I was raised in a family where abuse and neglect were normal. As a result, I was severely depressed, and at the age of 12, I attempted suicide. I called a local crisis hotline and spoke to a man who was a third-year missionary training student. He convinced me and my parents that he could provide counseling to me and that I didn’t need the antidepressants that the doctors had prescribed. I saw him twice a week for counseling from then on.
Later that summer, his apartment building caught fire, and he convinced my parents to let him move into their basement. He immediately began molesting me. I became pregnant right before I turned 14. My parents said I could only keep my child if I married him and that I had brought shame to my family. So, in May of 1980, we went on a road trip so I could be married off. We first stopped in Kentucky, and when the judge refused to do the ceremony due to my age, we drove on to Alabama. There, a judge had no problem with the situation, and in a six-minute ceremony I was married to the 27-year-old pedophile who had abused me.
When my daughter was two weeks old, my parents could not stop my husband from beating her, and so I was told we had to move out, as though I could stop him from hurting her. For the next 14 months, I juggled high school, keeping house and trying to keep myself and my baby alive around a man who grew more violent every day. I begged my parents for help and told them he would kill us; their response was that I was a married woman and had to figure it out myself. Eventually I began counseling again to “cure my depression and make me a better wife.” My therapist asked me immediately how often my husband beat me, and when I said every day, he promised to help. He had a social worker waiting the next week when I walked into his office. I was taken to a shelter for battered children. Eventually, they removed my child from the home as well.
Even though most child marriages like mine ultimately result in divorce, those divorces cannot be initiated by the children themselves. I was considered emancipated the day I was married, yet I was too young to drive, get a job, rent an apartment or file for a divorce. I had to have a court-appointed advocate act on my behalf. I left school in the middle of the day to go to court for my divorce. I made it back in time for 11th-grade English class.
Later, I spent the ages of 18-21 drinking every day before I got sober. I’ve struggled with depression and, perhaps most of all, with having a relationship with my family. It is clear to me now that they traded my safety and that of my daughter to preserve their social standing in the community and the church. That pain has never completely left me, and my life has never been the same. My relationship with my parents never recovered. I have chronic PTSD and depression; worse, I had no support system or self-confidence, so I ended up giving my child up for adoption. My coerced marriage was forced on me to cover up sexual abuse, and for my former husband, it was a way to avoid being charged with a crime. I never felt like a child, only like someone clearly incompetent to fix what was happening to us.
Even though I know now as a middle-aged woman that I couldn’t have done more than I did, it doesn’t do much to relieve the nightmares. This didn’t happen in a far-off country. I was raised in an upper-middle-class suburban home in the midwestern U.S. My family looked a lot like yours probably does.
And what happened to me is still legal. Children in these marriages are trapped. If there had been laws against marriage before the age of 18, I couldn’t have been coerced to marry. I feel strongly that we must outlaw child marriage, and that it must not be allowed to be used as a front to hide sexual abuse any longer.
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I wore a wedding dress that was left at the dry cleaner where my sister-in-law once worked. The headpiece came from my stepmother — the stepmother who hated me and convinced my father to give his consent for me to marry a man who was not only seven years older than me, but also someone I had only known for maybe two months.
I had just turned 16 in September of 1992, and by the end of 1992, I was married and forced to drop out of school because my now-husband was jealous that other boys might look at me.
My mother died in October of 1991 and, soon after, my father married the woman he had been having an affair with while my mother battled ovarian cancer. We moved away from the town I grew up in and away from all of our family because my new stepmom wanted it. She wanted me out of her life, so my father consented to let me marry a 22-year-old man I had dated a few times.
No one ever asked me if I was sure I wanted to get married. When my father went to the court clerk to sign permission for me to get married, no one batted an eye. No one asked, “Do you want to get married?” Not even the pastor who required we attend one of his counselling sessions prior to marrying us.
Soon after we married, my husband quit his job and we moved in with his grandmother. Then the abuse started. His mother, his brother and even his friends saw it. No one did anything to help me or stop him.
His grandmother had an overnight job. She cooked all the meals: breakfast and then a huge meal that was to be for lunch and dinner. I was not allowed to cook any meals in her house. I remember one time I wanted some soup for dinner instead of the food she cooked. She saw the empty can of soup in the trash and raised hell with my husband, who in turn hit me for making her angry. We put up a Christmas tree one year and she came home and threw it in the yard because she did not want it in her house.
