At 15 I was Forced To Marry A Man Twice My Age | Minutes With | @LADbible

he looked young he did look young but it was after the marriage that i knew that he was twice my age so i was 15 he was 30. i knew i knew who was going to rape me and that's what happened and it became like every single day [Music] what was your childhood like where did you grow up and so my family well my mom and my dad were from bangladesh um they grew up there and they came over in the 70s um i had i've got two older brother two older brothers one older sister and there was another younger brother after me and then there was like my younger younger brother there was a big gap and they were like babies my older sister she started dating somebody she actually said said to my dad you know i want to get married to this boy you know i'm in love with him being with him for a couple of years it was all kept hush hush you know it was a very big secret so for her to tell my family was a massive thing for her but it wasn't accepted she ran away and we didn't know where she was but that impact brought such a tremendous eruption over volcano and it affected everybody in their family so when your sister left the house with her boyfriend what happened to you after that we were a poor family even though there was so many of us we grew up very poor um never been on holiday never could even go to the next town because that's how poor we was so it was only about a couple of weeks after that funnily enough my father's got tickets for everybody and we're going to bangladesh and i'll be like oh okay i thought we couldn't afford to do anything like this but i think all my extended family paid for the tickets you know because as you can imagine the honor affected them the shame affected them as well where they needed to regain their honor and they thought by this ripple effect they can take me to bangladesh and get me married off who was the guy you were set to marry so the way that it was set up i mean we lived in the city and my father would keep going away like to the village and coming back and he had little businesses everywhere and he was going to all these places to find someone to obviously suit me the first time i remember seeing this person was um there was a outside our house was quite big it was like a mansion and there was a veranda and there was a stained window and i remember my mum just saying oh um she like showed me the guy she just tapped on the window and she goes that's the guy that you're going to be getting married to i was like what you know it was like it was it was a bit crazy and i couldn't understand it how did it make you feel numb angry everything at the same time it's like if if you can be numb and angry and outraged did you have a chance to speak to your future husband before the wedding no not really i think my parents were too afraid for me to say anything for me they were afraid of me of saying something and probably tarnishing it in some way which i probably would have the wedding was massive it was like you've seen the bollywood movies you know there was like hundreds and hundreds of people there i mean my family were you know we were quite poor in this country over that country we were quite wealthy um i remember being in my room i was drenched in gold and you know sorry and everything and i remember sitting there and i didn't want to come out of my room knowing that oh there's another man there that i don't even know and his whole entire family is here um celebrating laughing joking you know you could you could smell all the amazing food that they were cooking and you know it's and i'm just sat there in my room just thinking well i'm just this little china doll that that's been all pampered up and he's going to get to married to a stranger i remember his sister like knocking on my door and like trying to get a peep for this new bride you know that their brother's going to get married too and it was just numbing it was like a i knew there was a horror story coming and it was just like in my brain you know when it's slowly slowly coming along and you're like oh the music's getting more intense that's how it felt i mean a lot of people at this point would be like well why didn't you say something why did you not go to the police why did you not scream out shout out you cannot do that over there but you can't get out there you can't go out because first of all you wouldn't know where to go second of all people would just bring you back to the house because eyes are everywhere and third of all you wouldn't even know what to say because it's normal out there i remember asking one of my uncles who was more or less my age and you know which is a bit weird with the age differences but he was my uncle and i asked him i said what happens to girls when they say no and they shout and they scream he would tell me things like oh you'd get taken to the village and locked up in this little cellar so i had to keep this all like thinking to myself right rubes just just pace up the way that they want to when you get home you can do whatever you want when you get home you can do what you want and that's all i had to repeat to myself i mean for a 15 year old to be thinking that way you got to imagine how much of a deep end i was in and it was how much i was drowning to be thinking that sharp and thinking right this is what i've got to do just to get out of that place and i had to go with it i had to pretend how did your parents feel seeing