The cost of a bullet is less than a dollar.
Lina overheard these chilling words spoken about her in the days before she was forced into marriage.
Her family brought her from the United States to Yemen, claiming her grandmother was gravely ill. Once Lina arrived, they announced she would be getting married to a local man despite her objections. The young woman knew that if she didn’t comply, her life would be in danger.
The 22-year-old Tahirih Justice Center client shared her story in an NPR segment that aired this week.
Unfortunately, Lina is just one of many girls and women impacted by forced marriage in the United States.
“These are courageous women and girls who are facing extreme circumstances,” Tahirih Founder and Executive Director Layli Miller-Muro told NPR. “Some of our clients have threatened to commit suicide… as their only way out. They’ve been beaten. They have been imprisoned in their own home. They’ve been starved.”
The NPR segment highlights the disturbing findings of Tahirih’s forced marriage survey, which documented as many as 3,000 cases of forced marriage across the United States, in a two-year period, and showed that forced marriage impacts many ethnicities, religions, and cultures. The segment also addresses the lack of infrastructure in the United States and abroad to help U.S. women facing or fleeing forced marriages.
You can listen to the full segment or read the corresponding blog here.
Need Help?
If you are facing or fleeing a forced marriage or know someone who is, click here to contact the Forced Marriage Initiative at Tahirih Justice Center, or visit preventforcedmarriage.org for more information.
Photo credit: Renee Deschamps/Getty Images/Vetta
