MAKING her way down the aisle in a red and gold sari, Rubie Marie's eyes filled with tears as she neared the man she was about to marry. Only Rubie wasn't a bride on the happiest day of her life but a 15-year-old child being forced by her own dad to wed a man double her age in front of her family and friends. Rubie, who lived in Wales with her family at the time, had been flown to Bangladesh by her family whose sole purpose was to find her a suitor.
While Bangladeshi law doesn't allow anyone under the age of 18 to marry, a loophole meant that with her dad's permission, the marriage could go ahead. Worse was still to come for Rubie because with a ring on her finger, she was raped daily by her new husband before falling pregnant at just 16. "No girl should have to go through what I went through," she says.
"I spent years of my life desperately trying to numb myself from the pain of my reality." While Rubie’s innocence was snatched at an early age, she says that her childhood had in fact been a happy one. Speaking exclusively to Fabulous as part of Life Stories , our YouTube series that sees ordinary people share their extraordinary stories she says: “My childhood was a very happy one - I had seven siblings.
It was like the Brady bunch. “We lived by the sea in Wales and it seemed like every day was filled with so much joy and colour.” Most read in Fabulous But advocate and yoga instructor Rubie, now 42, who lives in the Midlands, says that her family dynamic changed as s.