Marry your rapist! A phenomenological analysis of the experiences of women forced to marry their assaulters in their childhood

Abstract

Child sexual abuse (CSA) and child marriage (CM) are two social realities that have drawn and sustained considerable research attention in Nigeria. However, research into the intersections of CSA and CM is scarce. This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of women who suffered CSA and were forced to marry their sexual assaulters in their childhood. Ten survivors were engaged in semi-structured interviews, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was utilized to identify four superordinate themes of participants’ experiences. These themes emphasized sexual abuse repeatedly experienced by participants, forced marriage to their assaulters, childbearing and mothering responsibilities foisted on them in their teenage, and hostilities and intimidation encountered in their marital lives. Participants provided accounts of short- and long-term physical and mental issues trailing their abuse and their coping mechanisms. The need to effectively address the cultural and religious factors that tolerate the practice of marrying CSA victims as a form of assuaging the debilitating effects of sexual assault was stressed.

Keywords

Assaulter child sexual abuse child marriage marry Nigeria rapist

Sexual abuse of children has continued to gain the attention of researchers, frontline workers, law enforcement agencies, religious figures, legislators, policymakers, and the general public in recent years. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, 2022a), at least 120 million girls under the age of 20 years have been forced to engage in sex or perform other sexual acts. Also, recent academic efforts on child sexual abuse (CSA) have offered insights into the prevalence and lifelong adverse effects of CSA on survivors through the analysis of primary data from childcare professionals, health practitioners, and secondary sources (e.g. Belete et al., 2020; Brown, 2019; Lo Iacono et al., 2021; Shrivastava et al., 2017). While these studies have illuminated the abusive outcomes of CSA in many ways, there is a dearth of knowledge on lived experiences of girls who suffered multiple and sustained abuses as children. In particular, the experiences of young girls who were sexually assaulted and forced to marry their assaulters are yet to be empirically developed.

In some societies, there are laws and practices under which a man who commits rape, sexual assault, or other similar acts is exonerated or excused from punishment if he marries or offers to marry his female victim (Duque, 2021). According to UN Population Fund’s (UNFPA, 2021) report, there are 20 countries with ‘marry your rapist’ laws. In these countries, such as Russia, Thailand, and Venezuela, men who sexually assault women can overturn rape convictions if they marry the women or girls they assaulted. In Russia, if the perpetrator of rape has attained 18 years, and has committed statutory rape with a minor below 16 years, he is exempt from punishment, provided that he marries the victim (Johnson, 2021). In Kuwait, all that is required for the offender to marry his victim is the permission of her guardian, while in Thailand, the perpetrator needs to be over 18 years, and the victim must be up to 15 years. However, some countries have had to reconsider or repeal the laws and traditional practices following public outcry or some other major events. For example, Morocco repealed the law in response to widespread outrage that trailed the case of a 16-year-old girl who committed suicide after a court ordered her to marry the man who raped her (Hirsch, 2012). However, there are countries where there are no enabling laws for such practices, but cultural tradition allows men to marry their rape victims.

Nigeria is one of the countries whose legal system has no provision for the ‘marry your rapist’ option but still has communities with a high prevalence of such practices (Sadiq, 2023; UNICEF, 2022a). The practice is hinged on the belief that the stigmatization that comes with rape victimization may hinder the victim from getting a marriage suitor if she does not marry the offender. Also, the practice is traditionally meant to protect the victim from the ‘temptation of further engaging in pre-marital sex’, and protect the image of the victim’s family (Omogbolagun, 2022; Sadiq, 2023). Although there are no reliable statistics on women and girls who were subjected to this practice, reports indicate that girls below the age of 15 years are most vulnerable to being married to their assaulters (Omogbolagun, 2022; UNICEF, 2022a). Despite considerable reports and stakeholders’ description of this practice as harmful, there is a lack of research that unravels the lived experiences of victims, especially those who were raped and married off to their assaulter in their childhood. The dearth of studies on this subject may be due to challenges in recruiting survivors of CSA and child marriages (CM), known to be reticent to be involved in research due to cultural and religious inhibitions (Aborisade et al., 2023; Mobolaji et al., 2020). The purpose of this study is to advance knowledge in the areas of CSA and CM through a phenomenological analysis of the experiences of women who were sexually assaulted in their childhood and thereafter, forced to marry their assaulters.

Feminism, CSA, and CM

Since the 1800s and early 1900s, and up to the 1980s survivors’ movement, feminists have been spearheading a painstaking interrogation and politicization of the social problems of CSA and CM (Freedman, 2013; Stith, 2015). Feminist analysis of CSA in the 1980s grew together with that of rape as participants in consciousness-raising groups discovered that they have been subjected to sexual abuse in their childhood, often by relatives. Consequently, the rape of girls was included in feminist anti-rape activism, theory, self-defence training, and crisis services. Irrespective of age, feminists considered rape as an act of male domination, violence, and power. Therefore, due to their relatively powerless position as minors, underage girls are taken to be doubly vulnerable. Feminists identified multiple forms of power that come into play in the sexual abuse of juvenile females (Stith, 2015). These include patriarchal power, adults’ power over children, societal attitudes towards rape, and the different positions of boys and girls in the public sphere and the educational setting.

Feminists also pointed out how gendered discourses structure and limit adults’ and children’s understanding of sexual violence (Doane and Hodges, 2001; Freedman, 2013). For example, they posited that the meanings of CSA are constructed through discourses that reflect existing power relations and interests (Boyd, 2009; Whittier, 2009). According to Whittier (2009), young adults’ accounts of their childhood and adolescents’ experiences of sexual contact with adults are shaped by their gender. Even gendered power is not effectively subverted by the self-constructed narratives of survivors. Specifically, African feminism views CM as a manifestation of the socio-cultural, patriarchal, and phallocentric shackles that women in the region had been exposed to and that had long tied them down (Ajidahun, 2020; Ogundipe-Leslie, 2007). However, African feminism does not advance the reversal of gender roles or opposition to African men and culture, rather, they advocate for the overhauling and ameliorating of the conditions of women and girls in the continent.

