Bride kidnapping

[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.

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.

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.

Due to this loss of labour, the women's families do not want their daughters to marry young, and demand economic compensation (the aforementioned bride price) when they do leave them.

[15][16] The practice has increased with the rise of Salafist networks under president Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi, who pay as much as $3000 for every Coptic Christian woman kidnapped, raped and married to a Muslim man.

According to one scholar, a successful bridal kidnapping raised the abductor's reputation in his community, and allowed him to negotiate a lower bride price with his wife's family.

Human rights workers report that one third of men who abduct their wives abandon them, leaving the wife without support and impaired in finding a future marriage.

[34] Women's rights groups have attempted to reverse the tradition by conducting awareness raising campaigns and by promoting gender equity, but the progress has been limited so far.

[40] Though origin of the tradition in the region is disputed,[41] the rate of nonconsensual bride kidnappings appears to be increasing in several countries throughout Central Asia as the political and economic climate changes.

[46] The matter is somewhat confused by the local use of the term "bride kidnap" to reflect practices along a continuum, from forcible abduction and rape (and then, almost unavoidably, marriage), to something akin to an elopement arranged between the two young people, to which both sets of parents have to consent after the act.

[47] However, the United Nations Development Programme disputes that bride kidnapping is part of the country's culture or tradition, and considers it a human rights violation.

In modern days, this practice is still going on with more permissive manner, like the woman parents know in advance when the kidnapping will happen, when the messenger will come, and when and where the marriage will take place.

Because of this increased cost (and the general unpleasantness of abduction), kidnapping is usually only a practice reserved for a man with an otherwise blemished chance of securing a bride, because of criminal background, illness or poverty.

[81] Bride trafficking has become a pressing issue in China, stemming from the country's historical one-child policy and a cultural preference for male offspring, which has resulted in a significant gender imbalance.

[90] For example, in a paper discussing the phrase, Indigenous academic Mirna P Marinho da Silva Anaquiri reports a quote from a teacher in Goiânia interviewed as part of her fieldwork: As a child I witnessed an Indian woman arriving at the farm where my father worked, tied to the tail of a horse.

[98] Contemporary chronicler Alonso González de Nájera writes that during the Destruction of the Seven Cities in southern Chile Mapuches took over 500 Spanish women as captives.

[101] The Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia regions in the Northern Caucasus (in Russia) have also witnessed an increase in bride kidnappings since the fall of the Soviet Union.

It is represented in mythology and history by the tribe of Benjamin in the Bible;[126] by the Greek hero Paris stealing the beautiful Helen of Troy from her husband Menelaus, thus triggering the Trojan War;[127] and by the Rape of the Sabine Women by Romulus, the founder of Rome.

Sir Walter Scott devotes the latter half of the 1829 introduction to his novel Rob Roy to describing the real incident, which took place in 1750 near the village of Balfron.

American literary scholar Barry Menikoff places the story in context, and states that "the trials of James and Robert Macgregor were cited regularly as illustrations and precedents in Scottish criminal law".

[138] On 10 November 1690, Mary was lured outside from the home she shared with her great-aunt on Great Queen Street, Westminster, where the three men forced her into a six-horse coach and took her off to the coachman's house.

[137] Reputedly a "nasty piece of work",[140] Johnston had previously been involved in a similar elopement with a Miss Magrath in County Clare, Ireland and had subsequently been imprisoned in Dublin as a debtor.

In 1965, this custom was brought to national attention by the case of Franca Viola, a 17-year-old abducted and raped by a local small-time criminal, with the assistance of a dozen of his friends.

Conveying clear messages of solidarity, Giuseppe Saragat, then president of Italy, sent the couple a gift on their wedding day, and soon afterwards, Pope Paul VI granted them a private audience.

With the consent of his parents and the aid of his friends, the abductor would accost his bride and take her to a barn away from the home, as superstition held that pre-marital intercourse might bring bad luck to the house.

The 1960 Hong Kong film Qiangpin (The Bride Hunter) portrays the custom in the format of an all-female Yue opera comedy, in which Xia Meng plays a gender-bending role as a man masquerading as a woman.

[159] On a more serious note, a 1970 Italian film, La moglie più bella (The Most Beautiful Wife) by Damiano Damiani and starring Ornella Muti, is based on the story of Franca Viola, described above.

However, before the national debate caused by the Viola case, a 1964 satire directed by Pietro Germi, Seduced and Abandoned (Sedotta e abbandonata), treated the Sicilian custom as a dark comedy.

[160] The 2007 Kyrgyz film Pure Coolness also revolves around the bride kidnapping custom, mistaken identity, and the clash between modern urban expectations and the more traditional countryside.

[non-primary source needed] In the BBC radio and television comedy series The League of Gentlemen, the character Papa Lazarou comes to the fictional town of Royston Vasey under the guise of a peg-seller.