A survivor’s plea to end child marriage | Payzee Mahmod | TEDxLondonWomen

[Music] [Applause] many of you will be familiar with how child marriage affects thousands of girls around the world but how many of you are aware this is happening to girls like me right here in the UK I was married at the age of 16 I was able to leave my child marriage but my sister banaz had her life stolen my so-called honor killing he all started with a shared traumatic experience we found ourselves in child marriage that neither of us chose or wanted in my family there are five girls and one boy and when my sisters and I were between the ages of 7 to 10 well each had to undergo FGM we were told this was done to protect us from being promiscuous and to prevent us from dishonouring our family name this notion of honor was introduced to us at a very young age and growing up in the UK as Iraqi immigrants balancing two very different cultures was at times difficult in particular for one of my sisters Bikel when she was a teenager she started to challenge my father on his beliefs and their relationship broke down she ran away a couple of times and eventually social services got involved and she was taken into care but of all the social workers who came into our home not one of them asked me if I were safe after Mikael left every trace of her disappeared overnight as though she never existed and the community reacted they cost my family out and they threatened to throw petrol bombs at our house my father had lost his status in the community so in a desperate attempt to regain this when I was 15 and studying for my GCSEs my father came to me and he started to talk about marriage I laughed it off because I thought you was joking and I didn't really understand the concept of marriage but from that moment my father changed he became very cold towards me and I felt like he didn't love me anymore and so a couple of months later when my sister banaz was just 17 she had a child marriage to a man much older than her who she didn't know but now has dropped out of college as she moved to Birmingham with her new husband so I hardly saw of her but when I did see her I noticed she became low and she became quiet she changed as a person then when I was 16 the conversation of marriage came up again this time my father said there's another man who wants to marry you and being unaware of the consequences being scared to say no again I said to my father do what makes you happy and then it all happened so quickly one day I was called to the living room by my father he told me to sit down pay my respects and don't speak I didn't really know how to behave because all my life my family had said don't talk to boys and don't look up boys yet all of a sudden they said Harry's your husband so I sat there listening to my father and my mother and this man they were just talking about me as though I was an item at auction so I did as I was told but for just a brief moment I looked up and the first thing I noticed was that he was so old he was losing his hair now I remember thinking god he looks like an encore now I supposed to have dressed up and really made an effort to meet my husband but I thought to myself maybe if I don't he'll see me and you'll think I don't want her but it was too late the deal had been done and I was just given away to this man so the wedding arrangement started and we went shopping for jewelry in the wedding dress and every shop that we walked into my mother showed me expensive gold bangles and necklaces but I wasn't into any of that I was a teenager growing up in London and I loved pop fashion I looked up to the likes of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera but of course a big frilly covered up to the neck wedding dress and Kitson Hills were chosen for me I found it so disgusting I still do so in the wedding shops I tried to act like a brand to show that I was a child and I just wanted to complete my childhood really and focus on my education but I knew deep down there was nothing I could do to stop this and none of the shopkeepers questioned my age or said anything about how young I looked when I look back now I realize that instead of saying I don't want to get married I just kept trying to show that I wasn't going to be good at it in the religious part of the ceremony the Imam didn't question my age and he conducted the whole ceremony in Arabic I was the only one who didn't speak Arabic yet nobody told me what it all meant I do recall though the one thing that the community the same community who caused my family out and made threats to us were now back into our lives and they were celebrating our weddings my father had gone where he wanted by marrying two of his daughters as child brides he had regained his honor and status within the community next came the registry office and I prayed inside that the registrar would notice that I was a 16 year old but the ceremony ceremony went ahead as normal and on the day of the wedding party I was told to pack my things so as I started packing I put my pop star posters with my things I knew I wasn't allowed to but it was my only way of holding on to my childhood on that same day a family friend came to me and she told me that a white bed sheet would be placing my things and that I must return it to my family I had no idea what she was talking about but I nodded respectfully and said yes the wedding party was horrible I was told to stand there and smile but not too much just enough for the hundreds of photo has been taken of the newlywed couple and after the wedding we were sent off to a hotel in the hotel i sat on the bed and this man who was now my husband was just talking at me I didn't really understand anything you were saying he's vocabulary felt so grown-up he placed his hand on my hand and he tried to kiss me and I flinched in fear naively saying to him can we please be friends but he snapped immediately and he threw everything outside directly at me I grabbed a pillow to cover my face he cursed at me closed the door and left the room that night I locked myself in the bathroom still in my wedding dress and it would be the first time I started to self-harm the pain took me away from the miserable reality I was facing he came back in the early hours of the morning and he didn't notice my cuts because he