Afghan women hiding for their lives

September 24, 2009
By Atia Abawi
CNN

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Shameen's brown eyes seem lost as she thinks about the one day she wants to forget, but it is all she can think about.

Nearly 90 percent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the U.N.

1 of 3 Still traumatized, she recounts the events that led her to a safe house in Kabul.

She was raped and nearly stabbed to death by her husband just seven days before we met her.

Her lips are quivering and her eyes full of fear.

"He forced himself on me," she said. "All I could do was scream."

She was married off 15 years ago when she was a teenager.

Throughout those years she was tortured and abused, suffering daily beatings with an electrical wire or the metal end of a hammer.

This was her normal life. the rest