How a Forced Marriage Survivor Built a Global Movement

33% of these young girls that are being forced into child arranged marriages into losing their lives.

“For me, this is actually an autobiography.”

I share my story with the world. If what happens when you are into as a child, this is for me. In my case, I was 16 years old. If what happens to you when you are being forced into arranged marriage, afterwards, there's some talks about it. She's been in no experience arranged marriage, but they don't really know behind the scene what's happening. Leila Ishan is a resilient, fearless and inspiring humanitarian author in the founder of I Want Freedom charity.

She now empowers girls worldwide through education, advocacy, and her powerful story of overcoming adversity.

My ultimate goal was to allow this to be a movement and not just to be an awareness. I want the whole world to know as that what happens to as young girls want to get into forced arranged marriage. So, this is why I'm here, and this is why I would like to awaken the world and that everyone know. It's that way. It spans the globe.

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It's not over! I'm telling how we're...

Living your legacy podcast for those who live to live a legacy. [Music] Hello and welcome back to another episode. I'm sat here today with Leila and we're going to dive into her mission. Her impact, but she's having her vision for her brand and how she's helping shape change the world in a positive way. And she's on a big one. Let me tell you, Leila, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

“So, let's start with, you know, this big mission of yours, right?”

We a lot of people get to sit here and I get to hear their missions, right? Some people are changing the world, some people are changing their communities, but you know, you're doing something really impactful. So, I'd love for you just to explain to everyone listening what you do. What I do is that I have written my name more in this book.

And this is about being a voice for over 12 million girls that are losing their freedom, their choices, every single year.

Well, 33% of these young girls that are being forced into child arranged marriages into losing their lives under suicide or under the persons that they're forced to marry. And unfortunately, there's not enough organizations that supports this cause. And also, there isn't really much of media that talks about how many lives are involved in this matter. Yeah, I didn't realize it was so many every year. Huge.

And what I just shared with you, this is according to UN records that reports that this is what's happening. It's probably under reported, like most of these.

“It's 110% and that's exactly what I believe that's what it is, only because this happens not just in the Middle East.”

It's actually happens globally, including United States. And for me, this is actually an autobiography. And I share my story with the world. If what happens when you are into, as a child, this is for me in my case, I was 16 years old. Of what happens to you when you are being forced into range marriage afterwards. There's some talks about it.

Oh, she's been in your experience in range marriage, but they don't really know behind the scene what's happening. And I share this book as very well. And I share about 75% of what I have experienced in my forced range marriage that lasted 16 years, where I felt myself stuck. And I couldn't get out of it for many reasons.

One, because my education was stolen for me. My hopes and my dreams, my goals, that as a very young 16 year old and a very driven one, was taken away from me. In for those reasons, I didn't really had the security to be independent and to say enough as enough.

I had my first child at the age 17.

“By the time I became 26 years old, I was mother of four children.”

And I filed for divorce after my 4th to 10th bed with God's grace. I was able to get my freedom. And that age 33, I had a 4 year old, 6 year old, 8 year old, and at 13 year old, with no education, no degree, where I was able to, through real estate, get myself out of it and become independent. And I became one of the most successful age in my community.

My office out of 87 agents. It was being awarded left and right almost every year throughout my real estate career. I was determined that I'm going to be doing whatever it takes to not only be successful, but in make it to show my ex-husband that I can do anything I want. And the only reason it was trapped and it couldn't is because of you.

But on top of that, my ultimate goal was to allow this to be a movement. And not just to be an awareness. I want the whole world to know as that what happens to as young girls move and get into forced-to-range marriage. And so this is why I'm here. And this is why I would like to awaken the world.

And that everyone know is that to please, please stand up for the girls' rights. We're not talking about one or two.

We're talking about over 12 million girls like you said.

“And I think that's, you know, it's very hard to summarize it.”

But if someone's listening, they're not really kind of fully aware of how a range of marriages work and come about. You know, they may have seen it in a movie or heard about it. But can you actually explain kind of the mechanics of it in a couple of minutes for someone that's not sure how it works? Yeah, so the way it works is generally its tradition, it's a culture. And this runs like I said globally.

It doesn't necessarily mean it happens in Christianity or, you know, tradition or Muslim or anything like that. It's just overall, this is just their nature. This is all they know. A great grandmother's experience that, a grandmother's or mothers. And when a child, a young girl goes maybe perhaps half the courage to share their story and experience with their parents.

