In Saudi Arabia, the only thing keeping an 80-year-old man from buying, marrying, and then raping his 12-year-old relative is … nothing. It happened this week.
The girl’s mother’s attempt to prevent the her father from selling her into a forced marriage with a man over six decades her senior was fruitless. The women’s advocacy groups who have expressed outrage have seen their protests come to nothing. And the three other underage girls this man is also married to might as well have been his housecats for all the voices they got.
The reason there is nothing to stop this man or any other from raping children under the guise of a marriage? Because Saudi Arabia has no minimum age for marriage.
