29 - Bride kidnapping. Europe.

Bride kidnapping. Europe.  Roma (Romani) communities.  Bride kidnapping has been documented as a marital practice in some Romani community traditions. In the Romani culture, girls as young as twelve years old may be kidnapped for marriage to teenaged boys. As the Roma population lives throughout Europe, this practice has been seen on multiple occasions in Ireland, England, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The kidnapping has been theorized as a way to avoid a bride price or as a method of ensuring exogamy. The tradition's normalization of kidnapping puts young women and girls at higher risk of becoming victims of human trafficking.  Mediterranean.  Marriage by capture was practiced in ancient cultures throughout the Mediterranean area. It is represented in mythology and history by the tribe of Benjamin in the Bible; by the Greek hero Paris stealing the beautiful Helen of Troy from her husband Menelaus, thus triggering the Trojan War; and by the rape of the Sabine women by Romulus, the founder of Rome.  In 326 A.D., the Emperor Constantine issued an edict prohibiting marriage by abduction. The law made kidnapping a public offence; even the kidnapped woman or girl could be punished if she later consented to a marriage with her abductor. Spurned suitors sometimes kidnapped their intended brides as a method of restoring honor. The suitor, in coordination with his friends, generally abducted the victim while she was out of her house in the course of her daily chores. The victim would then be secreted outside the town or village. Though the kidnapped woman or girl was sometimes raped in the course of the abduction, the stain on her honor from a presumptive consummation of the marriage was sufficient to damage her marital prospects irreversibly. Sometimes, the abduction masked an elopement.  Great Britain.  Abduction and forced marriage were ancient customs in the Scottish Highlands. Robert Louis Stevenson's 1893 sequel to the better-known Kidnapped, usually entitled Catriona but also published as David Balfour, fictionalises the bride kidnapping of heiress Jean Key by Robert Campbell (aka Robert MacGregor), youngest son of the folk hero Rob Roy. 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".  An earlier and equally notorious example of bride kidnapping was that of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, who in October 1697 attempted to marry as his child-bride the daughter of the late Hugh Fraser, 9th Lord Lovat; thwarted in that, he turned his attention to Hugh's widow, Lady Amelia Murray (1666–1743), daughter of John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl. "If he could not have Amelia the daughter, he would have Amelia the mother". Whilst at Castle Dounie he had a minister brought in to marry them. Her family, the most powerful in Scotland, was naturally enraged by this act of violence. He later treated it as a practical joke without legal validity; they separated in December 1697 and he married twice more before Amelia's death on 6 May 1743, without seeking divorce. His rape of Amelia led to a conviction in absentia for treason.  A decade earlier, another notable example spilled from the Scottish Highlands to London, necessitating a private act of Parliament to annul the marriage. Scandal erupted in 1690 when Captain James Campbell (of Burnbank and Boquhan), aided by Sir John, son of Sir William of Johnston (who had served in King William's War and as a captain at the Battle of Boyne), and by Archibald Montgomery, abducted and married a young heiress in London. The teenaged Mary Wharton was heir to her father Philip Wharton of Goldsborough Hall in North Yorkshire, who had died in 1685. On her 13th birthday, Mary had come into an annual income of £1,500, equivalent to £315,000 in 2025.  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. There, she was forcibly married to Campbell, without her consent, and without the presence of her legal guardian Robert Byerley, the son of her great-aunt. By order of the Lord Chief Justice, the marriage was annulled and Mary was returned to her guardian within two days, to whom she was wed two years later. Sir John was then arrested and indicted for the abduction on 11 December, convicted by jury, and hanged at Tyburn on 23 December 1690. Reputedly a "nasty piece of work", 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. He was also alleged to have committed rape in Utrecht. However, the real culprit was Campbell, who had lured the impoverished Johnston with money, but escaped scot-free. The marriage was annulled on 20 December 1690 by the Parliament of England, which passed a private act of Parliament: the Mary Wharton and James Campbell Marriage Annulment Act 1690 (2 Will. & Mar. Sess. 2. c. 8 Pr.). Campbell's older brother, the 10th Earl of Argyll and later 1st Duke of Argyll, had unsuccessfully petitioned against the annulment.  Italy.  The custom of fuitina was widespread in Sicily and continental southern Italy. 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. When she was returned to her family after a week, she refused to marry her abductor, contrary to local expectation. Her family supported her, and suffered severe intimidation for their efforts. The kidnappers were arrested and the main perpetrator was sentenced to 11 years in prison.  The exposure of this "archaic and intransigent system of values and behavioural mores" caused great national debate. In 1968, Franca married her childhood sweetheart, with whom she would later have three children. 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. A 1970 film, La moglie più bella (The Most Beautiful Wife) by Damiano Damiani and starring Ornella Muti, is based on the case. Viola never capitalised on her fame and status as a feminist icon, preferring to live a quiet life in Alcamo with her family.  The law allowing "rehabilitating marriages" (also known as marry-your-rapist law) to protect rapists from criminal proceedings was abolished in 1981.  Ireland.  The 12th-century Norman invasion of Ireland was invited by an instance of wife-stealing: in 1167, the King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, had his lands and kingship revoked by order of the High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, as punishment for abducting the wife of another king in 1152. This led Diarmait to seek the assistance of King Henry II of England in order to reclaim his kingdom.  In 1797 Henry Browne Hayes kidnapped Mary Pike in County Cork, in an attempted bridal kidnapping. At the subsequent trial Browne was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales, Australia.  The abduction of heiresses was an occasional feature in Ireland until 1800, as illustrated in the film The Abduction Club.  Malta.  In 2015, Malta was criticized by Equality Now, for a law which, in certain circumstances, can extinguish the punishment for a man who abducts a woman if, following the abduction, the man and woman get married. (Article 199 and Article 200 of the Criminal Code of Malta). The article was ultimately abolished by Act XIII of 2018, Article 24.  Slavic tribes.  East Slavic tribes practiced bride kidnapping in the 11th century. The traditions were documented by the monk Nestor. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Drevlians captured wives non-consensually, whereas the Radimichs, Viatichi, and Severians "captured" their wives after having come to an agreement about marriage with them. The clergy's increase in influence may have helped the custom to abate.  Marriage by capture occurred among the South Slavs until the 1800s in Yugoslavia. Common in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the custom was known as otmitza. The practice was mentioned in a statute in the Politza, the 1605 Croatian legal code. According to Serbian folk-chronicler Vuk Karadzic, a man would dress for "battle" before kidnapping a woman or girl. Physical force was a frequent element of these kidnappings.  Bride kidnapping was also a custom in Bulgaria. With the consent of his parents and the aid of his friends, the abductor would accost his victim and take her to a barn away from the home, as superstition held that pre-marital intercourse might bring bad luck to the house. Whether or not the man raped his victim, the abduction would shame the woman or girl and force her to stay with her kidnapper to keep her reputation. As in other cultures, sometimes couples would elope by staging false kidnappings to secure the parents' consent.  In religion.  In Catholic canon law, the impediment of raptus specifically prohibits marriage between a woman abducted with the intent to force her to marry, and her abductor, as long as the woman remains in the abductor's power. According to the second provision of the law, should the woman decide to accept the abductor as a husband after she is safe, she will be allowed to marry him.  The canon defines raptus as aWikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.This episode includes AI-generated content.