♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Tonight, on this special edition of "Frontline"... First... >> They put me in a cage.

I was with around 12 other younger minors.

>> NARRATOR: The mass detention of migrant children.

>> Our children are being sheltered and cared for as we seek to find them a very safe home.

>> NARRATOR: "Frontline" and the Associated Press investigate... >> When you detain children, you create risks for them for lifelong physical and emotional problems.

>> NARRATOR: The cost to "Kids Caught in the Crackdown."

And later-- a secret sex trade in Iraq... >> What's the difference between muta'ah marriage and prostitution?

>> NARRATOR: Working with an undercover reporter, correspondent Nawal al-Maghafi investigates clerics exploiting women and girls.

>> We're here to investigate allegations that some clerics here are grooming women and even acting like pimps.

>> NARRATOR: These two stories tonight on "Frontline."

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> During the summer, my uncle asked me if I wanted to go, like, learn the job that he was doing.

My mom wanted me to go so that I can see how hard it is to work out in the sun.

What they did was, like, just started a house from the bottom to the top.

I always like working with my hands or just, like, learning new things.

♪ ♪ Then that day that we were heading back, I was on my phone.

And, Hector, he starts saying that, "Nah, there's... the cops are coming."

(chatter on police radio) So, my uncle pulls over, and all he tells us is, "Just relax, nothing's wrong."

(chatter on police radio) The cop came, started asking for our papers, if we had any identification, everything.

>> POLICE OFFICER: >> Yeah.

>> He took me, out he made me talk to Border Patrol.

>> BORDER PATROL AND MARTIN: >> BORDER PATROL: >> MARTIN: We were all handcuffed.

And I started asking the cops, like, "What's happening, what are they going to do to us?"

And he just told us that we weren't supposed to be here, and because we were illegal, Border Patrol was going to come get us.

As soon as I was in the back of the car, I-I just felt like everything was over.

♪ ♪ >> DAFFODIL ALTAN: That night in June 2019 was the beginning of a long journey for Martin.

It would land him hundreds of miles from home.

>> Have you ever been to a stadium?

It was like a stadium but with cages inside, and that's where they kept all the people.

And when we walked in there, we just saw people, it's like, crying, we saw little kids crying.

They put me in the cage.

I was with around 12 other younger minors.

I didn't really know what to think, I was like, "Is this prison, or, like, what is this?"

I kind of broke down.

I didn't know what to do.

>> ALTAN: He had ended up in a massive U.S. Border Patrol holding pen in McAllen, Texas.

>> A bleak picture of conditions for migrant children.

>> We are seeing sick children, we are seeing dirty children, we are seeing hungry children... >> ...say there is not enough food, water, or sanitation.

>> ALTAN: Martin had spent most of his life in the U.S., but it didn't matter.

Like tens of thousands of kids who had recently crossed the border on their own, or had been separated from their parents, he was handed over to a federal agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.

>> MARTHA MENDOZA: When a child arrives at the U.S. border, they are taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose mission is to protect the security of the United States.

They're not set up to take care of anybody.

They then turn that child over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is an agency whose mission is to take care of people.

♪ ♪ >> ALTAN: I've been reporting on the lives of undocumented people in America for the past decade.

>> These kids are getting sent all around the country... >> ALTAN: With the Associated Press, we've been investigating HHS's detention system for migrant children.

>> GARANCE BURKE: We're going to end up with sort of like a generation of migrant kids who are going to have this kind of lasting trauma.

>> ALTAN: My partners at the A.P., investigative reporters Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza, have been on this story for years.

They obtained confidential HHS data showing where migrant children are being held and how many of them are in detention at any given time.

>> BURKE: What we found in our reporting is that never before had there been this many children held inside the government's network of shelters for migrant kids.

The majority of those kids were in facilities with more than 100 or 1,000 other children, so mass facilities where, psychiatrists say, kids start to feel like just another number.

>> ALTAN: HHS's own numbers now show that over the past year, nearly 70,000 migrant children have been held without their parents-- more than any other time on record-- and more than any other country in the world.

♪ ♪ One of HHS's largest facilities is an emergency influx shelter in Homestead, Florida.

That's where Martin ended up in June 2019.

At the time, nearly one out of every five migrant kids in HHS custody was being held there.

>> When we arrived there, you could just see there was a couple of guards, armed guards, by the entrance.

