‘My father-in-law raped me when I was pregnant’: The Horrific Story Of Child Brides (READ)

To countless migrants, Britain is the promised land. But, once here. many are cruelly exploited. Yesterday, we told the secret of slaves working in our curry houses. Today we reveal the terror of brides brought to our shores to marry their countrymen.

We are waiting for the new bride. And, as is her prerogative, she takes her time to prepare. Sheep are being driven noisily along the lane outside, while in the house the electricity has failed again; lights dim, the ceiling fan whines to a halt and in the sticky gloom the scene could be any time in the past 200 years.

This impression is not dispelled when the curtain at the back of the room is drawn aside and Shaista appears at last. The 26-year-old is dressed traditionally in a pretty shalwar karmeez suit, with an exquisitely embroidered floral dupatta, or scarf, wrapped about her head. Her two chaperoning brothers make a place for her on the sofa.

Cruel truth: Many women travel from to Britain believing it is the ‘promised land’ but face terror when they arrive (file picture)

In a few weeks’ time she will leave Punjab for ever to start a new life in inner-city East London.

It is some step. She has not been outside Pakistan nor, aside from a brief meeting as teenagers, had she seen her English-born husband Shabaz before they were married by arrangement of their families last summer.

How did it come about?

‘My father and grandfather are friends of his father and grandfather,’ Shaista explains. ‘The families came from nearby villages.

‘In 2010, Shabaz’s mother called my father about agreeing an engagement. His parents were getting an interest in me because of my qualifications, compared to those of other girls [she has a BSc in botany and MSc in psychology].

‘His parents came over and it was decided. My parents asked me and I said, “OK”. On our engagement day, in November 2011, both sets of parents were here but Shabaz remained in London because of his work.

‘We spoke to him on Skype. He asked me about my qualifications and family and what kind of person I am.’ (She says that the superiority of her own education compared with her husband’s is not an issue.)

Five hundred guests attended the wedding across the Ravi River from Lahore. Shabaz returned to London a week later. ‘Now he is arranging immigration papers for me. The minimum time is about six months.’

I had already met Shabaz — a handsome and polite security guard with a rapid-fire Cockney-Asian accent — in a cafe in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium in East London.

That was a world away from Shaista’s tumbledown neighbourhood — typical of where so many of these stories begin in the settlements along the Grand Trunk Road, that fabled highway that runs 1,500 miles from modern-day Bangladesh, through India and Pakistan to the Afghan capital Kabul.

Once, it was the main artery of the British Raj and the writer Rudyard Kipling described it as ‘such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world’. Today, that river leads those who live alongside it to every corner of the world.

Conversation: The first time one bride, Shaista, spoke to her perspective husband was via Skype

Shaista is but one. I hope her marriage to Shabaz will be a success — indeed, many arranged marriages do work. But the rural Pakistani tradition of arranged or even forced marriages — sometimes to strangers or, more often, first cousins — of girls or young women to men living in the UK remains a troubling issue.

The brides are so vulnerable. And, if it goes wrong, the consequences for them can be disastrous.

A typical example is Rani. She is a small woman in a woollen hat, with bright eyes behind thick glasses. We meet at her ‘safe house’ in Britain — a dismal terrace in a town far from her former marital home. In the damp living room the wallpaper is held on by masking tape.

We have to talk through an interpreter because, although she has been in Britain for almost ten years, Rani speaks very little English. Her story — one of monstrous deception and abuse by her in-laws — goes some way towards explaining why. She was born and brought up in Gujrat, a town on the Grand Trunk Road 60 miles north of Imamia Colony where I met Shaista.

‘As a little girl, I had ambitions to be a doctor but my parents wanted me to learn the Koran,’ she says. ‘I was sent to a madrassa [an Islamic school] and by the age of ten I knew it by heart.’

This learning led, in due course, to her disastrous arranged marriage. ‘I was 18 and my family was visiting the home of a holy man. He also happened to be receiving some people from the UK. They had come to Pakistan with the intention of finding a bride for their son. I didn’t realise this then.

‘The visitors questioned me closely about my family and my life. I thought nothing more of it, but I later learned that they immediately asked the holy man to arrange a marriage between me and the son. Just like that.’

A meeting was arranged between Rani’s family and the visitors.

‘My future father-in-law said: “We are a religious family and we are looking for a religious girl.” My family thought he was making the right noises and said: “We would like to speak to your son.”

‘My future husband was in Pakistan with them but the father-in-law made excuses for his non-appearance. He said: “He doesn’t speak Punjabi or Urdu and he is not acclimatised to the weather.”

‘My family accepted this explanation and the match was agreed. My mother-in-law’s family was in such a hurry to get things done that I was married within the week.’

Rani first saw her husband at their 2001 wedding ceremony.

‘I was excited and afraid. When we were finally brought together, my mother-in-law told me to say “salaam” to him. He just nodded his head and that was it.

‘Even so, I had no suspicions then that anything was amiss.’

But doubts started to grow. These increased when she arrived at Manchester airport to be met by her father-in-law rather than her new husband.

‘Then, in the car park, my husband suddenly appeared. My father-in-law said to him “your old lady’s here”, but my husband said nothing to me.

‘When we got to their house I was put in the attic and my husband slept in the same room as his father. My husband did not speak to me.’

At first she thought he was just very shy: ‘In those first months I did everything I could to be part of his family, even speaking in their dialect.’ Her in-laws put her to work in the house and teaching at the madrassa run by her father-in-law. Yet her husband avoided her.

At this point she says she began to be physically abused, first by her mother-in-law then other family members, later her husband. Embarrassed to tell her family in Pakistan, Rani retreated into herself, desperately unhappy.

Her marriage was finally consummated, but ‘it was not a satisfying physical relationship. I would get quite upset. It was not loving.’

Follow us on twitter @psermuel For advert placement, mail us to psermuel@gmail.com or 08062303830