By LARA SETRAKIAN
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 25, 2008
She may be the world's first 8-year-old divorcee.
When Nojoud Mohammed Ali's parents arranged her
marriage to a 30-year-old man, it was consistent with
the mores of Yemen, her home country on the tip of
the Arabian peninsula. For girls like Nojoud, such
arrangements mean falling prey to physical and
sexual abuse.
"He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as
to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to
another in order to escape, but in the end he would
catch me and beat me and then continued to do what
he wanted," Nojoud told the Yemen Times.
"I cried so much, but no one listened to me."
But the child escaped. She fled from her new
husband's home and found her way to a nearby
courthouse. There she found a lawyer, Shatha Ali
Nasser.
"I met her by chance in the court, and I took her case.
She went alone to the court. … The police and
employees told me about her," Nasser told ABC
News.
Nasser found an anonymous donor who paid
Nojoud's 50,000 rial dowry (about $250) -- effectively,
the cost of her divorce -- and two months into her
unwitting wedlock she was free.
Nojoud is the first child bride to go to the court to seek
a divorce. But she is one of many girls in Yemen
forced to marry young.
Some Wives Younger Than 15
More than 48 percent of girls in Yemen wed before the
age of 18, according to statistics released in 2007 by
the International Center for Research on Women.
