- Noora Al Shami's parents gave her to distant cousin to escape poverty
- Ran in fear when he first took his clothes off and avoided sex for 10 days
- He 'treated her like sex object but no one cared because she was his wife'
- She had two miscarriages and gave birth to three children by the age of 15
- She finally filed for divorce after ten years with help from charity Oxfam
- Is now lobbying Yemeni parliament to crack down on child marriages
A Yemeni child bride who was forced to marry a violent
husband three times her age when she was just 11 has spoken of the shocking
sexual abuse she suffered at his hands for more than a decade.
Noora Al Shami was given away to a distant cousin in his 30s
because her parents did not want her live in poverty.
As young girl, she was excited to be the centre of attention
at a lavish three-day wedding party in the port city of Al Hudaydah where she
was allowed to wear 'three really beautiful dresses' for each day.
But almost as soon as the celebrations had ended she was
quickly thrust into a world of physical and psychological abuse from which she
could not escape.
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Decade of abuse: Yemeni woman Noora Al Shami was forced to
marry a violent man three times her age when she was 11 years old because her
parents did not want her to live in poverty
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She said: 'It was at the end of the wedding that the fear
and horror set in.
'He was three times my age and saw marriage as a means to
act like a depraved animal.'
She told how she 'immediately began to quiver and cry' when
she was driven to the house her husband shared with his father.
When the clerical worker first took off his clothes, she ran
away in terror and desperately avoided sex for 10 days.
And when she was eventually pressured into consummating the
marriage, she said her body went into shock and she was rushed to hospital.
She described being 'treated like a sex object' but said no
one was interested in helping her because she was 'legally his wife'.
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