At just 11, Noora Al Shami was dressed in adult clothing, unaware of the horrific ordeal she would face later that evening when her 35-year old-cousin and future husband took her home to assault her.

During a three-day celebration in Yemen's port city of Al Hudaydah, young Noora wore "three beautiful dresses" at the family event, only to be forced into years of sexual abuse by Mohammed Al Ahdam.

For innocent Noora, dressing up seemed like harmless fun, but it was a chilling precursor to the trauma that lay ahead. "I was allowed to wear adult clothes, to put on jewellery, to accept presents," Noora, now aged 47, told The Guardian.

"What hadn't occurred to me was that I would be abused by a violent criminal."

The first time Al Ahdam exposed himself to Noora, she ran away. She managed to avoid the attack for 10 days until Al Ahdam's sisters accused her of "bringing shame on our brother by rejecting him", according to the Express.

When the rape happened, Noora's body went into shock.

"I was rushed to hospital - I was a child being treated as a sex object, but the abuse did not stop. Nobody cared about my complaints, as I was legally a wife."

Al Ahdam, a much older distant cousin, married Noora in 1989 right after she turned 11. "He was three times my age and saw marriage as a means to behave like a depraved animal," Noora stated.

In 2021, UNICEF reported a shocking 4 million child brides in Yemen.

Decades after Noora's own child marriage, Human Rights Watch data from 2006 showed that 14% of Yemeni girls were married by 15, with over half wed before turning 18.

Families frequently marry off daughters to ease their financial struggles in return for a dowry, despite Islamic law offering little protection for young girls.

"My husband provided a dowry of around $150, which was a huge amount. But it was at the end of the wedding that the fear and horror set in. I was taken away from my parents and left with a man who meant nothing to me. He drove me to the house he shared with his widowed father in Al Hudaydah. It was a nice home but I immediately started to quiver, and to cry."

Noora suffered two miscarriages within a year before welcoming her son Ihab at just 13.

Her daughter Ahlam was born when Noora was 14, followed by another son, Shihab, at 15, with each pregnancy riddled with complications.

Her husband Al Ahdam's brutality intensified.

"He thought nothing of hitting me, even when I was pregnant," Noora recalled.

"If his father hadn't been in the house, it would have been even worse. His presence was some kind of restraint, but I was still very badly injured."

Al Adham also subjected their children to his cruelty, once seizing their daughter Alham by the feet and slamming her onto the floor, resulting in a hospital visit for the two-year-old, who was bleeding and injured.

After enduring a decade of horrific abuse, Noora found comfort in a programme led by Oxfam and the Yemeni Women's Union that supports survivors of domestic violence. She then took the courageous step to file for divorce.

The struggle didn't end there. Noora engaged in a legal battle for financial support to raise her children.

Her resilience saw her return to education, qualify as a teacher, and she now passionately advocates for stricter laws on child marriage.

Noora refuses to be bound by the "ruins of the past". "We need to change the lives of our children, and not just by paper laws," she insists.

"We need a complete change in culture. It's not really something that the law has been able to control, especially not in tribal communities," Noora admits.

"The legal marriage age has been 15 for some time, but my mother was first married at nine, and divorced by 10, before going through another two marriages. She had me in her early teens.

"I wanted to stay at school and get a good job, but my parents could not afford it. They did not want me to live in poverty forever. I did not understand their decision to marry me off - only that the same thing happened to most girls my age."

Despite the tireless efforts of Noora and other campaigners to raise the legal marriage age from 15 to 18, the physical and emotional damage is often lifelong.

However, even with potential changes to the law, Islamic law does not set a minimum age for marriage, and Yemeni clerics frequently challenge any statutory restrictions.

Currently, 30 per cent of girls in Yemen are married before they turn 18, and 7 per cent wed before they reach 15, according to the advocacy group Girls Not Brides.

If this article has affected you, please contact SARSAS at info@sarsas. org.uk or seek advice from the NHS on help after rape or sexual assault.

'I was forced to marry man in his 30s and was was a mum-of-three by 15' - The Mirror