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Society

Honor Killings In Iran: Parents Suffocate "Child Bride" Daughter

A 15-year-old girl is murdered by her parents in Iran, three years after her arranged marriage, in yet another possible "honor" killing the Islamic Republic is loath to punish.

Photo of a girl hiding her face in front of a mosque in Mehran, Iran

In Mehran, Iran

The Persian-language daily Etemaad has reported this week another murder of a young woman in Iran, which stands out for its shocking details in the context of the Iranian plague of so-called "honor killings."

A 15-year-old girl was killed by her parents, just outside the northwestern town of Khoy near the borders of Turkey and Azerbaijan. The parents have reportedly admitted to suffocating their daughter, named as Raheleh, with a pillow before tying a scarf around her neck, throwing her body in a garden shed and calling neighbors to report her death as a suicide, the newspaper reported Sunday.

Neighbors told the daily that Raheleh's older sister had previously tried to kill herself.

The gruesome case was another case of both femicide and filicide in Iran, and of underage marriage, a phenomenon that appears to be both prevalent and increasingly approved by Iran's government authorities.


Two sisters

According to Etemaad, Raheleh had been married off aged 12 to a man in his 20s, and moved to live with him in the city of Orumieh. Days before her death, which was reported to be July 12, she had returned to her parents' home without her husband.

Police investigating the death immediately doubted the parents' version of events upon arriving at the house. They were arrested and ultimately confessed to their acts, the daily reports. The father was described as having a drug addiction.

There has not been a firm response from the judiciary or legislature of the Islamic Republic..

The paper cited an unnamed resident of the locality as saying that the couple previously married off Raheleh's older sister, Hanieh, also when she was just 12. She soon separated from her husband, Etemaad reported that a neighbor recounting: "that led them to marry her to a foreign national in a neighboring country. But when Hanieh realized her husband wanted to sell her, she returned to their village. That's when she decided to commit suicide, and jumped off a building." The sister survived, and was believed to be in Tehran now, "though nobody knows anything about her."

Family "honor"

There are few reliable statistics in Iran on femicides, though they often occur in relation with the 'honor' of conservative and/or poorer families. As a phenomenon, honor killings are broadly rejected by society. Still, there has not been a firm response from the judiciary or legislature of the Islamic Republic.

Reasons for killing a wife or daughter typically include the refusal to marry a man chosen by the family, wanting to end a marriage, fleeing violence at home, or beginning any type of interaction with a man that is not a close relative.

Separately the country registered just under 27,500 underage marriages involving girls aged less than 15 years in 2022, with a spike in numbers in the second half of the year also of marriages of teen girls, 15 to 19 years of age.

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Society

How Parenthood Reinvented My Sex Life — Confessions Of A Swinging Mom

Between breastfeeding, playdates, postpartum fatigue, birthday fatigues and the countless other aspects of mother- and fatherhood, a Cuban couple tries to find new ways to explore something that is often lost in the middle of the parenting storm: sex.

red tinted photo of feet on a bed

Parenting v. intimacy, a delicate balance

Silvana Heredia

HAVANA — It was Summer, 2015. Nine months later, our daughter would be born. It wasn't planned, but I was sure I wouldn't end my first pregnancy. I was 22 years old, had a degree, my dream job and my own house — something unthinkable at that age in Cuba — plus a three-year relationship, and the summer heat.

I remember those months as the most fun, crazy and experimental of my pre-motherhood life. It was the time of my first kiss with a girl, and our first threesome.

Every weekend, we went to the Cuban art factory and ended up at the CornerCafé until 7:00 a.m. That September morning, we were very drunk, and in that second-floor room of my house, it was unbearably hot. The sex was otherworldly. A few days later, the symptoms began.

She arrived when and how she wished. That's how rebellious she is.

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