I was a child bride at 15 & forced to marry 30-year-old man by my own dad

MAKING her way down the aisle in a red and gold sari, Rubie Marie’s eyes filled with tears as she neared the man she was about to marry.

Only Rubie wasn’t a bride on the happiest day of her life but a 15-year-old child being forced by her own dad to wed a man double her age in front of her family and friends.

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Rubie, who lived in Wales with her family at the time, had been flown to Bangladesh by her family whose sole purpose was to find her a suitor.

While Bangladeshi law doesn’t allow anyone under the age of 18 to marry, a loophole meant that with her dad’s permission, the marriage could go ahead.

Worse was still to come for Rubie because with a ring on her finger, she was raped daily by her new husband before falling pregnant at just 16.

“No girl should have to go through what I went through,” she says.

“I spent years of my life desperately trying to numb myself from the pain of my reality.”

While Rubie’s innocence was snatched at an early age, she says that her childhood had in fact been a happy one.

Speaking exclusively to Fabulous as part of Life Stories, our YouTube series that sees ordinary people share their extraordinary stories she says: “My childhood was a very happy one – I had seven siblings. It was like the Brady bunch.

“We lived by the sea in Wales and it seemed like every day was filled with so much joy and colour.”

But advocate and yoga instructor Rubie, now 42, who lives in the Midlands, says that her family dynamic changed as she and her older sister hit puberty.

“My family was very religious and we came from a Muslim background,” she says.

“We were kept quite well sheltered and there were a lot of restrictions over what girls could and couldn’t do especially when it came to dating.

“We weren’t allowed to talk to boys, wear anything revealing or figure hugging or even go out with friends in the evening.

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“When I was 15 and my sister was 18 we both had boyfriends that we kept secret, the difference was my sister was at the age where she could move out.

“She wanted to get married and that wasn’t accepted by my father, he was furious and quite aggressive and it meant she had to leave.” 

Rubie says her sister’s departure meant that all eyes were on her to restore the family’s ‘honour.’

‘Something was brewing’

She recalls how her sister had brought shame to the family and there were fears Rubie would do the same.

“My parents worried that I might go the same way and not long after, I would come home from school to find the male members of my family having meetings,” she explains.

“I knew something was brewing but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

Just a few weeks after Rubie finished Year ten, her dad announced that the family would be travelling to Bangladesh for the summer.

Initially, Rubie felt excitement until the true motives unravelled.

“I was really excited to go,” Rubie recalls.

“It was my parents’ homeland and I had heard so much about it, but I’d never been.

“With all the stress and tension of my sister leaving it felt like something good and exciting.”

Rubie and her family moved into the family mansion built by her parents in Bangladesh for the summer.

The family enjoyed what appeared to be a normal holiday together until September came and Rubie had expected to return home.

“We had all planned on going home but my father kept saying no and told us that as we had spent so much money getting here we should extend the trip,” she recalls.

“He part owned a restaurant so he didn’t need to rush back to work.

“But as the weeks went on the real reason why my father wanted to stay on became apparent – he wanted to find me a husband.”

‘My world came crashing down’

Rubie explains how her dad’s bombshell came completely out of the blue during a family meal.

From that moment, she knew her fate was sealed.

“He just announced it at dinner one evening, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we got Rubie married?’,” she says.

“My world came crashing down when I realised that was the whole reason we were there – it was like this domino effect.

“I just couldn’t take in what he was saying to me, I was totally numb and just tried to get on with my life.”

Just a few weeks after the ploy was announced, a suitor was brought to the family’s home.

Going to the kitchen for a glass of water, Rubie was met by a stranger.

Rubie recalls: “My mum beckoned me over and pointed to a strange man. She told me that was the man I was going to marry.

“I just remember the look of pain and sadness on her face.

“At that moment he looked pretty young, I assumed he was a similar age to me, it wasn’t until I saw our marriage certificate when I turned 16 the following January that I realised he was in his 30s.

“I was in disbelief and denial – I was just totally numb.”

My eyes were actually bruised with me from wiping them so much from the tears

Rubie Marie

In the lead-up to the wedding, Rubie remembers becoming more and more disconnected with the world.

She feared what would happen if the wedding went ahead and what lay beyond the day she was forced to say ‘I do’ against her will.

“My depression was just rolling like a snowball,” she says.

