15 October 2019

17,000 sign petition demanding BBC removes from iPlayer its 'pleasure marriages' expose on how Iraqi Muslim clerics sell young girls for sex because it's 'disrespectful' to Shia Islam

More than 17,000 people have demanded the BBC take down a documentary about young Iraqi girls being sold for sex - calling it 'disrespectful' to law-abiding Shia Muslims.

The corporation broadcast 'Undercover With The Clerics - Iraq's Secret Sex Trade' on October 3 - an investigation into sexual exploitation of children and young women by clerics in Iraq.

Journalists caught clerics offering 'pleasure marriages' to girls as young as nine - where men banned from sex outside marriage can pay a dowry for an interim wife.

The practice is banned in Iraq but eight out of 10 Shia clerics who were approached were willing to carry it out, the BBC World investigation found. [Daily Mail] Read more