Being Forced To Marry My Cousin When I Was 13

I Didn’t Want To Keep My Rape Child | An Arranged Marriage Story

How To Escape A Child Forced Marriage

‘We have no one’: The women and girls sold as brides in Kashmir

 

Arsheeda Jan* speaks fluent Kashmiri with an accent that suggests it is not her first language. The 43-year-old is originally from Kolkata but now lives in a two-room wooden home on the banks of the river Jhelum on the outskirts of Srinagar city. Her eyes fill with tears as she describes how she arrived in Kashmir more than two decades ago.

Her parents died when she was a child, she explains, and she and her four siblings were sent to live with relatives. “We were very poor,” she says.

When she met a middle-aged Bengali woman who promised her a job in a shawl factory in Kashmir, Arsheeda saw an opportunity to earn some money. She was 13 years old.

“She told me that will provide me with a job in Kashmir and we have to do embroidery on shawls. I had no idea where Kashmir is,” Arsheeda recalls.


She didn’t tell her siblings about her plan.

When she reached Kashmir, the woman, who was herself married to a Kashmiri man, kept Arsheeda in her home for a week. During that time, Arsheeda says she did all of the household chores in the belief that the woman was going to help her build a better life for herself.

“I kept on asking her ‘where is the job?’ Then one day a man and his father arrived with a bearded man who was supposed to do my nikah (marriage contract).”

A photo of a woman looking outside through a window indoors.
Arsheeda has had no contact with her family since she was trafficked two decades ago [Rifat Fareed]
When Arsheeda cried, the cleric explained that he could not marry her against her will and left. But the family found someone else who was willing to do it.

“The agent threatened me that if I raise my voice she will kill me. I was very scared,” she says.

Still just 13, Arsheeda was married to a labourer nine years her senior.

“When my husband entered my room for the first time, I was shivering. I tried to flee many times but failed. Then I became pregnant. I gave up on the idea that I can ever leave this life,” she says.


Arsheeda, who now has four children, has had no contact with her family in Kolkata since she left.

“When there is a fight with my husband he asks me to leave and pay the money for which he bought me,” she says.

Pointing to a scar on her forehead, Arsheeda explains: “My husband beats me sometimes and he taunts me.”

When her husband is violent, she says she tries to take shelter in her neighbours’ house but that they are unwelcoming. “[They] inform my husband,” she explains. “Some neighbours assume I have slept with many men, that’s how they think I landed here. They don’t understand …”

“Everyone looks at me differently. I still feel alien.”

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At 15 I was Forced To Marry A Man Twice My Age

Pakistan: The ordeal of 'abandoned wives' left behind by UK families

 

Sana Hafeez, 28, from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, had hardly started the 10th grade when her family arranged her engagement to her British-born cousin Muhammad Bilal Choudhary.

Although Hafeez had wanted to become a civil servant after completing her education, she was excited by the prospect of going to the United Kingdom. She thought it would help ease her family's financial troubles and provide her with an opportunity to get an education and a good job.

"But to my surprise, my fiancée and his family asked me not to pursue my studies beyond grade 12," she told DW. "I was heartbroken, but the prospect of going to the UK and supporting my family financially was still a solace."

The pair remained engaged for five years and married in August 2018. Her husband left for the UK a week after the marriage, and both he and her in-laws had promised to take her there as well, said Hafeez.

Hafeez is one of many women from her region who have been married off to British Pakistani men in the hope they can help their families financially. But lawyers and womens' rights activists say that many of these marriages often go awry.

Several residents of Hafeez's district of Mirpur have family members in Britain. Many people left in the 1950s and 60s, when the construction of a large dam affected thousands in the district.

Over the years, through marriages, asylum, work permits and family connections, many made their way to the former colonial power.

"For a year we remained engaged and talked over the phone," Hafeez recalled. But her fiance's attitude started to change in 2019. "When I insisted on coming to the UK, he started hurling slurs and insults and finally filed for divorce in May of this year," she said, fighting back tears.

"It was a bombshell for me and the family. He wasted eight years of my life," she said. Additionally, her family had to borrow money to pay for the marriage — money which they thought could be repaid once she was settled in the UK.

"I could have become a civil servant or gotten a higher education. Who will compensate for all my losses?" she asked.

