Abused for 23 years after forced marriage to cousin

Mother speaks out in bid to help others in Asian community

ABIRMINGHAM mum who was the victim when a forced marriage to a cousin turned abusive says she has lost the ability to trust anyone.

Afraid of her violent husband, as well as the stigma of becoming a divorcee in an Asian community, she endured 23 years of abuse at the hands of the first cousin she was made to wed.

She said during her marriage she was strangled, hit, controlled and verbally abused, including in front of her children.

“He messed up my life. It’s left me feeling vulnerable, I don’t trust,” added the woman.

But she is speaking out to raise awareness of the traumatic impact of domestic violence among ethnic minority groups.

“Ethnic minorities don’t speak up. I think it’s more difficult in the Asian culture.”

The mother told how her new husband ‘took over her life’ after she was forced to marry him, aged 20, in Pakistan.

After he moved to the UK he eventually went on to control everything, she said, from finances to getting her to give up her dream of becoming a pharmacist.

The woman, now aged 46, left her abusive partner two years ago after fleeing the family home following a violent row.

Since then she has had to learn simple tasks like using a bank card and paying bills for the first time.

She said: “The whole idea was for him to come here (UK). I said to my mum ‘I don’t want to marry him’.

“But obviously there’s a lot of family pressure, a lot of culture pressure. My mum told me: ‘You’re going to do a good deed; you have to marry him’.

“So we got married, and he turned around and told me he was only marrying me for the passport. I was his ticket. He became nasty, asking who is going to want to marry you, have you seen the state of yourself?”

After flying over from Pakistan to Birmingham, he then took control over her life, she said.

Her life changed drastically. She said: “I was working at the time, but I got pregnant. He managed to get me to leave my job, even now I still don’t understand how he did it. He was promising the world, promising that I was supported. He would say: ‘You don’t need to work, I’m the husband, it’s my responsibility, people are looking, people are talking.’”

Though the mum had ambitions to carry on working at a chemist and progress with her pharmacy career, she felt the pressure from both her abuser and family to give up work. Instead, she became a full time mum to their three kids.

“You don’t divorce. My family said you live and die with your husband, doesn’t matter what they’re like,” she recalled. “They told me you can’t leave him’”.

Violence was never far from the surface in the troubled marriage. “One time he was strangling me and he was finding it funny, in front of my children. I couldn’t breathe and my daughter started to panic and tried to get him off me,” she added.

“He just laughed and said to me ‘I let you go, next time I’m not going to let you go.’” But with one of their children needing palliative care at home, she felt even more trapped.

“I was stuck, he cut off my family one by one. He installed cameras in the house to keep an eye on me.

“I found out later that he hacked into my phone. He called me a whore, a prostitute, he’s called me all sorts.”

But the woman began squirrelling away money and eventually fled with her three children in 2020.

“I learnt how to use an ATM card two years ago. I had no idea how to manage money, how to do the bills. Even now I still struggle. I had no one to turn to. I was planning to go wherever, far away from him.”

But before she fled there was one final confrontation when she decided to ‘stand up’ to her husband.

He attacked her and tried to strangle her, she said. Police arrested him.

But the marriage is now finally over after a ‘nightmare’ fight through the divorce courts. “I feel drained. I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t know my identity,” she said.

“I tried to go back to university. But he belittled me so much that I just gave up on everything. All I want is some respite, I need help to get my life back on track, I need help with the trauma. I need to know who I am and have time for me.”

He became nasty, asking who is going to want to marry you, have you seen the state of yourself?