Warning: this story may be upsetting for some readers.

Lucina didn’t choose to get married when she was 19.

She was studying to become a doctor, taking every opportunity she could find for extra learning. So when another girl asked if she’d like to come home to study with her, Lucina agreed and got in the car. When offered tea and cakes – a sign she was an honoured guest – she accepted. The offer turned out to be a trap. Her “friend” had drugged the cakes and when Lucina awoke she was trapped – pressured into a forced marriage to the girl’s brother, Yutas.

Several months later, when the ongoing COVID lockdown was lifted, the police staged a dramatic rescue to free her from imprisonment. She was malnourished, bruised – and pregnant. Her brother Salam says, “She was almost dead. Even we could not recognise her at first glance. All her bones could be seen. She was not even able to stand and walk properly.”

The price of faith

Lucina’s traumatic ordeal was a punishment for her faith in Christ. Sadly, her experience is part of a trend: the Open Doors 2021 Gender Specific Religious Persecution Report shows that in many parts of the world, sexual violence and forced marriage continue to be used as tools to shame Christian women and girls, to punish female converts and to restrict the growth of the church. Lucina says, “Everything happened just because my family is Christian. We love Jesus. And I paid the most for it.”

Lucina’s father, Boutros, is known as an evangelist in their South Asian community. Extremists, unable to tolerate the number of people turning to Christ because of his preaching, told him to stop. They attacked him. They threatened to kill him. But he wouldn’t give up. That’s when the extremists went one step further. To punish the family for their faith in Jesus, they targeted his daughter. They abducted Lucina and forced her to ‘marry’ Yutas. Lucina was a prisoner in the extremists’ home, forced to work like a maid – if she refused, they would beat her up. They also forced her to pray according to the village religion, saying that she had to, because of her ‘marriage’.

While imprisoned, Lucina’s family searched desperately for her. Salam explains, “We found nothing. After a couple of days of searching, the entire country went under lockdown for COVID-19. We still continued our search for her but failed to get any leads.”