Original subtitles

Muslim clerics acting like pimps

Undercover in Baghdad,

we expose a secret world of sexual exploitation.

Widows of war, forced to become halal prostitutes

Men of God, giving religious

guidance on how to abuse children.

In this holy sex trade even children are for sale.

(mysterious music)

I'm in Kadhimiya Central Baghdad,

one of Shia Islam's most important pilgrimage sites.

Millions visit this holy shrine,

and many couples come here to get married.

Just walking around the shopping arcade,

across from the main shrine,

I've come across multiple marriage offices.

We've heard that some Shia clerics

are performing a controversial religious practice called mut'ah,

or pleasure marriage.

In this society, where sex for unmarried couples is forbidden,

a pleasure marriage allows a man to pay for a temporary wife.

But, they're illegal in Iraq.

And we've found they are being used to exploit women.

I have to be discreet filming this,

but we're here to investigate allegations

that some of the clerics here

are grooming women for halal prostitution,

and even acting like pimps.

(call to prayer)

Pleasure marriage, or mut'ah, is a Shia practice.

But Sunni Islam also recognizes

another type of informal marriage, which is calls Misyah.

Many Iraqi clerics say pleasure marriages

are sanctioned by Islamic law,

and can even be good for couples.

This is Faris Al Mousawi.

Tell me about Mut'ah marriage.

What are the rules behind mut'ah marriage?

The man pays for a sexual relationship.

But the cleric said, if the woman was poor,

the man would be helping her.

But what's the difference between Mut'ah marriage and prostitution?

(mysterious music)

Fifteen years of war have had a

devastating effect on Iraq's women.

A million have been widowed,

and many more are still displaced.

Clerics had told us pleasure marriages

were a way of helping vulnerable women.

But we'd started to hear stories of abuse.

We're concealing the real names of the women we spoke to.

When the so called Islamic State took her city,

Rana fled to Baghdad.

Soon after, her husband left her.

(background market noise)

(Sombre music)

Rana says she trusted her new husband,

and didn't read the marriage contract.

She thought she was starting a new life.

(Sombre music continues)

(suspenseful music)

After a few days, Rana's husband

took her out shopping.

Then, she says, without any warming, he vanished.

(street noise)

She's thought her husband was sincere.

In fact, he'd tricked her into a temporary pleasure marriage.

When Rana's family found out the marriage

wasn't genuine, they rejected her.

Unable to support herself, she became a prostitute.

(suspenseful music, street noise)

A man and a cleric had conspired to

deceive Rana.

The only way to get evidence on camera of what clerics

were doing behind closed doors, was to go undercover.

First, our reporter had to get his hidden

cameras through the Khadimiya security cordon.

His task would be difficult and dangerous.

We're concealing his identity.

When I arrived I was really scared.

First checkpoint was really scary because

I had a secret camera.

If they found this, no way I can run away.

Posing as a potential client, he arranged to meet several clerics.

I just went to many of this office

and start asking them if you do a temporary pleasure marriage.

Some of them they said yes.

One of them was Sheikh Hussein

This is Hussein Al Musawi.

His office is opposite the main shrine.

My cover story was I am Iraqi, living in London

coming to Baghdad for a short trip.

Our reporter pretended he'd met a girl,

and wanted to have sex with her.

He asked if the cleric would do pleasure marriage.

The cleric said it was better not to have a written contract.

Without a contract, he said, it's easier to cover your tracks.

The cleric was giving advice on how to use

a woman for sex, and then get rid of her.

We had evidence they said this but to

see it for myself was really shocking.

I couldn't believe he was telling me have sex

with her and just leave her in the street.

His services came at a price.

We found an expert on Islamic law, Ghaith Tamimi,

who could help us interpret our evidence.

In Iraq, he’d been a high ranking Shia cleric.

But he started speaking out

against the clerical establishment.

After receiving death threats,

he’s now living in exile in London.

Ghaith told me this cleric was breaking Islamic law,

and his advice could put a woman in danger.

