Mike Thomson: Abducted, shackled and forced to marry at 12

Farah, a 12-year-old Christian girl, says she was taken from her home in Pakistan last summer, shackled, forced to convert to Islam and made to marry her kidnapper. It's a fate estimated to befall hundreds of young Christian, Hindu and Sikh women and children in the country each year. On 25 June, Farah was at home in Faisalabad, Pakistan's third most populous city, with her grandfather, three brothers and two sisters when they heard knocking on their front door. She remembers her grandfather going to open it. Then three men burst in, grabbed Farah and forced her into a van outside.

They warned the family that if they tried to get her back "they'd make us regret it", says Farah's father, Asif, who was at work at the time. Asif went to the nearest police station to report the crime - even providing the name of one of the abductors, whom Farah's grandfather had recognised - but he says the officers showed little interest in helping. "They were very unco-operative and refused to register the crime. Not only that but they pushed me around and verbally abused me."

Despite repeated complaints to the police it was three months before they finally registered the incident. And even then they took no action. During this time, 12-year-old Farah, who'd been driven 70 miles (110km) to a house in the nearby city of Hafizabad, says she was raped, shackled and treated like a slave. "I was chained most of the time and ordered to clean the abductor's home as well as take care of the animals in the yard outside. It was terrible," she says…. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56337182

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