NPR’s All Things Considered aired a segment yesterday about forced marriage in the US, a human rights violation that many people assume happens only overseas.
The segment featured an interview with Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, which helps women and girls leave or avoid arranged/forced marriages. Reiss herself was trapped in an abusive arranged marriage when she was 19, and her family and community shunned when she finally fled the marriage 12 years later.
“People often ask me when I tell them my story, ‘Where you from? Iran?’ And I tell them I’m from Brooklyn,” Reiss told All Things Considered.
For many girls and women, arranged/forced marriage means a lifetime of rapes and beatings. Often they are not allowed to finish their education and are forced into lifelong domestic servitude.
Click here to hear the segment and to read NPR’s blog entry about it.