If she were caught with a man, she

risked being charged with prostitution.

Despite being illegal in Iraq,

we found pleasure marriage was widely available in Khadimiya.

Out of 10 clerics we spoke to, eight said they performed them.

One of them was Sayyid Raad.

His title, Sayyid, means he claims descent from the prophet Mohammed.

Our reporter told him he’d met a girl and wanted to have halal sex.

He said pleasure marriages allowed a man

to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

It’s illegal to rent a hotel room In

Iraq unless you’re properly married,

but Sayyid Raad said this was no problem.

(Atmospheric music)

I wanted to find out about the men

who use clerics to do pleasure marriages.

I was meeting a married professional in his forties.

Speaking anonymously, Ali, not his real name,

told me he regularly does them, sometimes, just for an hour.

To me it sounded like prostitution

but Ali said he wanted it to be halal.

As we talked, Ali revealed some men were paying

for pleasure marriages with children.

(suspenseful music)

We were discovering one of Iraq's darkest secrets.

Clerics making money helping men

who wanted sex with very young girls.

Sayyid Raad was prepared to talk about it.

Our reporter had told him, he'd met a 13 year virgin

and asked whether a pleasure marriage would be Halal.

Vaginal sex was forbidden, according to the cleric.

But other things he said, were permissible.

(busy crowd noise)

Sayyid Raad said he was a follower of Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani,

Iraq's most senior Shia cleric.

Like some other Shia leaders in Iraq,

Ayatollah Al-Sistani has in the past written

that if a child under nine was promised

in a marriage or temporary marriage

sexual touching was religiously permitted.

We approached the Ayatollah's office to

clarify his religious advice on this matter.

In a statement, he said, times had changed.

And this had been erased from his current books.

Ghaith has called for all Iraq's religious

leaders to condemn these practices.

(building string music)

To continue our investigation, we've come to

the most important site for Shia Muslims.

(muffled loudspeaker)

This is Karbala. It's the biggest Shia pilgrimage site in the world,

tens of millions of pilgrims come here every year.

We’d already seen how clerics were helping men break the law,

and even doing pleasure marriages with minors.

We wanted to know whether the religious authorities

in this holy city condoned the practice.

I spoke to Sheikh Emad Alassady.

So we heard about pleasure marriages

- mut’a marriages - do you do them here?

But in the streets around the shrine,

some clerics were giving very different advice.

One of them was Sheikh Salawi.

(suspenseful music builds)

Sheikh Salawi said he was a member of one of

Iraq's powerful and well-armed militia groups.

Our reporter pretended he’d met a young girl who was still a virgin.

We showed this footage to Yanar Mohammed, who

runs a network of women’s shelters across Iraq.

Nine years old...

they are just opening a shop for paedophiles,

inviting them from all over the world.

The girl is looked at as a piece of merchandise,

and using the merchandise in specific ways is allowed,

but the virginity is kept for that big sale

that they will do in the future.

(traffic sound)

The ‘big sale’ is marriage.

Yanar told me that some families see girls as a financial burden,

and want to marry them off.

But parents can only find a husband if

their daughter’s virginity is guaranteed.

Pretending he had a real girl in mind,

our reporter asked Sayyid Raad what would happen if he did

take the girl’s virginity during a pleasure marriage.

They are speaking of how a man can get away

with the crime of raping a young girl.

So 'just leave her and go',

what does mean for the girl involved?

If the males of the family are aware of what happened to her,

they will be killing her,

and then the honour of the male patriarchs is preserved.

It is always the girl and the women who pay the price.

(tense music)

I interviewed a girl who is at grave

risk of violence from her relatives.

She lost her virginity in a pleasure marriage.

We'll call her Mona

and for her safety,

we filmed an actor telling her story, using Mona’s exact words.

A few weeks later, the man took Mona to a cleric in Khadamiya.

She was only 14.

Her parents knew nothing about it.

Did he ask for your parents consent?

When she tried to stop seeing the man, he turned to blackmail.

Mona had been groomed by a sexual predator,

with the help of a cleric.

