A YOUNG woman who escaped a forced marriage has spoken of her ordeal as a new refuge for women like her opens in Waltham Forest.

Known only as Farhana, she was helped by the Ashiana Network, which runs refuges for women who are victims of forced marriage, and is now in her early 20s.

Farhana said: “I've been at the refuge since June of this year. I feel safe here – definitely safer than I was before.

“I was in a really bad situation at home.”

There are only two refuges in the UK, both in Waltham Forest and run by Ashiana, which cater specifically for women who are at risk of being forced into marriage.

A third Ashiana refuge, opened in 1989, caters for women who have been victims of more general domestic abuse.

Farhana left her home and family two years ago after her parents threatened to send her to Bangladesh to be 'married off'.

She said: “There were a lot of arguments and a lot of abuse. It was just getting too much.

“My parents weren't agreeing to the freedom that I wanted – if I wanted that freedom, I had to be kicked out or stay and be married off.

“It was actually fixed from the age of 15 and I had no idea.”

Believing her to have become too westernised, her parents told her she was going to Bangladesh to visit family with the intention of seeing her married to a man she had never met.

Farhana said: “I was very much into the arts and the media. It's frowned upon in the Asian community.

“My mother would have preferred me to be a doctor.”

She added that her mother in particular had a strong sense of family pride and felt the family would be shamed by Farhana's behaviour.

On the night she left home, an argument saw one of her brothers smash through a door 'to keep from smashing her instead'.

She said: “It was just terrible. He was trying to control himself. I feared for my own safety.”

Her sisters, who are both married, have also been disowned as they made matches their parents disapproved of.

She remains in contact with them but has not spoken to other family members since leaving home.

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