Friday 4 February 2011

Desperate wives in Iceland


It seems even small Iceland (population less than half a million) isn’t immune when it comes to predatory men in the community.

Paragraph in a copy of a March 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks Cablegate:

Desperate Wives

Social service providers report regular contacts with a population of foreign women who have immigrated to Iceland to marry Icelandic citizens whom they have met on-line or through friends and relatives already married to Icelanders. Some of these women live in circumstances akin to slavery. A lawyer for the capital's Intercultural Center offered an example of one Icelandic husband who quit work and insisted that his Chinese wife work three jobs to support him. Only able to sleep for four hours a night, she eventually suffered a breakdown. Some Icelanders at one of her workplaces found her pro bono legal assistance, thanks to which she obtained a divorce and permits to remain and work in Iceland. The Intercultural Center lawyer learns of several such cases a year, most often involving "extremely beautiful" Russian and Baltic women in their twenties brought to Iceland as "trophies" by men in their fifties. The women work long hours, and their husbands take their salaries; some of the men reportedly also sell sexual access to their wives.

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