BBC
“UNDERCOVER WITH THE CLERICS”
IRAQ’S SECRET SEX TRADE
POST PRODUCTION SCRIPT
PN:-
FKAL547L/02
00:00:05:21 |
VO |
Muslim clerics acting like pimps. Undercover in Baghdad we expose a secret
world of sexual exploitation. |
00:00:17:20 |
Man |
Do you want her to stay for the night? She wants 300. |
00:00:26:12 |
VO |
Widows of war forced to become halal prostitutes. |
10.00.26 |
Woman |
They wanted violent sex.
They’re like animals. |
00:00:36:04 |
VO |
Men of god, giving religious guidance on how to abuse children. |
00:00:41:17 |
Man |
You can have foreplay, lie with her, touch her body, her
breasts. Nine years old and over, there’s no problem at all. |
00:00:54:05 |
VO |
In this hidden sex trade even children are for sale. |
00:00:58:15 |
Man |
A 12 year old girl is prized, she’s still ‘fresh’. She’ll be expensive. |
00:01:09:00 |
Man |
The girls ask for 150 to 200 The girls are good.
The girls are beautiful. |
00:01:18:14 |
|
UNDERCOVER WITH THE CLERICS IRAQ’S SECRET SEX TRADE |
00:01:31:07 |
VO |
I’m in Kadhimiya, central Baghdad. One of Shia Islam’s most important
pilgrimage sites. Millions visit this
holy shrine and many couples come here to get married. |
00:01:45:24 |
Nawal PTC |
Just walking around the shopping arcade across from the
main shrine I’ve come across multiple marriage officers. |
00:01:53:18 |
VO |
We’ve come here because of increasing concern among Iraqi
Shias that some clerics are abusing an ancient marriage practice to exploit
women and girls. It’s called mut’ah, or (speaking in Arabic), pleasure, or
temporary marriage. And it allows a man to pay for a short term wife. But
it’s illegal in Iraq. |
00:02:18:07 |
Nawal PTC |
I have to be discreet filming this but we’re here to
investigate allegations that some of the clerics here are grooming women for
halal prostitution and even acting like pimps. |
00:02:32:19 |
VO |
Pleasure marriage or mut’ah is a
Shia practice. But Sunni Islam also
recognises another type of informal marriage which it calls misi’ah. Many Iraqi clerics say pleasure marriages
are sanctioned by Islamic law and can even be good for couples. This is Faris Al Mousawi. |
00:02:52:18 |
Nawal |
Tell me about mut’ah marriage. What are the rules behind mut’ah marriage? |
00:02:56:14 |
Faris Al Mousawi |
Widows and divorcees have the right to do temporary
pleasure marriages. A dowry is paid to
the woman upfront, and a time limit is set.
For example I could pay someone a dowry of 1000 dinars … To become my wife for one month. |
00:03:21:08 |
VO |
The man pays for a sexual relationship. But the cleric said if the woman was poor
the man would be helping her. |
00:03:30:04 |
Faris Al Mousawi |
He’s getting closer to God by marrying her, and if she has
children he’s supporting them. |
00:03:40:14 |
Nawal |
But what’s the difference between mut’ah marriage and
prostitution? |
00:03:44:03 |
Faris Al Mousawi |
Prostitution is illegal and irreligious. It’s a mere agreement for sex in return for
money. But if it’s based on religious
rules that society accepts then it’s halal, just like marriage. |
00:04:12:03 |
VO |
15 years of war have had a devastating effect on Iraq’s
women. More than a million have been
widowed and 1.5 million people are still displaced. Clerics have told us pleasure marriages
were a way of helping vulnerable women but we’d started to hear stories of
abuse. We’re concealing the real names
of the women we spoke to. |
00:04:40:10 |
Rana |
IS came so we left Mosul. |
00:04:46:16 |
VO |
When the so called Islamic State
took her city, Rana fled to Baghdad, soon after her husband left her. |
00:04:55:13 |
Rana |
I met a man, I wanted someone to look after me. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.
He said: ‘Let’s go to Kadhimiya where they can arrange a marriage
contract’. |
00:05:16:18 |
VO |
The man took Rana to one of the marriage offices in
Kadhimiya. |
00:05:25:02 |
Nawal |
Tell me what happened when you went to the cleric’s office. |
00:05:30:14 |
Rana |
The man gave him $40.
He drew up a marriage contract.
I was happy. I thought it was a
real marriage. |
00:05:41:02 |
VO |
Rana says she trusted her new husband and didn’t read the
marriage contract. She thought she was
starting a new life. |
00:05:52:19 |
Rana |
We had three of the happiest days of my life. He was ordering food, cherishing me. When you’re broken, and someone comes and
gives you hope, it’s very precious. |
00:06:11:21 |
VO |
After a few days Rana’s husband took her out shopping. Then she says without any warning he
vanished. |
00:06:21:23 |
Rana |
He disappeared. I
asked around. No one knew him. |
00:06:27:16 |
VO |
She thought her husband was sincere. In fact he’d tricked
her into a temporary pleasure marriage. |
00:06:37:09 |
Rana |
When I showed people the contract, they said; ‘This is just
a pleasure marriage’. |
00:06:45:13 |
VO |
When Rana’s family found out the marriage wasn’t genuine
they rejected her. Unable to support
herself she became a prostitute. |
00:06:59:14 |
Rana |
When you get married you feel secure. You’re happy. You believe you have a husband and a
future. It was all a lie. A cleric is someone we respect. Then you find out this guy in a turban is a
cheat. |
00:07:25:09 |
VO |
During a year long investigation, our team spoke
to around twenty five women and girls, who said pleasure marriages had been
used to exploit them. All feared reprisals if they showed their faces. Iraqi
lawyers, journalists and human rights workers told us that abuse of the
practice was a significant and growing problem, but warned us it would be
difficult to expose. So one of our
reporters went undercover in Kadhimiya with a secret camera. If discovered,
he risked being detained by one of Iraq’s feared Shia militias. We’re
concealing his identity. |
00:08:11:23 |
Undercover man |
When I arrived I was really scared, first check point was
really scary because I have a secret camera, if they found this no way I can
run away. |
00:08:26:22 |
VO |
Only clerics can run marriage offices here. While
many go through years of religious education, it’s possible in Iraq to become
a cleric with little formal training. Posing as a potential client, our reporter
arranged to meet several clerics. |
00:08:43:21 |
Undercover man |
I just went for many of this er, office and start ask them
if they do a temporary pleasure marriage.