There were so many rules or things I was not allowed to do. I wasn’t allowed to drive, and I couldn’t attend college after getting my GED because my husband feared I would get a degree and then leave him. He didn’t have an education because he dropped out in his 9th grade year, so we both took our GED tests at the same time. I passed and he failed. He beat me that night because he said I made him look stupid.
My father lived in the next town over and would occasionally stop by to see me. He knew I was being abused and did nothing to help me. In fact, he and my stepmom moved to Florida and didn’t tell me until I heard about it from a friend.
I left at least three times prior to leaving for good. In July of 1994, I had finally had enough and left. My husband had slammed my head against his steering wheel because I changed the radio station without his permission. My brother and his wife took me in. That is when I found out that my brother had tried to keep my father from letting me marry, that he and his wife wanted me to come live with them. But my father, in his pride, would not let that happen. The most important years of my life, my high school years, were ones filled with abuse and being forced to grow up way before I should have.
Even though it has been over 20 years since I left my abusive marriage and remarried a wonderful man, I still have severe PTSD from my experience of being an underage bride. I should not have been allowed to marry. There is no good reason for someone under the age of 18 to marry. Period!
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*At Michelle’s request, her name has been changed and the photo used here is not actually of her.
Dear Fraidy,
It was such a privilege to have an opportunity to listen to your talk on October 15 at the Columbia University Department of Population Health. My name is Chung, the boy who sat in the front row. I, on behalf of everyone else, would like to thank you for taking your valuable time to share with us your life journey and give us such hope and motivation for helping others the way you do! I thought that it was only fair that I should as well share my story with you because you remind me of a very important woman in my life.
I came from a family of six in Cambodia (I’m the youngest). My mother taught me so many lessons, bad and good. She was so poor that she could not afford any story books. So she would tell me stories of her survival through the civil war (the Khmer Rouge, right after the Vietnam War in the 70s), her resistance towards my father to have me, how precious I was that she would do anything to protect me–despite the bitterness and hatred she lived through (if anyone at all can relate to her, it’s you!).
My mother, too, had no choice but to marry my father during the civil war (the couple-matching rule created by the communist leaders at that time). Shortly after their marriage, the war ended, my father became very violent and cruel. The only things he did were drink, gamble, and abuse my mother physically and emotionally. In our culture (influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism), divorce is something a woman would do right before she lost her damn mind (that’s what every member of my society would say). Therefore, my mother had no choice but to live under a male-dominant culture, taking her socially assigned role as a woman whose primary job is to please her husband’s sexual desires and to produce children and nothing she or anyone can do about it. However, my father tried to force her to abort me because he believed that I was conceived from a dark spirit and thus would bring my family bad luck (like we always had so much luck in our family before I was born).
I grew up without any relationship whatsoever with my father. He developed hatred towards me for no fault of my own. On the first day of my second grade, he gave me the first kiss I have ever had, and never had I imagined what it’s like. I didn’t know what it was, but I know it was not my father who gave me that kiss. It was a man who broke every piece of my mother’s heart, a man who provided me nothing but fear and anger. The only thing I remember of him were those nights when my mom hid me in our old bedroom closet and locked the door from the outside so he couldn’t hurt me. When my mom was not home, he would force me to give him oral sex. I remember one time I refused not to do what he wanted and he slapped me so hard that I couldn’t get off the ground. The next thing I knew was me waking up in my mom’s arms with a few neighbors surrounded her. I wondered why I couldn’t walk. I thought that was because my father hit me so hard. But it wasn’t what I thought. It was something I truly didn’t understand at that age. Yes, it was rape. My father raped me when I was only 7 years old.
My mom had to give my two sisters to relatives living in the city so that they would be safe away from my demonic/psychopath father. I spent years and years dreaming about those moments, moments I looked through the cracked closet door watching my mom get beaten, raped, shattered glasses all over the floor, the blood, and the tears on my mother’s face. I still have these dreams today!
