For Ms. Tairova, the anxiety began on the eve of her high school graduation when a friend confided to her that a man named Elim, eight years her senior, planned to kidnap her at the ceremony the next day. She attended the graduation but was terrified, unsure of whom she could trust. The would-be abductor never materialized.

"I think this happens to all young women when they turn 16," Ms. Tairova said, sitting in an empty room of the American University, where she now works.

She enrolled in the university in the southern Kyrgyz city of Jalal-Abad but soon learned that another family from her village was considering her as a bride for their son. Strangers began asking people at her school what she looked like.

Then one evening there was a knock at the door of the apartment she shared with her sister. Outside were 10 men, including the would-be husband. For six hours, Ms. Tairova refused to step outside her apartment. Finally the men gave up and went away.

Ms. Tairova went back to live with her parents and began working as a bookkeeper in a tobacco plant. One day a man came in and introduced himself. They spoke for about 20 minutes, but Ms. Tairova told him she was not interested in seeing him again.

The next day she was kidnapped. She was waiting with two friends for the company bus to take them home when a car pulled up. The two men inside offered all three women a ride. One of her friends knew the men, so they agreed. But when the driver took a detour, she became worried. When he stopped to pick up the man from the day before, she started to scream.

She grabbed the driver's neck and began to choke him, but the second man pulled her hands away. Desperate, knowing her only chance was to stop them before they reached her abductor's house, she blurted out in Russian that she "was not a girl anymore," a euphemism meaning she was no longer a virgin. It was a lie, but it worked.