Teenage Girl Recounts How She Was Forced to Marry 78-Year-Old Man at 9

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A 13-year-old Kenyan girl, Younis, has recounted how her parents forced her to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather when she was only nine years old in accordance to local Samburu tribe custom.

She ran away after enduring the agonizing marriage for 4 years and was rescued by Josephine Kulea, a young woman who runs the Samburu Girls Foundation, a boarding school for girls who have been disowned by their families, suffered traumatic ordeals backed by their culture including, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and so on.

Younis told CNN:

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“When I was about nine years old, my father married me off to an old man who was 78 years old. I went to his home and I stayed with him one week. He told me that I will be a wife but I was just innocent, I wanted to come to school. But that man wanted me to be a third wife. I told him, I will not be your wife, and he caned me. Then I heard that there is a woman who helps children. I came from Baragoi barefoot, I didn’t even have shoes that day. I came to Maralal … Kulea took me to [the] children’s office, she rescued me.”