It is an unimaginably hideous outcome.To be raped by your cousin's husband; be jailed for adultery as your attacker was married; to suffer the ignominy of global uproar about your jailing and assault, but be pardoned by presidential decree; and then to endure the shame and rejection from a conservative society that somehow held you to blame. The solution in this society? Marry your attacker.
This is the despicable thing that happened to Gulnaz, an afghan woman four years ago, who was barely 16 when she was raped by her cousin's husband, but the government, in a really sad turn of event, decided to find her guilty of ADULTERY... Then came the shocker - She was made to choose between a 12 year jail term or marry the monster that defiled her.
Gulnaz plight -- like so much in beleaguered Afghanistan -- disappeared from the world's gaze once she was pardoned and released courtesy of a presidential pardon and international intervention. Instead of a new start, what followed for Gulnaz was a quiet, Afghan solution to the "problem" -- a telling sign of where women's rights stand in Afghanistan despite the billions that have poured into this country from the U.S. government and its NATO allies during more than a decade of war. She was forced to marry her rapist and she is now pregnant for him with the third child.
How Gulnaz ended up here requires some explanation. There was pressure upon her to marry her attacker after her release. But at the same time, other activists were trying to assist her with an asylum bid abroad.
"Unfortunately, Gulnaz was heavily pressured to marry her attacker by various people within the government which, in and of itself, was immensely disappointing," her former attorney, an American citizen named Kimberley Motley, tells us. "Gulnaz was constantly told that neither she nor her daughter would be protected if she did not succumb to their pressure to marry... Gulnaz essentially became a prisoner of her environment."As an uneducated, young, single mother with no family support, it would have been an uphill battle for Gulnaz and her daughter."
Local pressure won out. She was introduced to her attacker in the shelter where she was first interviewed upon release from prison. They talked and it was agreed she would marry him. Most disturbingly, the woman who -- despite knowing the stigma it would create around her -- defiantly insisted she had been raped when we spoke nearly four years ago, now says she was told by her relatives to make up the allegations.
No I am not thinking about it anymore," Gulnaz adds. "I don't have a problem with him now and I don't want to think about the past problems. My life is OK... I am happy with my life... It is going on."
She is then permitted to talk alone. Asadullah moves away but stands close to the door of the room. Though she now maintains she was not raped, she explains her decision. She contradicts her husband, saying her brothers would have taken her back, had she not married him.
"My brothers opposed the marriage and told me to take my daughter and go to Pakistan to live with them instead," she says. "But now we're married, they disowned me and won't see me again." "
It is truly chilling to see how things have gone for Gulnaz after the level of international attention her story received -- pregnant with the third child of the man who was once her rapist, accepting a life as his second wife, trapped in his home.it is indeed verysad
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