My father later on committed suicide, but I have no memories of what exactly happened to him. I grew up knowing he took his own life, but I never know the details of it. I came to the U.S. in 2012 with the help of my American host family (you can find the detail of how they brought me here at this link). Ever since I came to the U.S. and start having this comfortable life with proper family, I have had this dream that woke me up almost every night. I dreamed of me walking into the wood, and suddenly the sky turned dark and an old falling-apart outhouse appeared in front of me—than this very fearful feeling took over me. The feeling of hopelessness, pain, and guilt all at once. Then I felt obligated to open the door of the outhouse and the dear I felt got worse and worse. A figure of a man hung up from the ceiling of the outhouse appeared when I opened the door. This dream woke me up shaking and sometimes crying unconsciously every time. So in 2015 (three years after I arrived in the U.S.), I went back to Cambodia to renew my passport. I wondered if my dream that had been hunting me for the past three years had anything to do with how my father died. When I asked around, my relatives and older siblings were so shocked. They were shocked because I did not remember that I WAS THE ONE WHO FOUND MY FATHER’S BODY HUNG IN THE OUTHOUSE after school. It was then when I realized that the kiss he gave me on my first day of my second grade was a goodbye kiss, and it was the last day I saw my father’s face.
The story of my mother, however, was different. I had an inseparable relationship with my mom. She was my hero and role model growing up. She was there for me whether I needed her or not, showed me what was right and what was wrong. She showed me what a woman was capable of, and what a mother would do to protect her children. Unfortunately, my mother too, passed away from liver disease (Hepatitis B) about seven years later when I was only in my 8th grade. I was her primary care person at home because all my siblings had to work far away to earn just enough to buy her very minimal required medicine. I was there for her every day of her life for one last year. I was there watching her drifting away with her last breath…yet, I could not do anything to help her. I wish I could take away all of her pain to myself and gave my life for her.
After my mom passed, I developed this hurtful feeling, a broken soul that finds whatever could relieve the pain from the inside. I did unspeakable things like insert needles under my fingernails, pull my hair, and whatever you could think that a broken 14-year-old boy would do, I did it. I did it not because I wanted to die, but I wanted to feel alive!
Having said that, you have given me so much inspiration that I tried so hard not to cry in front of my classmates (–well, I did a little–). People like you and my mother are the reasons I am doing what I am doing–doing public health, supporting women in any way I can. Every bit of my miserable life experiences started from the arranged marriage between my mother and father. Having to witness strong women like yourself able to rise and stand up against the male dominant society meant the world to me, and I wish my mother could be a part of it! And because my mother couldn’t be here, I am living her dreams and continuing her legacy for her, to be the man my father and many men couldn’t be.
I wanted to make a difference in the world even if it’s a little one. My hope is to continue onto my DrPH program right after I finish my master degree specializing in Population and Family Health, as I am doing now. I wanted to make sure, in my ability/power, that children whom I can reach would never have to live the life I once lived.
Again, thank you so much for deeply touching my heart with your story!
-Chung Lip
I have always kept my arranged marriage a secret, it’s not often you find someone in the United States who would understand. Most people think that sort of thing doesn’t happen in developed countries. It’s ancient, archaic, something that happens somewhere else, not here. Not where we marry for love.
See, when you’re a child you must rely on adults for just about everything. As we grow, we slowly gain responsibility and power of our own lives. We can begin to dress ourselves, decide the kinds of clothes and styles we like. We can make our own food, and decide what we like and don’t like to eat. The natural progression is increased independence. But this is all disrupted when you are coerced or forced into an arranged marriage. Marriage is an adult decision. And when this decision is made for you, as a child, the damages are unparalleled.
But the worst part is, the secrecy. Not wanting to tell anyone how me and my husband came to be. We are still married. We’ve been through unyielding challenges together. We’ve grown to be best friends, love, and respect each other. We have a family now. We escaped our abusive situation together. But we keep it to ourselves, cause we never thought anyone else would understand. Who could possibly understand, that we grew up in a religious cult and were told at the ages of 15 that we were to marry each other? We were told we were ‘made’ for each other, meant to be together by God. We were just like everyone else in our commune, our partners were picked for us by the elders.
We could have said no, right? Not really. Not as a child, who is trained to fear God and authority. A child who is trained to ignore their inner voice. Marrying each other meant we got to stay in the community, with our parents and families. Getting married meant we were doing the right thing. We had seen what happened to people who didn’t marry their arranged mate. They were screamed at, ostracized, banished. The rules were strict and rigid. Our choices were to obey, or disobey and suffer the wrath.
