A girl in Kenya who was forced to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather when she was only nine years old has been freed after four years of hell.
Younis, 13, who is part of the Samburu tribe, was married off by her parents in accordance to tribal custom, which also includes female genital mutilation and offering girls to male relatives for sex.
She was forced to live with the 78-year-old man for four years until she escaped and walked barefoot to a boarding school for girls called the Samburu Girls Foundation.
Explaining her harrowing and heartbreaking tale, Younis told CNN: ‘When I was about nine years old, my father married me off to an old man who was 78 years old’ ‘He told me that I will be a wife but I was just innocent, I wanted to come to school. But that man wanted me to be a third wife. I told him, I will not be your wife, and he caned me.’
Luckily for Younis and around 200 other girls across Kenya, the Samburu Girls Foundation offered her a way out.
Tags: child brides, child exploitation, forced marriage, halo project, honour based violence, kenya, pregnant, rape, tribal custome, victims