Hafeez's case is not unusual, said Ghazala Haider Lodhi, a women's rights advocate.

"Since the 1990s, I have heard and seen thousands of cases of such women," Lodhi told DW.

"Because of the conservative nature of our society they cannot share their ordeals."

Lawyer Ifzal Ahmed Khan has witnessed many similar cases. Khan told DW that a British Pakistani man, originally from the town of Bhimber in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, married his cousin Sadaf more than seven years ago. He stayed with her for a few years and abandoned her after the birth of a baby boy.

The man later divorced his cousin, he said, adding that the man is now threatening to take the child.

Sardar Abrar Azad, an activist in Mirpur, says his friend's sister was also abandoned after being married to a British Pakistani. According to Azad, poverty is what drives families to marry off their daughters to British Pakistanis. He added that people are often so desperate to send their daughters to the UK that they don't pay much attention to the character of the husband-to-be.

Many of the men turn out to be utter frauds, Azad said. "Instead of taking the girls back, they stay here for months while the girls' families bear their accommodation expenses."

While poverty is one reason young women are married off, some parents seek husbands for their daughters in order to strengthen existing family ties, he said.

Most of the girls, advocate Lodhi said, are from impoverished families, who hope that their daughters will call one of their brothers to the UK or will themselves work there and send money back. What seems like a dream can soon turn into a nightmare, she said.

'Parents should seek consent'
"I think parents need to seek the consent of their sons and daughters who are born and brought up in the UK under completely different socio-economic conditions," Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, former prime minister of the disputed territory, told DW.

He believes that a lack of consent leads to the breakup of such marriages. "The man and woman should be given a chance to communicate with one another and understand each other before they decide to marry," he said.

In Mirpur, the British Pakistani men marrying local women have an increasingly bad reputation. Lodhi claims that almost half of them are already married. In one case, a British Pakistani man married more than six times. "Most of these men are over 40 and even 60 in some cases," Lodhi said.

"They know most of their victims are poor and cannot do anything against them," said Khan. "So they marry here, and spend a few months or years impregnating women. In some cases, they take the kids with them and in others they leave both the wife and kids here, and ruin their lives."

"What else could it be described as except debauchery and lust?" he said.

Attique Khan believes that society has to take steps to stop such marriages. "Efforts could be made at the government level, but civil society has to create awareness to stop this trend," he said.

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Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Bridal slaves

Criminalising forced marriage: The risk of symbolic gestures

 A young woman sits in front of the bank manager, her distress is palpable with tears streaming down her face; her voice comes out in desperate gasps.

“Please don’t call the police; I can’t explain how awful things will get.”
“They have broken the law, I have no choice.” He responds.
“Please, please, please, don’t.” She is almost incoherent with distress.

The bank manager appraises her. She had come in this morning to relay to him that her bank cards had been fraudulently reported stolen by her family. The young woman had fled a forced marriage and her family in their rage had retaliated. He agrees to not report them and the young woman looks visibly relieved.

This young woman was me ten years ago. I recount this experience to give a glimmer into what it is like when you are fighting for survival. When all you want is your safety and the thought of police intervention fills you with horror.

Governments like symbolic gestures: a big summit to end sexual violence in war zones with a Hollywood star at the helm or the passing of a law to criminalise forced marriage. Sometimes symbols matter, other times, symbols are a lot easier than tackling the complexities of a problem. I was reminded of this as news came through this week that forced marriage had been criminalised by the coalition government; it is a law that fills me with dread.

Dread because I have serious concerns as to whether it will protect victims at risk. A person fleeing a forced marriage has been under extreme emotional pressure to comply and the prospect of taking their family to court, where the maximum custodial penalty is seven years, can be an overwhelming prospect. So much so, that it could prove to be a deterrent in asking for help. The cultural context in which these situations arise, where misogynistic notions of honour prevail, make leaving that much harder.

A law would not have helped me get out sooner and nor would it have been a deterrent to my family. Kidnap, false imprisonment and rape are all criminal acts but if they have not stopped women and boys being forced to marry against their will, then what is the rationale for a new law now? Symbols only work if there has been work on the ground to provide the necessary support to victims and survivors.

It is not sexy to provide funding to women’s services. It doesn’t get you the headline of sharing the platform with a Hollywood star. It is not sexy to teach relationship and consent in schools or to train teachers, GP’s, UKBA to spot the signs of a forced marriage. It is these things that will make a tangible difference and even save lives.

