At 8, she was engaged. At 13, she was forced to marry. Today, she's fighting to end child marriage in the U.S. This is Naila's story ...
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00When I was eight, on this trip, I was engaged.
00:03How old were you there?
00:05Fifteen.
00:06Because we had to basically sleep with each other.
00:14I have a picture, and I'm just sitting there,
00:29and I look like a little girl, and I'm just smiling,
00:32but I don't know what's going on.
00:34I hear these older girls giggling,
00:46because he was my first cousin, my dad's brother's son.
00:49So he was there, and I was in their house,
00:53and they were like, you know, this is about to become her house.
00:56You know you got engaged last night?
00:58And I didn't get it. I didn't get it.
01:01I thought it was cool, because I was getting gifts and stuff.
01:04I didn't know anything.
01:05But I came back to America, started the fourth grade,
01:07and I met this boy, and I had a crush on him,
01:10but I said to myself, you know what, Naila?
01:12There's no hope, because you're already engaged.
01:15Imagine at eight years old saying that to yourself.
01:32My parents brought me back here, because up until 2017,
01:35the age to get married with parental permission
01:37was 14 in New York.
01:39Soon as I turned 14 and started college
01:42in Baldwin High School down the block,
01:45they noticed I was talking to boys
01:48and, you know, becoming westernized.
01:51They applied for my husband to come here.
01:53It was approved, and then my parents found out about a boy,
01:57and I was beaten.
01:59I spent some time in foster care.
02:01I ran away from the foster care system, came back home,
02:04and was kind of lured into the child marriage trap.
02:27I don't know how many senators there were,
02:46but I emailed every one of them.
02:48I called Governor Cuomo after he got the bill on his desk,
02:52Naila's law, after it was unanimously passed.
02:55It was sitting on his desk for about four weeks.
02:57He finally signed it.
03:10It's not just the Muslim women, not just the Jewish women.
03:14It's every woman in America.
03:16This is an American problem.
03:19We're also working on a federal bill
03:22to raise the sponsorship age for spouses to 18,
03:28because in order to sponsor a parent, you have to be 21.
03:32But to get a spouse, they go by the state.
03:35So if you are in West Virginia who has no age limit,
03:39you can be 8, and he can be 60.
03:41I'm in pieces, and I'm starting to pick them up slowly.
03:45And I have to cut my heart open for every little girl out there.
03:49And she needs to know that if I can do it, you can do it.
03:53So we have to stay strong.