Excerpt:
Jada was looking forward to high school in her New Jersey hometown when her father, a recent convert to Islam, decided they should move to Saudi Arabia. Jada's mother had passed away suddenly a few years earlier. It was just the two of them now, and so Jada went with him alone. Soon after, on a walk to the local grocer, her father instructed Jada to move to his right side and stay there. This, he explained, was how men would know she was for sale.
She was only 12 years old.
You may have heard Jada's story before. It has received widespread attention, largely through the efforts of the Maryland-based Tahirih Justice Center, which works to end child and forced marriages and other forms of violence against women and girls. You may have heard about Jada's half-sister, who worked to rescue her although the U.S. State Department could offer no help in the face of Saudi laws. Thanks to her, and to the efforts of Tahirih and others, Jada made it home to America before her father could sell her into marriage.