�鶹APP

�鶹APP�He was around 40 and I was 15. All I wanted to do was to go out and play hopscotch with my friends. I used to dread night-times,�鶹APP� said the Turkish woman who asked not to be named.

At the age of just 15, she had been forced into marriage with a man nearly three times her age.

She then suffered years of abuse at the hands of a husband who was 40 when he took her as his child bride.

�鶹APP�He used to drag me to the bedroom and took pleasure out of pulling my hair,�鶹APP� she said. �鶹APP�I used to collect all my hair from the floor and pillows every morning. Then I started cutting my hair so that he couldn�鶹APP�t hurt me as much.�鶹APP�

There are more than 700 million women in the world who were married before their 18th birthday.

An average of 40,000 children and young women under the age of 18 are married every day �鶹APP� around 15 million each year. More than 60% of child brides in developing countries have no formal education.

In Turkey, around one in three marriages involve someone under 18 �鶹APP� according a 2015 report written by the Turkish Population and Health Research.

The future is bleak for hundreds of thousands of young Turkish girls at risk of early forced marriage �鶹APP� and also the 370,000 Syrian girl refugees living in Turkey who are out of school and who could face a similar fate.

The haunting stories of four Turkish women who were married off as children will be told for the first time in a documentary to be shown in London on October 30.

Filmed by Dr Eylem Atakav in the Turkish city of Izmir in 2015, Growing Up Married explores what happens following child marriages through the stories of four women.

Dr Atakav �鶹APP� a senior lecturer in film and television studies in University of East Anglia�鶹APP�s School of Art, Media and American Studies in the United Kingdom �鶹APP� had unprecedented access to the Turkish women�鶹APP�s stories.

She said: �鶹APP�It was July. I was in Izmir for the filming of Growing Up Married and I had spent the day interviewing two of my parents�鶹APP� neighbours about their experiences.

�鶹APP�Then, at around 10 o�鶹APP�clock at night, there was a knock on the door. Three women from the neighbourhood came to ask if I was making a film about child brides and said that they wanted to talk about their experiences, too.

�鶹APP�I was surprised to find how invisible and silent �鶹APP� yet common �鶹APP� this experience was. It was a truly eye-opening moment that signalled the women�鶹APP�s urgent need to speak out and the importance of recording their experiences.�鶹APP�

One of the women featured in the documentary told Dr Atakav: �鶹APP�They put a wedding gown on me one night and took me to some place I had never seen before. I was sitting next to my aunt in the car. I asked her: �鶹APP�Auntie, where am I being taken to?�鶹APP� She pinched my arm and said: �鶹APP�Stop talking! It is rude to talk!�鶹APP� I [have] remained silent until this moment.�鶹APP�

Growing Up Married is Dr Atakav�鶹APP�s first film and will be shown at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley, London. The film will be followed by a question and answer session with Dr Atakav.

She has contributed to a House of Lords Commission report on Religion and Belief in British Public Life and is co-leading a project at the University of East Anglia on British Muslim values.

In Turkey, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of child marriages involving Syrian refugee girls �鶹APP� with 15% of all girls in the country now getting married before the age of 18.

The drastic situation was highlighted in a paper published by �鶹APP, the children�鶹APP�s charity behind A World at School.

It said action is needed to improve access to education for all Syrian refugees and to overcome gender barriers that keep girls out of the classroom and make them vulnerable to being forced into marriage or work.

World leaders pledged in February to get all refugee Syrian girls in school this academic year.

Despite that promise, �鶹APP warns the funding has not yet been fully delivered, leaving girls at risk and without hope for the future.

According to Human Rights Watch, child marriage is a fundamental violation of human rights and can have many harmful consequences.

Child brides face a higher risk of contracting HIV and are much more likely to experience domestic violence. Pregnancy remains among the leading causes of death for girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide.

According to the international consortium Girls Not Brides, child marriage was common in Syria before the outbreak of the civil war. But the conflict has increased the practice at an alarming rate.