"He would ask me to bring him something and if it wasn't there, he would beat me", Arwa recalls. Her husband offered a generous dowry but before long, he became violent and abusive. Encouraged by her father, she ran away. "We cannot find a good balance between the husband and the girl. It is not marriage, it is only rape!" says her lawyer, who successfully campaigned for a new law to make seventeen the legal minimum age of marriage. Before Arwa's divorce, there was no protection for child brides, with the country's influential religious conservatives opposed to change: "Islam determines the age of marriage to be when the girl is ready for intercourse, not a specific age." Until the President ratifies the new law, it could still be reversed, leaving many Yemenite girls to suffer the same fate as Arwa.