An Afghan woman was beheaded last week after she refused her mother-in-law’s demand that she have sex with another man.

Care2 has reported numerous incidents of violence against women and girls in Afghanistan, but the murder of this young woman is gruesome and atrocious. What kind of mother-in-law insists that her son’s wife prostitutes herself, and then proceed to murder that wife when she refuses?

Mah Gul, just 20 years old, lived in Herat province in southwestern Afghanistan along the Iranian border.  According to authorities, this was not the first time the mother-in-law had tried to force her into sex with other men.

She had been married for four months to her baker husband.  When he left home for work, his mother and her cousin tried to force the young wife into sex with the cousin.