It wasn't love that brought Aliya and Hassan together, but a couple of childhood photos he'd seen of her. For Hassan, Aliyah - then a 20-year-old from Manchester - was a ticket out of Pakistan to join his brothers in England in the hope of kick-starting a lucrative career in medicine.

As for what Aliyah thought of Hassan? Well, no one cared. Not her mother, who threatened to kill herself if Aliyah didn't go through with the marriage. Not her father, who had routinely molested Aliyah in her formative years, and not her siblings, who desperately wanted to uphold their parents' honour and obey their demands.

For three years after her wedding in Pakistan in 1998 Aliyah - a practising Muslim raised in northern England, who wears the hijab - was raped and emotionally abused by her husband. “He wanted to do things in the bedroom that I didn't want to do,” she told The Times. “And in the end he forcefully got what he wanted.”

Aliyah, who worked as a factory-hand to support her unemployed husband, went to her local cleric to raise her concerns of being subjected to sexual abuse after her mother refused to listen to her complaints.

“I told my imam that I was suffering and that my confidence was broken,” she said. “The imam told me to be patient. And I couldn't say no to him because I was raised to fear men and put up with their decisions.”

Aliyah didn't go back to the imam because he was a close friend of her family and she was afraid that he would relay her complaints to her parents. She couldn't seek the advice of another imam because clerics don't usually deal with females that aren't their students or known to them through family links.

“I totally lost faith in spiritual leaders after that,” Aliyah said. “I lost faith in imams because they refuse to discuss issues such as rape and abuse and refuse to speak up against it. It's seen as an embarrassing issue for them and they won't get involved because they think their reputation will be ruined and so would the reputation of the community.” Aliyah also accused her mother of ignoring her complaints about her sexually abusive father.

Aliyah, now 30, divorced Hassan in 2001 after she was overcome by severe depression that on more than one occasion pushed her to consider taking her own life. She sought help from a therapist, but the advice she was given convinced her that she had to resolve her problems on her own. She said: “When I told the therapist how I had been abused she said I needed to read self-help books. It was ridiculous. While I didn't want medication I just wanted someone to listen to me and to give me encouragement to build myself back up.”

Her tragic story is far from unique. She said that some of her friends have gone through similar ordeals and have had complaints brushed aside by their clerics.

Aliyah said that clerics always put their community's reputation ahead of women's welfare.

“In the current situation, with the Muslim community here feeling that it's being attacked and regularly discriminated against, imams don't want to bring up issues that involve the community because they fear that it would ruin the reputation of the Muslim community further.”

“Aliyah's” name has been changed to protect her identity