My mum gave my adult boyfriend permission to marry me at 14 – then my second husband tried to traffic me out for sex
AN ex-Mormon shared some of the traumatic events she says she endured while in the community.
The unnamed woman recalled how she was married off from a young age and the strange requests her second husband made in the bedroom.
Speaking on the We’re All Insane podcast, the mum-of-five discussed her time in the religion and the abuse she suffered at the hand’s of her second husband.
She revealed that she got married to her first husband two days before her 16th birthday.
The pair had first met and began dating when she was 13 and he was 16.
She explained how her mum gave her approval for their nuptials two years prior when she was just 14-years-old.
“He had already proposed to me by the time I was 14, he actually did it right in front of [my mum],” she said.
“My mum pulls me aside and she says: ‘You know, you’ve been dating your boyfriend for about a year and a half, I think you can go ahead and get married.'”
The woman revealed that her boyfriend was already a legal adult at 18 when he first popped the question to her.
“[My mum] said: ‘It’s normal in our religion so I think it’s safe for you guys to go ahead and get married.’”
She described how she felt abandoned by her mother in this moment.
“At this point I’m just [thinking] ‘Wow, OK, I guess you’re done raising me, I guess you’re done being my mum,'” she said.
“You haven’t really been there the past two years anyway.”
The woman became pregnant with her first child at the age of 17, and described how it gave her a “reason to live.”
She said her husband had become physically abusive and was “very addicted to porn.”
“He would beat me and rape me, he just got off on that kind of stuff,” she said.
She had her daughter when she turned 19 and said that her children gave her the courage to seek help.
HOW YOU CAN GET HELP:
Women's Aid has this advice for victims and their families
- Always keep your phone nearby.
- Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
- If you are in danger, call 999.
- Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
- Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
- If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
- Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
When her own dad reached out to see if she was OK, he helped her to fix her car and she packed it up and left.
After her first marriage ended, the then 20-year-old grew close to her brother’s friend.
She described him as the father her children never had and her personal “saviour.”
They got married when she was 23 but had a turbulent relationship, including infidelity on his part.
She described how her second husband would blame everything on her first partner for the 20 years they were together.
During a separation period, she said a family member of her husband reached out to let her know about an inappropriate relationship he’d had with a minor.
“He came back into the house and I’m scared at this point, I’m terrified of him because I don’t know who this person is,” she said.
“I was following along this is what I do when I’m scared, I freeze and I fawn.
He wanted me to start performing like I was eight-years-old during some of these fantasies.
Survivor of abusive marriage
“I just realised: ‘Who the f**k I’m married to? Have I just been a body this entire time?'”
The woman, who now shared three kids with her second husband, recalled some of his weirder fetishes in the bedroom.
“He had admitted to me that he was attracted to under age kids, to minors,” she explained.
“He wanted me to start performing like I was eight-years-old during some of these fantasies.”
It was at this point that her husband started having her listen to podcasts about “hot wifing.”
“You send your wife out and she takes videos of [her] being with other men,” she explained.
“He was posting new pictures of me. He put up cameras in all the rooms, including our bedroom.
“He would want me to perform for him while he was at work.”
She said that her years of PTSD meant she would do whatever it took to survive.
I felt like I had to do it if I wanted to feel loved.
Survivor of abusive marriage
“If you cannot survive through your lived experience, you completely disassociate from what you’re living,” she said.
“You become whatever your perpetrator needs or wants you to become.
“I felt like I had to do it if I wanted to feel loved.”
Eventually, her husband took it one step further, suggesting her “worth would be found” by men wanting her.
“He started putting in my head that it would be a great idea to start trying to meet up with other men,” she said.
“That’s when I talked to my therapist and she asked: ‘Are you sure he’s not trying to sex traffic you?’”
After an initial period of denial, she said that her husband began to float the idea of making money off her meet-ups with other men.
“I got online and [searched] ‘sex trafficking wife’ and I watched a video and [thought] ‘Holy s**t, I don’t want it to get that bad,'” she recalled.
The woman credited her therapist with helping her leave the “toxic” marriage, explaining that she put her in touch with a women’s shelter.
“I took half of our money from the bank, I grabbed clothes, I packed up my kids, and I [said] ‘We’re leaving,'” she said.