Passing a law is a quick win but at what price? There is a real chance that this may force the issue underground. Forced marriage is already hugely under reported; the Forced Marriage Unit reported that they gave advice or support related to a possible forced marriage in 1302 cases between January to December 2013. I suspect this is a tiny snapshot of the real picture. There are many boys and girls that flee and sleep on friend’s floors, they learn to survive and work and carry on. I know I did. All I wanted was my life back and a bed without a stranger, a room to call my own again.

So my message to Theresa May and David Cameron is: I really hope you will be backing your symbolic gestures with the effort needed on the ground to protect those people most at risk.

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A GIRL In The River - The Price of Forgiveness

What Can I Do If I'm Being Forced To Marry Someone? | Ustadha Taimiyyah Zubair

Forced marriage is a crime a sin and means parents are destroying the lives of their own children. It has to stop! Say No! Seek Help!

Noura in her own words: Teen who killed rapist husband shares her story

Sudanese teenager Noura Hussein, who is on death row for killing her 35-year-old husband, in a case that has sparked international outrage, has spoken out for the first time about her forced marriage, and the rape and struggle that happened when she stabbed him.

CNN obtained a first-hand account from the 19-year-old, who is currently awaiting retrial in an Omdurman prison cell after appealing her death sentence.

The teenager's story has put a spotlight on forced marriage and marital rape in Sudan, where the legal age to enter into marriage is 10 and marital rape is not a crime.

Noura's family made her get married at 15, but allowed her to finish school. Three years later, after a public marriage ceremony, her husband tried to consummate the marriage. After refusing to have sex with him on their "honeymoon," she says he raped her as members of his family held her down. A day later her husband tried to rape her again, and she stabbed him to death. When she went to her parents for support, they turned her over to the police.

The Sudanese government has not responded to CNN's requests for comment on the case.
Noura's first-hand account was obtained by CNN. It has been translated, and lightly edited for clarity and length.

Noura Hussein: He told my parents that he wanted to marry me when I was in the 8th grade.
They fooled me after I sat the secondary school exams at the end of that year.
And the first time I even saw him was a week after he proposed the marriage to my uncle.
And from the first time they told me I refused. I told them I don't want to marry, I want to study.
I spoke to him directly and said, "I don't want to marry you."
I fled to Sinnar to my aunt's house, but two days later they brought me back and the religious ceremony took place, two weeks after he first proposed, in our house.

Afterwards I had no communication with him. If he visited the house I left. I told him, I don't want you.

The wedding ceremony was three years later after I sat my school leaver exam. They did all the usual rituals for the wedding, his family are well off, but in all that time I didn't take anything from him -- not a single penny.
I was overwhelmed with anger, I didn't want this man.
I sat in the hairdressers contemplating suicide.

I cried sitting next to him. In the car he kept coming closer to me and I kept moving away. We arrived at the honeymoon flat, I locked myself inside one of the rooms and lay down fully clothed.

This went on -- I refused to eat, I refused to leave my room. On the third day he told me it's time you open the door so I don't break in. I refused but while he slept I crept out and found the door to the flat was locked.
On the ninth day his relatives came, his uncle told me to go to the bedroom. I said no so he dragged me by my arm into the bedroom and his cousin slapped me. All of them tore at my clothing. His uncle held me down by my legs and each of the other two held down my arms. He stripped and had me while I wept and screamed. Finally, they left the room. I was bleeding, I slept naked.
The next day he grabbed me, threw me on the bed and tried to climb on top of me. I was fighting back and my hand found a knife under the pillow. We began grappling over the knife. He cut my hand and bit down on my shoulder.
I ran to my parent's house. I had no idea how I got there. I was still carrying the knife.

I was hoping to finish studying law and then marry, my dream is to be a judge.

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Forced marriage: Mother jailed for four-and-a-half years

A mother who forced her daughter to marry a relative almost twice her age has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.

The woman from Birmingham, who is in her 40s, duped the then 17-year-old into going to Pakistan in September 2016 to wed the man.

The girl became pregnant by him when she was 13 and he was 29, which her mother saw as a "marriage contract".

The case is the first successful prosecution of its type.

