Emotional story of a teen girl that was forced to marry a 78-year-old when she was just 9-years and freed after four years of marriage in Kenya.
Younis endured four years of trauma after being married off to a 78-year-old man by her parents
A 13-year old Kenyan girl identified as Younis, who was forced to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather when she was only 9-years old, has been freed after four years of hell.
The Samburu tribe teenager was married off by her parents in accordance to tribal custom, which also includes female genital mutilation and offering girls to male relatives for sex.
She was forced to live with the 78-year-old man for four years until she escaped and walked barefoot to a boarding school for girls called the Samburu Girls Foundation. Explaining her harrowing and heartbreaking tale, Younis told CNN:
'When I was about nine years old, my father married me off to an old man who was 78 years old. He told me that I will be a wife but I was just innocent, I wanted to come to school. But that man wanted me to be a third wife. I told him, I will not be your wife, and he caned me.'
Josephine Kulea is trying to rescue Samburu girls as young as seven from being sold off to men for sex
Luckily for Younis and around 200 other girls across Kenya, the Samburu Girls Foundation offered her a way out. She said:
'I heard that there is a woman who helps children. I came from Baragoi barefoot, I didn't even have shoes that day. I came to Maralal. Kulea took me to the children's office, she rescued me.'
The foundation which is run by Josephine Kulea, takes in girls who have been disowned by their families and helps them deal with the trauma of forced genital mutilation or any other horrific events they have suffered.
Josephine, who is also part of the Samburu tribe, said: 'I realised we are the only ones doing FGM, female genital mutilation, the other communities are not doing it.
I came to realise that there are things that are not right and I need to make a difference, that's how I started rescuing girls.'
Early marriage is illegal in Kenya but Josephine explained that people within the Samburu community were not pleased that she was rescuing girls from forced unions.