Wed and Tortured at 13, Afghan Girl Finds Rare Justice

[alp227]

KABUL, Afghanistan -When she refused to prostitute herself or have sex with the man she was forced to marry when she was about 13, officials said, Sahar Gul's in-laws tortured her and threw her into a dirty, windowless cellar for months until the police discovered her lying in hay and animal dung.

In July, an appeals court upheld prison sentences of 10 years each for three of her in-laws, a decision heralded as a legal triumph underscoring the advances for women's rights in the past decade. She is recovering from her wounds, physical and emotional, in a women's shelter in Kabul.

But to many rights advocates, Sahar Gul's case, which drew attention from President Hamid Karzai and the international news media, is the exception that proves the rule: a small victory that masks a still-depressing picture of widespread instances of abuse of women that never come to light.

Full: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/world/asia/wed-and-tortured-at-13-afghan-girl-finds-rare-justice.xml

[PDJane]

1. This is not because of Islam,

But because of an archaic and vicious code of honour that should be stamped out, root and branch. So many people, too many women and girls, but boys and men, too...end up unwanted, abused, and thrown away.

The child has a great deal of courage.