Aside from the field of sociology, feminist literary theorists have largely drawn from feminist trauma theory, which builds on the work of Judith Herman (1981). The theory has been influential in feminist therapy and in organizing survivors of CSA (Doane and Hodges, 2001). Feminist trauma theory linked subjectivity with social inequality and argued that childhood trauma causes both trauma and emotional difficulties for individuals and primes them to be compliant citizens. The theory further posits that the flourishing of assault and trauma is founded on the context of patriarchal family structure, male domination, and larger societal patterns of war and the drive for dominance and control. In Africa, the trajectory of female domination was traced by Nwabueze (2005) to traditional societies where heroic duties such as hunting and warring were reserved for men while women were restricted to domestic duties. Studies that examined CSA and CM from the lens of feminism in Africa, and Nigeria in particular, have identified patriarchy as a significant contributor to the vulnerability of children to different forms of sexual abuse (Aborisade, 2022c; Akudolu et al., 2023; Mobolaji et al., 2020).

However, feminist scholars have offered an important insight into the ways that patriarchal systems orchestrate CM (Allwood and Wadia, 2020; Bessa, 2019; John, 2021). For example, Stith (2015) examined how patriarchal religious systems negatively impact girls’ lives. She particularly formulates questions on how the Roman Catholic ritual of first communion may initiate girls into patriarchal disempowerment. She further postulates that the appropriation of girls’ selfhood into the robes of ‘child bride’ and ‘mother’ is a critical component of the patriarchal religious construct. However, Gómez (2023) describes CM as a form of gender and child-specific persecution that places girls in situations of dependency, limiting their human rights – right to life, liberty, and security.

CSA and child (forced) marriage in Nigeria

In 2018, UNICEF listed Nigeria among the worst countries in the world for children or for a child to be born. This uncomplimentary rating was premised on the multifaceted challenges that children are made to face in the country which include high infant mortality, CSA, child labour, child (forced) marriage, school dropout, child trafficking, child harvesting (baby factory), and female genital mutilation (FGM) (Aborisade, 2021a; Aborisade and Oshileye, 2020). Among these problems, CSA and CM are considered as having the most devastating effects on the lives of girls and women (Allwood and Wadia, 2020). Several actions connote sexual abuse of the underaged and are recognized as such under Nigerian law. However, rape is the most widely known and reported form of sexual abuse against children. Rape, under Section 357 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, is defined as having unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman or girl, without her consent, or where the consent was not freely given, or was given as a result of fraudulent misrepresentation. Meanwhile, Section 221 of the Code provides defilement of girls below 16 years, as an offence of misdemeanour liable to imprisonment of 2 years. For defilement of girls below 13 years, it is an offence of felony under Section 218 that attracts imprisonment for life.

Aside from the local laws, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act in 2003, which requires that the well-being of every child must be respected and protected. The Act provides that sex with a child is considered rape, and anyone who has sexual intercourse with a child is liable to life imprisonment upon conviction. However, 12 northern states, including Bauchi, Yobe, Sokoto, Adamawa, Borno, Zamfara, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa, Kaduna, and Kano, are yet to accept and domesticate the Act (UNICEF, 2022b). The reasons mainly adduced for the non-adoption of the Act by the states are cultural and religious practices that contradict the dictates of the Act. Some of the socioreligious practices that negate the dictates of the Act are CM, child labour, FGM, and almajiri practice – an Islamic education system where children are subjected to begging for alms to cater for themselves and their teachers in the process of learning the Quran. According to a report by Save the Children International (2021), 48% of girls in northern Nigeria get married before the age of 15 years, while 78% of them are married by the age of 18 years.

According to UNICEF (2022a), Nigeria is the country with the highest number of child brides in West and Central Africa, having 23.6 million girls married before attaining the legal age of 18 years. Also, 10.3 million girls were reported to be married before attaining 15 years, with a projection of 29 million child brides for the country by the year 2050. According to Mobolaji et al. (2020), the practice of CM is mainly informed by the values placed on the virginity of brides and to ensure a long time of fertility to produce offspring. However, empirical studies have pointed out the social, physical, emotional, and other forms of consequences that result from CM for the child bride which include vesicovaginal fistula, sexually transmitted infections, cervical cancer, high blood pressure, postpartum depression, and gender-based violence (Anozie et al., 2018; Fan and Koski, 2022).

In northern Nigeria, incidents of CM are reported to be contracted in various forms. There are cases where non-Muslim girls are abducted, Islamized, and forcefully married off by district heads or community/religious leaders without the consent of the girl’s parents or guardians (Omogbolagun, 2022). In such cases, the parents are left to use whatever means available to them to rescue the girl from the ‘husband’ and the authorities that married them off. According to Omogbolagun, this practice has the backing of top religious and community leaders, which makes it often difficult for families to rescue the victims. Similarly, terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram, have abducted girls from different parts of Northern Nigeria to marry them (Sahara Reporters, 2021). Finally, in cases of rape against underage girls by an adult, marriage is perceived as an agreeable solution that is mutually beneficial to both the assaulter and the victim’s family (Sadiq, 2023). By marrying the victim, the assaulter can escape prosecution, while the victim’s family is shielded from shame and stigma. Aside from protection from rape scandals, victims’ families also consider marriage a desirable option to ‘protect’ the girl victim from the temptation of engaging in pre-marital sex.

The present study

The current study, which represents one of the first attempts at examining childhood experiences of rape and forced marriage, hopes to fill existing gaps in research and literature on the intersections of CSA and CM. By directly eliciting personal accounts of victims’ experience of CSA and forced marriage in their childhood, a detailed and unique data set of survivors’ narratives of childhood sexual victimizations is offered. Following a phenomenological framework, the study explores (1) survivors’ accounts of rape and the immediate post-rape social reactions, (2) narratives of the events that culminated in their forced marriages to their assaulters, (3) their lived experiences of marriage in their childhood, and the challenges they faced in their marital lives, and (4) their coping mechanisms and pathways to exit the marriage.

