Madeleine* is 17 years old and dreams of being a chef. But her ambitions have been curtailed. She is behind bars in a juvenile detention centre in Jordan, waiting to be released into the care of a male family member.
“This is the story of a girl in prison: me,” wrote Shahed, another teenage girl, who was detained in the same al-Khanza detention centre in Amman, the country’s capital. “My wish is to live in a place without strict rules, to live free,” she said. “To have stability, to have a job, to be away from trouble and away from violence.” At the top of her letter she wrote “hope behind the steel”.
Both Madeleine and Shahed were detained under Jordan's controversial ‘male guardianship’ system, which has locked up women and girls for many months at a time without charge or trial, for activities such as leaving the family home without permission or for having sex outside marriage.