you that upset at your own wedding my mother never wanted it to happen never she but she's a woman she's silenced she's not allowed to speak in that country you know and it was heartbreaking for my mom because i could see her i could see her breaking my father was acting very like like like as if he wasn't acknowledging what was happening but then trying to make sure that everything goes to plan but i remember there was one point where i got placed sitting next to this husband and i saw my father and i wanted i was crying and i wanted to just look at my father's face because i was daddy's girl and i wanted him just to make that connection with me and he did and i saw tears coming down his eyes and i thought where's that dad you know where is he why is he not saving me i remember after the wedding i did my personality did start seeping out and my anger started to sleep out and i remember like making a few snidey comments here there and everywhere but by that time it was too late anyway i knew i knew who was gonna rape me and that's what happened and it became like every single day and that was very tough to kind of go through um he was he looked young he did look young but it was after the marriage that i knew that he was twice my age so i was 15 he was 30. going through the rape every single day like i said i had to disconnect myself i had to just where i took myself and this is very personal it's like i took myself to the beach in my head i was on a beach because that i grew up next to a beach i loved being by the sea and that's my that's my zen place and i used to take myself there my brain said whatever's happening to my body is happening but my brain would be elsewhere and that's how i kept myself alive but when after he's done i remember going to the bathroom and just sitting under the shower for like an hour and just cleaning my trying to clean every single part of me off so i don't smell him on me and it was it was horrible because i would sit there just crying because that's when it will hit me so when i'm in my zen place where my zen place but when i'm going to wash myself it will just hit me really hard and i'll be like just crying and i've got to keep this away from everybody i can't tell anybody i've got no one to talk about it to nobody and i would just just let my tears flow with the with the shower and that's where i went down the drain i think from day one i numbed myself out thinking i was pregnant i just thought no i'm not pregnant no it can't be happening i remember everybody's celebrating and they were like oh yeah she's you know we're all gonna have a little grandson and grandson that's what they wanted so how old were you when you got pregnant i was i just turned 16 and when i got pregnant i became really really sick it wasn't morning sickness i mean my mom's had eight of us she knows what morning sickness is but it was to the point where i kept on vomiting violently um there would be blood coming up i started to lose weight rapidly i lost two stones in that two weeks um couldn't keep anything down and i i just you know i was a slim girl you know and i looked like a bag of bones back then and it was horrible i i didn't know what was happening i just thought that's what pregnancy is but my mum knew it wasn't that i knew i was gonna die and that's how it felt and i thought right well if this is happening to me let it happen to me because i didn't really care at that point i knew that was my deathbed and it was to the point where my mum i she made that phone call to my dad and she said to my dad she's gonna dive we don't get tickets coming back home as soon as my mom said we've got the tickets uh i kind of like thought right i'm that close to going home now whether i make it or not i'm still that close to going home i think as soon as i got back home everything just hit me all the all the pretending that i did every single emotion that i tried to put push away and it's like my soul and my body just snapped back into place and i i tried to commit suicide and i just couldn't take it it's like everything every memory everything just hit me like a like an explosion i don't like this body that i'm in i don't like what's happened to me i don't like what they've done to me i don't like carrying this rape child that's how i used to think and i don't want none of it it's like everything was dictated for me the day after when i was admitted to hospital on the day after this one nurse and you know i really can't remember her name but she was like an angel she came to me you know when when my mum and dad went home she came to me and she said you want an abortion don't you and i said yeah and it was like the first time somebody spoke to me with respect like my opinions mattered like it was amazing such an amazing feeling it was like you know what i'm worth something you know i actually felt good for the first time that somebody wanted to listen to me and then the next day when it was scheduled to for me to you know so they were going to give me an appointment after the scan i saw my daughter's heart beating and i just thought i can't do this and i don't care where how she was made but she's got me now she's got this strong person right here carrying this baby and i thought i'm gonna put my everything into my daughter how was your daughter when she was born so um my pregnancy with my daughter was quite it's quite a slow one you know she was three weeks early three pound thirteen she was the size of a doll