Methods

The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design to understand and describe the intersection of CSA and CM as a double dose of victimization. The study aimed to gain deeper insights into how CSA and CM victims understand their experiences by ensuring that they are given sufficient attention to provide in-depth experiential accounts of their experiences from childhood to adulthood.

Ethical considerations

Approval to conduct the study was received from the Faculty of Social Sciences Ethics Committee of the authors’ university. Throughout the process of recruiting and interviewing the participants, the interviewers emphasized the voluntary nature of the study. Participants were given both digital and hard copies of informed consent forms, containing study information once they accepted participation in the study. In the form, assurances of confidentiality and anonymity were stated, as well as participants’ right to withdraw from the interview at any point. As the interviews proceeded, interviewers paid attention to any signs of distress from the participants. Also, interviewers periodically asked participants if they were happy and comfortable to continue with the interview. At the end of each interview, participants were carefully debriefed. Although advocacy groups assisted in establishing contacts with potential participants and soliciting participation they were neither involved in the interviewing nor allowed access to the data collected from participants.

Procedures

The community of interest for this study is usually a hard-to-reach group due to the sensitive nature of the research. Therefore, to recruit participants, the researchers approached women advocacy groups within Lagos State to advertise the study with their clients and invite women who had experienced forced marriage to men who sexually assaulted them in their childhood. The Lagos-based advocacy groups assisted in reaching out to women advocates and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) across the country to solicit participation in the study. Over a period of 8 months (May 2022 to December 2022), 16 women who fitted the criteria were contacted through the advocacy groups, however, only 10 of them accepted to be part of the study. Due to geographical distance and other inhibitions, only three interviews were conducted face to face, while seven video interviews were conducted through WhatsApp and Zoom. The participants who took part in the virtual interviews were informed about the importance of being alone during interviewing sessions, while researchers ensured utmost privacy during the face-to-face interviews.

Participants took part in in-depth interviews that followed semi-structured protocols designed to explore lived experiences of women who were compelled to marry the men who had sexually assaulted them in their childhood (see Table 1). The interview enabled a natural flow of conversation between the interviewers and participants, especially on participants’ experience of rape, societal reaction, marriage as the ‘only option’, and experiences as a married girl. The research team consisted of the authors (male and female), and two female assistants who are experienced in conducting interviews. Eight participants chose to be interviewed by female interviewers. However, we were unable to identify differential responses based on gender matches between participants and interviewers. The interviews ranged from 1 hour 20 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes. All participants allowed audio recording of the interview proceedings, therefore, a voice recording device was used for this purpose. Consequently, recordings were transcribed verbatim and anonymized transcripts were imported into NVivo 12 version.

Table 1.

Interview schedule with representative questions.

Sections	Representative questions
Initial building of rapport	How are you? How do you consider Nigeria to be faring at the moment? How is life treating you? (e.g. your job, trade, social life, family)
Free recall about CSA and CM experiences	Thank you for sharing your views about Nigeria and your personal life. Now, I would like to ask you to freely share your childhood experience if you wouldn’t mind. However, if you will prefer I ask later, don’t worry, we can talk about other things in the meantime.
Marital life, childbearing and mothering	Thank you for sharing your childhood experience. Now I will like you to focus on your life as a young married woman. Tell me about your experience as a young pregnant woman, during childbirth and as a mother.
Challenges in seeking help and reporting	So, while you went through these experiences, did you ever considered telling someone other than your friends and family members about it. Did you consider reporting to the police? Were there problems or challenges that made it difficult for you to report to the police or other people who could help?
Decision and processing in exiting marriage	What were the circumstances that led to your decisions to leave the marriage? Tell me about the situations and events that led to the end of your marriage or your separation from your husband. Tell me about the challenges you experienced during this period.
Conclusion	So, how are you doing now? Looking at your past experience, what are your views, if any, about child sexual abuse, the practice of marrying the assaulter to correct the wrong of CSA, and child marriage as a cultural practice? Do you have any advice to offer to women who experienced this type of crime in their childhood?

CSA: child sexual abuse; CM: child marriage.

Study participants

The study deployed a purposive technique to identify and recruit participants for the study, as often recommended in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) studies (Bernard, 2006; Nizza et al., 2021). In using purposive sampling for this IPA study, the range of variation and focus on common patterns of CSA was narrowed, while the uniqueness of victims’ accounts of being forced into marriage to their assaulters was recognized and acknowledged. This method is supported by Pietkiewicz and Smith (2014) who recommend that IPA studies should be conducted with small samples (<12) to yield the level of depth and detail needed to give voice to the lived experiences of participants.

Ten participants between the ages of 26 and 41 years were interviewed. Only three participants were residents of Lagos state and within the southwestern part of Nigeria. The other seven participants stayed in Kano (2) and Katsina states in the northwest, and Kaduna (2), Benue, and Niger states in the northcentral parts of the country. However, all participants stated these states were not their states of origin or residence in their childhood where they suffered abuse. The participants were ethnically homogeneous, as all of them except one identified with Hausa/Fulani, one of the three ethnic majority groups in Nigeria. Their age at the time of suffering sexual assault ranged from 11 to 14 years, which was about the same age they were made to marry their assaulters, except for two participants who married about a year later. Participants left the marriage to their assaulters after staying for between 4 and 11 years. Their reasons for leaving the marriages included their husband’s death, domestic violence, and irreconcilable differences. Table 2 provides demographic information about the study participants.

Table 2.

Demographic characteristics of study participants.