Some of them they said yes, one of them was Sheikh Hussain. |
00:08:57:18 |
Undercover Man |
How are you, Sayyid?
What’s up? |
00:09:00:13 |
Cleric |
Well, thanks be to god. |
00:09:01:22 |
Undercover man |
May your parents be blessed. |
00:09:08:11 |
VO |
This is Hussain Al Musawi. His office is opposite
the main shrine. He has authorization from The Ministry for Shia Affairs and
a license to conduct marriages from the Ministry of Justice. |
00:09:24:02 |
Cleric |
What do you do? |
00:09:25:06 |
Undercover man |
I have a dental lab.
… if you have anything wrong with your teeth, let me know. |
00:09:31:05 |
Cleric |
God bless you. I
liked you the minute I saw you. |
00:09:36:22 |
Undercover man |
My cover story was I am a Iraqi live in London coming to
Baghdad for short trip. |
00:09:45:16 |
VO |
Our reporter pretended he’d met a girl and wanted to have
sex with her, he asked if the cleric would do a pleasure marriage. |
00:09:53:04 |
Undercover man |
I want to ask, what’s the shortest period of time I can get
married for? |
00:09:57:12 |
Cleric |
You can do it for one or two days, or an hour. Sharia doesn’t have a time limit. We can do a sharia ceremony, she’ll be
yours. |
00:10:08:00 |
VO |
The cleric said it was better not to have a written
contract. |
00:10:12:10 |
Cleric |
Just do it verbally, for a week, then leave her. As they say, you have the approval of
sharia but not the law. |
00:10:14:15 |
Undercover man |
What do you mean? |
00:10:15:19 |
Cleric |
It’s just a verbal contract, so there’s no evidence. No paper, no thumbprints. |
00:10:22:14 |
VO |
Without a contract he said it’s easier to cover your
tracks. |
00:10:27:20 |
Cleric |
Let me give you some advice. Don’t tell the girl my offices are in
Kadhimiya. So that later she doesn’t
come here asking for her rights. It’s
better without a contract. |
00:10:42:15 |
VO |
The cleric was giving advice on how to use a girl for sex
and then get rid of her. |
00:10:53:04 |
Undercover man |
We heard other that they say this but to see it in myself
it was really shocking. I was not
believe er, he was told me have sex with her and then just leave her like
leave her in the street basically. |
00:11:08:04 |
VO |
His services came at a price. |
00:11:11:01 |
Undercover man |
How much does it all cost? |
00:11:13:10 |
Cleric |
People give us a gratuity.
150, 200, 250. It’s for our
services. |
00:11:27:07 |
VO |
Seeking to understand more about mutah marriage,
we approached more than 20 senior Shia clerics to take part in this
programme. Only one agreed to talk to us on camera. Ghaith Tamimi. In Iraq, he had
been a high ranking Shia cleric, but he started speaking out against the
cleric establishment. After receiving death threats, he’s now living in exile
in London. |
00:11:56:11 |
Man |
Oh my god. It’s
unbelievable, it makes your blood boil.
He’s giving him the tools to cheat. |
00:12:11:01 |
VO |
Ghaith told me this cleric was breaking Islamic law and his
advice could put a woman in danger. If
she were caught with a man she risks being charged with prostitution. |
00:12:23:13 |
Nawal |
What happens to a girl if she doesn’t have evidence on
paper of her marriage? |
00:12:30:15 |
Man |
It means, if she has problems … she can’t prove she was
married. Morally, this is the lowest
of the low. |
00:12:51:10 |
VO |
Despite being illegal in Iraq we found pleasure
marriage was widely available in Kardimiya, out of 10 clerics we spoke to 8
said they performed them. |
00:13:06:01 |
VO |
One such cleric was Sayyid Raid. |
00:13:10:23 |
VO |
Our reporter met him outside the main shrine and
went with him to his nearby office. Raid said he had two offices in Kaldimyia
and employed four other clerics. Our reporter saw his license to conduct
marriages from the Ministry of Justice. |
00:13:31:21 |
Undercover Man |
How’s your health? |
00:13:33:11 |
Cleric |
Fine |
00:13:35:04 |
VO |
His title Sayyid means he claims descent from the prophet
Mohammed. He agreed to do a pleasure
marriage if our reporter brought a girl to him. |
00:13:44:14 |
Cleric |
I won’t forget about you. God is my witness. |
00:13:51:21 |
Undercover man |
Welcome, Sayyid. |
00:13:52:18 |
VO |
Our undercover reporter met him again in an upmarket
shopping centre. The reporter said he’d found a girl and now wanted to do a
pleasure marriage. |
00:14:06:09 |
Cleric |
Have you agreed on the marriage duration? |
00:14:09:13 |
Undercover man |
Yes, half an hour or an hour, no more than that. |
00:14:13:10 |
Cleric |
It’s better to do it for a day in case you get
distracted. With a whole day you can
relax. |
00:14:20:11 |
VO |
He said pleasure marriages allowed a man to do pretty much
whatever he wanted. |
00:14:25:12 |
Cleric |
There are restrictions for women. A man can marry as many women as he
wants. You can marry a girl for half
an hour and as soon as it’s over you can marry another one straight away. |
00:14:39:09 |
VO |
It’s illegal to rent a hotel room in Iraq unless you’re
properly married but Sayyid Raid said this was no problem. |
00:14:47:12 |
Cleric |
I can sort out a first-class hotel for you. A suite with heating, a bathroom and a
fridge. |
00:15:09:23 |
VO |
Our team spoke to more than twenty men who said
they did brief temporary marriages to get sex. All of them told us the
practice was widespread. Ali, not his real name, agreed to give an interview
if we didn’t show his face. |
00:15:26:08 |
Ali |
I go and meet her, we agree on the money. I take her to one of my houses or one of my