We wanted to see how difficult it would be

to get a cleric to do a pleasure marriage with a very young girl.

It turned out to be easy.

Sayyid Raad took our reporter to a waiting taxi.

Our reporter had told him he wanted to do a

pleasure marriage with a 13 year old virgin.

He didn’t ask to meet the girl in person, or talk to her family.

He agreed to do the ceremony over the phone.

Basically another colleague of mine, she was in the hotel and

when he ring the phone my female colleague,

she was on the other end of the phone

and she was ready to answer.

I’m not thinking this marriage would be that simple.

The only question he asks is, what is your name?

And he began the ceremony without any questions.

In just a few minutes, Sayyid Raad had made $200 for a

pleasure marriage with a girl he believed to be only 13.

For Mona, the consequences of her teenage

pleasure marriage have been disastrous.

(sullen string music)

Her family are now pressuring her to get married.

She told us something similar had happened to her cousin,

with fatal results.

(sad string music continues)

Mona’s in such an impossible situation,

what she thought was her teenage love story

has ended up ruining her entire future.

And if it wasn’t for the cleric convincing her that

it’s religiously OK, this would have never happened.

(suspenseful music)

In Iraq today, Conservative Shia clerics

give far more than just spiritual advice.

After years of sectarian conflict, they've gained political leverage

often with the backing of armed militias.

Activists say they're pushing women's rights back decades.

There were laws that protected women,

some protection for us in our marriages.

It seems that everything we gained in decades of

hard work by our mothers' generation were just lost.

Once the Islamic clerics rule the first losers are the women.

(tense music)

Our findings show that Iraqi law is failing to protect women.

To try to understand what's happening,

I've come to the Courthouse in Sadr City.

(indistinct talking)

Just outside, I see the clerics I'd met earlier.

They're operating a parallel religious legal system,

conducting Sharia marriages and divorces.

A Sheikh is doing a Sharia divorce.

It only takes 5 minutes.

Divorce under Sharia law is easier than Iraqi civil law.

And leaves women with fewer rights.

Sharia also allows child marriage.

What's the youngest age that you'll marry?

Under Iraqi law a girl must be 15 to marry.

But this doesn't seem to bother some clerics.

Inside the court, they're dealing with the consequences.

Iraqi law doesn't recognise Sharia marriages.

So to be legal, couples must have

their marriage signed off by a judge.

The law on the minimum age for marriage should be enforced.

But that's not happening.

(talking)

Haneen is getting her marriage registered.

She's dressed like a grown woman,

but actually she's only 13 years old.

(sad music)

A cleric married Haneen to her husband six months ago.

Now she's pregnant.

Because she got married underage,

Haneen's father and groom could get two years in prison.

Instead they've been fined $50.

It's up to the judge. These days many are lenient.

(indistinct talking)

There's a queue of fathers waiting for their

daughters to get married before the judge.

Sami Okaybi is here with his 14-year-old daughter.

He didn't want her face shown.

Why are you marrying her off so young?

(indistinct talking)

The court's social worker is registering

the teenage brides and their grooms.

She's processed 126 underage marriages in the last six weeks.

She predicts almost all these teenagers will end up divorcing.

If you're a divorced woman you don't have a future.

You're looked at as a tainted person.

You become very vulnerable to that cleric

who whispers in your ears that he has the solution.

They call it temporary marriage,

being thrown off from one man to the other

to the third, fourth,

until you found out that you're a prostitute,

with a religious cover.

(ominous music)

Far from pleasure marriage helping women,

we found that clerics were using it to exploit women.

Preying on the most vulnerable,

recruiting them and pimping them out.

Rusul is 16.

For her safety, an actor is speaking her exact words.

Rusul was married off at twelve and divorced at thirteen.

Then she did a pleasure marriage to survive.

But soon after the man left her.

(sorrowful music)

The cleric told her that now she would never find a real husband.

With her sister to support,

Rusul had little choice but to work for the cleric.

