Meet two young women who are currently living in common-law relationships. The Sunday Gleaner will not publish their names because they both fear ridicule and possible abuse by relatives and their spouses.

They are from the same inner-city community in St Andrew. One is 17 years old and the other, 21.

The older of the two, a high-school dropout, has been living with her spouse since she was barely 18 years old. She was encouraged to see him by her mother who has seven other children to look after. She was only 15 at the time and had just arrived from the country to live with her mother when her father migrated. Her spouse is nearly 40 years old.

"Him have a shop and one day after me go buy some cigarette from the shop, me get a call on me phone and me seh, 'Is who this and how you get me number?' and him seh my mother give it to him," she tells The Sunday Gleaner.

"Because him want the something (sex), him call mi. Sometimes him call mi and tell mi fi come down a him house, but me neva go because me neva want to be in nuh relationship with him," she says.

A relationship eventually started. She moved in with him the following year, because he promised to pay for her schooling while they were together. But then the abuse started.

"Mi and him start fight and quarrel," she says. She remembers the first time it happened:

"Mi and me sister go up a one next yute house fi East Indian mango and him come and ask mi mother which part mi deh. She tell him seh mi gone up a mi aunty, but him go up a mi aunty and him never see mi. So him head up the road, but him no sure which part me deh."

But he eventually caught her. He took her to her mother's house and locked the doors, but her mother demanded to see her daughter. He eventually opened the door and promised the mother never to hit her daughter again.

"But mi know that from him lick me one time, him a go lick mi again," she confesses.

Sex

The other, a 17-year-old, started her relationship when she, too, was 15. She had already had two serious relationships. She is now involved with a young man almost 10 years her senior. There is no physical abuse in the relationship, but there are arguments that she could do without sometimes.

She really started having sex, she says, because of pressure from her peers.

"A follow me follow (friends)," she tells us. "One girl that did live in a mi yard, she seh she a do it long time, you know, and she seh mi must try it," she remembers. "Because me did fool-fool dem time there," she chuckles, embarrassed.

She is not proud of herself, though, and wishes she could make some of her choices again.

"Of course, mi sorry. Mi neva waan break it (virginity), but is because me follow the girl," she says.

- Gareth Manning