Child genius and now prostitute: Sufiah Yusof attended Oxford University at just age 13
Posted on 04/04/2008 7:40:17 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Until a week ago, her instinct was always the same: any time she was away from home, Halimahton Yusof would scan the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of her daughter's face.
"I always looked for her. For the past few years I didn't even know whether she was alive," she says, her eyes moist with tears.
"Every time there was a story on the news about an accident, or a death, I feared the worst. I just wanted to know she was alive."
Child genius and now prostitute: Sufiah Yusof attended Oxford University at just age 13
Then, last weekend, she got the confirmation she desperately craved — although in an unimaginably sad way.
Halimahton, a devout Muslim, was confronted by graphic Sunday newspaper pictures of her daughter selling sex from the dingy basement of a Salford flat.
Styling herself "Shilpa Lee", it emerged 23-year-old Sufiah Yusof was advertising her services on the internet as a £130-a-time prostitute. It would be a distressing discovery for any mother, but for Mrs Yusof it is all the more heart-wrenching.
Ten years ago, the girl she still calls "Sufi" was admitted to Oxford University to study maths, at the age of 13 the youngest undergraduate to do so at the time.
Brilliant and determined, she seemed destined for great things — expectations that were brutally dashed when she ran away at the age of 15 and asked to be admitted into the care of social services.
In a bitter email to her elder sister Aisha, she accused her father Farooq of making her childhood a "living hell" by "hothousing" her in pursuit of academic success.
There have been many more twists and turns to Sufiah's story since then, too.
Just three years ago, aged 20, she was back living at the family home, apparently reconciled with her father.
Yet within weeks, a bitter argument over something minor — the family don't know what — led her to flee again, and she has not seen her mother or siblings since.
Until their discovery last weekend, none of them knew where she was or what she was doing.
Nor is this the only unsettling development.
Just a week before Sufiah was unmasked on Sunday, her father Farooq was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty at Coventry Crown Court to two charges of sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls.
Seeds of despair: Sufiah in 1997 on her first day at Oxford with her father Farooq and sister Aisha
Halimahton is in the process of divorcing Farooq, her pride having finally forced her to act against the man with whom she shared her life for more than 30 years.
She has had to ask herself difficult questions about whether she could have done more to safeguard Sufiah from the expectations of the domineering Farooq.
"I was shaking when I found out what had become of her," she says in her first interview since her daughter's lifestyle was exposed.
"No mother expects that, and part of me is haunted by the notion we had driven her to that.
"I have no idea what is going on in her mind, but I refuse to judge her and I want her to know my door is always open, that I am here for her.
"We have been through so much, but I have to believe that at some point in the future we can become a family again."
All week she has been trying to reach her daughter, but Sufiah's old mobile number has been ringing unanswered.
Halimahton says: "I haven't seen the pictures in the papers, and I don't want to see them. My sons have told me it's not good for my heart. I want to think of her as I remember her.
"I have no idea why she's doing this, whether she's trying to make her father angry or whether it's just desperation.
"I only wish I knew her state of mind but she asked me to let go of her and I did.
"I asked my solicitor if there is anything I can do to help her, but she's an adult and beyond my reach. I can only pray that she comes to her senses.
"My friends are shocked but they remember our relationship, how close we were and they have told me she needs help."
So does she lay the blame at her husband's door?
"I'm not the blaming kind. There's no use trying to point the finger. All I can hope is Farooq and Sufi look at themselves and sort out the issues they have. Deep in her heart, Sufi is a kind and gentle girl and I just hope she finds her true self again."
One comfort is that with the exception of Sufiah and now Farooq, the family remain close.
Three of Halimahton's other children — Abraham, 26, Iskander, 21, and 14-year-old Zuleika — live at the comfortable five-bedroom family home on the outskirts of Coventry, while her eldest daughter Aisha, 25, lives nearby with her husband and visits regularly.
All fiercely intelligent — Iskander attended Warwick University from the age of 12, and Aisha at the age of 15 — they seem to have escaped the tortured circumstances their sister finds herself in, and do not seem a dysfunctional clan.
The house is warm and comfortable, strewn with the usual paraphernalia of family life
At its centre, Halimahton clearly retains a close bond with her children. Yet it is within this same family that, as a teenager, Sufiah, in that angry email written after she had run away from Oxford, claimed she had been subjected to "years of physical and emotional abuse". Her father, she said, bullied his children intellectually and physically, flying into fits of rage if he felt they were not working hard enough.
The routine was so effective that at 12 Sufiah had already passed three A-levels.
Today, her siblings agree their father could be difficult but insist he was not fundamentally violent.
"It was like he had something to prove, as if he wanted to use us to get back at the world," Iskander, a computer programmer, says.
"He would be fine but then he would scream and shout. It was the thought of it that scared us as much as it happening."
On occasions he smacked them.
For a woman clearly devoted to her children, it seems odd Halimahton did not intervene — but while she considered leaving, she felt trapped by financial worries and the belief that her husband, at heart, had good intentions.
Theirs was not the most conventional of romances.
Halimahton, 51, had arrived in this country from her native Malaysia as a 19-year-old to take up a sponsored study course at Oxford College of Further Education.
