Bride kidnapping

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A depiction of Vikings kidnapping a woman. Viking men would often kidnap foreign women for marriage or concubinage from lands that they had pillaged. Illustrated by French painter Évariste Vital Luminais in the 19th century.
Benjaminites seize wives from Shiloh in this 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld. There were not enough women available for marriage after the high losses in the Battle at Gibeah.

Bride kidnapping, also known as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, is a practice in which a man abducts and rapes the woman he wishes to marry.[1]

Bride kidnapping (hence the portmanteau bridenapping[2]) has been practiced around the world and throughout prehistory and history, among peoples as diverse as the Hmong in Southeast Asia, the Tzeltal in Mexico, and the Romani in Europe. Bride kidnapping still occurs in various parts of the world, but it is most common in the Caucasus, Central Asia and some parts of Africa.[3][4][5]

In most nations, bride kidnapping is considered a sex crime because of the implied element of rape, rather than a valid form of marriage. Some types of it may also be seen as falling along the continuum between forced marriage and arranged marriage. The term is sometimes confused with elopements, in which a couple runs away together and seeks the consent of their parents later. In some cases, the woman cooperates with or accedes to the kidnapping, typically in an effort to save face for herself or her parents. In many jurisdictions, this used to be encouraged by so-called marry-your-rapist laws. Even in countries where the practice is against the law, if judicial enforcement is weak, customary law ("traditional practices") may prevail.

Bride kidnapping is often (but not always) a form of child marriage.[6] It may be connected to the practice of bride price, wealth paid by the groom and his family to the bride's parents, and the inability or unwillingness to pay it.[7]

Bride kidnapping is distinguished from raptio in that the former refers to the abduction of one woman by one man (and his friends and relatives), and is still a widespread practice, whereas the latter refers to the large scale abduction of women by groups of men, possibly in a time of war. Raptio was assumed to be a historical practice, hence the Latin term, but the 21st century has seen a resurgence of war rape, some of which has elements of bride kidnapping; for example, women and girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and ISIS in the Middle East have been taken as wives by their abductors.

Rituals indicating a symbolic bride kidnapping still exist in some cultures (such as Circassians[8]), as part of traditions surrounding a wedding. According to some sources, the honeymoon is a relic of marriage by capture, based on the practice of the husband going into hiding with his wife to avoid reprisals from her relatives, with the intention that the woman would be pregnant by the end of the month.[9]

  1. ^ "Captured Hearts". www.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  2. ^ "'Bridenapping': a growing hidden crime". The Independent. 9 October 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  3. ^ "Police swoop on fake 'bride kidnapping'". 2 September 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  4. ^ "Kidnapped and forced to marry their rapist ending courtship in Uganda". 28 September 2023. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  5. ^ "Kidnapped, raped married. The extraordinary rebellion of Ethiopia's abducted wives". 17 March 2010. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  6. ^ "One in five girls and women kidnapped for marriage in Kyrgyzstan:..." Reuters. 1 August 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  7. ^ Smith, Craig S. (30 April 2005). "Abduction, Often Violent, a Kyrgyz Wedding Rite". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  8. ^ Gilad, Moshe (5 July 2012). "A Slightly Rarefied Circassian Day Trip". Haaretz. "We have an ancient and strong tradition, and we preserve it carefully. Kidnapping the bride before marriage is part of this tradition, and today it is a symbolic ceremony that allows women to marry whom they wish even if the family is against the match."—Zuhair Thawcho, director of the Circassian Heritage Center in Kfar Kama, Israel
  9. ^ See, e.g., William Shepard Walsh, Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities, (J.B. Lippincott Co., 1897), p. 654; John Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental and Social Condition of Savages, (Appleton, 1882), p. 122. Curtis Pesmen & Setiawan Djody, Your First Year of Marriage (Simon and Schuster, 1995) p. 37. Compare with Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (Allerton Book Co., 1922), p. 277 (refuting the link between honeymoon and marriage by capture).