Girl, 11, forced to marry her 35-year-old cousin and was pregnant by 13

An 11-year-old girl was paraded around in adult clothing, blissfully unaware of the horrific fate that awaited her later that night, 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 felt like playing dress-up for Noora was merely a deeply disturbing indication of the horrors to come. “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 fled. She managed to avoid the assault for 10 days before Al Ahdam’s sisters told her she was “bringing shame on our brother by rejecting him”.

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.

Many families are driven by the prospect of receiving a dowry in exchange for one fewer mouth to feed, with young girls left vulnerable and unprotected 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 endured two miscarriages within a year, before she gave birth to a son called Ihab — all age. A daughter, Ahlam, followed when Noora was 14, and then Shihab, another son, when she was 15.

Every pregnancy was fraught with complications and hardship.

Al Ahdam grew progressively more violent. “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 subjected Noora’s children to abuse, grabbing Ahlam by the feet and slamming her against the floor, leaving her hospitalised and bleeding at just two. Following a decade of appalling abuse, Noora enrolled in a programme operated by Oxfam and the Yemeni Women’s Union which supports survivors of domestic violence.

She subsequently succeeded in filing for divorce.

A legal dispute followed as Noora battled for financial support to raise her children. She managed to resume her education and qualified as a teacher, and now actively advocates for legal limitations 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 difficulties persist for a lifetime, however, despite Noora and fellow campaigners’ efforts to see the legal age of marriage increased from 15 to 18.

Yet even if the legislation were amended, there is no minimum age for marriage in Islamic law, and Yemeni clerics frequently argue against legal restrictions. According to campaigners Girls Not Brides, 30 per cent of girls in Yemen 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.