had other priorities we got in the car and he drove me back to my parents and he said to them we're still not husband and wife there is something wrong with her my mother was horrified she said the community will think you're not a virgin I didn't understand any of the language and the conversation was happening around me I just sat there desperate for my parents to see me I just wanted them to help me but it breaks my heart to say that in that moment my mother explained to me what the white sheet was for and I was sent away with my husband I tried everything I could to prolong this I made excuses but nothing worked about six days later I returned the white sheet to my mother and I felt a part of me dying a few months later when I was helping my mother cook I noticed that the smell of cooking made me really sick and she suggested that I might be pregnant I was confused how could I be pregnant I didn't even know how pregnancy happened and growing up in a jean size and throwing up every morning hadn't even registered to me I was living in a complete daze but I went to the GP and I had a pregnancy test and it was confirmed that I was pregnant my immediate reaction to the nurse was I don't want his baby can you please take it away now to which she replied well maybe you should have thought about using contraception the nurse knew that I was 16 and that I was married my family were absolutely ecstatic at the thought of their first grandchild they told me that having this baby would make me love my husband I had no idea what I was doing but I knew the ugly truth in which had led to this pregnancy and I couldn't bear a physical reminder of this for the rest of my life so I had an abortion see I never accepted the marriage and every time my husband would say he doesn't like something I would try to use that to make him dislike me silly things like hoop earrings and high heels these little acts of rebellion were all I had to make him not want me I was so desperate for him to say I don't want you after the abortion I secretly took the pill but his family would call me from Kurdistan and they would pressure me into getting pregnant again they would say there was something wrong with me and under all this pressure I found it so difficult to continue with my education which really hurt because this was my only escape all of my teachers knew that I was married and they knew my age yet none of them ever said anything about how this was affecting me and my education a year into her marriage banaz moved back into London and the four of us me her husband my husband and Bernards moved in together she started enrolling at my college and we became closer than ever it felt like the good times banaz was the only person who witnessed what I was going through in my marriage not only because she was living with me but because she too was going through the same in her marriage and much worse that following summer banaz decided she'd had enough she left her abusive child marriage and she moved back in with my parents she's becoming happy again becoming herself she'd met someone and she'd fallen in love but in the eyes of the community another one of my father's daughters was dishonouring the family name and so the rumor started and death threats were being made to both Bernards and her boyfriends life they started making reports to the police about these death threats and my sister went to the police more than five times on one occasion she handed the a handwritten note naming her harasses in January 2006 banaz disappeared many in my family and those named on the list immediately became suspects and they were arrested and while the police were investigating a safety alarm was placed into my home but I bravely lied and I told my husband that it was CCTV I knew fully well that he would hate this but I saw this as my chance to get out and I was right for the first time he was scared to be violent to me fearing that he too would be arrested so he gave him he said he would divorce me but on one condition that I accept all the blame because he wanted the community to know that I was a bad wife of course I'd done nothing wrong but I took the blame just so I could get out for the two years that I was married I asked desperately to be divorced but both him and my parents would never allow it and so many times when I felt like giving up on life because I thought I'd be stuck in that marriage for the rest of my life I was finally going to be free three long months into Vanessa's disappearance the police found her body in Birmingham my sister had been murdered for leaving her child marriage when I turned 18 I finally got my divorce and I arranged Vanessa's funeral all in the same month my father my uncle and three other Kurdish men were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for Vanessa's murder [Applause] losing my sister has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me and yet it somehow allowed me to get out of my marriage none of this should have ever happened to either of us and when I look back now I'm absolutely outraged at the number of people who failed to protect us the number of adults social services the GP the register the Imam the teachers and the police today I'm showing up on behalf of my 16 year old self my sister Banias and any child who is at risk of child marriage [Applause] [Music] childhood up to 18 should be a time to learn to grow and to pursue your dreams not to be married and raped under the current law in England and Wales child marriage at any age is not a crime this means that children are not automatically protected from non-registered cultural religious or child marriages which happen abroad and a child can get married at the age of 16 and 17 with parental consent and we know that amounts to parental consent correct parental coercion as I've clearly demonstrated through my story the onus should never be on the child to have to speak out in order to get protection from child marriage it is all of our responsibilities to do something about this child marriage must become a crime [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 859,674

Rating: 4.9391966 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Activism, Childhood, Culture, Human Rights, Law

Id: GkH0jZPLB5M

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020