A Yemeni child bride who was forced to marry a violent husband three times her age when she was just 11 has spoken of the shocking sexual abuse she suffered at his hands for more than a decade.
Noora Al Shami was given away to a distant cousin in his 30s because her parents did not want her live in poverty. As young girl, she was excited to be the centre of attention at a lavish three-day wedding party in the port city of Al Hudaydah where she was allowed to wear ‘three really beautiful dresses’ for each day. But almost as soon as the celebrations had ended she was quickly thrust into a world of physical and psychological abuse from which she could not escape.
She told The Guardian: ‘It was at the end of the wedding that the fear and horror set in. ‘He was three times my age and saw marriage as a means to act like a depraved animal.’ She told how she ‘immediately began to quiver and cry’ when she was driven to the house her husband shared with his father. When the clerical worker first took off his clothes, she ran away in terror and desperately avoided sex for 10 days. And when she was eventually pressured into consummating the marriage, she said her body went into shock and she was rushed to hospital. She described being ‘treated like a sex object’ but said no one was interested in helping her because she was ‘legally his wife’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2440155/Yemeni-child-bride-Noora-Al-Shami-forced-marry-abusive-older-husband.html#ixzz2h3KZhLyO
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Tags: Asian, haloproject, pregnant, rape
