Even My Pollyannish Optimism...

...can't help me with this one:

Child bride, 8, dies of internal bleeding on wedding night: Residents, activist

"An eight-year-old Yemeni girl died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, a social activist and two local residents said, in a case that has caused an outcry in the media and revived debate about child brides.

Arwa Othman, head of Yemen House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old man late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province in northwestern Yemen.

“On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death,” Othman told Reuters. “They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn’t save her life.”

Othman said authorities had not taken any action against the girl’s family or her husband.

A local security official in the provincial town of Haradh denied any such incident had taken place. He did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press."

[---]

"Human Rights Watch urged Yemen’s government in December 2011 to ban marriages of girls under the age of 18, warning it deprived child brides of education and harmed their health.

Quoting United Nations and government data, HRW said nearly 14 percent of Yemeni girls were married before the age of 15 and 52 percent before the age of 18. The group said many Yemeni child brides-to-be are kept from school when they reach puberty."

Shakes head. Sheds tear.

As one of the commentors says, Happy September 11th, everyone.