Yemeni Child Bride Hailed As Hero
Nujood Ali is anything but your typical kid in a candy store.
In fact, there's nothing typical about the 10-year-old Yemeni girl, CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports.
At Carnegie Hall, Nujood became one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year - their youngest ever.
And at the United Nations, she told her story to representatives from a dozen or so U.N. agencies.
She went on to meet Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.
But she's also recently spent time in her native Yemen, where just last February, when she was only 9 years old, she was forced into marriage by her father.
"Did you know what marriage was when your parents told you you were going to get married?" Miller asked her through a translator.
"No, I did not know what marriage meant," Nujood said through a translator.
It's not uncommon for children to be married in Yemen, but it is unusual and unlawful for those marriages to be consummated before the bride turns 15.
But that's what happened to Nujood.
"I was really scared and I cried a lot every night," she said. "In the morning and in the night."
But she didn't cry for long. Two weeks into the marriage, Nujood said "enough." She went - all by herself - to court and asked for a divorce.
"I said to her, 'please smile and trust me, I would like to help you,'" said Yemeni lawyer Shada Nasser.
Nasser, who was also honored by Glamour, took - and won - the case of Yemen's first-ever child divorce.
"Is she a hero in her country?" Miller asked.
"Yes, of course," Nasser said.
But Nasser is Nujood's hero. Now Nujood is back in school and says she wants to become a laywer herself … "So I can help other little girls like myself," she said.
Read more about Nujood's story at Couric & Co. blog.
And she already has.
At least three Yemeni children have gotten divorces since Nujood paved the way.