Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Marriage for Money

Guess some people will do just about anything for it - money. Or, in this particular instance a father who had one thing in mind - and it was dollar signs. He married off his disabled daughter. Kind of sort of. The disabled girl didn't actually go off and live happily ever after with the man she married. It was done in name only so that a man who married a Bedouin woman could have an identity card for her. So basically what happened was a case of identity theft givaway.

The girl - who is about 23 at this point, so she's a young woman, not a girl - was 14 when she was in a car accident "in which she sustained an injury to her brain, leaving her in a coma." She came out of the coma, but still has physical damage. Her mother died six years ago, and her aunt has been caring for. The aunt went to go enroll the disabled young woman in a rehabilitation center and that is when she discovered that the young woman "was no longer on her father's family card... but on 'her husband's' family card." [No, I do not know exactly what all this "family card" stuff is all about, but because women here are not allowed to have their own identity, and are required to have a male "vouch" for them, whether it be a father or a husband, this family card is a requirement.]

The aunt has been pursuing the disabled young woman's rights for four years, "arguing back and forth with her father, who did not care for her, especially since she was now no longer getting welfare benefits." The Human Rights Commission got involved and the father has since "admitted marrying [his daughter] off without her consent and for taking advantage of her situation." What a stand-up guy! The father, by the way is in prison, but I'm not sure why [for this? the selling of his daughter's identity?]. The article doesn't say. In the meantime, the young woman's husband has divorced her so that she can now regain her rights - he's a neighbor of mine - he lives in the same small town that we live in. The whole saga is convoluted and just goes to show you how low some people will stoop.

The lowering of the proverbial bar just never ceases to amaze me...

2 comments:

  1. Apparently one cannot get medical treatment without a national ID card (issued to the Man of the Family in KSA). Pretty much the same system our Dear Leader intends for the USA. The people from the Empty Quarter do not appear to officially exist; a decade from now the hills of Idaho and Alaska may be full of Blank People who are not real to the National Health Services.
    It could have been worse. If the man had buried his daughter in the tractless sands she would have been still officialy alive and married. Good thing she had an aunt.

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  2. "women here are not allowed to have their own identity, and are required to have a male "vouch" for them"

    Yep, that's it. The Saudi's are no longer our friends in my opinion.

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