friends’ homes, and the ‘operation’ is completed there. |
00:15:43:10 |
VO |
To me it sounded like prostitution but Ali said he wanted
it to be halal. |
00:15:51:03 |
Ali |
If a religious man tells you pleasure marriage is halal,
then it doesn’t count as a sin, and they’re cleaner
than women from the streets. |
00:16:06:14 |
VO |
As we talked Ali revealed some men were paying clerics for
pleasure marriages with children. |
00:16:16:14 |
Ali |
A new 12 year old is prized, she’s still ‘fresh’. They say she’s ‘fresh’. She’ll be expensive. $500, $700, $800. |
00:16:38:17 |
VO |
We were discovering one of Iraq’s darkest secrets. Clerics making money helping men who wanted
sex with very young girls. Sayyid Raid
was prepared to talk about it. Our
reporter had told him he’d met a 13 year old virgin and asked whether a
pleasure marriage would be halal. |
00:17:11:00 |
Cleric |
Just be careful she doesn’t lose her virginity. You can have foreplay, lie with her, touch
her body, her breasts. |
00:17:21:05 |
VO |
Vaginal sex was forbidden according to the cleric but other
things he said were permissible. |
00:17:29:18 |
Undercover man |
Tell me exactly what I can and can’t do. |
00:17:33:02 |
Cleric |
You can’t penetrate her from the front. |
00:17:35:08 |
Undercover man |
What about anal sex? |
00:17:36:05 |
Cleric |
Anal sex is fine.
But don’t go to the front to take her virginity. |
00:17:44:03 |
Undercover man |
What if she gets hurt? |
00:17:45:14 |
Cleric |
That’s between you and her.
Whether she can take the pain or not. |
00:18:02:00 |
Man |
What that man is saying is a crime that must be punished by
law. |
00:18:15:05 |
VO |
Raith Tamimi says that most Shia Muslims would be
horrified at mut’ah marriage being used to enable men to marry children. |
00:18:23:22 |
Man |
I’m an Iraqi citizen and a Shia cleric. I know
these laws. I’ve personally sseen hundreds of pleasure marriages, but I can’t
believe that what I’ve just seen could be considered holy. |
00:18:42:15 |
VO |
Sayyid Raid said he was a follower of Grand Ayatollah Al
Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric.
Like some other Shia leaders in Iraq, Ayatollah Al Sistani has in the
past written that if a child under 9 was promised in a marriage or temporary
marriage sexual touching was religiously permitted. We approached the Ayatollah’s office to
clarify his religious advice on this matter.
In a statement he said times had changed and this had been erased from
his current books. |
00:19:32:12 |
VO |
To continue our investigation, we’ve come to the most
important site for Shia Muslims. |
00:19:38:09 |
Nawal PTC |
This is Karbala, it’s the biggest Shia pilgrimage site in
the world. Tens of millions of
pilgrims come here every year. |
00:19:53:17 |
VO |
We’d already seen how clerics were helping men break the
law and even doing pleasure marriages with minors. We wanted to know whether the religious
authorities in this holy city condoned the practice. I spoke to Sheikh Emad Alassady. |
00:20:12:17 |
Nawal |
So we’ve heard about pleasure marriages, mut’ah marriages,
do you do them here? |
00:20:18:00 |
Sheikh |
It’s illegal. It
would be punished with three to 15 years in prison. Even if the perpetrator was a cleric. |
00:20:31:23 |
VO |
He said they do still happen in secret and are allowable
under Sharia law. |
00:20:36:11 |
Nawal |
Don’t think these pleasure marriages exploit vulnerable
girls? |
00:20:40:23 |
Sheikh |
You can’t say it’s bad, because it has come from God. But
maybe the way some people practice it is abusive. |
00:20:54:03 |
VO |
In the streets around the shrine our reporter
asked four clerics if they would conduct a pleasure marriage. Two said they
would. One of them was
Sheikh Sellowi. |
00:21:06:22 |
Undercover man |
Such an honour to meet you. |
00:21:08:01 |
Cleric |
I am at your service. |
00:21:16:07 |
VO |
Sheikh Sellowi said he had completed extended
religious studies and
was a member of one of Iraq’s powerful and well-armed Shia militias. Our reporter pretended he’d met a young
girl who was still a virgin. |
00:21:30:14 |
Undercover man |
I want to marry a 12 year old. She’s an orphan. I don’t want to commit to a permanent
marriage. I want a temporary
marriage. Are you sure it’s alright if
she’s a young girl? |
00:21:52:22 |
Cleric |
Nine years plus, there’s no problem at all. According to sharia there’s no
problem. In foreplay you can’t enter
her. You can do everything else. |
00:22:19:13 |
Undercover man |
Can I have anal sex with her? |
00:22:23:16 |
Cleric |
If she accepts, it’s allowed. |
00:22:30:19 |
Undercover man |
I told you she’s only 12. |
00:22:33:02 |
Cleric |
Yes. |
00:22:34:21 |
Undercover man |
I’m worried she might get injured. |
00:22:38:01 |
Cleric |
It’s up to you how you want to do it. She’s permitted to you. You’re allowed to do it from behind. Do what you desire. |
00:22:56:03 |
VO |
We showed this footage to Yanar Mohammed, who runs a
network of women’s shelters across Iraq. |
00:23:06:14 |
Lady |
9 years old. They
are opening a shop for paedophiles, inviting them from all over the
world. The girls is looked at as a
piece of merchandise. And using the
merchandise in specific ways is allowed but the virginity is kept for that
big sale that they will do in the future. |
00:23:33:19 |
VO |
The big sale is marriage. Yanar told me that some families
see girls as a financial burden and want to marry them off. But parents can only find a husband if
their daughter’s virginity is guaranteed.