Pseudonym	Age	Ethnicity	Religion	Education	Age at sexual assault	Age at marriage	Estimated age of assaulter	Pre-assault relationship with assaulter	Assault case reported to the police (yes/no)	Current marital status with assaulter	No of years in marriage to the assaulter
Halima	38	Hausa	Muslim	No Formal	11	12	40–45	Family friend	No	Widow	6
Aisha	31	Hausa	Muslim	Primary	13	13	42	Teacher	Yes	Divorced	9
Hadiza	29	Fulani	Muslim	No formal	14	14	38	Teacher	Yes	Separated	10
Hajia	26	Hausa	Christian	No formal	12	12	52	Neighbour	Yes	Widow	8
Krishna	35	Hausa	Muslim	Primary	13	13	49	Teacher	No	Widow	6
Aisha 2	41	Hausa	Muslim	Secondary	14	15	50–52	Teacher	No	Separated	10
Alimah	35	Kanuri	Muslim	Secondary	14	14	56	Village head	No	Separated	7
Ameerah	34	Hausa	Muslim	Primary	11	11	61	Teacher	No	Widow	14
Naimat	32	Fulani	Muslim	No formal	12	12	44	Teacher	No	Separated	11
Rukayat	39	Fulani	Muslim	No formal	13	13	47	Neighbour	Yes	Separated	12

Data analysis: IPA

The analysis followed the IPA tradition within qualitative research. This has to do with the exploration and examination of the lived experiences of participants, and how they ‘make sense’ and interpret the events in their lives in the context of a particular phenomenon (Smith et al., 2022). Therefore, IPA analysis was considered to be suitable for accessing the hidden voices of women who suffered a combination of CSA and CM in their childhood by ‘metaphorically shining a light’ on areas of a double dose of child maltreatment which is rarely researched (Oxley, 2016). Efforts were made by the researcher to adhere to IPA philosophical principles at all times. After transcribing the audio recordings, the analysis conformed to a four-stage process which was (1) interpretative reading and annotations, (2) generating codes and identification of themes, (3) finding relationships and clustering into master themes, and (4) comparing master themes across the sample to identify overarching superordinate themes and subthemes (Pietkiewicz and Smith, 2014).

At the end of the initial annotation, in which preliminary themes were coded and nested, the authors, their research assistants, and two independent coders engaged in in-depth discussion to examine and refine personal experiential themes that were identified for each account. This was a collaborative and reiterative process that sought to align with the hermeneutic foundations of IPA in ensuring that assumptions were accounted for at every interpretative stage. After summarizing and nesting related themes, the authors identified master themes for each account, which were also assessed by independent coders. Involving independent coders to examine individually is informed by the idiographic foundations of IPA, focusing on one specific case at a time. At the end of this routine for all interviews, we generated a master table of themes representative of the total generated data. Then, master themes were compared across different transcripts and we agreed on superordinate themes that evolved from the experiences of participants.

Results

The accounts of the participants on their childhood experiences of CSA and CM led to the identification of four superordinate themes: (1) sexual assault, (2) marrying the assaulter, (3) marital life, and (4) coping mechanisms and exiting the marriage.

Theme 1: sexual assault

All participants were below the age of 15 when they experienced rape by male adults that prompted their marriage to the perpetrators. They explained the circumstances leading to their assault, their relationship with the perpetrators, and their social reactions. Analysis of participants’ narratives revealed three subthemes: incidents of rape, relationships with assaulters, and social reactions.

Incidents of rape

All participants stated that their experience of rape as children, which prompted their forced marriage, was their first ever sexual intercourse. They described that their assaulters had penetrative sex with them and they lost their virginity in the process. The assaults were committed in schools (5), on bush paths (2), in perpetrators’ residences (2), and in an uncompleted building. They all stated that perpetrators resorted to the use of physical violence to subdue them and gain virginal penetration. The rape process was described as ‘extremely painful’ with seven of the participants needing medical attention, out of which five of them were admitted to medical facilities for 2–9 days. Some of them pointed out that perpetrators were brutal in attacking them because they (participants) had earlier resisted their advances when it became clear they intended to have sex with them. ‘Immediately he started removing my dress, I do not need to be told that he wanted to have sex with me, I held his hand but he slapped me’, Alimah stated.

Relationships with assaulters

The perpetrators of CSA against the study sample were all familiar faces to the victims before the incidents. Participants identified their assaulters as their teachers (6) – in Islamic and conventional schools, neighbours (2), family friend, and district (village) head. Not only were their assaulters known to them, eight participants confirmed that the perpetrators were also known to their parents/family members prior to the incidents. ‘It was on the basis of my familiarity with him that I entered his house when he invited me on my way from school on that day’, Hajia submitted.

They all identified their assaulters to be married to a minimum of two women at the time of their assault. Three participants indicated that they were friends with their assaulters’ children who were older than them in age before the incident. Only two participants expressed that they were privy to their assaulters’ sexual advances towards them which they always rebuffed before they were eventually raped. One of these two participants confirmed that her assaulter approached her parents about marrying her but his proposal was declined: ‘My father told him he wants me to complete my secondary education before marriage is entertained’, Rukayat stated.

Social reactions

Four participants indicated that their parents and guardians reported the rape cases officially to the police, especially as they sustained serious injuries from the experiences. Three participants stated that their cases were reported to the district heads, while the parents of two participants reported the cases to Islamic council/religious heads within their communities. Three of the four participants whose cases were reported to the police indicated that their parents were pressured into withdrawing their cases from the police for ‘amicable resolution’. Islamic scholars and community chiefs were engaged to persuade their parents to withdraw their cases from the police. On the part of the fourth participant whose case was with the police, her parents became fed up with the inaction of the police in investigating the case and officers’ incessant financial demands under the guise of collecting evidence.

Participants reported that their networks of friends, schoolmates, families, and neighbours initially expressed sympathy after the incidents. However, they described how these sympathies subsided and comments questioning their future marital lives were being made.

