Nojoud Muhammad Nasser, an 8 year old girl in Yemen, has sought a divorce from a 30 year old man after her father had forced her to marry him. The girl logged a complaint with the court against her father for the forced marriage.

The judge ordered both the father and the girl’s husband to be arrested after hearing her testimony, amidst tales of how she was beaten and sexually assaulted.

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. Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months.

Apparently this is commonplace in some areas of Yemen as there is no law deciding the minimum age for marriage. What sort of world do we live in where an eight year old girl can be forced to marry by her father, and then get beaten and raped in her own home?

Clive Bellmore