“I was getting more and more disconnected with my mind, with my body, with my soul. I was just trying to sever everything, so I couldn’t feel.

“I knew that obviously when I get married he will have sex with me, a man I had never even spoken to.

“And it it was as if my body already start to prepare myself for those traumas.”

Nightmare becoming a reality

Just six weeks after being introduced to her husband-to-be, the wedding day arrived.

Whilst those around Rubie were keen to celebrate, she felt nothing but dread.

“The night before I had the traditional Mehndi ceremony,” she remembers.

“Everyone was full of celebration but I was just crying, my eyes were actually bruised with me from wiping them so much from the tears.

“The nightmare was becoming a reality.

“The wedding was a traditional ceremony but I don’t remember much of it, I just remember the day just seemed endless, it was as if time never passed.

“I had exchanged next to no words with this man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.

“At one point I turned and I caught my father’s eye – he was crying and I knew in that moment that he felt some regret.

“I was always daddy’s girl until the day – I had never felt so betrayed by someone I loved.”

‘A small way of coping’

After the ceremony, members of Rubie’s family accompanied her back to her husband’s home.

“It was expected for me to be a dutiful wife and give him my body, but of course there was no consent there,” she says.

Rubie says she was on her period the first night they were together so her husband left her alone but a living nightmare soon began.

Her body was no longer her own.

“A couple of days after was when the rape started and it was just continuous after that,” Rubie reveals.

“I just totally disconnected in those moments – I would take myself to the ocean in my mind as a small way of coping.

“Not everyone in my family had agreed with what was happening and thankfully my uncle had given me the contraceptive pill and explained that if I took them I wouldn’t get pregnant.

“It made me feel safe in a way.”

However, there was an expectation for Rubie and her husband to start a family and her secret was rumbled.

Rubie’s sister in law discovered the pills in her purse.

“She presented them to members of the family and they were taken away from me,” says Rubie.

“It wasn’t long after that I became pregnant in February.

“It was like another trauma, but everyone around me was celebrating.”

But Rubie was suffering from a virus called CMV (cytomegalovirus) which she’d contracted from her husband and can cause harm to babies.

When she was nine weeks pregnant the family made the decision to fly Rubie back to the UK for the sake of her health, leaving her new husband behind.

“When I got off the plane I remember all I wanted was a pot noodle,” she says.

“That was my happiest memory of coming back to the UK.

“But when I got back to my bedroom in Wales it really dawned on me – nothing was ever going to be the same again.”

Faced with her crushing reality, Rubie took an overdose in an attempt to end her life.

She says: “I ended up in hospital, and I remember this one nurse came to me after my family left, and asked if I wanted an abortion.

“In that moment she felt like an angel, she was right, that was exactly what I wanted and she was the first person to actually consider what I might want.

“I didn’t feel invisible for the first time in over a year.

“All through that time social services nor my school or even doctors ever asked why I had gone missing or why I was pregnant so young.

“But the next day I had a scan, and I saw my daughter’s heart beating, and I just couldn’t go through with it.

“I decided I would carry on living for this baby.”

Rubie’s daughter was born prematurely in October that year.

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“She was born ‘handicapped’, that’s how doctors described it,” Rubie says.

“The CMV I had contracted had caused her to be born with complications so for the first two weeks I wasn’t able to touch her.

“It meant I really struggled to bond.

“I didn’t feel like a new mum, my baby just felt like a sibling.

“After all I was just a normal teenager who was into the Backstreet Boys.”

Rubie would have to still speak to her husband but says it was over the phone and the calls were short and blunt.

“We also exchanged letters as a formality as my family knew this would help to prove we were in a relationship when he applied for a UK visa,” she exolains.

While the family prepared for Rubie’s husband to join her in the UK, she began secretly dating a man in the Midlands after connecting with him over the phone.

“He worked in a restaurant with a family member, and I just saw it as a ticket out of here,” Rubie says.

“I ran away to be with him taking my daughter with me but the community came together and they tracked me down and brought me back to my house.

“Now there was this urgency of getting me to Bangladesh again and I knew that would come with a one-way ticket.”

In 2000 Rubie, whose daughter was a few months old by then, spotted a school friend walking past her house.

It was a key moment that would prove to be a turning point in her life.