Pretending he had a real girl in mind, our reporter asked Sayyid Raid
what would happen if he did take the girls virginity during a pleasure
marriage. |
00:24:01:22 |
Undercover man |
What if she loses her virginity, god forbid? What do I do? |
00:24:04:02 |
Cleric |
That’s not acceptable.
Her family could come after you and ask you to marry her. Then she’s your responsibility. |
00:24:13:09 |
Undercover man |
If this happens, God forbid, how do I get rid of her? |
00:24:19:11 |
Cleric |
Do they know where you live? |
00:24:21:10 |
Undercover man |
No, they don’t. |
00:24:22:05 |
Cleric |
Then you can leave her and go. |
00:24:37:04 |
Lady |
They are speaking of how a man can get away with his crime
of raping a young girl. |
00:24:46:19 |
Nawal |
So just leave her and go.
What does this mean for the girl involved? |
00:24:51:05 |
Lady |
If the males of the family are aware of what happened to
her they will be killing her and then honour of the male patriarchs of the
family is preserved. It’s always the
girl and the women who are, who pay the price. |
00:25:15:04 |
VO |
I interviewed a girl who’s at great risk of violence from
her relatives. She lost her virginity
in a pleasure marriage, we’ll call her Mona.
And for her safety we filmed an actor telling her story using Mona’s
exact words. |
00:25:33:09 |
Mona |
I was a school girl.
This guy started following me home from school. He was rich. He owned a car dealership. We talked and he told me he wanted to marry
me. |
00:25:57:15 |
VO |
A few weeks later the man took Mona to a cleric in
Kardimiya, she was only 14. Her
parents knew nothing about it. |
00:26:09:09 |
Mona |
I told him I was a virgin. |
00:26:13:01 |
Intv |
So the Sheikh knew you were a virgin? |
00:26:15:04 |
Mona |
Yes. |
00:26:18:01 |
Intv |
Did he ask for your parents consent? |
00:26:20:24 |
Mona |
No, he said: ‘You’re both adults so it’s not needed’. |
00:26:27:11 |
VO |
When she tried to stop seeing the man he turned to
blackmail. |
00:26:33:20 |
Mona |
He told me the first time we’d had sex he’d filmed
everything. He said; ‘if you tell
anyone, I’ll show them the video’.
After that I was terrified. So
I did anything he asked. |
00:26:56:21 |
VO |
Mona had been groomed by a sexual predator with the help of
a cleric. We wanted to see how
difficult it would be to get a cleric to do a pleasure marriage with a very
young girl. It turned out to be
easy. Sayyid Raid took our reporter to
a waiting taxi, our reporter had told him he wanted to do a pleasure marriage
with a 13 year old virgin. He didn’t
ask to meet the girl in person or talk to her family, he agreed to do the
ceremony over the phone. |
00:27:31:16 |
Undercover man |
Basically another colleague of mine she was in the hotel
and when he rang the phone my female colleague she was in another end of the
phone and she was ready to answer. |
00:27:48:21 |
Undercover man |
Shayma, I’m with the Sayyid, doing the contract. He’s next to me. I’ll give him the phone to speak to you. |
00:27:58:06 |
Cleric |
Peace be upon you.
how are you, my dear Shayma? |
00:28:04:22 |
Undercover man |
I’m now thinking this marriage will be their symbol the
only question he asked her what’s your name?
And he start make the ceremony without any question. |
00:28:19:06 |
Cleric |
Do you agree to the marriage? |
00:28:21:07 |
Phone |
Yes. |
00:28:23:03 |
Cleric |
A pleasure marriage, right? |
00:28:24:20 |
Phone |
Yes. |
00:28:26:04 |
Cleric |
Open your hands and pray with me. Do you, Shayma, give me consent to marry
you to the man who wants you? He’ll
pay you a dowry of 150,000 dinars for one day. If you agree, say ‘yes, I give my consent’. |
00:28:43:05 |
Phone |
Yes, I give you my consent to marry me. |
00:28:48:15 |
Cleric |
Mohammed, do you agree to marry Shayma for one day? And that you will pay her 150,000
dinars? If you agree, say ‘yes’. |
00:29:00:14 |
Undercover man |
I agree to have you, Shayma Mohammed, as my wife for one
day. |
00:29:09:19 |
Cleric |
Shayma, say you agree. |
00:29:12:06 |
Phone |
I agree to the marriage. |
00:29:23:08 |
Cleric |
My daughter, now he’s your husband for one day for
temporary marriage. OK? |
00:29:29:07 |
Phone |
Yes. |
00:29:30:05 |
Cleric |
Congratulations. |
00:29:31:04 |
Phone |
Thank you. |
00:29:32:20 |
Undercover man |
Many thanks Sayyid. |
00:29:34:06 |
Cleric |
Now you are married and she is
permitted to you. |
00:29:39:14 |
VO |
In just a few minutes Sayyid Raid had made $200 for a
pleasure marriage with a girl he believed to be only 13. For Mona the consequences of her teenage
pleasure marriage have been disastrous.