For many years I tried to say no, I said I didn’t want to marry someone from the commune. I wanted to leave and have experiences. But the brutality was just too great. Friends and family wouldn’t speak to me. I would get screamed at, people would come to my house late at night and yell at my mother about me. I was told if I wanted to stay in the commune, I had to marry my partner. I had no family outside the commune, and I loved my family very much. I didn’t see a path for myself where I didn’t marry him. So I surrendered.
We had a baby together, and began our life. I was one of the lucky ones, my partner was kind and gentle. We had always been friends, and we bonded over the obscurity of our lives. As our living conditions worsened in the commune, we decided to break free together. We got new jobs, moved, and cut ties. After years of therapy, we have begun to rebuild our lives outside the cult.
But the fact remains that we didn’t have a choice in the biggest adult decision either of us would ever make. And that has lasting effects. And once you have a family together, those bonds are tighter, more complicated, more powerful, more to lose. We have struggled greatly over the years. We split apart, unsure that we could stay together given our history. I have discovered a strength within me that I didn’t know I had. One that has come from the hardships I have endured. But it has been a very lonely path.
It wasn’t until I found Unchained At Last that I knew anyone like me existed. I was sure I was the only one, besides the others I grew up with in the commune. Discovering their website, and speaking with their mentors has helped me to take steps I never thought I could take. Like sharing my story. My strategy has been to hide, shield myself, blend in amongst the crowds, and keep my history to myself. But Unchained has inspired me to remove my veil, and stand amongst the other young women who were coerced into arranged marriage before adulthood. Because it turns out, it is more common than we think.
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*At Julia’s request, the photo used here is not actually of her.
Growing up in a traditional African household in the U.S., there was frequent mention of getting married young and it being arranged. I did not take it too seriously considering my parents’ guidelines: having to be Muslim, from their home country, specific caste and tribe, educated, older and wealthy. I knew once I got older, I would become more interested in guys and that dating would not be an option for me, just instant marriage to a guy selected by my parents. However, I did not expect my mom to find someone so soon.
I remember the night she first proposed it to me. It was October 2014, when I was 16 years old. She told me about a distant cousin that she grew up with who was much older than I was and that he would take good care of me because we were related. I was so shocked all I could do was cry while she asked me whether I agreed or not. But I did not say yes, and she said she would ask me again tomorrow for an answer. My father never expressed any disagreement about the arrangement and generally went with what my mother wanted. Of course, by then she had already contacted family members telling them I agreed and that the wedding would be set for May 2016, right after I turned 18.
Not too long after, she had called him without my knowledge and sent him pictures of me and given him my number so that we would speak to each other. The first time, she had me there so that I would not say anything out of line and had me speak to his other family members. I told her by then that I was not interested, and she would go on and rants about how I would be disgracing her and that she already told everyone that I agreed. She further tried to guilt and manipulate me by having all of my family members talk to me about how happy they were for me and that it would be an honor and things of that nature.
For the next year and a half, day in and day out, I had to endure her mood swings pertaining to the arranged marriage and my reluctance. I felt so guilty for not doing what my mother wanted, because her points about wanting what was best for me stuck. She told me that years later I would be unhappy and would regret it. I knew I did not want the arranged marriage at all, but hearing that constantly, every single day, with no recourse had an impact on me. Having my own mother yelling, crying, and insulting me for not obeying her demands, feeling like there was no way out pushed me to have dark thoughts. Not once did she ever fully accept my refusals, and she would constantly force me to talk to him. I blocked his number on my phone, but she would just call him on her phone instead and announce that she was giving the phone to me. I hardly ever spoke to him, and eventually I let him know that I was not interested, and it was just something my mom wanted. He pretended to listen and care that I was not willing, and instead of just telling her that he would move on, he told me to come up with something to tell her, as if I had not already tried. He stopped calling for a while, but then soon after everything went back to normal, as if I had never told him that.
I was fortunate enough to find Unchained At Last in December 2015. I had hope for myself and my future knowing that Fraidy and her organization would fight for me and support me throughout this rough journey and that I was not alone.
By early 2016, I found out I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship that would require summer classes and being away from home at the time of my fated wedding day. I was able to fully remove myself from having any contact with him or giving in to any of my mother’s demands. I was finally free and able to be independent and no longer felt I had a stifled and bleak future.
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*At Mariam’s request, her name has been changed and the photo used here is not actually of her.
