When Anne Chandler travels around Houston, she doesn’t see the same city you and I see.

As an ambitious young woman in rural southern Afghanistan, Fouzia Durrani was headed for trouble.

When Kadi entered the United States for the second time, she knew there would be no returning to her home country of Mali. An activist who fought for women’s rights and who defied her husband and community to protect her daughter from female genital mutilation, she knew that returning would cost her her life and leave her daughter without a protector.

Although many Americans may think that phenomena such as forced marriages and so-called “honor killings” exist only overseas, social service agencies, educators, and a growing number of law enforcement personnel know differently.

In the past decade, several new laws have allowed abused foreign-born women, including those who entered the United States illegally and those whose immigration status depends on their spouse, to obtain legal residency on their own.

Forced marriage and honor violence are often viewed in the West as backward customs relegated to impoverished developing nations. But a spate of gruesome honor killings in the U.K., and new research about the prevalence of underage marriage in the U.S., for the first time show that this kind of violence against women is far more widespread.