Each time people call me to ask about how the rape happened, what will the future now hold for me concerning marriage and having children. How I will be able to gain the respect of community members as a child who started having sex at young age . . . as if I voluntarily had sex with the man. (Ameerah, raped and married off at age 11)

Ameerah’s experience of lack of empathy was shared by other participants, with some of them expressing that those that showed concerns on their social networks are often quick to point out the desirability of negotiating marriages with their assaulters as a quick and worthy solution. Participants expressed that they were not surprised that the ‘marry the assaulter’ option was commonly discussed by their social network as a post-assault solution because it is a popular practice in their communities before their own experience.

To be sincere, it is a common thing and almost a norm in my community. It is often used if the girl or girl’s parents decline the marriage proposal. So, they use this method to force the girl or the parents to accept the marriage. It is only on a few occasions that the parents still insist that the marriage cannot happen. In this case, the girl may be taken away from the community to avoid being a subject of social ridicule. (Aisha)

From the narratives of the participants, assaulted girls who remain unmarried will be subjected to stigmatization, social isolation, and other social backlashes: ‘she will be asked to leave Islamic schools, parents will not want their daughters to associate with her, married women will not want her near their husbands and so on’.

Theme 2: marrying the assaulter

The participants described a series of complex, emotional, and debilitating processes that led to their eventual forced marriages to their assaulters within 3–15 months from the date of their rape. Indeed, participants’ accounts indicated how they felt that their emotional well-being and human rights were compromised by the assaulters, their parents, authority figures, and society at large. In the process, they described progressions of negative emotions and despair as they were unceremoniously handed over to their assaulters as wives without any form of recourse to how they felt about the decisions made on their behalf. Their narratives were analysed and separated into the following subthemes: marriage negotiation, communicating the decisions, and ceremony.

Marriage negotiation

None of the cases of rape against the participants got to the judicial level despite four cases being reported to the police. The main negotiators for marriage as a way of assuaging the rape cases on the part of the offenders were village heads and religious leaders. Participants identified the main reasons adduced for marriage as the need to protect them from social stigma, prevent further sexual assault and pre-marital sex, and save their family name from being subjected to disrepute. Others include the need to ‘make the best out of the unfavourable situation’ by venturing into early childbearing responsibilities and motherhood, which is socially perceived as beneficial for women. According to participants, religious and cultural stances were predominantly invoked during negotiations to substantiate the need for their parents/guardians to submit to the marriage option. However, on the part of three participants, it was their parents that requested that their assaulters marry them as a condition for reaching a truce in their assault cases.

Communicating the decision

Participants described the process of parents/guardians communicating the decision to marry them to their assaulters as the most distressing and emotionally depressing moments of the entire process. They described that their parents/guardians’ persuasive efforts at making them agree to the marriages made them feel like their psychological and emotional being were invaded and attacked. ‘As young as I was then, it was as if I was about to be sold into slavery and the end of my hopes of becoming someone in life’, Naimat stated. She mentioned that her negative perception of marriage to her assaulter was informed by a series of unpleasant stories that often trail such marriages. ‘I have heard my mother and her friends talk about the troubles such young girls go through in their husbands’ homes’.

Participants expressed that while their mothers expressed sadness in breaking the news of marriage to them and soliciting their acceptance, fathers largely showed little or no empathy. ‘He just walked in and told me point-blank, “Halima we have settled your matter, you are going to marry that man” he said without an iota of feelings’. Three participants who were from polygamous homes with an average of 10 siblings attributed their fathers’ lack of empathy to having many children. ‘Why will he be bothered, while I am an only child to my mother, my father had 13 children from six wives at that time’. Four participants indicated that part of the conditions discussed at the time of negotiating their marriages was that their husbands will not have further sex with them until they are 15 years. However, they all stated that these promises were not kept as their husbands had sex with them the same day/week they arrived at their matrimonial homes.

Ceremony

Participants described their marriage ceremonies as devoid of the usual pomp and pageantry that usually characterize such events in their communities. This, according to the study sample, aggravated their fears about their future as married women. They reported that their parents/guardians collected items as compensation from their assaulters for defiling (raping) them before marriage. These included food items, local non-alcoholic beverages, hides and skins, local perfumes, religious items, clothing, and money. Halima expressed that the value of the entire items brought for her parents seriously impacted her self-esteem. ‘I felt worthless when I did the mental calculation of the value of the items they brought and it was not up to ₦20,000 ($44)’. Participants remarked that the value of the items brought as bride price for their marriage was low because they were not getting married as virgins. ‘In our community, girls that marry as virgins are showered with gifts from husbands’ family and community people’. Participants stated that they were able to notice palpable fears, sadness, and concern in the faces of their family members all through the ceremony which worsened their feelings.

Theme 3: marital life

All participants were married into polygamous family settings. The man with the least number of wives among the assaulter/husband had two wives before marriage to the victim, while the village head who assaulted 14-year-old Alimah initially had six wives. Participants were more comfortable and focused on describing the challenges in their marital lives. The narratives they shared were separated and analysed in the following subthemes: sexual abuse, childbearing and mothering, hostility and intimidation, and spousal abuse/violence.

Sexual abuse

All participants narrated troublesome sexual experiences with their husbands. They reported being treated like sexual slaves as husbands only approached them whenever they had sexual urges. ‘He does not engage in any useful discussion with me, he will only come to satisfy his sexual desire . . . he just satisfies himself and leaves immediately’, Ameerah said. Five participants stated that there were occasions when their husbands resorted to physical violence and brute force in having sexual intercourse. Circumstances that made participants resist sexual advances which made their husbands resort to violence include being in their menstrual cycle, nursing tears and pain in their vagina, after childbirth, having body aches or other illnesses, and while sleeping. On these occasions, they reported sustaining injuries that ranged from bruises, dislocation of the wrist bone, head injury, severe body pain, and vaginal bruises.