|
00:30:04:15 |
Mona |
I’m afraid because I’m no longer a virgin. I have nightmares my family will find out
and kill me. I’m really scared. |
00:30:26:24 |
VO |
Her family are now pressuring her to get married. She told us something similar had happened
to her cousin with fatal results. |
00:30:39:04 |
Mona |
My cousin fell in love with a man who was just using
her. Later, her family made her marry
another man. But he found out she
wasn’t a virgin. Her cousins took her
away. To wash away the shame, they
killed her. |
00:31:21:16 |
Nawal PTC |
Mona’s in such an impossible situation, what she thought
was her teenage love story has ended up ruining her entire future. And if it wasn’t for the cleric convincing
her that it’s religiously okay this would have never happened. |
00:31:46:16 |
VO |
In Iraq today conservative Shia clerics give more than just
spiritual advice after years of sectarian conflict they’ve gained political
leverage often with the backing of armed militias. Activists say they’re pushing women’s
rights back decades. |
00:32:08:03 |
Nawal |
There were laws that protected women, some protection for
us in our marriages, it seems that all the things that we gained in decades
of hard work of the generation of our mothers were just lost. Once the Islamic clerics rule the first
loser is the women. |
00:32:38:06 |
VO |
Our findings show that Iraqi law is failing to protect
women. To try to understand what’s
happening I’ve come to the court house in Sadr City. Just outside I see the clerics I’d met
earlier, they’re operating a parallel religious legal system conducting
Sharia marriages and divorces. |
00:33:07:22 |
Cleric |
Is this your first divorce? |
00:33:13:19 |
Cleric |
No room to mend the relationship? |
00:33:15:13 |
Man |
No. |
00:33:16:17 |
Cleric |
How about you? Any
room at all? |
00:33:17:00 |
Lady |
No. |
00:33:19:05 |
VO |
Sayyid Faris Al Mousawi is doing a Sharia divorce. It only takes 5 minutes. |
00:33:26:17 |
Cleric |
The divorcee has waived her dowry. Which means you take nothing from your
husband. |
00:33:34:11 |
VO |
Divorce under Sharia law is easier than under Iraqi civil
law. And leaves women with fewer
rights. Sharia also allows child
marriage. |
00:33:44:01 |
Nawal |
What’s the youngest age that you’ll marry? |
00:33:47:04 |
Cleric |
She must be mature enough … To tolerate sexual intercourse and marriage. Sometimes that would be at 10 years
old. Sometimes 12 to 15 depending on
the male guardian’s approval. |
00:34:06:08 |
VO |
Under Iraqi law a girl must be 15 to marry but this doesn’t
seem to bother some clerics. |
00:34:15:15 |
Nawal |
Shouldn’t you follow the law? |
00:34:18:14 |
Cleric |
The secular laws don’t matter. Religious laws are a constant. They’re better than civil laws. |
00:34:36:06 |
VO |
Inside the court they’re dealing with the consequences,
Iraqi law doesn’t recognise Sharia marriages so to be legal couples must have
their marriage signed off by a judge.
The law on the minimum age for marriage should be enforced but that’s
not happening. |
00:34:56:20 |
Judge |
When were you born? |
00:34:57:21 |
Haneen |
2005. |
00:35:00:19 |
Nawal PTC |
Haneen’s getting her marriage registered, she’s dressed
like a grown woman but actually she’s only 13 years old. |
00:35:09:05 |
VO |
A cleric married Haneen to her husband under Sharia law 6
months ago. Now she’s pregnant. |
00:35:17:17 |
Judge |
Haneen have you married Sajjad? |
00:35:19:16 |
Haneen |
Yes. |
00:35:21:03 |
Judge |
When you married, were you a virgin? |
00:35:23:14 |
Haneen |
Yes. |
00:35:26:08 |
VO |
Because she got married under age, Haneen’s father and
groom could get 2 years in prison, instead they’ve been fined $50. It’s up to the judge and these days many
are lenient. |
00:35:42:21 |
Judge |
For minors, marriage can sometimes be to their advantage … And that of the family.
She’s agreed to it and wants it.
As you know, marriage is a fact of life. |
00:35:59:12 |
VO |
There’s a queue of fathers waiting for their daughters to
get married before the judge. Sami Okaybi’s here with his 14 year old
daughter, he didn’t want her face shown. |
00:36:12:08 |
Nawal |
Why are you marrying your daughter off so young? |
00:36:16:00 |
Father |
If they’re 18 years old, it doesn’t suit our young
men. We look for 13, 14, 15, these
ages. At 18 she’ll barely have a
chance. No one will take her. |
00:36:33:04 |
Nawal |
Is there anything that you’re going to miss of your previous
life? |
00:36:37:22 |
Girl |
Of course. |
00:36:38:24 |
Nawal |
What? |
00:36:39:16 |
Girl |
My childhood. |
00:36:46:03 |
VO |
The courts social worker is registering the teenage brides
and their grooms. |
00:36:53:02 |
Social worker |
Tabarak, do you agree to this marriage? |
00:36:55:06 |
Girl |
Yes, I agree. |
00:36:56:15 |
Social worker |
How old are you? |
00:36:57:17 |
Girl |
15. |
00:36:59:21 |
Social worker |
You’re still young.
