Seventy-Year-Old Saudi Man Marries 15-Year-Old Girl [Updated]

Saudi Arabia has another case of a pedophilia dressed up as marriage. In the latest case, a 70-year-old man paid a family $17,500 in a dowry to purchase a 15-year-old girl as a bride. The girl proceeded to lock herself in the bedroom for two days in fear on their wedding night and then fled home to her family. The groom is now demanding that the girl be handed over to him or to get a refund from the family. [Update: a divorce has been issued in the “marriage” and the articles now report the man as 70 years old rather than 90 years old]

I realize that dowry traditions have long existed but they often appear little more than selling off your young daughter, in this case to a pedophile. How the family can claim to love his child and sell her off to a 70-year-old is hard to square.

The girl locked herself away on the first night after being legally married in the Kingdom where many clerics believe that young girls who are seven or eight are subject to marriage as consistent with the Koran. Some deny any age limit. It is hard for reformers to get much change when Mohammad is believed to have marriage 6-year-old Aisha and consummated the marriage when she was 9.

Source: Al-Arabiya