Afghanistan Child Brides Flogged for Fleeing Forced Marriages

When Khadija, 13, and Basgol, 14, escaped from the much older men they'd been forced to marry, they thought the police would help. Instead, the police officers who found the girls fleeing on a bus sent them back to their home village to be brutally flogged for running away from their husbands. The two girls' fate is nothing unusual in Afghanistan, where marriage of girls under 16 and public flogging—though both illegal—remain widespread.