NEWPORT-born Gaby Gillespie, now 50, was betrayed by her father who killed her mother than sold her and her sisters as child brides. She talks to JEN MILLS.

“When I decided to speak out about my life experiences I did so in the hope that I could show other girls and women that no matter what we go through as child brides we are strong individuals. I am also trying to put my voice alongside millions of others who are starting to speak out and say “’Enough is enough, this needs to stop!’

We were a happy family of four sisters - I was the youngest. But then my mum Mary, from Birmingham, disappeared. I remember our father Ali Abdulla Saleh Yafai picking us up from school one day in 1971 and telling us she had just left us and gone. He was later arrested and charged with her manslaughter.

They never found her body and he was convicted on just witness statements. A witness said she heard screaming in our house and she saw my father and two other men carrying out a rolled up carpet on the day my mum went missing.

He admitted it many, many years later to my sister. He said it was the night before her 26th birthday and they were arguing about something to do with her birthday. He said she was stood in the kitchen holding a knife and there was a struggle and he accidentally slit her throat. To cover up the fact she had died he cut her up into pieces and later disposed of her body in Llanwern Steelworks. I knew he did kill her, I felt it in my heart. I believe he was an evil, evil man.

He did four years in prison, and then he was allowed to take us back. We had been fostered, on Grafton Road, and I went to Duffryn High School.

On my 13th birthday in 1977 he promised us a fantastic holiday to his country the Yemen. He said we were going to a nice warm county where there were beaches and fruit trees. We were very naive. There were three of us – my older sister was a student nurse and she didn’t come with us.

I was 13, Yas was 14 and my sister Issy was 17. It was terrifying. All of a sudden we realised it wasn’t a holiday. When we got to Gatwick our father told us he wasn’t coming with us. He said our uncle was going to meet us on the other side. We knew as soon as we got there that something was wrong.

It was nothing like he said it was. A couple of weeks after we got there they separated us and sold my sister Yas. We were more or less locked up in the house and weren’t allowed to go out unless we were with a male family member. It was terrifying for us. We were told we had to change our clothes and we had to become Muslim girls.

Yas was taken away and my sister Issy was moved to Sana’a with a different uncle. We were taken to a very rural village with mud huts. Day-to-day life was hard and back-breaking work. We woke up at 4am and went to the fields. We had to harvest our own food, carry the water from miles away. Everything was cooked in a clay oven with no electricity.

We had to feed the animals and clean the house. Generations of one family would live in one house. It was constant. Women gave birth in the fields where they were working. We didn’t know how to pray and we used to get beaten because we didn’t know how to do things.

About a month after that our dad turned up with Yas. She had tried to commit suicide and the family she had been married into didn’t want her anymore. She had shamed them – she was ‘damaged goods’. He had to give the money back he had been paid.

A couple of weeks after that he told us our older sister Issy was to be married to a 60-year-old man. She was 17. She told him straight away, ‘If you try and marry me I will commit suicide’. He said, ‘Do what you want to do’. She threw herself off a roof on her wedding night.

My father reacted quite badly to it and we thought ‘Okay, he’s going to change’, but it didn’t last for long. He just went back to his old ways.

A couple of months after that I got married. I knew I was going to be sold so I tried to see if I could pick a husband I would actually like. He was 18 and I was still 13. But a few months later my husband started vomiting and died. That was it.

After he died my second husband was chosen for me. I was with him for 16 years and had five children. There was no medical care for us. Even when I was in labour for three days with my first son, I was taken to the hospital after the third night. I thought I was finally going to get help. In the room there was just a high wooden table without even a pillow. It was horrifying, with no painkillers.

I finally managed to escape when my sister Yas met a young girl from England who told her about a place called the British Embassy that could help. We never knew.

I fled with my children and said I wanted to go home. They said I could go tomorrow because I was British but my children were Arabic. I refused to go without my children. We were in hiding for a year but they finally managed to put my children on my passport and smuggled us out.

It took a long time because I had a lot of Yemeni family who worked in the government. During that time I was in a safe house and they found me work looking after the children of people who worked in the British Embassy.

My father hunted me up until the day he died four years ago. He threatened to kill me because I ran away. Once before I left he threatened me to my face with a gun and said ‘I’m going to kill you the same way I killed your mother’. My grandmother got in the way and said ‘No, you will have to go through me first’. My father backed down and left the house.

In August 1992 we arrived back in the UK. It was difficult adjusting but it was also very empowering. I think it was a turning point for me – I started sticking up for myself. The only thing that was in my mind was making sure my father never found us. We changed our identities, changed our names and moved around quite a lot.

I lived in Duffryn for three years then I moved to Devon and then Bristol. My eldest son lives in Newport now and he has just had a baby boy.

This happens so much in the UK - girls go missing and never come back. I think it’s a growing problem that needs to be addressed. People don’t talk about it because a lot of girls are ashamed or they don’t want to upset their families or community. It has been good to have a voice.

In Yemen we were told we were not allowed to speak English and we had to learn the local language. Me and my sister always swore we would never stop speaking English to each other.

I never lost my Newport accent."

Gabriella Gillespie has written a book called A Father’s Betrayal which is currently available in paperback and on Amazon Kindle download.