The tragedy of the '8-year-old bride' and strange stories in America

According to a British newspaper report on child marriage in AmericaSunNearly a quarter of a million children in the United States have been married since 2000, legally recognized by U.S. law. One of them is Naila Amin, who married a man 13 years her senior.

"It's your body but I own it," Naila recalled her 28-year-old husband saying before raping her, then 15, on the cold concrete floor.

The ordeal began when she attended a family wedding in her native Pakistan at age eight. The New York-based girl saw some girls giggling and pointing at her, saying, "Don't you know what happened last night? You're engaged."

Naila was stunned, wondering why her parents hadn't discussed this with her. She ran to ask and was shocked when they confirmed it. Naila was stunned when she returned to school in Queens, New York, USA. She clearly remembered that she had a crush on a classmate named Theo. He was the first person of the opposite sex that made Naila's heart flutter, until he shouted at her: "Stop it, you're engaged, what are you dreaming about?"

Heartbroken, Naila began to rebel against Pakistani Muslim traditions. She stopped wearing her headscarf, borrowed Western-style clothes from her neighbors and changed into them on the way to school.

When Naila was 13, her parents took her to Pakistan for a "nikah," a traditional Muslim wedding. Upon returning to the United States, her father legalized the marriage and applied for a visa for her fiancé to come to the United States.

Naila was sure the clerk would notice her age and reject her, but she was wrong. American law allows 14-year-old girls to get married if their parents agree, since 25 states in the US do not have a minimum age for marriage.

According to reports, there were nearly 120,000 cases of children under 18 getting married in the US between 2000 and 2015. In Tennessee in 2001, three 10-year-old girls were married to men aged 24, 25 and 31. In Alabama, there was a case of a 14-year-old girl marrying a 74-year-old man.

Hell on Earth

Naila continued to rebel, even dating an American boy her own age, until her father found out. He was furious and beat her so badly that she was hospitalized. Finally, at the age of 14, Naila was sent back to Pakistan, where her life of hell began.

"I got married on January 5, 2005, when I had just turned 15," Naila recalls. "Although I had done the nikah before, they did it to help my husband immigrate to the US, so the rituals were incomplete and had to be redone. My wedding day was terrifying. I was so heartbroken that I didn't want my mother to hire a makeup artist and did my own makeup. I even put a pillow in the middle of the wedding bed on our wedding night so I wouldn't have to touch him."

"I had to serve my husband in every way, from taking off his shoes and socks to cooking for everyone. That was not the life I wanted. I am an American, born in New York. I often looked at children. Every night, when he raped me, I wished I was a child, but in reality I was still a child," Naila recounted.

Naila attempted suicide several times but failed and was beaten. Ten days after their marriage, Naila escaped, hiding under the back seat of a car, riding a horse, avoiding the Taliban and finding her way to the US embassy in Islamabad. Her escape attempt failed and she was sent back to her husband's house.

"He beat me in front of my family, my sisters, their children and husbands, my younger sister, my mother," Naila said. "I remember my mother screaming as if she was in labor. He grabbed my hair and dragged me for several meters. I still have bald patches on my head, and my old hair cannot grow back."

"He kicked me in the head, I was dizzy. My thigh still has a scar. Then he told me to go get cleaned up and go to my aunt's house for dinner. At night, he continued to rape me."

Five months after their marriage, Naila’s parents returned to the United States. She borrowed her uncle’s phone and called child welfare workers in New York. Authorities arrested her mother as soon as she set foot on U.S. soil, charging her with kidnapping. To secure his wife’s release, Naila’s father asked his son-in-law to take her back to New York. When she landed at JFK, Naila breathed a sigh of relief.

The pilot announced that she would be the first to leave the plane. Naila was greeted by a team of 20 social workers and child welfare workers.

Lifetime wound

Now 28, living with her boyfriend in a quiet neighborhood on Long Island, Naila has become an active campaigner against child marriage, speaking in schools and even before the United Nations, with the hope that no girl will ever have to go through what she did.

She founded the Naila Amin Foundation, which she hopes will provide shelter for women fleeing forced marriages. However, Naila still suffers from the physical and mental effects of her forced marriage.

"If you are forced to marry as a child, you will never forget that pain. I still suffer from psychological trauma, anxiety. My childhood, my youth was robbed, leaving lifelong psychological scars, even physical scars," Naila said.

"I want American law to change. In this country, people have flown to the moon, but children are still not protected from forced marriage."