpenter who had been hired to work at her uncle's home. She was only 13, an eighth grader.

"Don't tell anyone or else.," he warned her.

The girl, now 14, who asked to be identified as Pabitra, doesn't remember how many times she was raped, her memory is murky. She has compartmentalised the trauma.

P...