Once we went inside, we saw kids playing outside, there was kids playing soccer.

In my head, what I was thinking was, like, "This was a way better place than where I was, in Immigration."

But this place is not really home, so I didn't really feel safe at the same time.

>> ALTAN: There were more than 2,000 teenagers being held at Homestead.

>> With very high numbers of children coming across the border at times, HHS has to be able to meet its responsibility, both legally and morally, to have a place for these children to go.

And I would say that, you know, even one of our influx shelters is better than a CBP processing center.

>> ALTAN: Jonathan Hayes is the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is legally required to care for migrant children within HHS.

He sat down with the A.P.

's Garance Burke.

>> BURKE: So, why would your agency hold so many children together, both in influx shelters and just very large shelters?

>> There were some periods where we were receiving 400 to 500 kids every day.

You know, you-you may look at a, at a shelter with 500 kids, and realize, "I could fill up one of those in one day, potentially."

>> ALTAN: HHS would not allow us to bring cameras inside Homestead, despite repeated requests.

But over the past year, we've spoken to numerous kids who've been detained-- including this girl, who says spent a month and a half inside Homestead waiting to be reunited with her father.

She asked us to disguise her voice out of concerns for her immigration status.

>> GIRL (speaking Spanish): >> ALTAN: She says most of the day was spent in classrooms, with only one hour of outdoor time.

>> ALTAN: The mass detention of children at Homestead and other HHS sites stems in part from a little-known decision by the Trump administration.

In 2018 HHS started doing extensive background checks on the children's sponsors, mostly relatives trying to claim them from detention.

>> MENDOZA: They began vetting sponsors and families to the extreme.

Anybody in a house where these kids were going to go to would have to be fingerprinted, background checked, and fully screened, which took a long time.

>> ALTAN: While the extreme vetting was in effect, the time kids were spending in HHS shelters went from a few weeks to months.

>> Some of the additional changes that did come to be, I think did have an impact on kind of slowing down the, you know, the process in that.

But, you know, it's always a balance between, you know, the safety of the children, but also being able to discharge them as quickly but as safely as possible.

♪ ♪ >> ALTAN: In Florida this past summer, we met a woman who had been trying to get her nephew out of Homestead.

>> XIOMARA (speaking Spanish): >> ALTAN: Xiomara says her 16-year-old nephew Jarin left Honduras because gangs were trying to recruit him.

>> ALTAN: Though she herself is undocumented, Xiomara says she gave HHS everything they asked for, but Jarin had been in detention for almost four months.

♪ ♪ >> ALTAN: >> XIOMARA: >> ALTAN: Along with the extreme vetting, we found there was another factor pushing up the number of kids in detention: HHS was sharing information with ICE about sponsors coming to claim their children.

>> What it was meant to do was to cast a larger net after those that could be particularly targeted for apprehensions.

>> ALTAN: Andrew Lorenzen Strait was a deputy assistant director of ICE at the time.

In May 2018 he helped write the agreement between the two agencies.

>> I thought we were going to be looking at how we care for kids that may have these issues of being taken advantage of-- trafficked, smuggled.

>> ALTAN: Instead, ICE used the information to apprehend sponsors.

In the months following the agreement, the agency says around 330 people were arrested.

>> There is a total chilling effect of coming forward, because they believe they are going to be picked up by ICE.

The outcomes of that partnership were devastating to the migrant community.

>> BURKE: In some of the government paperwork I've seen, there are fewer sponsors coming forward now, and that that's led to more children being in custody.

>> I have absolutely heard some anecdotal conversations and comments, you know, that there, you know, there was some examples of sponsors that were concerned.

However, I-I really reject, you know, the-the very premise that there's this very widespread pattern.

>> ALTAN: ICE says it's not arresting people in this way anymore.

But the fear remains.

At her home in Texas, Martin's mother was worried about being arrested as she searched for her son.

>> WOMAN: >> ALTAN: Martin was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. when he was nine months old.

>> WOMAN: >> ALTAN: But even undocumented kids like him, who've been here most of their lives, have been detained.

>> WOMAN: >> ALTAN: As more children were being held, and for longer times, we began hearing from human rights advocates and mental health experts who'd been inside Homestead.

>> Never have I ever been to a facility that has 2,000-plus children in one place.

It's a, it's a deeply unnatural state.

