At 16, most girls are thinking about school and the future.
Nina Aouilk, however, was forced into an abusive arranged marriage where she says she was routinely physically and sexually assaulted.
Fearing for her life, the then-teen fled to her parents' home – only for her family to try to kill her for leaving.
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Now, the life coach tells LADbible her harrowing story of defiance and surviving an attempted ‘honour killing’.
Prior to the attack, the author had been living in her marital home with her husband and her in-laws.
Having been agreed by the two families when Aouilk was just a child, she had no say in the relationship and was sent to live with the strangers at 16.
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Rather than being welcomed, she says she was routinely subjected to emotional and physical torture from her relatives – including her mother-in-law who would regularly deny her food.
She claims her father-in-law also tied her up with metal coat hangers, naked, with Aouilk unable to move or even able to use the bathroom.
The sadistic behaviour continued, with the teenager also enduring multiple sexual assaults.
“There was no door so that I could be accessible to my father-in-law, who would come in and rape me and attack me and threaten me,” she bravely told LADbible, adding: “He had a real craving for control and to scare me…which he did.”
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At the time in the 90s, there had been multiple honour killings in the area called ‘bride burnings’ – with members of the community pouring petrol on women who gave birth to daughters rather than sons, with the husband's family making the crime look like a suicide.
Knowing that life couldn’t continue as it was though, Aouilk returned to her family home – where she was set up as she crossed the threshold.
Having dreamt of being embraced by her parents, the young woman was greeted with the same abuse she says she’d endured throughout her childhood.
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“I thought I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life,” she recalled, describing the moment her father dragged her by her ponytail into their home.
Despite not seeing his daughter for four years, Aouilk says her father started to beat her along with her mother, sister-in-law and eldest brother.
“This was a different kind of beating,” she revealed, saying: “It was like they were determined to kill me.”
Having been threatened with death all her life, she endured a brutal beating resulting in a broken jaw, arm and displaced hip.
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In her heartbreaking interview, the British author described herself as a little rag doll which was being ‘bounced’ off the walls with every inch of skin covered in cuts.
Aouilk even remembers ‘leaving her body’ as her father stomped on her and held his foot to her throat.
She told LADbible: “I remember looking at myself and thinking, this is it.”
Thankfully, an internal voice called to her and in a break in the chaos, she was able to crawl away and escape through the backdoor.
In the years that followed, Aouilk used her experience to help others who’ve experienced extreme trauma.
Topics: UK News, Sexual Abuse, Domestic Abuse