Syeda was forced into marriage at age 16 in Pakistan. She went along with the marriage to her first cousin, a stranger to her, only after her father told her that was the only way she’d be allowed to attend college.
After her wedding, Syeda continued to live with her own parents, without her husband, and the family moved to the U.S. But when she was 25, her husband followed her to the U.S. and moved in with her and her family – and he subjected her to unspeakable physical and sexual abuse. He also demanded that Syeda move with him back to Pakistan.
Syeda endured seven weeks of her husband’s abuse before her family threw her out of the house, because of her refusal to return with her husband to Pakistan. Syeda fled to a shelter.
Despite what she has been through, Syeda has taken control of her life. She is a college student, close to graduating with a bachelor’s degree, and she has a job. She managed to move out of the shelter after only a brief stay, and she has her own apartment. She owns her own car. She speaks English fluently.
Unchained now is working with Syeda to help her get divorced and end, forever, her forced marriage. A prominent law firm has generously agreed to represent Syeda pro bono.
“I’m so blessed,” Syeda said. “I’m so lucky I found Unchained.”
Support Syeda and others like her by clicking here.
*At Syeda’s request, the photo used here is not actually of her.
Jamie was pressured into an arranged marriage at age 19 – to a man who beat and raped her and abused their children.
Jamie knew she wanted to leave, but she had no money and no education. She had no support: Her family and community shunned her, because of her decision to divorce and to come out as gay. They refused to help her even after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Unchained found Jamie a team of attorneys to represent her pro bono in family court. Unchained’s executive director babysat for Jamie’s children while she underwent surgery. And when Jamie was about to refuse chemotherapy treatments because she worried she would be too sick to care for her children, Unchained raised money for an au pair to take care of the children through the hellish months of chemo – and then raised money to buy her a car, so Jamie could get to her doctor appointments.
“Whether I was raped or molested or beaten, no one ever stuck up for me,” Jamie told Unchained when her divorce was final. “Now someone sees my pain and actually does something about it.”
After her divorce, Jamie lived in a cozy apartment with her two children. She went on to attend college, where she was about 15 years older than most students but excelled in her studies.
Jamie was Unchained’s first client and remained a part of the Unchained family until she died of cancer in 2018. Her children moved in with a guardian Jamie arranged before she died.
Support survivors like Jamie by clicking here.
When people hear my story, they say they’re heartbroken. But I share it with you now in the hopes that maybe it will be able to help somebody, somewhere. I hope it will show you why you should end child marriage and protect girls age 17 and younger from what I went through.
I was barely 17 when I got married in New York. I came from a poor family, in an insular Hassidic community where everyone’s marriage is arranged at a young age. I didn’t have any other choices in life. Somebody suggested to my parents that I marry this boy, who comes from money, and I said, What the heck? It’s the thing to do.
I was a 17-year-old girl raised in such a sheltered life, I didn’t even know my vagina was called a vagina. I had never gone on a date or had a boyfriend. I was a baby. How can a 17-year-old girl raised in such a sheltered life make that sort of decision?
However, upon meeting the boy, I knew he wasn’t for me. We got to meet for a half hour, and he sat there with his shirt buttoned up to his nose, and he kept burping. After a half hour my father came into the room and said, So, is this a mazel tov [congratulations]? I said I didn’t know. And then the boy’s father came in and said, Mazel tov!
I thought, I guess I’m engaged.
The next morning I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I needed a way out. But I thought about the shame that would bring my parents, and I went along with it.
We were engaged for four months, and we were not allowed to see each other. As the engagement continued, I realized a lot of lies were being covered up. I was initially told he was 21, but I learned he was actually 23. I found out he smoked, when I didn’t want to marry a smoker. But what could I do?
I was so naïve at 17, I didn’t understand why my parents signed my marriage license application. I thought all parents signed for their children. I didn’t know I needed “parental consent” because I was not yet 18.
I was 17 and so innocent. My biggest sin was I wanted to wear nail polish. And now I’m married to him, and on our wedding night, after we did the deed, he looked at me said, If you think you’re my first, you’re not. I’ve been having sex with prostitutes.
I was shocked. I started to cry, and he yelled at me for crying, yelled that he had married a woman with mental issues. I quickly learned not to show real emotion.
He must have raped me a million times while we were married. But there were also gang rapes.
