17-Year-Old Girl Marries Man, 90: Teen Manipulated Into Believing She Was Going To Marry Handsome 20-Year-Old

A 17-year-old girl married a man, 90, after she was led to believe she was about to marry a handsome 20-year-old. This arranged marriage in Saudi Arabia has a whole different twist than others you hear about. The girl’s father was involved in the manipulation and sued by the teen.

After the girl explained that the man she was about to marry wasn’t the one she was introduced to, she took her case to a Saudi court. It ruled in favor of the girl, considering her marriage to the old man “null and void.”

Police reportedly got involved when security authorities in the southern region of Jazan were looking into requests by the girl to help rescue her from her father, who pushed his daughter into marrying a 90-year-old man living in Madina.

Prior to the whole realization that the 17-year-old girl was about to marry a 90-year-old, she was introduced by her father to a handsome 20-year-old he said wanted to marry her. She accepted his proposal and a marriage contract was drawn up and signed the girl’s father.

As reported in Gulf News, when the 17-year-old looked over the marriage contract, she noticed the man’s date of birth. Her father had already signed the contract. It’s a tradition in local areas for the bride’s custodian to sign them. The girl’s parents were divorced, and she was living with her father.

To the bride’s dismay, she learned that the young handsome man was an “accomplice” in the scheme so her father could marry her off to a man living in a different region. The teen told police that she “could not accept the marriage and preferred to abscond from home and ask for legal assistance, particularly that her father had bought her a ticket to go to Madina and join her husband,” the report states.

Social media lashed out at the 17-year-old’s father for “selling his daughter to the old man.” Many feel he should face some kind of legal justice for betraying his daughter’s trust and trying to ruin her life.

Middle East Forum delves into why the “selling” of girls into marriage isn’t considered “barbaric.

“One must understand that the “selling” of girls into marriage is not seen as barbaric. To the contrary, it is viewed as taking care of one’s daughter, protecting her reputation, ensuring that an (under-valued, useless, potentially dangerous) daughter is fed, clothed, and housed and not at her father’s expense. In poverty-stricken, illiterate countries and cultures, marriage is a woman’s only dignified and viable alternative other than prostitution.”

“Further, if a family has land or other economic resources, they will want to keep it “in the family;” for that reason they marry daughters to first cousins. And, if a family is wealthy, they must marry their daughters into similarly wealthy families or lose all honor.”

Will this lawsuit discourage other families from attempting to manipulate girls into marrying older men? The 17-year-old who married the 90-year-old for a nanosecond was fortunate to have the ruling in her favor.

[Images via atik-online.net and Al Arabiya News]