Sentencing the mother at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Patrick Thomas QC said the victim had been "sold for her passport".

Neither the mother nor daughter can be identified for legal reasons.

Jurors had heard the daughter, now aged 19, was fooled into travelling to Pakistan on the promise of getting an iPhone for her 18th birthday.

'Cruelly deceived'

When the plan to marry her to the relative 16 years her senior was revealed, the girl protested. In response her mother threatened to burn her passport and assaulted her.

"It takes no imagination to understand the terror she must have felt", the judge said.

"You had cruelly deceived her. She was frightened, alone, held against her will, being forced into a marriage she dreaded.

"You must have known that was her state of mind. Yet for your own purposes, you drove the marriage through."

Prosecutor Deborah Gould read a victim statement to the court in which the girl said she was proud of herself for coming forward and wanted other young women who found themselves in similar situations to ask for help.

The court heard how the wedding was the defendant's idea. The victim's father, who is divorced from her mother, eventually found out and told social services and police.

The mother was found guilty on Tuesday of two counts of forced marriage and a count of perjury after she lied to the High Court about the incident.

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'I was bought for 50,000 rupees': India's trafficked brides

In a nearby village, Saeeda* holds her youngest daughter as she talks about how she was brought to Haryana 20 years ago with her sister.

“I only know that I arrived in Haryana when I was 11,” she says. “I was brought here with my sister but I haven’t seen her since we arrived.”

She was sold to Azim, a widower 20 years older who already had six children by his first wife. She says she was beaten by her husband and his family. “They wanted me to obey them, and if I objected they always had the same words for me: ‘We own you because we bought you.’”

Saeeda was visited by activists from Empower People who told her what rights she had as a wife and mother. Now, her husband has agreed to give her a property in her name, which means that she and her children are secure if Azim dies before she does.

Many paros, she says, are thrown out of the family home when they are widowed. Her home has become a meeting place and refuge for the other paro women living in her village, and she also helps others in her wider community who have been trafficked into marriage.

“Now I have enough courage to fight,” she says.

Link

The Good Wife​

Long but worth the read. Very moving account.

One day, when I was in Grade 10, I was in my bedroom doing math homework. My mother walked in. She told me I’d received a marriage proposal. I laughed. “Mom, what are you talking about?” I asked. She didn’t crack a smile, and I realized she was serious. “I’m only 16,” I said. 
“I’m not ready for marriage.” She told me that I was lucky. The offer came from a nice man who lived in Canada. He was 28 years old and worked in IT. His sister was a friend of hers. The woman thought I’d make a perfect match for her brother—I was very tall, and he was six foot two. “They’re going to look so great together in pictures,” she had said to my mother.

For weeks, I pleaded with my mom not to make me go through with it. I’d sit at the foot of her bed, begging. She would tell me it was for my own good, and that a future in Canada would give me opportunities I wouldn’t have here at home. She assured me that she’d spoken to his family about my desire to continue my education. “You can go to school in Canada. And we don’t have to worry about you being alone,” she said. The next thing I knew, his parents were measuring my wrist for wedding bangles. The date was set for five months later, in July 1999.

In May 2001, I gave birth to our daughter. When we returned from the hospital, my husband slept on the couch while I stayed with the baby in the second bedroom. I’d never felt so alone. I fantasized about stealing money from my husband’s wallet and taking a cab to the airport, calling my parents and asking them to buy me a plane ticket home. But I didn’t want to leave my daughter behind.

When she was a few months old, we bought a four-bedroom house in Streetsville with his parents. I was rarely allowed to leave. I never had a penny to my name. My mother-in-law gave me her cast-off clothing to wear. I didn’t have a cellphone. I wasn’t allowed to go to the grocery store on my own. If I didn’t iron my husband’s shirts or make his lunch or finish my chores, he and my in-laws told me that I was a bad wife who couldn’t keep my family happy. I walked on eggshells all the time. If I asked my husband something, he would reply, “Bitch, get out of here.”

Two years in, the abuse got physical. He would grab my wrist and shove me around. I’d be sitting on the couch and he’d slap me upside the head, or grab me so hard on my upper arms that my skin would bruise. Once he tossed a glass of water in my face; I slipped on the floor and threw out my back. Another time he punched a hole in the wall next to my head and told me, “Next time, it’s going to be you.” On several occasions, he picked up a knife and said he was going to kill me and then himself.