He told me he had fantasies of watching me have sex with other men, while he hid in a closet. I learned quickly that the only way I could protect myself, the only way to survive, was to behave in ways that made me very uncomfortable. He would threaten me that he was from a rich family, and he would take away our children and leave me without my children, without money or food.
He was drinking a lot. I found out later he was also doing drugs. I had never seen a drunk person before. I had never seen abuse before.
I was a baby, but I was not allowed to use birth control, and soon I had a baby. I was 18. And then I was pregnant again, and he told me, You’re not skinny. You’re not wearing the tight black dress I want you to wear.
For my 21st birthday he took me to strip club. I had never been to a strip club before. And he chose a table at the far end and made me walk from one end of the room to the other, so he could watch other men ogle me. I remember I was wearing a light blue dress, part of a suit that came with a jacket on top, but I had to wear it without the jacket. It was my first time dressing in a way I knew to be immodest. I had no ability to be true to me.
Finally, after nine years, after the millionth time he raped me when he was drunk, I looked in the mirror and saw a reflection I didn’t recognize. I knew it was time to get out. It was on a Shabbos [Sabbath], and I took my kids and my paperwork, and I went to my mother’s house. My parents made me go back home, and I went back home, but I was done. I told my parents about the rapes, about the gang rapes, and everything that had taken place, and then they supported me. I crushed my parents that day.
I love my parents to death, and I don’t blame them in this. They were raised with the same mentality, the same ideas. They didn’t have a chance to grow and mature, so how could they raise children to grow and mature?
Maybe if my parents couldn’t just sign for me, and they had to wait until I was 18, I would have gotten stronger and would have been able to stand up to them. My dependence on them at 17 was severe. I couldn’t stand up for myself and say, This is not what I want.
I now have a 17-year-old daughter, and I tell her that part of growing up is figuring out who you are. How can you figure out who you are before you’re even halfway there? Do most people know who they are at 17?
The more time a child has to grow and mature, it allows them more time to make lifelong decisions. Marriage is legally binding. You are now forever stuck to uphold that legally binding contract. Having to say yes to something so serious at such a young age is like signing a contract in a language you don’t understand.
Yes, a minority of 17-year-olds are strong-minded and are able to make good decisions, but most are not. Those who are mature and capable of making healthy decisions will be able to wait until 18, for the sake of the others who are less mature. Give children the chance to wait until 18, especially those who grew up in insular religious communities and have no Internet access or reading materials. They might say, Yes, this was my decision. But do they know there are other options?
Even today, years after I left, my entire life is based on my getting married at 17. Every aspect of my life, my children, my relationship, all my struggles, go back to my marriage at 17.
Now you have the power to prevent what happened to me from happening to another 17-year-old girl. I beg you, please. End child marriage!
NOTE: Esther finally got divorced after nearly a decade of abuse, but her problems did not end there. Esther felt coerced into having her divorce arbitrated by a religious court, and her divorce agreement included a standard provision: that she would raise her children in the same insular religion in which she was raised and married. Her agreement also said she must behave according to strict religious law inside and outside her home as a condition of retaining custody of her children.
Unchained found Esther a pro bono attorney with expertise on religious law, who fought to win Esther full custody of her children and the right to raise them as she chooses.
Support Esther and others like her by clicking here.
*At Esther’s request, her name has been changed, and the photo used here is not actually of her.
Zubaida thought her life in the U.S. would be wonderful when she was brought here from overseas as part of an arranged marriage to an American man.
It wasn’t.
Her in-laws, who lived with her and her new husband, beat and taunted her — particularly after each of her three miscarriages. And after her third miscarriage, Zubaida’s mother-in-law knocked her to the ground, where she lay, bleeding. Zubaida’s husband finally took her to the hospital for medical attention, but immediately upon her discharge, he announced that she was no longer his wife. He took her to the airport and left her there.
Zubaida was barely strong enough to stand on her own. She spoke very limited English. She did not have a penny with her. She stayed at the airport until her only relative in the U.S. learned where she was and rescued her.
Unchained helped Zubaida rebuild her life. The organization matched her with a volunteer psychotherapist, offered assistance to help her become financially independent — and found Zubaida a team of attorneys who represented her pro bono through her divorce proceeding and got her the financial settlement she deserved.
“When nobody else would help me, you did,” Zubaida told Unchained. “I will never forget your kindness.”
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*At Zubaida’s request, her name has been changed and the photo used here is not actually of her.