Did anyone tell you that? |
00:37:04:09 |
VO |
She’s processed 126 underage marriages in the last 6
weeks. She predicts almost all these
teenagers will end up divorcing. |
00:37:15:01 |
Social worker |
Only four or five of these marriages will be
successful. Most of the 126 won’t work
out. |
00:37:23:08 |
Intv |
What happens to the girls who get divorced? |
00:37:26:13 |
Social worker |
They’re destroyed, they’re still children. Particularly if they’re pregnant or left
with a child. They start looking for
ways to make a living. |
00:37:39:17 |
Lady |
If you are a divorced woman you do not have a future, you
are looked at as a tainted person, you become very vulnerable to that cleric
who whispers in your ears that he has the solution. They call it temporary marriage, being
thrown off from one man to the other to the third to the fourth until you
find out that you’re a prostitute.
With a religious cover. |
00:38:16:04 |
VO |
Far from pleasure marriage helping women, we found that
clerics were using it to exploit women.
Preying on the most vulnerable, recruiting them and pimping them
out. Rosoul is 16 for her safety an
actor is speaking her exact words. |
00:38:35:19 |
Rosoul |
I wanted to have a life, a family. That’s not what happened. Now everything is destroyed. |
00:38:47:19 |
VO |
Rosoul was married off at 12 and divorced at 13 then she
did a pleasure marriage to survive but soon after the man left her. |
00:39:00:06 |
Rosoul |
I looked for him but couldn’t find him. There was nothing I could do so I contacted
the cleric. |
00:39:13:11 |
VO |
The cleric told her that now she would never find a real
husband. |
00:39:18:16 |
Rosoul |
He told me; ‘Now you’ve taken this path, you have no other
choice’. ‘Why don’t you carry on
?’ ‘It’s better for you than getting
into something worse’ |
00:39:34:15 |
VO |
With a sister to support Rosoul says she had little choice
but to start working for the cleric. |
00:39:41:01 |
Rosoul |
When he phones me and says he’s found someone, I can’t say
no. |
00:39:51:23 |
VO |
Rosoul’s now pimped by the cleric, forced to have sex with more than
a dozen men. |
00:40:01:08 |
Rosoul |
The Sayyid brings drugs for me, to make sure I don’t get
pregnant. Mostly injections. |
00:40:09:16 |
Intv |
How much does he give you for each man? |
00:40:14:06 |
Rosoul |
It depends on what the man desires. It’s not up to me. |
00:40:18:19 |
Intv |
Are there any sexual things they force you to do? |
00:40:23:09 |
Rosoul |
Yes, certain things.
It depends what the man wants.
I’m forced to do things I don’t want.
Even if I resist, it still happens.
There are many girls like me.
it’s very widespread. |
00:40:56:17 |
Ali |
The sheikhs, the religious men … They do this all the time.
|
00:41:08:08 |
VO |
Ali who does pleasure marriages for sex says he always pays
clerics to find him girls. |
00:41:16:16 |
Ali |
There are many sheikhs who do this. I’m only in touch with two. They provide all I need. I go to their office. There are girls sitting there. Or he shows me pictures. I pick one and give the cleric $20. That’s what the girl gets. He’s like a friend. It’s very simple. It’s just a way of making money. It has nothing to do with religion. If you asked me, would I let my sister do a
pleasure marriage? Of course not. |
00:42:26:16 |
VO |
We already had evidence that clerics we’d been secretly
filming would perform pleasure marriages but would they also precure
girls? Our reporter went back to
Kadhimiya to Sayyid Raid’s office. |
00:42:43:23 |
Undercover man |
So I’m coming back in a month. Can you find me someone? |
00:42:51:06 |
Cleric |
When you come back? Fine. I can take a photo of her and
send it to you. I will arrange everything with her. Then when you come back,
she’s yours. I won’t forget you, God is my witness. |
00:43:06:11 |
Undercover man |
You remember when I married the 12 year old? She was an
orphan. I’m worried. Maybe I exploited her? |
00:43:13:18 |
Cleric |
Did you force her? |
00:43:16:07 |
Undercover man |
No. |
00:43:16:07 |
Cleric |
No, she was willing and you paid her. |
00:43:24:00 |
VO |
In Karbala, Sheikh Sellowi hadn’t seemed to think he was
doing anything wrong either. |
00:43:30:02 |
Undercover man |
I told you, the girl is very poor. I’m worried it might be exploitation. |
00:43:39:11 |
Cleric |
You exploiting? No
way. |
00:43:45:10 |
VO |
A few days later, our reporter rang the sheikh to ask him
if he too would provide girls. |
00:43:51:11 |
Phone |
My dear doctor, how are you? |
00:43:53:19 |
Undercover man |
How are you, Sheikh? |
00:43:56:24 |
Phone |
I am good, thanks.
How’s everything with you? |
00:44:00:13 |
Undercover man |
I wanted to ask if I could marry a girl through your
contacts. |
00:44:05:02 |
Phone |
You want a temporary marriage, right? |
00:44:07:15 |
Undercover man |
Yes, temporary. |
00:44:08:11 |
Phone |
So for two, three or five days? Or a month? |
00:44:11:24 |
Undercover man |
Yes. |
00:44:13:13 |
Phone |
These are good girls.
They only go out on special occasions, like when I sign them up for a
temporary marriage. For this work
these girls ask $150 to $200. |
00:44:29:19 |
Undercover man |
Excellent. |
00:44:32:22 |
VO |
He told our reporter he could offer him a choice of women. |
00:44:37:20 |
Phone |
They won’t send photos.