Within months she had met Farooq Yusof, also a student who was living in the same block of rented accommodation.
Both Muslim, the couple quickly married in a small ceremony in Oxford in 1975.
By the mid-Eighties, they had produced four children, who were all remarkably bright, but Sufiah particularly so.
"When she was barely 18 months she could sing whole nursery rhymes.
"She could recognise numbers and letters at ten months old, and do a 20-piece jigsaw upside down.
"Farooq said she was a little genius even when she was a baby."
Eventually all the children were home-schooled, after Sufiah had told her mother at the age of five: "I don't like it at school, I want you to teach me."
Her siblings apparently felt the same.
But life at home was under a dark cloud.
In 1989, Farooq had gone on the run, implicated in a £1.5million mortgage fraud, leaving Halimahton alone to rear four children.
Should you wonder about the peaceful religion of Islam on prostitution.
I’m sure he did it for the faith. :-P
Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
Man, the top of that father’s head is enormous.
He reminds me of a character from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
At $258 per hour, it seems that Sufi is still pretty good at math.
Yeah, the last time I saw a noggin like that, it was enslaving the USS Enterprie...
So where’s the hubby?
Just waiting for the “So? Women LOVE to be prostitutes. It’s easy, fun money for them. It’s just like cooking hamburgers, but more lucrative!” posts that invariably come up on any thread that mentions prostitution.
Meanwhile the quote
“her father Farooq was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty at Coventry Crown Court to two charges of sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls...”
is telling, undergirding my continual assertion that virtually all prostitutes:
1) are addicted to drugs and doing the only thing they can do to keep themselves high
2) are actual slaves or
3) got violated as children and are continuing to abuse themselves in a typical self hating psychological self abuse pattern.
Obviously, he's from Talos IV...
The mother still is in denial, had nothing to do with a family hunger for success as she still describes it--she had a child molestor of a husband.
I’m sure he did it for the faith
An Islamic faith (the religion of peace) that practices child execution, condems women and girls to death by stoning, and where children are considered sexual objects and slaves.
BUT, it was the race to success that destroyed her daughter.
Did you know the actor who plays that role, is actually an actress?
He looks like an alien from outer space.
It is horrible what happened. It isn’t surprising what happened to her daughter. Women don’t become Prostitutes or sex workers who already have high opinions of themselves regardless the silly rhetoric put on display and sadly a large number of them have been molested.
A horribly sad situation...
he’s a real hottie...
"While all Muslims of course condemn terrorism in all its form we should not forget the role of the media in shaping peoples perceptions. The constant and inaccurate references to 'Islamic' or 'Muslim' terrorists risks demonising and alienating the Muslim ummah (community) worldwide as a whole. Terrorist acts are contrary to the word of Allah and the Sunnah (way) of his Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and as such no act of terrorism is 'Islamic' and no terrorist is a Muslim. The MCB should spend more of its time trying to change the media's prejudiced portrayal of Muslims and Islam rather the patronising the Muslim community of this country which it claims to, but does not, represent."-- Jonathan Marshall, Oxford
"The MCB should spend more of its time trying to change the media's prejudiced portrayal of Muslims and Islam" --Jonathan Marshall
Heresycorner says: "Lack of Islam, on the other hand, does not seem to have been the problem. From a devout family, by all accounts, she was fairly observant as a teenager. Her husband, a lawyer named Jonathan Marshall, had already converted to Islam before he met her note timeframe differs). Tracked down by the Telegraph to Saudi Arabia, where he is working for a "leading City law firm", he put their failed marriage down to different priorities:
The reason we split was that I became more observant and Sufiah became less so. That took her in the wrong direction, away from the direction in which I wanted to go. The teachings of Islam are fundamental to your everyday life, so when paths diverge in that respect it is a major issue.
Perhaps she wanted to go out on her own. Or without a veil. Jonathan, who sounds like he would have been a complete prig in any religion, then adds:
"She was confused, really. She didn't know quite what she wanted. She wasn't ready to settle down. Basically, she wanted to be a student."
Well, she was only 19.
If Jonathan Marshall had spent less time with his Koran and more talking to his young bride she might not have ended up in this unhappy situation.
On a more positive note, there had been moves afoot in Malaysia, where her mother was born, to rescue the wayward prodigy. The Straits Times was reporting earlier today that a government minister had launched a "Save Sulfiah programme" which would "come up with strategies to assist Sufiah." Sadly, the minister for higher education later admitted that little could be done, apart from contacting the Malaysian Students Department in Britain. "We just can't bring her back," he said. "She is big now and can decide for herself. She has the right to do as she pleases."
The government is, however, proceeding with another plan it announced at the same time: to encourage an international blogging campaign against Fitna.
Yeah, I grew up on Trek. My dad watched 2x a day after work.
There is a Russian-origin Mafia in Israel bringing in Russian women to be prostitutes in Israel, many of them kept in conditions of slavery. So the Jerusalem Post might turn its investigative eye closer to home than Iraq.
Yes, prostitution and sex slavery are not legal in Israel. But they are de facto institutions just the same.
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