India, Dec. 22 -- After nine years of trauma and hardships caused by an incident that shattered her childhood, the survivor of a gang rape incident-who was then 14 years old-has now transformed her pain into purpose.

"I want to become a judge so that I can deliver justice to girls and women who have suffered," she said on a day when a POCSO court in Bulandshahr announced the sentencing of five men convicted of gang raping the now 23-year-old and her mother after a highway ambush in July 2016. The convicts, who assaulted the mother and daughter in front of their family members, were awarded life imprisonment.

While the family said the verdict restored some hope in them after a nearly decade-long wait, they expressed profound dissatisfact...