We've been monitoring facilities all over the... >> ALTAN: Neha Desai is part of a group of attorneys who monitor the conditions for migrant children inside detention facilities.

>> That are deteriorating... What we know from decades and decades of research is the way we should treat these kids is in the most homelike setting, in the least restrictive setting possible.

Children at Homestead are monitored 24-seven by security guards.

Children tell me that they can't walk five feet to go to the bathroom by themselves.

These children are not free to leave.

>> ALTAN: Psychologist Yenys Castillo was brought into Homestead to assess the impact of detention.

>> All of the children in Homestead said, "We are prisoners; we're detained; we cannot leave."

It was a very regimented place.

Children were walking, and there was this one child, and he was crying.

So, I asked the children, "How come I saw a child crying, and nobody was addressing that child?"

And they said that they were not allowed to talk to one another most of the time, and then they're not allowed to touch one another, and they're not allowed to offer comfort.

So, we tend to see teenagers as mini-adults.

They're not adults.

They cannot regulate their own emotions.

They don't think of the future as we do.

They think, "This is going to last forever."

The longer they stay in these detention conditions, the more they deteriorate psychologically.

>> GIRL: >> ALTAN: >> GIRL: >> ALTAN AND GIRL: >> GIRL: >> The security around any of our shelters is more to keep people out than to keep people in.

Especially with some of the older children, you know, these aren't secure facilities that are impossible to get out of.

The overwhelming majority, the near-unanimous number of children in our care, are grateful.

>> ALTAN: There are now approximately 170 HHS shelter programs for migrant kids across the country, from small foster-care sites to places like Homestead.

HHS houses the youngest migrants, infants and toddlers, in a handful of facilities they call "tender-age" shelters.

We were recently given rare access to this shelter holding babies and teenage mothers in San Benito, Texas.

>> This is our busy hallway.

There's constantly children playing, nursing, eating.

>> ALTAN: Melissa Aguilar is the director of shelter programs for Comprehensive Health Services, a private company that runs the shelter.

>> We focus on zero to 17.

So, we have mothers in care.

We have the capacity to service pregnant teenagers, and they can also care for their babies here.

A staff said it earlier today, and she said it best, that "the children are borrowed."

They're borrowed for-for our purpose, right?

So, a lot of times, when something is borrowed, you take care of them better than you would something that is your own.

>> ALTAN: The company runs five other shelters, including Homestead.

And among its leadership is former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who'd backed the policy of separating kids from their families at the border.

Over the past year, the government has paid CHS nearly $300 million.

By its very definition, when you're for-profit, your job as a company is to make a profit.

So, some people might say, then, isn't there then an incentive to detain kids?

>> There is a profit, there is a price incentive, but it's not a detention incentive.

The-the question about is there incentive to detain children-- absolutely not.

And I think that it's so important for everybody to understand that we're not detaining children.

We're not separating children.

We're caring for children.

>> BURKE: Morally, ethically, is it okay for a for-profit company to make money from holding children in mass facilities that they cannot leave?

>> They're not the ones determining what kids are coming there, they don't really have as much say over who stays there.

We can move kids in an out if we so desire.

Am I personally opposed to, you know, a for-profit company?

I've thought about that question, and honestly, I'm not.

And at the end of the day, when you get down at the shelter level, you know, you're basically talking about just a bunch of social workers, child-welfare experts, who just want to help care for the kids.

>> We know from the American Academy of Pediatrics that there's no amount of time that it's safe for children to be detained.

We know definitively that detention harms children.

That every single day that children are there, those impacts compound.

>> ALTAN: Recently, HHS's internal investigator looked into the issue.

>> MENDOZA: They took a look at the shelter system and concluded in their own report that the mental-health needs of these kids was not being met.

Some kids were getting stressed out to the extreme, inflicting self-harm, becoming extremely withdrawn and depressed.

>> ALTAN: Beyond the mental-health impacts, there have also been documented cases of physical and sexual abuse at some HHS shelters-- and the A.P.

reported that children and families are now suing the U.S. for hundreds of millions of dollars.

♪ ♪ As for Martin, after almost three weeks in detention, he found out he would finally be going home.

>> On a Saturday night, I was going to sleep, and they woke me up, like, around 10:00, 10:30.

And they're like, "You're getting to leave."

>> WOMAN: >> When I saw them, I just, like, ran to her and got to hug her.

I just stared at them, didn't know what to do.