plastic dolls you can buy from the shops that's how big she was i didn't even get to have two minutes for my daughter because she was taken straight away to special care unit i just saw her big eyes and she made a little noise like a little cat and then they took her straight away so i didn't really have that you know vital bonding time with her i just thought okay so i kind of started disconnecting before any trauma would happen because that's the only way that that was my coping mechanism started kicking in it's like my survival mode was like right something bad's gonna happen right disconnect disconnect and that's what i started to do and she was in she was in special care unit for two months the only way that i could touch her was through if i incubate if i can feed her putting my hands through the um gloves and it wasn't nice because i was coming back home then without a baby without the balloons and the cards and that was horrible it was horrific when she did finally came back i i still took me a long time to bond with her i don't think i bonded with her until she was about three and that's me being a horrible mom but also my mum was trying to survive with postnatal depression and you know traumatic going through all these traumatic events you know it's like you're trying to keep yourself sane but at the same time you can't give any love to anybody else because you can't love yourself what was happening between you and your husband after you gave birth so throughout the pregnancy throughout when i came back from bangladesh to the uk he would make phone calls he'd write letters and things like that now the reason why he wrote letters and you know keeping that communication is so when when my family or and his family like combinedly sponsored him to come as my spouse to the uk it would show there's still communication there's still letters being exchanged there's that you know oh their marriage is good that's how clever they were like my my father and my uncles would write letters on my behalf and send it back to him because i wouldn't write anything i won't say i won't write a love letter to somebody i don't love you know why would i do that there was plans about me moving to bedford so then i can go and be the wife the cook the cleaner the slave and produce more babies and i knew that would that would have been my second move from out of my family's home because i've seen it happen to my cousins i'm not gonna be those trapped women who cannot speak and you know i'm in my home country now i'm gonna bloody speak i'm gonna say everything that i can when the moment's right but i need to get myself out of this city and that's what i did so i then i remember running out of the house while my father was in work because i wasn't allowed to go on the phones or anything like that i wasn't allowed to go to the shops and i remember seeing one of my school friends walk across the road because we lived on the main road and all the shops are there so when i saw her i ran out of the house and i ran across the road and i said you have to help me i need to get out she was like rubes you know i haven't seen you in ages you know i see you with your mum you know everywhere i went even in the uk was chaperoned you know she'd be like i've seen you with your mum and dad like yeah but i couldn't really go up to it and talk to her like a human being and just have a private conversation so she goes come back to my house and my parents will help you they only lived around like two streets away went to her house and i told them everything it took them six hours to actually then get a female officer to come to the house and i went to my parents house i went in the house and at that by that time i had my uncles and aunties there as soon as the wood opened up they were snarling at me they were whispering giving me dirty looks and i heard it all on this you know felt it all felt like i was just in this dark cave just going up the throat up the stairs going to get my baby grab a few bags clothes in a bag and i walked out of the house and that's all i had so my next move was just latch myself onto anybody and that's what i did i latched on to a man that i met and he was a lot older than me and i i saw him as my ticket out that's what that's what brought me to the midlands can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with that man and where it took you so with this new relationship that i thought it was a golden ticket out at the time he was 28 i was 16 and i was just yeah i just just no i was 16 17 and i thought he i was so dysfunctional so i attracted a dysfunctional person basically and he lost his child two years before of bone cancer and she was seven years old so he was you know just going along with his depressed life and he saw damsel in distress and he took it and i took it as well and that's how it happened and we connected on some crazy level thinking that he would give me a better life because that's what he promised me and then he became a perpetrator where i actually experienced ten years of domestic violence i didn't go out with a house for five years i was not allowed to go to the shops i wasn't if i had to desperately go to the shops when he's not there he would make sure that i was timed and if i was late coming back when he calls the house line and i don't pick it up i will get bad it just i found out that he was on drugs he was on heroin and he would go out for like three days and nights at a time i wouldn't