And they say, especially particularly their mother, would you always hear as honey, it's okay.

Have a child, you'll change. It's okay honey, I endured it and look where I am today. Your father is sorry, you know, but now she's 56 years old. Why is that okay?

“Why do you think that's okay for me to be abused in this arranged marriage?”

And also, they believe that this is just how it works when you're a daughter. You don't have a lot of depivorages that the boy gets, meaning having a voice, meaning being able to go to school, meaning to be educated and to be independent. There's really not enough trust in girls. But that's only because they don't have the opportunity to be able to get themselves educated parents to control. And in my case, just to give an example.

And this is very common is that I was six months old and my parents engaged me with a cousin that was five years old. And I started having proposals at age 12, 13 years old.

But at the time I was 16, I had five proposals and my uncle used to always say, "They would come in because he was the elder and the family were well respected."

So they would come in and ask him from my hand and he'll say, "She's already engaged. She's already promised." So this is a global cause that's happening and it's all because majority of population in the world are illiterate. They don't know any better. And the thing that this is a girl's duty is that when you're a girl, you're just going to have to get married. And on top of that, and most of the countries, particularly third world countries, it's difficult for them to survive and countries that there's no jobs.

And when you have a daughter, and they can't really support you, what they do is the end of selling you for $500 or $2,000 at age five. I just got a video, you know, Larry, the more the founder of E. And when I look at great friends and he's been sending me emails because he knows what I'm doing.

But it was just heartbreaking to know that there are half of a dozen girls playing and to turn it on the street from five years to 11.

I've just been sold for $2,000 each. And you see there are husbands, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s are walking towards them, trying to grab them. And it just breaks me my heart. It's just a hard way. Yeah, and it's, you know, I was going to ask for people listening, maybe uneducated on the subject.

“Is it happening in certain countries, certain religions that it all around?”

It's, it's globally, you know, if you do you research, I just read an article that is an Alabama just happened.

A 64-year-old Caucasian man, Mary's, a 16-year-old with the parents consent. I'm talking about Caucasians and he gets arrested, somebody tells on him. And this old man is like, why am I being arrested? He's questioning why. I think you are with the 16-year-old and he goes, so what? I married her with parents consent. What does that mean?

A 16-year-old girl, how would she know that this is what she wants?

Yeah. And if the parents particularly give their consent, so we need to ask questions, why are we doing this? What do we need to do to change? And what needs to be done? Anything overall is really as a huge impact on education. Parents need to be educated. The whole world need to be a work-in and bring in this awareness that this is wrong. We need to educate the young children to speak up, particularly girls, to fight for your own freedom.

And if you have to do what you have to do. Yeah, I think in the last five-ten years, there's been a massive rise in education and people speaking out in sex trafficking.

“And I think that's come a long way in the last five-ten years, but not in this area, right?”

Yes, I kind of took a shadow almost. I don't see much in, I don't know if it's because it's more prominent in certain countries, religions or why, but, you know, the world and society is, you know, still got a long way to go. But fortunately, it has come a long way in equal rights in the last 50 years for women in a racial aspect too, right? But there's still, you know, as you're highlighting here, there's some gaps in there, some big areas still where, you know, female rights such as, you know, so, so under the, not under the spotlight, right?

Exactly. I think it's so great what you're doing to bring it to a spotlight and we've had certain people sat here on the sex trafficking side, right? I educate them, bring that to the world, and it's great to see now a lot of celebrities are starting to run charities and organizations highlighting it too and even sharing some of their stories. So I hope, you know, this follows and it's in that aspect. And this is exactly what it is. It's sex-tiles trafficking. It's exactly what it is, except that.

Just wanted to be over and they just make it official by marrying their little young girls and without having any guilt over it. But this is really identical, very similar exactly where it is. So yeah, I do also have while I was writing my book to include it, I wanted to bring in awareness, I wanted to, this to be a movement. But I also realized that what that I needed when I was in that situation, I needed help, we needed escape, I needed to be in a safe home. I was, it was very hard because I had to endure on a daily basis, all kinds of views, mental, emotional, physical, sexual abuse.