Before I didn't really, like, miss my mom, 'cause I got to see her every day.

I didn't feel like there would be that empty space where you actually need that hug from your mom.

The first two weeks, I-I didn't really get to sleep.

I was still, like, confused about what was happening.

I wasn't really stable.

I'm still scared that something bad could happen.

Like, I don't feel safe anymore.

♪ ♪ >> XIOMARA: >> ALTAN: After nearly four months, Xiomara was finally recognized as Jarin's aunt by HHS.

>> JARIN: >> XIOMARA: >> XIOMARA: >> WOMAN (on phone): ♪ ♪ >> XIOMARA: (people speaking Spanish in background) >> JARIN: (applause) >> Your conscious mind may not remember, but your body remembers.

Your brain remembers.

And maybe that child, at that moment, says, "I'm okay."

But later on he might be in a situation that is scary, and then he might freeze.

And he doesn't know why.

♪ ♪ >> ALTAN: We visited Martin two months after he came home.

He and his family asked to see the footage of the moment when he was first detained.

>> (on recording): Listen, I'm at a check-and-stop here in Texas.

I got six subjects, one of them's got a New York state... >> ALTAN: Were you surprised when they got the Border Patrol on the phone?

>> Yes.

I just didn't know, like, what to say or how to react.

(police chatter on recording) >> ALTAN: >> No, it's okay.

>> ALTAN: Okay.

>> It's just... constant thing I wish, like, it never happened.

>> ALTAN: Mm-hmm.

♪ ♪ (police chatter on radio) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Coming up next on this special edition of "Frontline"... it's called pleasure or temporary marriage.

>> In the community, they look at it as prostitution.

>> NARRATOR: And some Iraqi clerics are using it to exploit women and girls.

>> We see women over and over again who were victims of these abusers.

>> NARRATOR: Correspondent Nawal al-Maghafi exposes "Iraq's Secret Sex Trade."

♪ ♪ >> This story contains mature content that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Viewer discretion is advised.

♪ ♪ >> NAWAL Al-MAGHAFI: I'm in Kadhimiya, Central Baghdad-- one of Shia Islam's most important pilgrimage sites.

Millions visit this holy shrine, and many couples come here to get married.

Just walking around the shopping arcade across from the main shrine, I've come across multiple marriage offices.

We've come here because of increasing concerns among Iraqi Shias that some clerics are abusing an ancient marriage practice to exploit women and girls.

It's called "muta'ah" or "munqata"-- pleasure or temporary marriage-- and it allows a man to pay for a short-term wife.

I have to be discreet filming this, but we're here to investigate allegations that some of the clerics here are grooming women, and even acting like pimps.

♪ ♪ There are no reliable statistics about how often this custom is actually used today.

It's illegal under Iraqi law.

But some clerics say there are occasions when it is appropriate.

This is cleric Faris al-Mousawi.

He runs a marriage office in Sadr City, another Shia area of Baghdad.

What are the rules behind muta'ah marriage?

>> AL-MOUSAWI: >> MAGHAFI: He says he doesn't conduct muta'ah marriages himself, because they're illegal.

But he tells me that sometimes they are permitted under religious sharia law, and they enable a man to help a woman in need.

>> MAGHAFI: But what's the difference between muta'ah marriage and prostitution?

♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: 15 years of war have had a devastating effect on Iraq's women and girls.

♪ ♪ It's been estimated that there are more than a million widows in Iraq, and more than 800,000 children who've lost parents.

♪ ♪ This 16-year-old girl asked to be called Rusul.

For her safety, an actor is voicing her words.

>> RUSUL (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: She says her father died when she was 12, and her family was left destitute.

By the time she was 13, she was already married and divorced.

Then a man offered her a pleasure marriage.

>> RUSUL (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: Rusul says a cleric from Kadhimiya did the ceremony, and that she didn't understand what she was getting into.

After two months, the man left her.

>> RUSUL (dramatized): (sighs) ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: Over more than a year of reporting, our team spoke to around 25 women and girls who said pleasure marriages had been used to exploit them.

All feared reprisals if they showed their faces.

Iraqi lawyers, journalists, and human-rights workers told us that abuse of the practice was a significant and growing problem, but warned us it would be difficult to expose.

(rustling) To find out how widespread it is, we had one of our colleagues go undercover in Kadhimiya.