Sexual lives with their husbands were described as traumatic and distressful. Ameerah noted that her husband who was in his 60s at the time, was incapable of engaging in prolonged and impactful sex, therefore, he often resorts to inflicting injuries on her and derives sexual satisfaction when she’s writhing in pain.

Childbearing and mothering

Seven participants indicated that one of the key purposes of their husbands’ sustained sexual intercourse with them was to prove their fertility was intact in their old age. In this, their husbands largely succeeded, as eight participants had children and spoke about their childbearing and mothering experiences. The eight participants got pregnant for the first time in their marriage between the ages of 13 and 15 years. They reported having several adverse medical conditions right from the early period of their pregnancies. Although they could not remember or were not specifically told of some of their ailments at the time, they reported experiencing miscarriages, severe bleeding, and prolonged labour. They mostly complained of not having adequate prenatal care, as their husbands complained of the cost and rather subjected them to alternative medicine, except when complications arose. Furthermore, they reported preterm delivery, their babies suffered low birth weight, and other severe neonatal conditions. Two participants reported their babies died shortly after birth, although they both went on to have children who survived. The eight participants reported having between two and five children for their estranged husbands.

On delivery, three participants reported they could not breastfeed their babies until weeks and months later as they suffered low milk supply and fungal infection. They also expressed challenges in managing their health and that of their children at an early stage after birth as they received little or no help from adults (co-wives and their families). Four participants reported physical and mental health problems that resulted from their childbirth and the challenges they had to face. They identified high blood pressure, hypertension, preeclampsia, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Also, they reported symptoms that implied postpartum depression which include mood swings, anxiety, crying spells, and having difficulty bonding with their babies.

Hostility and intimidation

Participants indicated they contended with multiple forms of hostility and intimidation from their co-wives and their (co-wives’) children. Six of them described how their fellow wives treated them as ‘slaves’ and ‘children’ despite their status as wives. They reported being subjected to physical and emotional violence at regular intervals. ‘They are always eager to make me feel inferior and only at the same level as their maids’. ‘Sometimes, they ask their children to beat me up and put me in my place’. ‘There were several times I was made to wash dishes for everyone including that of their children’. ‘Their children are allowed to be rude and treat me scornfully even in the presence of their father who often laughs when they do these things’. Participants reported that co-wives, especially the elderly ones, often subject them to corporal punishments under the belief that it is their (co-wives’) responsibility to train them to become mature wives.

Spousal abuse/violence

Specific mentions and descriptions of the various forms of abuse and violence meted out to participants by their husbands were made. Aside from the sexual abuse that had been reported, participants described physical, social, emotional, psychological, economic, and spiritual forms of abuse/violence. They reported physical violence to include beating, flogging, and hitting with sticks, belts, kitchen utensils, and other materials. These caused various degrees of injuries. They attributed their husbands’ constant physical violence to their inability to measure up to their senior wives’ standards in home management, understanding husband–wife relationships, emotional maturity, and personal hygiene. ‘He wants me to know everything a woman should know, forgetting that I was just a child that was still learning when he married me’. The emotional abuse suffered by the participants was reported to include constant criticism, name-calling, curses, mocking, embarrassment, and attacking their self-worth.

Social abuse suffered by participants included keeping them isolated from friends and families, controlling every aspect of their activities or movements, and humiliating or insulting them in public. They are also psychologically abused in the form of intimidation, issuing threats of harm, isolating, and instilling fear in them. Reports of economic abuse in the form of making them financially dependent, denying them resources for healthy living, and preventing them from working and continuing their education were made. Hajia, who was a Christian at the time she was abused and married, reported spiritual abuse as she was forcefully converted into Islam and coerced into performing Islamic rituals against her will.

Theme 4: coping mechanisms and exiting marriage

All participants of the study had exited their marriages to their childhood assaulters at the time of this study. While six of them left through divorce or separation, four left as widows after the death of their husbands. Their marriages (to their assaulters) were reported to have lasted between 6 and 14 years, while two of them remarried after ending their first marriages. They reported different methods of coping with their marriages to their assaulters and circumstances that culminated in their eventual exit. These are presented in the following subthemes: coping, seeking help and exiting marriage, and post-marriage conditions.

Coping

Participants were not conscious of any method they deployed to cope with troubled conditions in their marital lives. However, they described crying, sleeping, using drugs, and reading as activities they commonly engage in immediately after they suffered any form of abuse. Some of them relied on emotional support from their husbands’ children and wives who periodically sympathized with them. Despite their religious inclinations that forbid the consumption of alcohol, some of them confessed they developed the habit of drinking local alcoholic beverages to suppress their negative emotions on several occasions. Two of them reported engaging in extra-marital affairs with men that offered them emotional support and sexual satisfaction.

Seeking help and exiting marriage

Aside from four participants that left their marriages due to the death of their husbands, three of them were rescued by women advocacy groups after they contacted them for help, while the remaining three ran away from their marriages on their own. The three that ran away eventually sought help from women advocacy groups to ensure their safety. The divorce proceedings for the only participant who got an official divorce from her marriage were initiated by a women advocacy group, while three participants expressed that their divorce proceedings were ongoing at the time of data collection. All participants reported receiving therapeutic, legal, and financial support from the advocacy groups.

Circumstances that led to their eventual exit from their marriages were reported to include unbearable physical and other forms of violence/abuse, effects of enlightenment campaign programmes they witnessed, advice from their social networks, and self-convictions. On the events that led to marriage exit for one of those whose husbands died, Ameerah reported she might be partly responsible for the death of her husband. She was one of those who engaged in extramarital affairs as a coping measure with her troubled marriage. She stated that her husband had a heart attack on the day he discovered that her last child (of the three she had for him) was not his biological child. The heart failure eventually led to his death 2 days after. She was later rescued by an NGO as she was initially condemned to be stoned to death by the village council. After her rescue, she relocated to Lagos with her children under the protection of the NGO.