When you see them face to face, they’re good. If you don’t like one, there’s a second, a
third and so on. But the girls are
good. They’re beautiful. |
00:44:57:01 |
VO |
Many of the young women pimped out are destitute. They’re vulnerable to clerics who
distribute charitable donations. |
00:45:07:10jj |
Man |
Women in need often ask for charitable help. When they get to a centre, they’ll be
checked outIf she’s pretty, he’ll contact her two or three days later. |
00:45:29:24 |
VO |
Ghaith Tamimi says he’s seen clerics luring women into the
sex trade. |
00:45:37:19 |
Man |
She meets a cleric who takes her number and finds out her
personal situation. He pulls her in
slowly, then sells her body. That’s
what happens, it’s a system. |
00:45:53:02 |
VO |
Our undercover reporter had been promised girls by Sheikh
Sollowi. Now he was about to meet him
in Baghdad. |
00:46:00:15 |
Undercover man |
Peace be upon you.
How are you? |
00:46:04:18 |
Cleric |
Peace be upon you. |
00:46:08:23 |
VO |
The sheikh said he had a girl waiting. |
00:46:12:12 |
Undercover man |
Where does the girl live? |
00:46:14:10 |
Cleric |
She lives with her family but we can do a contract, because
she needs money or she needs sex. |
00:46:29:08 |
Undercover man |
But this is just for one day? |
00:46:31:00 |
Cleric |
Yes, one day. |
00:46:33:18 |
VO |
The sheikh said he had arranged a place where our reporter
could have sex with her. |
00:46:38:13 |
Cleric |
No one lives there, so you can rent it. It is a nice, safe house where you can
finish your business. |
00:46:54:19 |
Undercover man |
We have enough of proof, he can provide girl so we left it
there. |
00:47:01:10 |
Cleric |
I told the girl you’d come today. Then I rang her and cancelled until further
notice. Call me. |
00:47:23:22 |
VO |
The sheikh had proved himself willing to break the law and
sell women. By now we had evidence
this practice was wide spread. I was
about to meet a widow whose story revealed a senior cleric running what
appeared to be a prostitution ring.
Reem’s husband was killed in an IS
bombing. Soon after she and her
two children lost their home. |
00:47:53:02 |
Reem |
I was poor and hungry, so I asked a cleric in our area for
help. I said; ‘Sayyid, please help
me’. ‘People give you so many
donations for the poor and orphans’. |
00:48:03:21 |
VO |
When the cleric contacted Reem a few days later he made a suggestion. |
00:48:09:02 |
Reem |
He asked me to do a pleasure marriage with him. To be honest, I accepted. I didn’t hesitate. |
00:48:17:20 |
Intv |
Did you have sex with him? |
00:48:18:09 |
Reem |
Yes. I was forced
to. I didn’t want to do it. I had to do it to survive. |
00:48:29:07 |
VO |
Reem says the cleric started charging his friends money to
do pleasure marriages with her. It
began one night when he brought three men.
|
00:48:38:15 |
Reem |
His friend closed the door.
I said; ‘please don’t do this.
God won’t accept this’. He
said; ‘The Sheikh has done a pleasure marriage for us’. ‘You have to have sex with me.’ He had sex and left. The second friend was the same. The third one was a famous man in the
area. |
00:49:10:24 |
Intv |
How did you feel? |
00:49:13:13 |
Reem |
I felt abused. I was
forced, raped. They wanted violent
sex. |
00:49:35:12 |
Nawal PTC |
We can’t identify which cleric Reem has alleged abused her
but she says that she was raped in one of these offices in Kadhimiya |
00:49:50:09 |
Lady |
The lucky ones reached our shelters, the ones that are not
lucky. |
00:49:57:01 |
Nawal |
What happens to them? |
00:49:59:13 |
Lady |
They end up in brothels and they don’t live long, I would
say their life expectancy is like 35.
We saw many who were about to throw themselves off the bridge into the
river. |
00:50:21:03 |
VO |
We had evidence clerics had ruined women’s lives with
pleasure marriages. We’d filmed a
cleric boasting he had girls for sale.
Now after months of preparation we were about to try and catch a
cleric in the act of pimping. Our
undercover reporter set up a meeting with Sayyid Raid. |
00:50:45:18 |
Undercover man |
How are you Sayyid?
I hope you’re well. |
00:50:51:22 |
VO |
Once he felt safe, he signalled to a young woman in the
back of his taxi. |
00:51:04:17 |
Undercover man |
How much do you usually charge for a marriage? |
00:51:07:24 |
Cleric |
She hasn’t done it before.
I told her she should do it as you’re a good person. |
00:51:15:22 |
VO |
She says she’s 26 to protect her we’ve disguised her
identity. Our reporter makes it clear
he’s only here to talk. |
00:51:27:10 |
Undercover man |
It was very difficult meeting but it was important to prove
Sayyid Raid he bring girls. |
00:51:33:06 |
Undercover man |
You know our marriage will be only for one day, right? |
00:51:36:03 |
Lady |
Yes. |
00:51:39:02 |
Undercover man |
It’s a marriage for one day. |
00:51:42:21 |
VO |
Sayyid Raid took charge of negotiations. |
00:51:47:09 |
Undercover man |
So the Sayyid explained everything? |
00:51:50:09 |
Cleric |
Yes. I said to her
that the marriage will be for one day, or maybe two. |
00:51:54:24 |
Undercover man |
How about the dowry for the bride? |
00:51:58:05 |
Cleric |
It’s a one-off payment.