Full article

Forced To Marry

Forced marriages are not permissible in Islam yet they do take place in certain Muslim communities for a number of cultural reasons.

Did you ever hear your Imam speak against this during the Friday Khutbah ?

Forced Marriages - That's Messed Up - Nouman Ali Khan

Filmmaker Wants To Stop Fathers From Giving Up Their Daughters

 

She fights for the rights of women by telling stories about heroic men.

"The struggle to end violence against women has always been carried out by women activists," says Samar Minallah Khan, who makes documentaries about gender-based violence in her native Pakistan.

"Women have worked very hard to bring awareness, but it will never be enough." That's why she brings men into the picture. And her approach has won acclaim from both men and women.

Khan is one of five women honored with a Global Leadership Award by Vital Voices, a group founded by Hillary Clinton after the World Conference of Women in Beijing in 1995. At the presentation ceremony, held at the Kennedy Center last month, a packed house of women gave her a standing ovation when she dedicated the award to the men in her life: "my amazing supportive and loving father, my husband, my brothers and my son."

Khan's films focus primarily on the practice of swara, where a daughter is given away as compensation for a crime. Swara happens mainly in poor, rural areas.

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Women’s groups campaign in D.C. to help victims of forced marriages

 

Mariam was a sixth-grader in Toronto when her family started pressuring her to get engaged. They sent her on a summer trip to their native Pakistan, ostensibly to study but actually to meet a fiance chosen by her aunt. When she protested after returning home, she said, her mother kept insisting and wearing her down.

“She cried a lot. She prayed loudly to God that I would change. She refused to speak to me for days. She told me the family’s honor was at stake,” recounted Mariam, now 20, who asked that her last name not be published. “I wanted to finish school and go to college, but at times I almost said yes, just so she would stop crying.”

Finally, when she turned 17, Mariam decided to leave home — an unthinkable act in her culture. With encouragement from a women’s rights group, she slipped out early one morning, taking a small bag. No shelter would accept her, because she had not been physically abused, and she felt racked with guilt and loneliness. Eventually, though, she found housing, friends and a measure of emotional independence.

Today, Mariam is active in a growing movement in the United States and Canada to promote public awareness and legal protections for victims of forced marriage.

Full article

Siblings jailed for attempt to kidnap sister's girlfriend

Six siblings from a "traditional Asian Muslim family" in Lancashire have been jailed after attempting to kidnap the white girlfriend of one of their sisters, threatening to kill her because she had "messed with the wrong Muslims".

Sentencing them to between three-and-a-half and six years in prison, the judge said they had been motivated by religious and racial hatred as well as disapproval of their sister's sexuality.

"This case is about power and control," Judge Graham Knowles, QC, told the family at Preston crown court on Friday. "It's about striking terror into the heart, in order to control not just the body but also the will."

Almost three years ago Nazma Ditta, one of nine children from Blackburn, began a secret relationship with Sarah Harrison when both women worked at a clothes shop in Blackburn, Preston crown court heard.

Unhappy that Nazma, now 28, was in a same sex relationship – and with a white non-Muslim woman – six of Nazma's siblings plotted to break up the relationship. They claimed a teacher at a mosque had told them to "take action now or it might be too late" and had given permission "to be violent", the court heard.

The family wanted Nazma to enter into an arranged marriage with a cousin or another man, and discussed putting her on a plane to Pakistan, the judge noted. They concocted the plot via the online text messaging service WhatsApp, referring to it as "our mission as a family".

Three of Nazma's sisters, one wearing a full face veil, were caught on CCTV kicking and punching Harrison, 35, after she finished work at USC Clothing in Blackburn town centre on 20 June last year.

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British Muslims Should Stand Up and Say It: There Is Nothing Islamic About Child Marriage

This is a column about Muslims and child marriage. I hesitated before writing it. When I pointed out the prevalence of anti-semitism and homophobia within British Muslim communities earlier this year, I was accused by some of my co-religionists of "selling out", of "fuelling Islamophobia".

I understand their annoyance. Why give the racists and bigots of the Islamophobic far right yet another stick with which to beat us?

