Child Bride Survivor
Yemen: 2008

Nujood Ali was ten years old when her father married her off to a 30-year-old man who raped, beat and abused her. Once married, she became her husband’s property, her mother-in-law’s slave, and like hundreds of thousands of girls before her, would have been a captive for life.

Nujood came from a poor farm family and was one of sixteen children. She had never been separated from her mother, father, numerous siblings and extended relatives. In this place of her childhood she went to school, played with her friends, shared in the family chores, and ran freely in her village with the other children.

Because it was a terrible burden for her father to provide for his large family, and in order to have less mouths to feed, he sold Nujood to a delivery man from a distant village. The first night she was in her husband’s home, her mother-in-law held her down and beat her into submission as her husband repeatedly raped her. Each day she was abused, beaten, and treated as a slave; forbidden to leave the house; forbidden to even go outdoors.

Nujood escaped enslavement and fled to the nearest town where she remarkably found a lawyer who presented her plea for divorce to an understanding judge. The judge was horrified that her husband had sexually attacked her before she reached puberty and had subjected her to extreme physical violence. His decree of divorce made Nujood the youngest divorcee in history.

Nujoods autobiography reverberated throughout the world and helped create legal change in the laws surrounding the practice of child marriage. Although she was financially rewarded for writing her book and was honored by Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice for her courage and vision, her story does not end well.

In 2013 Nujood’s father evicted Nujood from her living quarters and used her compensation money to buy himself two extra wives. He then sold Nujoods’ younger sister into a marriage with a much older man.

(click to continue)

Child Bride Survivor
Yemen: 2008

Nujood Ali was ten years old when her father married her off to a 30-year-old man who raped, beat and abused her. Once married, she became her husband’s property, her mother-in-law’s slave, and like hundreds of thousands of girls before her, would have been a captive for life.

Nujood came from a poor farm family and was one of sixteen children. She had never been separated from her mother, father, numerous siblings and extended relatives. In this place of her childhood she went to school, played with her friends, shared in the family chores, and ran freely in her village with the other children.

Because it was a terrible burden for her father to provide for his large family, and in order to have less mouths to feed, he sold Nujood to a delivery man from a distant village. The first night she was in her husband’s home, her mother-in-law held her down and beat her into submission as her husband repeatedly raped her. Each day she was abused, beaten, and treated as a slave; forbidden to leave the house; forbidden to even go outdoors.

Nujood escaped enslavement and fled to the nearest town where she remarkably found a lawyer who presented her plea for divorce to an understanding judge. The judge was horrified that her husband had sexually attacked her before she reached puberty and had subjected her to extreme physical violence. His decree of divorce made Nujood the youngest divorcee in history.

Nujoods autobiography reverberated throughout the world and helped create legal change in the laws surrounding the practice of child marriage. Although she was financially rewarded for writing her book and was honored by Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice for her courage and vision, her story does not end well.

In 2013 Nujood’s father evicted Nujood from her living quarters and used her compensation money to buy himself two extra wives. He then sold Nujoods’ younger sister into a marriage with a much older man.

(click to continue)