I’ll do a verbal contract, like the one I did for you in the car. It will be valid for one day only. |
00:52:09:10 |
VO |
Sayyid Raid seemed keen to get the deal done as quickly as possible. |
00:52:14:24 |
Cleric |
Are you free tomorrow? |
00:52:16:24 |
Girl |
Yes. |
00:52:18:06 |
Cleric |
Do you want her for the afternoon? Or do you want her to sleep over and leave
in the morning? |
00:52:25:23 |
Undercover man |
How much would that be? |
00:52:29:13 |
Cleric |
She wants $300. |
00:52:35:24 |
VO |
We had the evidence we needed, it was time to end the
meeting. Our reporter took Sayyid Raid
aside and said he wouldn’t go ahead with the pleasure marriage. |
00:52:47:20 |
Cleric |
It’s up to you. I’ll
have to pay her for her time. |
00:52:53:07 |
Undercover man |
Okay, how much do you want now? |
00:52:56:08 |
Cleric |
Give me 400. |
00:52:58:24 |
Undercover man |
$400? |
00:52:59:09 |
Cleric |
Yes. |
00:53:01:08 |
VO |
But Sayyid Raid wasn’t ready to give up on the deal. |
00:53:05:05 |
Cleric |
I’ll try to find you a younger girl. I’ll ask her if she can find me a younger
girl. Maybe 14, 15 or 16 years
old. I’ll check the girl out. If she’s young, I’ll bring her to you. |
00:53:25:04 |
VO |
We’d captured evidence that a cleric was prepared to pimp a
young girl. |
00:53:31:14 |
Lady |
The cleric wanted his $400 he was willing to bring as young
as he has to, he just didn’t want to let that deal go past him. It’s a good franchise for the, these
vampires. They suck the life out of
young girls and leave them to deal with their miseries. |
00:54:09:18 |
Man |
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I never imagined… that I would ever see
holy pimps like this. It means the moral foundation of our society has
crumbled. |
00:54:46:01 |
VO |
We wanted to put our allegations to the clerics we’d
filmed. But it was too dangerous to do
it in person. I phoned Sayyid Raid
from London. |
00:54:57:24 |
Phone |
Hello? |
00:54:58:22 |
Nawal |
Am I speaking with Sayyid Raad? |
00:55:05:19 |
Phone |
Yes, that’s me. |
00:55:07:11 |
Nawal |
This is Nawal Al-Maghafi, a journalist from BBC Arabic in
London. Do you carry out temporary
marriages in your office in Kadhimiya in Baghdad? |
00:55:16:24 |
Phone |
No we don’t. No we
don’t. Only permanent marriages, only
permanent ones. |
00:55:24:04 |
Nawal |
So you don’t do pleasure marriages? |
00:55:26:10 |
Phone |
Where did you get this number? Where did you get this number? Who gave it to you? We don’t do anything like that. |
00:55:34:16 |
Nawal |
Do you recommend hotel rooms for the couples that … He hung up. Okay. |
00:55:44:24 |
VO |
We also called the other clerics we’d secretly filmed.
Sheikh Sheikh Sellowi didn’t respond. Hussain Al Musawi denied agreeing to do
a mut’ah marriage. We put our evidence to Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani
one of the most senior clerics in Shia Islam.
In a statement he said if these practices are happening in the way
you are saying then we condemn them unreservedly. Temporary marriage is not allowed as a tool
to sell sex … in a way that belittles the dignity and humanity of
women. Also a guardian of a girl
should not permit her marriage without her consent … and she is not supposed
to marry if it’s against the law which could bring troubles to her. He said that abuses we’d seen were happening
because the authorities were not enforcing the law. WE took our
evidence to the Iraqi Ministry of Shia Affairs. They said they had no
oversight of marriage offices in Kadhimiya, and declined to give an
interview. The Ministry of Justice, which issues licenses to conduct
marriages also declined. An Iraqi government spokesman told BBC Arabic if
women don’t go to the police with their complaints against clerics it’s
difficult for the authorities to act.
But for many young women across Iraq there’s no hope of justice. Mona can never let her family find out
about her pleasure marriage so going to the police seems impossible. |
00:57:18:02 |
Mona |
I’m trapped. I’ve
thought about suicide. If I feel more
pressure, I will do it. I have no
choice. |
00:57:40:17 |
VO |
Since we spoke to Mona she’s run away from home. Rosoul is still working for the
cleric. She feels she has no choice. |
00:57:49:18 |
Rosoul |
When a girl starts doing this, she’s destroyed. Her life ends the first day she takes this
road. She has no future. |
00:58:00:13 |
VO |
Reem escaped the cleric in Kandimiya, she’s still
traumatised. |
00:58:06:17 |
Reem |
For them a woman is an object. They don’t see her as a human being with
feelings. They are like animals. They eat the flesh and throw away the
bones. |
00:58:32:24 |
|
Reporter NAWAL AL MAGHAFI Undercover Reproter ANONYMOUS Online Editors MICHAEL PEATFIELD STEVEN G MATTHEWS Colourist STEWART FYVIE Dubbing Mixer ANDY SEARS Production Management Assistant ELIDADI NZAYISENGA Production Coordinators CAROLYNE ASTBURY NADER KHOURI MAY NAROEE Junior Production Manager TOBY KEELEY Production Managers SHARIFFA ABDULREHMAN MARIA CARAMELO Additional Camera MAIS AL-BAYAA Assistant Producer MOE SHREIF Executive Editor TIM AWFORD TV Documentaries Editor CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL Executive Producer MONICA GARNSEY Film Editor GARY BEELDERS Producer MAIS AL-BAYAA Filmed, Produced and Directed by PATRICK WELLS |