I was forced to marry at FIVE – while living in UK: Horrific story of the British child bride

Daily Mail:

  • Victim tells how her childhood was shockingly ended by the ceremony she mistook for a birthday party
  • Forced abroad to live with her husband in Pakistan, she suffered years of abuse before finally finding the strength to seek a divorce
  • Now a successful entrepreneur, she wants to show girls in her position there is light at the end of the tunnel

By Rebecca Seales

PUBLISHED: 06:12 EST, 8 April 2012 | UPDATED: 06:46 EST, 8 April 20

Trapped: Mrs Shah - who has adopted a pseudonym for her own protection - was forced into marriage at just five years old, despite living in an ordinary British town (picture posed by model)Trapped: Mrs Shah – who has adopted a pseudonym for her own protection – was forced into marriage at just five years old, despite living in an ordinary British town (picture posed by model)

A successful businesswoman has told of her agony after being forced into an abusive marriage at the age of five – despite living in Britain.

Samina Shah, who is now in her 40s and too frightened to reveal her real name, spoke out after revelations that Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit had handled the case of another five-year-old girl last year.

Mrs Shah said she believed she was being dressed for her fifth birthday party on the day of the Islamic ceremony which effectively ended her childhood.

She told The Sun: ‘There was a lot of activity – a lot of relatives in the house. I was dressed up in an outfit which my mother-in-law had bought for me.

‘My sister told me later that my mother-in-law had said, “At last, the beautiful girl belongs to me!”‘

Pondering why a tiny girl from a large northern town would be forced to undergo such an ordeal, she said she thought it was to do with maintaining tradition – and control.

Mrs Shah was born into a close-knit Asian community, and while her family lived in Britain they remained true to the conventions of remote Pakistani villages.

Aged just 13, she was removed from school without explanation. Instead of an education, she was taught that a woman’s place was in the home – and reminded that the greater her sufferings on earth, the more lavish her reward would be in Paradise.

Samina was still a frightened girl of 14 when she went through the formal wedding ceremony which marked her transition from her parents’ house to that of her husband. At 6am the day after, she was forced onto a plane to Pakistan, told only that she would return to Britain with her husband when she reached 16.

Long before that time, the teenager endured the forced consummation of her marriage after suffering an appalling beating.

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

7 Replies to “I was forced to marry at FIVE – while living in UK: Horrific story of the British child bride”

  1. Successful entrepreneur? She is no such thing. She is still sucking on the public teat pretending to help Muslim women in need.

    The journo is simply too dense to understand her language:
    Above all, she wants to emphasise that forced marriage is completely contrary to both the teachings of Islam and the dignity of human beings.

    She said: ‘Islam safeguards women’s rights, and I am delighted that I found the Islam that God sent down – not the one that has been hijacked by the jackals who misrepresent its true teachings.’

  2. Two young Tunesian men are being persecuted by their own government for critisizing islam in a short book they have published online named Dark Lands.
    So much for “arab spring”, it’s more like the dead of winter.

    Read about it here and please sign the petition.
    http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/drop-charges-against-tunisian-freethinkers.html

    You can read their book here
    http://www.amsterdampost.nl/uploads/DARK-LANDS-BY-MEJRI-JABEUR.pdf

    Please distribute these links as much as can, make this story go viral, worldwide!

  3. On this page you’ll find plenty links to this story.
    Most in French so use google translate to get the gist.