Memories of being raped or tortured continue to haunt Jariatu Sankoh Yillah, of Sierra Leone, and Lal Regmi, of Nepal.

Still, they found reason to be thankful Thursday.

They were among the group of asylum seekers invited to share their first Thanksgiving dinner with volunteers and staff of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center.

The center is a Denver-based organization that provides legal and other assistance to survivors of torture and war trauma. They also assist survivors' families.

"I see our participants as modern-day Pilgrims who came to this country to escape religious persecution," said Regina Germain, legal director of the survivors center. "They have traveled long distances in search of freedom and human dignity."

The wrong last name

Yillah, 37, fled her native country in West Africa four years ago.

The mother of two children said she was persecuted simply because she shared the last name of a rebel leader in a country that slowly is re-establishing its position after an 11-year civil war that brought death to tens of thousands of people and the displacement of more than 2 million.

After she was beaten and raped by rebels, whose trademark was to hack off the hands of their victims, Yillah was able to escape, luckily with her hands intact, in the darkness of night to neighboring Guinea. With the money she had saved to make her getaway, she purchased fake documents to get her to New York.

A former refugee told her about the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center, and with their help she submitted her application for political asylum.

She left behind her children, ages 6 and 17. Her husband left her because of the cultural stigma associated with being raped, she said.

After years of supporting herself as a house cleaner, she recently was able to secure a work permit and now works as a dishwasher at a local private college. Yillah is hopeful her children will someday join her in Colorado.

"I didn't know how to write my name when I first came to America," she told the roomful of mostly staff and volunteers at an Aurora apartment complex clubhouse where the meal was shared.

"You have helped me change my life. You make me happy," she said, before being overcome with tears.

Congressman in Nepal

Regmi was an active member of the Nepalese congress when Maoist insurgents tortured him and killed his father. Although reforms in 1990 established a multiparty democracy in Nepal after more than a hundred years of monarchal rule, rebels have gained traction and threaten to destroy the current regime.

With the help of American diplomats, Regmi fled Nepal a year ago and now is seeking political asylum.

Another son, his daughter and wife now live in India. He, too, is hopeful his family will join him if he is granted asylum.

After eating a traditional Thanksgiving meal that included a few dishes from the asylum seekers' native countries, Regmi thanked the survivors center for the clothes he was wearing and other support he has received, including food and medical assistance.

He is being treated for the lingering pain he suffers as a result of whacks to his head and knees with an iron bar.

"I have lost my father, my son (who was killed in 2005 in an attempted robbery while attending school in Texas) - my family," he said, teary-eyed. "You are my brothers, my sisters, my mother and my father. I give so much thanks to you."