A woman has revealed her horrifying forced marriage to man who had abused her since she was just 13. Brittany Bee was 17 when she married a 24-year-old family friend, stood in her living room wearing jeans and a T-shirt. After the meagre ceremony, her new husband drove her to an empty car park and allegedly raped her.
He told her, “Legally, you belong to me now”, she claimed in an interview The Sun. The pair first met when Brittany was visiting her mother, who lived in a different state. He convinced her to download messaging apps on her iPod, which he allegedly used to groom her. One year later, he allegedly molested her in the shower, sending her into a depression as she thought it was her fault.
Brittany was terrified to tell her father, part of a fundamentalist religious community, and developed an eating disorder because of the stress.
When she turned 16, her future husband messaged her: “I’m outside. I’m either gonna tell your dad what’s happening, or you can come with me.”
She left with him, only to allegedly suffer even more abuse. Her parents reported her missing, but assumed she had willing run away with the family friend.
Six weeks later, she was found by a family member who called the police, who then informed her father. He then forced her to stay in the house, forbidding her from going to school.
In 2013, she tried to overdose, but fortunately it didn’t work. In the weeks that followed, the family friend returned and her father decided the two should be married.
The pair tied the knot the very next day and moved into a flat, where she alleged he would throw her against walls and spit in her food. Two months after the wedding, he threw her out of a moving car, she said.
Knowing she couldn’t get a divorce until she was 18, Brittany fled in the middle of the night with just the clothes on her back, never to see or speak to her husband again.
She bought a car with some money her grandparents lent her and slept there. Another family member eventually gave her a job at her business and helped her enrol in a programme to help adults who did not graduate high school.