The problem is that this particular stick is already in their hands. Child, or underage, marriage is very much a part of British society. And the inconvenient truth is that it is Muslims - not Christians, Jews or Hindus - who are responsible for much of it. There is no point pretending otherwise. Nor is it morally tenable to stand idly by as young girls in the UK are forced into marriages before they are physically or psychologically ready, against their will and against the law.

First, a bit of background. The legal age for marriage in Britain is 16. Yet, back in October, I watched ITV's Exposure documentary, 'Forced To Marry', in which two undercover reporters, posing as the mother and brother of a 14-year-old Muslim girl, called 56 mosques across Britain to ask whether they would perform the girl's marriage. Shamefully, imams at 18 of those 56 mosques - or one in three - agreed to do so.

The imam of a mosque in Manchester was secretly recorded as saying that performing such a marriage would "not be a problem". An imam in Birmingham, despite being told that the girl didn't want to get married, could be heard saying: "She's 14. By sharia, grace of God, she's legal to get married. Obviously Islam has made it easy for us... We're doing it because it's okay through Islam."

Let's be clear: two-thirds of the imams refused to perform such marriages, with many making it clear they "found the request abhorrent". But here's the issue: a third of them didn't. A third of those imams hid behind their - my! - religion: "We're doing it because it's okay through Islam." Frustratingly, many Muslim scholars and seminaries still cling to the view that adulthood, and the age of sexual consent, rests only on biological puberty: that is, 12 to 15 for boys and nine to 15 for girls.

It doesn't have to be this way. As is often the case, there is no single, immutable 'Islamic' view. As Usama Hasan, a reform-minded British Muslim scholar and former imam, argues:

"There was a rival view in Islamic jurisprudence, even in ancient and medieval times: that emotional and intellectual maturity was also required, and was reached between the ages of 15 and 21." The latter view, he tells me, "has been adopted by most civil codes of Muslim-majority countries for purposes of marriage".

The Quran does not contain a specific legal age of marriage, but it does make clear that men and women must be both physically mature and of sound judgement in order to get married. It is also worth clarifying that Prophet Muhammad did not, as is often claimed, marry a child bride named Aisha. Yes, I'll concede that there is a saying in Sahih Bukhari, one of the six canonical Hadith collections of Sunni Islam, attributed to Aisha herself, which suggests she was six years old when she was married to Muhammad and nine when the marriage was consummated. Nevertheless, there are plenty of Muslim historians who dispute this particular Hadith and argue Aisha was in reality aged somewhere between 15 and 21.

This isn't a case of 'liberal' Muslims v 'conservative' Muslims, either. Even the much-maligned Muslim Council of Britain has said it is "strongly opposed to [underage marriage] on the basis that it is illegal under the law of the land where we are living and even under sharia it is highly debatable".

Indeed it is. Afifi al-Akiti, an Oxford-based theologian trained in traditional Islamic madrasas across south Asia and North Africa, tells me that the vast majority of classical scholars throughout Muslim history agreed on a minimum marriage age of 18 - two years older, incidentally, than secular Britain's current age of consent.

So, how to explain the view of a third of the imams contacted by ITV? The influence of Saudi Arabia, and its decades-long export of a reactionary, retrograde brand of Islam, cannot be ignored. The damage that has been done to a nascent British Islam by pre-modern, Saudi- inspired, literalist dogma is incalculable. Consider this: in 2011, when the Saudi ministry of justice announced it might prohibit marriages involving girls under the age of 14, Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan, one of the country's most senior clerics, issued a fatwa to allow fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters "even if they are in the cradle". To call such a mindset outdated or medieval would be a gross understatement. It's an endorsement of paedophilia, plain and simple.

It is also an apt reminder of why most countries, including most Muslim-majority countries, have minimum ages for marriage codified in law: to deter adults from exploiting children and to protect the most innocent members of our society.

"We have a moral duty to obey the law of the land," says al-Akiti. For adult men to try to marry young girls is illegal and immoral. But British Muslims have a special responsibility: to make the case that there is nothing Islamic about underage marriage, either.

Will this column be used by EDL-types to further their pernicious, anti-Muslim agendas? Maybe it will be, but I can't stay quiet. I'm the father of two young girls. When I hear of forced, underage marriages being carried out in the heart of major British cities, I think of my own daughters. And I feel sick.

This is 2013. Not 613. Or 1813. Child marriage is a form of child abuse. It must be stopped.

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