(car horn honks) If discovered, he risked being detained by one of Iraq's feared Shia militias.

We're concealing his identity.

>> When I arrived, I was really scared.

First checkpoint was really scary, because I had a secret camera.

If they found this, no way I can run away.

>> MAGHAFI: While many clerics go through years of religious education, it's possible in Iraq to become a cleric and open a marriage office with very little formal training.

Posing as a potential client, our reporter met with ten clerics here, telling them he wanted a pleasure marriage with a 13-year-old.

Eight of those clerics agreed to conduct such a marriage if he had the parents' consent.

One of them was Sayyid Raad.

>> Salaam alaikum.

(Raad speaking Arabic) >> MAGHAFI: Our reporter met him outside the main shrine and went with him to his nearby office.

He saw his license to conduct marriages issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Justice.

Raad said he had two offices in Kadhimiya and employed four other clerics.

His title, "Sayyid," means he claims descent from the prophet Muhammad.

>> RAAD AND REPORTER: >> MAGHAFI: He agreed to do a pleasure marriage if our reporter brought a girl to him.

♪ ♪ >> REPORTER: >> MAGHAFI: Our undercover reporter met him again in an upscale mall.

He told him he'd now found a 13-year-old girl and had her family's permission.

>> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> MAGHAFI: Sayyid Raad was willing to proceed without even speaking to the girl's family.

>> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER AND RAAD: >> MAGHAFI: Sayyid Raad said a man could do as many pleasure marriages as he wanted.

>> RAAD: (muezzin calling adhan) >> MAGHAFI: Our team spoke to two dozen men who said they did brief temporary marriages to get sex.

They told us the practice is widespread.

One of them agreed to give an interview if we didn't show his face.

>> MAN: ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: The man said he regularly does muta'ah marriages with women in their 20s, but he's heard that some men want younger girls.

>> MAN: ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: Our reporter had told Sayyid Raad that the girl he wanted a muta'ah marriage with was 13 years old and a virgin.

>> REPORTER: >> RAAD AND REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> MAGHAFI: What Raad said next was alarming.

>> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> RAAD: ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: We went to the Iraqi Ministry of Shia Affairs to ask about what we'd found.

They said they had no oversight over marriage offices in Kadhimiya and declined to give an interview.

The Ministry of Justice, which issues licenses to conduct marriages, also refused to talk to us.

We approached more than 20 senior Shia clerics.

Some condemned the abuse we found, but none would go on camera to discuss it.

One former high-ranking cleric agreed to talk to us-- Ghaith Tamimi.

>> TAMIMI: >> MAGHAFI: He's become an outspoken critic of the religious leadership in Iraq.

After receiving death threats, he's now living in exile in London.

He says that most Shia Muslims would be horrified at muta'ah marriage being used to enable men to marry children.

>> TAMIMI: ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: We'd been told that abusive muta'ah marriages were happening near the holiest site in Shia Islam.

This is Karbala, it's the biggest Shia pilgrimage site in the world.

Tens of millions of pilgrims come here every year.

♪ ♪ I spoke to Sheikh Emad Alassady, the head of the shrine's marriage office.

So we've heard about pleasure marriages, muta'ah marriages.

Do you do them here?

>> ALASSADY: >> MAGHAFI: But he said they do still happen in secret-- and are allowable under sharia law.

Don't you think these pleasure marriages exploit vulnerable girls?

♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: In the streets around the shrine, our reporter asked four clerics if they would conduct a pleasure marriage.

Two said they would.

One of them was Sheikh Salawi.

>> REPORTER AND SALAWI: >> MAGHAFI: Sheikh Salawi said he had completed extensive religious studies, and also said that he was a member of one of Iraq's powerful and well-armed Shia militias.

Our reporter told him he'd met a young girl who was still a virgin.

>> REPORTER: >> SALAWI: >> REPORTER AND SALAWI: >> REPORTER: >> SALAWI: >> MAGHAFI: We showed this footage to Yanar Mohammed.

She runs a network of shelters across Iraq that help victims of sexual abuse and muta'ah marriage.

>> Nine years old?

They are just opening a shop for pedophiles, inviting them from all over the world.

The cleric is trying to make it sound as legal and religiously accepted, but in the community, they look at it as prostitution.

It's not acceptable.

In our shelter, we see women over and over again who were the victims of these abusers.

