Girl, 11, forced to marry cousin two decades older and had three kids by age 15
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Noora Al Shami was just 11 when she was forced to marry her 35-year-old cousin in Yemen — by the age of 13, she was already pregnant and enduring years of abuse at the hands of her so-called husband
Noora Al Shami was forced to wed a man in his 30s when she was 11 years old. Her story is typical of(Image: Oxfam)
An 11-year-old girl was paraded around in adult clothing, completely oblivious to the horrific ordeal that lay ahead of her later that evening, when her 35-year-old cousin and so-called husband took her home and subjected her to rape.
The three-day celebration in the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah saw Noora Al Shami wear “three beautiful dresses” at the family gathering, before she endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of Mohammed Al Ahdam.
What seemed like playing dress-up for Noora was simply a deeply disturbing sign of the horrors to follow. “I was allowed to wear adult clothes, to put on jewellery, to accept presents,” said Noora, now 47, speaking to The Guardian.
“What had not dawned on me was that I would be abused by a violent criminal.”
When Al Ahdam first exposed himself to Noora, she ran away. She managed to escape the assault for 10 days before Al Ahdam’s sisters told her she was “bringing shame on our brother by rejecting him”, reports the Express.
When she was first raped, Noora’s body went into shock.
She said: “I was rushed to hospital – I was a child being treated as a sex object, but the abuse did not stop. Nobody was interested in my complaints, as I was legally a wife.”
Al Ahdam, a distant cousin well into his 30s, married Noora in 1989, shortly after her 11th birthday. “He was three times my age and saw marriage as a means to act like a depraved animal,” said Noora.
In 2021, there were 4million child brides in Yemen, according to UNICEF. Decades after Noora’s marriage, Human Rights Watch figures revealed that 14 per cent of girls were wed by the age of 15, and more than 50 per cent before reaching 18 in 2006.
Countless families are lured by the prospect of receiving a dowry in exchange for one fewer mouth to feed, leaving young girls exposed and defenceless under Islamic law.
Noora said: “My husband provided a dowry of around $150, which was a huge amount. But it was at the end of the wedding that the fear and horror set in. I was taken away from my parents and left with a man who meant nothing to me. He drove me to the house he shared with his widowed father in Al Hudaydah. It was a nice home but I immediately started to quiver, and to cry.”
She suffered two miscarriages within a year before giving birth to a son named Ihab – all while still a child herself. A daughter, Ahlam, followed when Noora was 14, and then Shihab, another son, when she was 15.
Every pregnancy was riddled with complications and hardship.
Al Ahdam became increasingly violent over time. “He thought nothing of hitting me, even when I was pregnant,” said Noora.
“If his father hadn’t been in the house, it would have been even worse. His presence was some kind of restraint, but I was still very badly injured.”
Al Adham also inflicted abuse on Noora’s children, seizing Ahlam by the feet and hurling her against the floor, which left her hospitalised and bleeding at just two. After enduring a decade of horrific abuse, Noora signed up to a programme run by Oxfam and the Yemeni Women’s Union which supports survivors of domestic violence.
She subsequently managed to secure a divorce.
A legal battle ensued as Noora fought for financial support to raise her children. She was able to return to her education and qualified as a teacher, and now campaigns actively for legal restrictions on child marriages.
Noora refuses to be defined by the “ruins of the past”. “We need to change the lives of our children, and not just by paper laws,” she says.
“We need a complete change in culture.
“It’s not really something that the law has been able to control, especially not in tribal communities,” said Noora.
“The legal marriage age has been 15 for some time, but my mother was first married at nine, and divorced by 10, before going through another two marriages. She had me in her early teens.
“I wanted to stay at school and get a good job, but my parents could not afford it. They did not want me to live in poverty forever. I did not understand their decision to marry me off – only that the same thing happened to most girls my age.”
Physical and psychological struggles endure throughout a lifetime, despite Noora and fellow campaigners’ tireless efforts to raise the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18.
Yet even if the law were to be amended, there is no minimum age for marriage under Islamic law, and Yemeni clerics regularly argue against any legal restrictions. According to campaigning organisation Girls Not Brides, 30 per cent of girls in Yemen are wed before reaching the age of 18, while 7 per cent are married before the age of 15.
If you are affected by the issues raised in this article, contact SARSAS on [email protected] or reach out for NHS advice on help after rape or sexual assault.
