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Yemen's 8-Year-old Divorcee

Forced to Marry, the Newly divorced Yemeni Girl Looks Forward to a Normal Childhood

Posted on 04/27/2008

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.

Full ABC story here...


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