>> MAGHAFI: We showed her footage of Sayyid Raad.

Our reporter had asked him what would happen if he took a girl's virginity during a pleasure marriage.

>> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> RAAD AND REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> They are speaking of how a man can get away with his crime of raping a young girl.

♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: I met a young woman who asked to be called Mona.

She says she lost her virginity in a pleasure marriage.

For her safety, an actor is speaking her words.

>> MONA (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: She says the man took her to a cleric in Kadhimiya for a pleasure marriage.

She was only 14.

Her parents knew nothing about it.

>> MONA (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: So the Sheikh knew you were a virgin.

>> MAGHAFI: Mona had been groomed by a sexual predator with the help of a cleric.

But now she's most afraid of her own family.

>> MONA (dramatized): ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: Sayyid Raad had agreed to conduct a pleasure marriage with a 13-year-old.

But would he actually go through with it?

The cleric now offered to do the ceremony in a taxi-- over the phone-- for around $200.

He didn't ask to meet the girl in person or talk to her family.

>> Basically, another colleague of mine, she was in the hotel.

And when he ring the phone, my female colleague, she was on another end of the phone, and she was ready to answer.

>> RAAD: >> I'm not thinking this marriage will be that simple.

The only question he ask of her, "What's your name? "

And he start make the ceremony without any question.

>> RAAD: >> REPORTER 2 (on phone): >> RAAD AND REPORTER 2: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER 2: >> RAAD: (reporter 1 replies in Arabic) >> RAAD: (talking in Arabic) ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: Rusul says that since her first pleasure marriage, she's been forced to work for the cleric who conducted it.

She wouldn't tell us his name, only that his office is in Kadhimiya.

>> RUSUL (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: She says she's been made to do more than a dozen temporary marriages.

>> MAGHAFI: >> RUSUL (dramatized): >> MAGHAFI: >> RUSUL (dramatized): ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: We were now hearing from multiple sources that some clerics were using pleasure marriages to pimp women and girls.

We wanted to find out if the clerics we had secretly filmed were doing this.

Our reporter rang Sheikh Salawi.

>> SALAWI (on phone): >> REPORTER: >> SALAWI: >> REPORTER: >> SALAWI AND REPORTER: >> SALAWI: >> REPORTER: >> MAGHAFI: He told our reporter he could offer him a choice of women in their 20s and 30s.

>> SALAWI: ♪ ♪ >> MAGHAFI: Back in Kadhimiya, we put the same question to Sayyid Raad.

Would he provide a woman?

>> REPORTER: >> RAAD: >> REPORTER: >> MAGHAFI: We wanted to put our allegations to the clerics we'd filmed.

But it was too dangerous to do it in person.

I phoned Sayyid Raad from London.

(phone ringing) >> (on phone): Hello.

>> MAGHAFI: Hello, salaam alaikum.

(Raad speaking on phone) >> RAAD: >> RAAD: >> MAGHAFI AND RAAD: >> RAAD: (phone beeps) >> MAGHAFI: He hung up.

♪ ♪ We also rang Sheikh Salawi, but he didn't respond.

We approached Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani.

He declined to be interviewed, but replied in a statement.

"If these practices are happening in the way you are saying, then we condemn them unreservedly.

Temporary marriage is not allowed as a tool to sell sex in a way that belittles the dignity and humanity of women."

He said the abuses we'd seen were happening "because the authorities were not enforcing the law."

We approached the Iraqi government on multiple occasions to ask them why they weren't cracking down on abusive pleasure marriages, but they declined to provide anyone for interview.

A spokesman told "Frontline," "If women don't go to the police with their complaints against clerics, it's difficult for the authorities to act."

♪ ♪ But for many young women across Iraq, there's no hope of justice.

Rusul is still working for the cleric.

She feels she has no choice.

>> RUSUL (dramatized): ♪ ♪ >> Go to pbs.org/frontline for more reporting from our partners at the Associated Press.

>> They began vetting sponsors and families to the extreme.

>> So why would your agency hold so many children together?

>> And more on life in post-war Iraq for women and girls.

>> In our shelter we see our women who were the victims of these abuses.

>> Connect to the "Frontline" community on Facebook and Twitter and watch anytime on the PBS video app or pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ >> For more on this and other "Frontline" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ "Frontline's" "Kids Caught in the Crackdown" and "Iraq's Secret Sex Trade" are available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