And I didn't had anyone to turn around and say, "Hey, can you help me?" Well, I was going to ask all the organizations and help lines for this that people can get help with. Yes, I personally myself decided to not only for my story to bring in awareness and to be a movement, but also I launched a non-profit, to be able to help girls globally that if they are stuck in this similar situation,

“that we would love to offer them safe home, support and education, so then one day they can write their own story, but that's what I'm working towards.”

Yes, it's hard to get there, especially on a global level, right?

Yes, this is definitely the beginning, but it's not going to be the end, and I'm also working very hard trying to bring in this story.

And on a screen to allow the world to see the reality of what girls are facing every single day.

“Yeah, I think bringing it in a more mainstream, right?”

Like sex trafficking has had several movies starting to come out now.

I think help educate the world, you know, the general population, more about how big the issue is, because I do think for many years it was kind of in the shadows and hidden away. Yes, and I believe this is the same, and it sounds like this is very similar.

Yes, absolutely agree with you.

I'll ask a couple of questions for you. I would love to hear, you know, write in the book, write, go through that process, you know, being a mom balance in the businesses, people are listening and you know, they obviously stand for for hearing what you went through, but also probably inspired about how, you know, everything's now turned out, right? What tips and things of you learn to be able to juggle these things and kind of, you know, have the business career that you've had as well. What helped me the most was staying on top of my health and fitness that honestly kept me going to stay positive and also my children knowing that where I was at in life and where I wanted to be was absolutely no question asked because I know that.

“You need to just stay positive and never feel like you're the victim always wake up and know that or believe that today's going to be a better day and tomorrow's going to be even a better day for you.”

And if you have that mindset and work towards freedom with one small steps and one decision at a time and you will get to be able to be juggle as long as you follow those things and not get drown in a dark hole and feel bad for yourself and feel like you're stuck. That is not the option. You just have to, there's really no one else when you stuck in a situation like that to help you but yourself. So health and fitness is the number one positivity consistency in staying positive and real stage for me, save my life and I know that I wanted to be successful and, you know, to be on my own fate.

“So just do what you need to do to accomplish whatever you have, you know, and as a mindset.”

And last couple of questions, you know, I think the stuff like this, there's there's two parts of it, right? There's people that maybe know someone going through this but they haven't actually realized how, how if someone you know might think there's a friend or someone they know that's actually stuck in this and is going through it or the signs and things people can spot to maybe help someone if they know someone going through this. You know, it's unfortunately for my own experiences that right now, I'm trying to gather stories of women to bring it in more globally to share with the world including my own sisters in some of the friends that I've known experience the same situation.

You know, I feel full to share this story, I don't know if it's out of shame or out of maybe even family's name. But it's in and when they do have bruises like myself or some sort of an injury we had, we stay home. We don't like to be seen in that kind of a situation. I mean, I remember when I had my first bad experience or that I had was at 816 where we first got married, I had a broken jaw, he broke my jaw and it couldn't even look at myself in the mirror because I was very looking disappeared. But I didn't leave the house for 8 weeks. I don't want it to be seen now. I don't want people to feel bad for me. And so yeah, I really hope that women are becoming more brave enough to come out and I had a darkness and speak up, please speak up because if we all gather voices together, we can make a difference in this world.

If you may think it's too late for you, but what about our daughters? What about our green dot grant daughters? The future generation. We all want that we all have a purpose and we all want to leave this world to be a better place for our future children. So please speak up.

Good. And I was about to ask ways to follow you, engage, get the book. You already shared one right book. Can you just repeat the book back and maybe any social media and other places?

The book is available on Amazon, Barnson Noble. It's called "I Want Freedom" by Leila Ishan. And our social media is Leila for girls' freedom. And 100% the profit of the book will go towards this cause that will be providing in supporting girls with help and education in support. Good. Well, Leila thinks so much for sharing the story. I think between the book and an episode and hopefully one day soon a movie can have the same effect that some of those other movies in sex trafficking sound of freedom and stuff have had educating the general public right.

“And I have, you know, just like with sex trafficking, more awareness charities, celebrities and people start speaking out to have a change. You know, there's a long way to go right and both arenas.”

But, you know, I think awareness is the first step, right? Just like in business. Thanks for sharing. Everyone listening, you know, go support. This obviously great cause. And as always, keep working hard, have impact, have a legacy. And I'll see you guys soon. Take care. Take care. Thank you.