Rusul's been pimped by the cleric for three years,

forced to have sex with dozens of men.

(dramatic music)

Ali, who does pleasure marriages for sex,

says he always pays clerics to find him girls.

We had evidence the clerics we'd been secretly filming

would perform pleasure marriages.

But would they also procure the girls?

Our reporter went back to Khadimiya to Sayyid Raad's office.

It was time to ask the crucial question:

would he provide a girl?

(sad music continues)

In Karbala, Sheikh Salawi hadn't seemed to think he was doing

anything wrong in arranging pleasure marriages either.

A few days later, our reporter rang the Sheikh

to ask him if he too would provide girls.

He told our reporter he could offer him a choice of women.

(wings flapping)

Many of the young women pimped out are destitute.

They're vulnerable to clerics handling charitable donations.

Ghaith Tamimi says he's seen clerics

luring women into the sex trade.

Our undercover reporter had been

promised girls by the Sheikh Salawi.

Now he was about to meet him in Baghdad.

The Sheikh said he had a girl waiting.

The Sheik said he had arranged a place where

our reporter could have sex with her.

We have enough proof he can provide girls,

so we left it there.

OK, salaam.

(dramatic music)

The Sheik had proved himself willing

to break the law and sell women.

By now, we had evidence that this practice was widespread.

I was about to meet a widow whose story revealed a senior

cleric running what appeared to be a prostitution ring.

Reem's husband was killed in an ISIS bombing.

Soon after, she and her two children lost their home.

When the cleric contacted Reem a few days later,

he made a suggestion.

(dramatic music)

Reem says the cleric started selling her to his friends.

It began one night when he brought three men.

(ambient sounds of town square)

We can't identify which cleric Reem alleges abused her.

But she says she was raped in one of these offices in Kadimiya.

The lucky ones reached our shelters.

The ones that are not lucky...

- What happens to them?

They end up in brothels, and they don't live long.

I would say their life expectancy is like 35.

We...

so many who were about to throw themselves

off the bridge, into the river.

(tense music building)

We had evidence clerics had ruined

women’s lives with pleasure marriages.

We’d filmed a cleric boasting he had girls for sale.

Now, after months of preparation, we were about to try

to catch a cleric in the act of pimping.

Our undercover reporter set up a meeting with Sayyid Raad.

Once he felt safe, he signaled to a

young woman in the back of his taxi.

She says she’s 26.

To protect her, we’ve disguised her identity.

Our reporter makes it clear he’s only here to talk.

It was a very difficult meeting

but it was important to prove Sayyid Raad he brings girls.

Sayyid Raad took charge of negotiations.

Sayyid Raad seemed keen to get the

deal done as quickly as possible...

We had the evidence we needed.

It was time to end the meeting.

Our reporter took Sayyid Raad aside and said he

wouldn’t go ahead with the pleasure marriage.

But Sayyid Raad wasn’t ready to give up on the deal.

We’d captured evidence that a cleric

was prepared to pimp a young girl.

The cleric wanted his $400.

He was he was willing to bring as young as he has to,

he just didn’t want to let that deal go past him.

It’s a good franchise for these vampires.

They suck the life out of young girls.

And leave them to deal with their miseries.

We wanted to put our allegations to the clerics we’d filmed,

but it was too dangerous to do it in person.

I phoned Sayyid Raad from London.

He hung up.

The other clerics didn't respond.

We put our evidence to Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani,

one of the most senior clerics in Shia Islam.

In a statement, he said:

He said the abuses we'd seen were happening because

the authorities were not enforcing the law.

An Iraqi government spokesman told BBC Arabic,

"if women don't go to the police with

their complaints against clerics,

it's difficult for the authorities to act".

But for many young women across Iraq,

there's no hope of justice.

Mona can never let her family find out about her pleasure marriage,

so going to the police seems impossible.

Since we spoke to Mona, she’s run away from home.

Rusul is still working for the cleric

She feels she has no choice.

Reem escaped the cleric in Kadimiya.

She’s still traumatized.

(weeping, heavy breathing)