be allowed to go anywhere because i didn't know the world and i didn't want to go outside because i was so scared and petrified of people and i remember getting we didn't have no money because he was he's a heroin addict i didn't have no money and i remember the odd pound or two there that he would give me i'll go and get a bag of chips and put it on top of the heater eat half in the morning and eat half in the night at that time my daughter was not feeding so she was just you know on milk breast milk and that's how i lived and that's me you know 17 years old living like a poor person homeless person which i was and then it was in that flat i got pregnant with his son and he used to beat me throughout my pregnancy um i remember one point where i used to tell me oh you're horrible you you you know you discussed in your this year and at that time i still never had any contact with my family so i was all alone in this perpetrator's world and i remember i had nails and i scratched my face i scratched it till it bled and i looked in the mirror this was after him beating me up and i was holding my pregnant stomach and i was looking in the mirror and i was like you're horrible i was just i was taking all the abuse that he was saying out through through my mouth and i've seen it to myself because i believed it then soon it came to a point where i actually made the ultimate choice of leaving was when my daughter was about a year old at that time and i just had my son and my daughter had hearing tests because her development because she was born with special needs but they didn't know what kind of special needs she was born with so it was time will tell so at that time they were doing a lot of hearing um tests so i met this girl through this play group for children who have got hearing difficulties and she started seeing the bruises on my face and everything she started giving me the encouragement and strength she took me into her world and i thought oh this is what it feels like to have friends so when and how did you find chance to turn your life around so um from leaving that perpetrator and moving on with my son and my daughter i did end up in dysfunctional relationships for a good six seven years it's all i knew i was in my early 20s you know i wanted to do what every other 20 year old 20s were doing which was living life but obviously i couldn't do that because i had two children because i wasn't fixing myself going to the core of the problem to fix myself i kept on attracting negativity all the time and then there was this um article that was released about this girl who was a model and she committed suicide and it was like as if it was my life reflecting back at me and i thought oh my god she actually did it she went and she killed herself and it just took me back a bit and i thought to myself i tried to do that and i'm so glad i didn't succeed because now is my changing point this and i felt like the universe just swallowed me up and said this is your calling so i got in touch with the charity that commented in this honor killing and i told him about my story and they asked me to go in and i became an ambassador for them i started talking about my experiences and then i started to find my platform and i started to find that people just attract to me and be like they want to tell me stuff about their lives and i'm like oh okay i'm feeling there's a pattern here and then i just grew on from that and i work with people overseas with charities overseas and i you know work with home office place professionals that need to be educated in what honor abuse is and what honor killings is because it is a crime now sometimes it is very difficult because we're conditioned from such a young age we we might not even know that it's and it's an abuse because in most cultures they bury into your head since you're born basically that women of god and women and men have got to do what their parents tell them to do you have to speak out because it is a criminal offence i understand a lot of people do not want to take their families down police stations get them you know rested but the thing is whether it's your family or a friend it doesn't really matter because they're abusing you they took my childhood and my teen life away from me and majority of my 20s and it's i'm 38 now and i've only started to live since i was 30. and i make it this i'm only eight years old just like the eight-year-old ruby and you know and that's where i'm going back to i'm living my life and i've got to do things for me what's the point of doing things for everybody else when it gives you no satisfaction especially in a life partner love should be so beautiful it should be your own choice not what other people think who you should love and who you should have children with it's your choice [Music] whilst everybody was having their orgies free-loved sex they would no longer be permitted to enjoy sex for each other they had to fantasize that they were actually having sex with jesus men included

Channel: LADbible TV

Views: 4,049,148

Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, documentary interview, forced marriage, child marriage, child bride, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, forced marriage survivor, forced marriage uk, forced marriage bangladesh, interview with the survivor, interview with child bride, minutes with, amazing story, minutes with unilad

Id: rvGCL8u3mMg

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021