Post-marriage conditions

All participants had left the villages and towns where they had lived with their husbands. Some of them reported they were not allowed custody of their children, including one of those whose husband is deceased. She stated that her in-laws refused her custody of her three children under the claim that ‘I did not come with the children to their family at the time I was married’. However, she indicated that a women advocacy group is supporting her to win the custody of her children. Participants reported nursing different forms of physical and mental health problems including PTSD since leaving their marriages. ‘I still have flashes of memory of flogging and different forms of abuse whenever I close my eyes to sleep’, Aisha-2 stated. This is despite leaving her marriage 3 years before the interview. Five of them indicated they had started trading and vocational services after undergoing training facilitated by NGOs. They expressed satisfaction in being financially independent and emotionally stable; however, they reported having difficulties in engaging in romantic relationships with men. Hajia, now 26 years, reported she has reconverted to Christianity and was preparing to write qualifying examinations to gain admission into tertiary institutions at the time of the interview.

Discussion

This study has explored the lived experiences of women who were sexually assaulted as children and made to marry the men who assaulted them. Participants’ experiences of CSA and CM were described using four superordinate themes: (1) sexual assault, (2) marrying the assaulter, (3) marital life, and (4) coping mechanisms and exiting the marriage. The description of their experiences highlighted the uniqueness of abusive experiences and gross denial of human rights of survivors of both CSA and CM, which until now, have not been empirically investigated in combination. There were variations in participants’ experiences based on their age at the time of the rape incidents, marital challenges, childbearing issues, gender-based violence, and circumstances that informed exiting marriage. Despite these divergences in the study sample, there were areas of convergence bordering on the intersections of CSA and CM which suggest the need for specific attention to be paid to CSA/CM as a distinct form of sustained child abuse, and that it is imperative for support to be constructed with a recognition of these peculiarities.

Incidents of sexual assault (Theme 1) described participants’ pathways into child (forced) marriage, which aligns with studies on the patterns, vulnerabilities of underage, offender types, and societal prejudice against victims of CSA (Aborisade, 2022a; Aborisade and Fayemi, 2015; Omogbolagun, 2022; Sadiq, 2023). Findings from this study also corroborate existing studies that child sexual offenders are often familiar to their victims (Aborisade et al., 2018; Shrivastava et al., 2017). The study participants described several ways in which familiarity with their assaulters made them vulnerable to being assaulted. Also, the demography of offenders reveals that men of different social standings are involved in the menace, including teachers and community heads. The findings from this study reiterate the reports of previous studies on the enduring reluctance of rape victims and their families in reporting their victimization to the police to seek justice (Aborisade, 2021b, 2022b, 2023; Ajayi et al., 2022). The failure to report cases to the police or reluctance to prosecute cases for those who reported, partly due to societal pressure, may have informed the settling for the ‘marry the rapist’ option taken (or proposed) by victims’ families.

Survivors’ accounts reflect a pattern of deliberate sexual assault targeted at underage girls to coerce them and their families into accepting marriage by intending but undesired potential grooms. These men take advantage of negative social reactions that trail sexual victimization, in which victims and their families are subjected to social stigma and isolation. Prior to their sexual assault, some participants indicated their assaulters’ expression of interest in dating/marrying them which they rebuffed. Therefore, as found in the study, offenders may have adopted the rape option as a form of pressure to force girls and their families into accepting the marriage. Extant studies on sexual violence in Nigeria have commonly described socially prejudicial attitudes towards sexual victimization as having a strong influence on survivors’ reporting behaviour (Aborisade, 2021b, 2022b; Ajayi et al., 2022). However, while there are hardly any reports suggesting incidents of female adults being compelled to marry their assaulters as part of the resolution of rape cases, underage females are reported to be forced into such marriages (Mobolaji et al., 2020; Omogbolagun, 2022; Sadiq, 2023).

Theme 2 described the processes of negotiating survivors’ marriages to the men that sexually assaulted them. All participants reported that decisions to marry them to their assaulters were made on their behalf without considering their personal feelings. As this negates the dictates of the Child Rights Act to which Nigeria is a signatory, it also affirms the report of UNICEF which listed Nigeria among the worst countries in the world for children or for a child to be born (UNICEF, 2018). Marriages to child survivors of sexual assault were contracted and agreed upon by members of offenders’ and survivors’ families to avoid social backlash. This is premised on cultural values that emphasize women’s virginity at the time of marriage (Omogbolagun, 2022). Therefore, women who suffered sexual abuse face social stigmatization that may hinder them from getting suitors for marriage in their community. The study found that survivors faced further discrimination and humiliation at the point of marriage as they do not get the same ceremonial benefits that are accrued to marriages to virgins. Participants’ description of emotional despair in the process of their marriages stands to negatively impact their mental health as they proceeded into their marital lives (Allwood and Wadia, 2020; Belete et al., 2020; Fan and Koski, 2022).

Participants’ marital lives (Theme 3) were characterized by multiple cases of sexual abuse, challenges in childbearing and mothering because they were underage, hostilities, intimidation and incessant violence from their spouses. In particular, this study found support in previous studies that asserted that preference for CM in Northern parts of Nigeria is premised on the belief that younger girls possess a higher level of fertility (Mobolaji et al., 2020; Omogbolagun, 2022; Sadiq, 2023). Participants expressed that their husbands’ sexual intercourse with them at marriage was mainly for the purpose of proving their fertility in childbearing. Also, the process of carrying a pregnancy to maturity and delivering their babies was described as problematic. They faced physical and mental health challenges that supported literature on the health consequences of teenage pregnancies (Kumar and Huang, 2021).

