I was forced to marry at FIVE - while living in UK: Horrific story of the British child bride



Victim tells how her childhood was shockingly ended by the ceremony she mistook for a birthday party

Forced abroad to live with her husband in Pakistan, she suffered years of abuse before finally finding the strength to seek a divorce

Now a successful entrepreneur, she wants to show girls in her position there is light at the end of the tunnel



Trapped: Mrs Shah - who has adopted a pseudonym for her own protection - was forced into marriage at just five years old, despite living in an ordinary British town (picture posed by model)

A successful businesswoman has told of her agony after being forced into an abusive marriage at the age of five - despite living in Britain.



Samina Shah, who is now in her 40s and too frightened to reveal her real name, spoke out after revelations that Britain's Forced Marriage Unit had handled the case of another five-year-old girl last year.



Mrs Shah said she believed she was being dressed for her fifth birthday party on the day of the Islamic ceremony which effectively ended her childhood.



She told The Sun: 'There was a lot of activity - a lot of relatives in the house. I was dressed up in an outfit which my mother-in-law had bought for me.



'My sister told me later that my mother-in-law had said, "At last, the beautiful girl belongs to me!"'



Pondering why a tiny girl from a large northern town would be forced to undergo such an ordeal, she said she thought it was to do with maintaining tradition - and control.

Mrs Shah was born into a close-knit Asian community, and while her family lived in Britain they remained true to the conventions of remote Pakistani villages.



Aged just 13, she was removed from school without explanation. Instead of an education, she was taught that a woman's place was in the home - and reminded that the greater her sufferings on earth, the more lavish her reward would be in Paradise.



Samina was still a frightened girl of 14 when she went through the formal wedding ceremony which marked her transition from her parents' house to that of her husband. At 6am the day after, she was forced onto a plane to Pakistan, told only that she would return to Britain with her husband when she reached 16.



Long before that time, the teenager endured the forced consummation of her marriage after suffering an appalling beating.

Missing - one childhood: Locked up by her husband, child bride Mrs Shah used to watch other children playing outside and sigh with envy

Mrs Shah returned to the UK three months later, after her Guardians decided she should be kept there under lock and key.



She said the feeling of sunlight on her face was one of the things she missed most during her captivity, adding, 'I used to look out at kids playing and feel an overwhelming sense of envy.



'When you are married at the age of five you no longer live like a normal child. I was deprived of my basic human rights.'



After giving birth to a daughter at the age of 20, Mrs Shah said she became determined her child would never endure the horrors she herself had lived through.



FORCED MARRIAGE UNDER UK LAW

The law covering forced marriage in Britain makes it a civil rather than a criminal matter, and many of the victims are sent abroad.



Those at risk can apply for a court order which bars them or the organisers of the marriage from leaving the country.



Violating such an order constitutes contempt of court, which carries a prison sentence of up to two years.



While forced marriages are not recognised as legal in the UK, if victims do not return to Britain then the people responsible cannot be prosecuted.



The Government is currently considering a change in the law.



Ultimately, her daughter was to be her salvation. Though the years of abuse she had suffered took a toll on Mrs Shah, manifesting as crippling obsessive compulsive disorder, she became interested in studying after watching her daughter's progress through school.



To her husband's displeasure, she enrolled in college and took GCSEs.



Finally, at the age of 37, she found the strength to leave the man who had made her life a misery, even banning her from smiling because he considered it 'the sign of a loose woman'.



In strict Muslim communities divorce remains strictly taboo, and those who do separate from their partners risk being ostracised by their friends and families.



While Mrs Shah returned to her parents after dissolving her marriage, the arrangement was not a success and she found herself entirely alone in the world.



At her lowest ebb, contemplating suicide, she began composing a goodbye text to her beloved daughter - but couldn't bring herself to abandon the best thing in her life, a child who so obviously needed her.



Finding herself outside a church, and ready to turn her back on a religion which had brought her nothing but pain and subjugation, Mrs Shah threw herself on the mercy of a priest.



Though she said she was keen to become a Christian, the priest said it was not Islam which had failed Samina - it was people.



He made contact with a Muslim woman who provided the sobbing mother with solace, and a bed for the night.



Mentor: After ending her own forced marriage, Mrs Shah hopes to help girls understand that Islam does not permit the barbaric practice - and that they too can escape it

Mrs Shah said it was not until she stopped seeing herself through other people's eyes that she felt able to move on from her abusive marriage and take control of her own life.

Having reinvented herself as a successful entrepreneur, she now gives talks to women's groups and mentors youngsters in her local area.



Above all, she wants to emphasise that forced marriage is completely contrary to both the teachings of Islam and the dignity of human beings.