Escaping the abuse

“I ran out of the house and begged her to help me,” Rubie says.

“I explained what had happened to me and she took me to her parents house and they helped me contact the police.

“Because there was so little education on honour-based abuse they didn’t arrive till the following morning.

“They escorted me to the house and I left with my daughter and a Tesco bag of clothes and took a train back to the Midlands.”

While Rubie had escaped her honour-based abuse, her ordeal was far from over.

“My relationship soon became violent and things changed rapidly,” she says.

“I was used to being mistreated.

“It was like groundhog day, only now instead of being raped everyday I was being beaten up every day.

“But I stayed with him for five years. We had a son together in 2002.

IRAQ TO PASS A NEW LAW TO ALLOW MEN TO MARRY NINE-YEAR-OLDS

By Natalie Brown

Iraq is set to lower the age of consent to nine years old, a decision that women’s rights activists say will “legalise child rape”.

The amendment to the country’s “personal status law” – also known as Law 188 – would allow adult men to marry young girls, putting them at increased risk of sexual and physical violence, as well as deprive women of rights to divorce, child custody and inheritance.

Established in 1959, Law 188 was viewed as one of the most progressive in the Middle East, acting as a safeguard for families, regardless of religious sect.

The proposal to overturn it is the latest step in a more than decade-long push to erode women’s rights by conservative Shia Muslim groups, a coalition of which now dominate the Iraqi parliament.

While Iraq has outlawed marriage under the age of 18 for almost 70 years, a 2023 UNICEF survey found that 28 per cent of girls in Iraq had married before they reached 18 because of a loophole in Law 188 that allows religious leaders, instead of courts, to officiate marriages involving girls as young as 15, with the permission of their father.

This latest move aligns with a strict interpretation of Islamic law, the governing coalition said, and is intended to protect young girls from “immoral relationships”.

Previous attempts by Shia parties to amend Law 188 failed in 2014 and 2017, largely due to backlash from Iraqi women.

Given it now has a large parliamentary majority, however, and a second reading of the amendment passed on September 16, Chatham House senior research fellow Dr Renad Mansour said it’s likely this time it will get over the line.

It’s not yet clear when the amendment will go before parliament for a vote, Dr Mansour said, but it could come at any moment.

Amnesty International said in a statement, “Not only does child marriage deprive girls of their education, but married girls are more vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse, and health risks related to early pregnancy.

“It is alarming that these amendments to the Personal Status Law are being pushed so vehemently when completely different urgent legal reforms are needed to protect Iraqi women and girls’ rights”.

It’s just the latest in Iraq’s conservative changes. Earlier this year, they made same-sex relationships punishable with up to 15 years in prison, and last year they ruled that media outlets had to replace the term homosexuality with “sexual deviance”.

Originally published on News.com.au and republished here with permission

“Even through my pregnancy I wasn’t safe, he would kick me in the stomach, I was black and blue.”

Rubie broke free of her relationship but was stalked by her ex for five years before he was eventually given a restraining order.

Trapped in a cycle of dysfunctional relationships, Rubie says she struggled to forge healthy ones.

“I had been in one dysfunctional relationship after another,” she says.

“At this point I was a full-time mum in my late 20s and I was dysfunctional too and I just really wanted to break out of that cycle.

“So I took a leap of faith and I booked a ticket to Thailand.”

I need other survivors to realise that there is hope and help out there, you just have to reach out for it

Rubie Marie

Rubie says that exploring the world became a huge part of her healing process.

“I went right back to what the eight-year-old me had wanted to do achieve before any of this had happened,” she explains.

“I had wanted to see the world and so that’s what I did.”

As well as travelling, Rubie went on to finish her GCSEs and even took part in pageants, taking home Ms Galaxy UK in 2016 and went on to win the international title of Ms Galaxy 2017.

Today Rubie, whose children are now in their 20s, is an ambassador for the Sundial Centre where she educates people on forced marriage and honour-based abuse.

“I didn’t get into charity work until I was 31,” she says.

“I saw a story about a woman with a very familiar story to my own but she had killed herself.

“It struck a chord with me because I realised that could easily have been me and I knew I had to speak out.

“I need other survivors to realise that there is hope and help out there, you just have to reach out for it.”

Rubie is an ambassador for the Sundial Centre. For more information visit sundialcentre.org

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