One of the novelties of this study is the unveiling of the hostilities and intimidation that child brides are exposed to in polygamous family settings. Participants described gruesome treatments meted out to them by older co-wives and their children in an apparent superiority battle for husbands’ attention and share of family economic resources. This situation reeks of another dimension of domestic abuse that has not been well documented by existing studies. Participants described being subjected to physical and emotional violence that has the potential of inflicting injuries with long-term effects on them (Belete et al., 2020; Fan and Koski, 2022; Gómez, 2023). In alignment with the literature on the vulnerability of child brides to spousal violence (Gómez, 2023; John, 2021; Omogbolagun, 2022), participants reported severe and incessant incidents of physical violence perpetrated by their husbands. They attributed reasons for such violence to failure in meeting up to husbands’ expectations of mature behaviour, display of sexual dexterity, and emotional intelligence in their matrimonial affairs. Other forms of violence/abuse such as social, emotional, sexual, and economic violence were reported with their debilitating effects on the participants.

On their coping with marriages under such circumstances in their childhood and decisions to seek help and exit marriages (Theme 4), participants’ experiences varied. The use of drugs, crying for long periods, reading, and engaging in extramarital affairs were common coping measures mentioned by participants. While studies have considerably noted drug consumption, crying as an emotional release of endorphins, and reading as conventional methods of coping with problematic situations (Sharma and Khokhar, 2022), engagement in extramarital affairs as a coping mechanism is underdeveloped in literature on coping with abusive marriages. Findings also support studies that affirmed the enduring reluctance of women who suffer spousal abuses in Nigeria to officially seek help (Aborisade, 2021b; Aborisade et al., 2023; Omogbolagun, 2022). This is particularly the case with married women who are reported to be handicapped in reporting their victimization by sociocultural and religious doctrines (Aborisade, 2023; Benebo et al., 2018). Only three of the study sample originally sought the assistance of women advocacy groups to end their problematic marriages. However, participants expressed relief to be free from their abusive marriages, although they reported they were still smarting from their traumatic experiences.

Implications and recommendations

The social acceptance of marriage as a form of assuaging the debilitating effects of sexual assault, especially for the underage, stress the importance of recognizing the re-traumatization and multiple cases of abuse children are exposed to in societies where these practices are tolerated. Such practices underline feminists’ position that meanings of CSA are constructed through discourses that reflect existing power relations and interests (Boyd, 2009; Whittier, 2009). Findings from this study align with the argument of feminist trauma theory, as social and gender inequality were found to play major roles in subjecting young girls and their parents/guardians to complying with unfavourable social conditions that cause emotional difficulties. As the theory further posits, male domination, the patriarchal family structure, and patriarchal religious systems were found to be important factors in the flourishing of assault and trauma for young girls in the communities of the study sample.

The findings from this study stress the need for policymakers and interventionists to understand the scale of the problem of child abuse in certain regions and societies in Nigeria. While attention has been considerably focused on CSA and CM as stand-alone challenges that children are exposed to in Nigeria, this study brings to the fore multifaceted adverse conditions requiring intensified effort to address. Without mincing words, there is a need for all northern states, especially the 12 states yet to adopt the Child Rights Act, to consider, sign, and fully implement the dictates of the Act for the protection of children. All socio-religious practices that negate children’s positive development in these states should be abolished. Religious and community leaders should not only be prohibited from committing and encouraging the practice of marrying CSA victims, but they should also be tasked with the responsibility of educating their communities on the ills of CSA and CM.

The government and nongovernment bodies must enlighten rural dwellers on the need to report any form of child abuse to the police and other designated agencies. Also, law enforcement agencies should ensure they live up to the expectations of complainants in processing cases of sexual and other forms of abuse at the judicial level. Societal prejudicial attitudes towards rape victims should be addressed through public enlightenment and education. Women who suffer a combination of CSA and forced marriage to their assaulters may also suffer aggravated physical and psychological damage that requires specialized medical and therapeutic attention. Therefore, this study calls for appropriate, proportional, and informed support within the sexual violence and child support sectors, that matches both the specific and generic demands of all groups of survivors and their varied experiences.

To broaden our understanding of socioreligious factors driving CSA and CM in Nigerian societies and elsewhere, further research that will triangulate the perspectives of religious community members, and leaders with that of perpetrators is required. Also, specific research attention is needed on law enforcement agents as first responders in respect of their capacity to manage CSA cases, especially in attending to survivors’ psychological needs, ensuring justice is served, and enhancing legitimacy among survivors of sexual violence.

Study limitations

Although the study presented a heterogeneous sample in respect of states and communities in the northern parts of Nigeria and abusive experiences, in other ways, the sample was far too homogeneous. This is premised on the belief that since CSA and CM have been reported in other parts of the country, incidents of CMs to sexual abusers in southern states may also be worthy of empirical investigation. Furthermore, the study sample were all under the support system of advocacy groups at the time of data collection, so it will be worthwhile to consider the accounts of those who are yet to seek or are unable to get help. It is possible that the women who were reached through the NGOs were untypical of the total (who may be more affected by CSA and CM, or more fearful to share their experiences). Finally, the participants narrated experiences that dated back to when some of them were 11 years old. The validity of their responses to interview questions may be limited by their ability to recall childhood memory.

Conclusion

This study offers detailed and insightful lived experiences of women who suffered double victimization of CSA and CM in their childhood. The themes highlight the existence of the debilitating and damaging impact of CSA and CM on child development and transition to womanhood. The narratives of study participants particularly highlighted the re-traumatization experiences that come with forcing child survivors of sexual assault into marriages with their assaulters. The common denominators of participants’ experiences were the physical and mental challenges that spanned their entire married lives to their assaulters. Finally, the study highlighted the need for child support systems and women advocacy groups to recognize the forms of abuse, control, and coercion that survivors had experienced in evolving effective interventions. The study findings emphasize the negative reporting behaviour of CSA survivors’ parents and social network, especially in approaching the police and seeking justice. This needs to be addressed as the criminal justice system has an active and effective role to play in seeing the end of the ‘marry the rapist’ practice, especially in respect of child survivors.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Richard Abayomi Aborisade

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