The girl sits in the last row of the tiny courtroom, trembling and holding her mother's hand. When the judge finally calls up her case, she is biting her fingernails as her lawyer speaks.

Three weeks earlier, Reem's father had married her off to her cousin - a tall, gaunt man more than three times her age. She says that her new husband raped her three days after their wedding and beat her almost every day in the remote village where they lived. She tried to escape, twice by suicide, and finally by fleeing to her mother's house in Sana'a, where she has come to court seeking a divorce. Reem is 12.

When the judge, Mohammed Alqadhi, asks why he should dissolve their marriage, she replies with an even voice: “If I have to return to my husband I will kill myself.”

Her case, heard earlier this summer in Yemen's capital city, is still before the courts but Reem's plight has emerged as a high-profile and crucial test of this conservative Muslim country's treatment of child brides. In May, Nujood Ali, a 10-year-old girl, became the first child bride to lobby Yemen's courts successfully for a divorce after being forced to marry a man nearly 30 years her senior.

Fleeing a forced marriage

Sameem Ali, forced to marry at 13, wants to help the hundreds still trapped. Read her story

BACKGROUND

• ‘My family still cross the street to avoid me’

• Single? Why not try an arranged marriage?

• Teachers may get power to halt forced marriages

BACKGROUND

• Scars and bruises of a girl who wanted to be free

• Police worker 'banned for telling truth'

• ‘I felt invisible and that no one cared about me’

• The Britons who are forced into marriage

Her case captured headlines around the world. In the wake of her victory, Yemeni judges and lawmakers vowed to stamp out the widespread practice of early marriage. Emboldened by Nujood's victory, a handful of other child brides have since stepped forward, demanding an end to marriages brokered by their families to win dowries or forge tribal alliances. But now the same court that awarded Nujood her freedom is failing to uphold the precedent set by her case. It seems that tribal customs still prevail over Yemen's official laws that set the age of marital consent at 15.

“Some extremists have complained about Nujood's case,” says Shada Nasser, the outspoken Yemeni lawyer who represented Nujood and now three other child brides, including Reem, in their quest for divorce. “They think the judges should not interfere with tribal life.”

Across the Middle East, marriage is seen as a rite of passage to adulthood, and, for women particularly, is still viewed as the gateway to independence, financial security and respect. But it seems that Middle Eastern women are beginning to find their voice. This week it emerged that a book exposing the matchmaking horrors visited upon one 29-year-old Egyptian pharmacist, Ghada Abdel Aal, by her family has become a bestseller and her blog “Wanna-b-a-bride” a lifeline for some of the 15 million girls who, she says “are pressurised by their society to get married”.

For Nujood, life is still poverty-stricken, but nevertheless she is optimistic about the future. I meet her and her family in their filthy two-room flat in the slums on the outskirts of Sanaa. She is proud of the publi- city that her case garnered, in part because she hopes it will pave the way for other child brides to seek similar justice. “I want other girls to take courage from me,” she says, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, arranged her marriage in February last year. The street sweeper was struggling to support his two wives and 16 children, most of whom begged on the streets. Nujood was the only child who attended school at the local mosque. He arranged for her to marry Faez Ali Thamer, a motorcycle taxi driver who promised to protect her in exchange for her hand.

“I did it for her own wellbeing,” Ahdal tells me, crouched on a mattress on the dusty floor of the room where his whole family sleeps. Nujood was terrified to leave her parents' house, but she believed them when they told her marriage meant that she would be able to finish school and visit her family whenever she wished.

Her parents claim that they had agreed to the marriage on the condition that Thamer would wait until Nujood passed puberty before he had sex with her. Nujood said she didn't know what sex was until her wedding night, when her husband dragged her on to his mattress. She managed to fend him off that first night, but on the third night he raped her. “He made me sleep with him every night after that. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I was so ashamed to remove my clothing.”

She says his family beat her because she couldn't keep up with her chores of fetching firewood and cooking bread on a heavy iron pan. School was out of the question. “I was begging to return to my family's house. I was so lonely and cried every day,” she says.

A week after she married, she convinced her husband to take her to Sanaa to visit her family. Out of his earshot, she told them of the abuse she suffered. Without the cash or clout to take his daughter back, her father said she would simply have to endure it. Later that night, an aunt took her aside and told her that her only hope was to seek a divorce. A few days later, when her parents were away, she took the money they had given her to buy breakfast for her siblings and boarded a bus for the courthouse, on the other side of town.

She waited on a bench outside the judge's office until he emerged from the courtroom. When she told him that she wanted a divorce he was shocked. “I said, ‘You are married? I don't believe it',” recalls Alqadhi. He sent the police to arrest her father and husband and threw them in jail. The judge took Nujood into protective custody, in his own home. The easiest way for her to end her marriage was to have it annulled and, for that, her husband was entitled to financial compensation. He was demanding a sum of £125 - an absolute fortune for Nujood's family. Nasser agreed to take on Nujood's case free of charge and paid Thamer out of her own pocket.

In the wake of Nujood's case, an influential group of Yemeni lawmakers has lobbied to raise the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18 for both men and women. Nujood has now enrolled in school. She has just finished year 2 and dreams of becoming a lawyer or a journalist. “I will never marry again,” she says. Her family has received donations from sympathisers around the world, transforming her from a street beggar into a minor celebrity with her own mobile phone and a possible movie deal.

For Reem, however, the future is more uncertain. Back at the courthouse, it is unclear whether the precedent set by Nujood will hold. Alqadhi granted her a divorce, even though Yemeni law technically protected her husband from prosecution. When Nasser presented the case of 12-year-old Reem, the judge seemed more reticent. “This case is different,” he tells me. “She is older and has married into her family. I don't want to just end the marriage, I want to solve the problem.” It was here that, earlier in the day, he had tried in vain to mediate a discussion between Reem, her parents and her husband. Her husband stomped out. Reem left in tears. Her mother and father had a shouting match. Her father says he arranged her marriage to protect Reem from the influence of her mother, from whom he is separated, and whom he accuses of prostitution. Her mother argues that he married her to avoid paying child support.

Alqadhi later told Nasser that he would postpone his ruling until Reem turned 15, ironically the legal age of consent for marriage, when she could make a mature decision about divorce. Until then, she has been ordered to live with her maternal grandfather. “I came here because I thought this man would help me, but I am leaving with nothing,” says Reem, twisting the sleeves of her black abaya. “I wish I was like Nujood.”

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