The teenager was attending a benefit organised by the Grossman Burn Foundation where she was presented with the Enduring Heart award, the
Daily Mail report.
Maria Shriver gave out the award and, according to the Daily Mail
said:
"This is the first Enduring Heart award given to a woman whose heart endures and who shows us all what it means to have love and to be the enduring heart."
In August this year, the Grossman Burn Foundation took on the case of Bibi Aisha, who, at the age of 16, was forced into an arranged marriage. She was tortured and abused by the family and ran away to escape her torment.
According to the details included in a press kit from the Grossman Burn Foundation, she
said:
"I spent two years with them and became a prisoner."
She was promised help by two of her neighbours who then tried to sell her on to another man. The three of them were detained by police and Aisha was sent to prison for running away, her three year sentence was reduced to five months after she received a pardon from President Hamid Karzai.
But her story doesn't end there. Her father-in-law found her and her husband took her to a Taliban court for shaming the family. The court ruled that her ears and nose were to be cut
off.
Her husband obeyed that ruling and Aisha was left to die. She got help through a reconstruction team and through Women for Afghan Women(WAW).
According to a CNN blog, Bibi Aisha
said:
"When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out."
"It felt like there was cold water in my nose, I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood."
Esther Hyneman, board member for WAW told
CNN:
"Bibi Aisha is only one example of thousands of girls and women in Afghanistan and throughout the world who are treated this way - who suffer abuses like this, like this and worse."
