She was trapped in a marriage for 10 years. Now she helps other 'chained' Orthodox Jewish women.

Sitting in her home on a leafy street in North West London, Rifka Meyer looks fondly at a framed photograph hanging above her dining room table.

The image, taken at her wedding, features her now-husband and the nine children — five hers, four his — who now form their blended family.

"I'm extremely happily married," she says.

But she wasn't always.

Meyer, a devout Orthodox Jew, once shared the house with her former husband, her second.

By her account, it was a deeply traumatic marriage that left her feeling manipulated, isolated, and a shell of her former self.

And when she tried to leave it, she couldn't.

To obtain a religiously accepted separation in Judaism, women require a bill of divorce known as a gett.

But they can only be granted by a husband to his wife — and Meyer's husband refused.

It was the start of a decade of struggle to end her marriage.

A traumatic marriage

Meyer said the marriage was coercive on a number of levels, including financially and emotionally.

"He moved into my home with my children and he didn't contribute to anything," she said, adding: "He was also controlling in the aspects of what I wore and who I could speak to. I found myself slowly being cut off from family and friends."

She was deeply unhappy, a situation compounded by allegations of criminal behavior against her husband, which Business Insider is unable to describe in full for legal reasons.

In a message to Business Insider, her former husband, Yossi Elkouby, described the allegations and a consequent conviction as a conspiracy against him.

Meyer said she resolved to end the marriage in 2011.

After Meyer decided the marriage was over, and with the assistance of the London Beth Din, the central religious authority for Orthodox Jews in the United Kingdom, she was able to get her husband out of her house.

But when it came to securing the gett, a document in Jewish law that brings about a religious divorce between the couple, Meyer said the Beth Din was hesitant.

"They said, 'He's gone through a lot, we've managed to get him out of your house, let the dust settle and then we'll talk about a gett," she explained.

Her husband's refusal left Meyer with few options to dissolve the marriage.

It rendered her an "agunah," which roughly translates from Hebrew as a "chained woman."

That, Meyer said, is an apt description: "There's a physical feeling of that ball and chain weighing you down."

Or, to put it another way: "You're technically stuck in a dead relationship with no future," she said.

Elkouby claimed to BI that he refused to give Meyer a gett because she was giving him the "silent treatment."

He said he wanted to reach a financial settlement through dialogue but she "stubbornly refused to discuss," leading to years of delay.

Elkouby told BI: "She could have received her gett in no time if she'd cooperated."

Becoming an agunah

Agunot, the plural of agunah, are women trapped in marriages they want to escape. They are unable to date, remarry, start a family with someone else, or otherwise progress in life while still adhering to Jewish law.

Theoretically, women like Meyer could obtain a civil divorce and explore these options outside their religion.

But it would mean severing ties with their communities, leaving behind their jobs, friends, families, and synagogues.

For Meyer, it wasn't even a consideration. She said: "I am who I am and I'm very secure in where I am in my religiosity."

After that, Meyer waited for her husband to have a change of heart. But with every passing week, month, and year, it became clearer that such a change was unlikely.

"I suppose it is the last act of control that someone has over their spouse and they can hold that as long as they want," she said.

After four years, Meyer got back in touch with the London Beth Din, hoping to find a solution.

They told her that they were bound by Jewish law, and had little power to compel her husband, she said.

A spokesperson for the London Beth Din told Business Insider that "save for exceptional circumstances" a gett cannot be forced.

"Therefore the suggestion that Dayanim were hesitant in forcing a gett completely misses the point that any gett which is achieved by force is invalid and no use to the recipient," he said.

Public shaming

That left one other option: public shaming.

"The Chief Rabbi's office put out a siruv against him, which is a publication about him, ostracizing him from the community," Meyer said.

The 2016 siruv, which has been reviewed by Business Insider, asked "communities to be wary of social interactions or entering into business transactions" with her then-husband.

It also urged synagogues to refuse him entry until he granted her a gett.

Although it was a drastic measure — the London Beth Din spokesperson called it "as strong as any siruv could be" — Meyer does not think it made much of an impact.

Nevertheless, she believed it would serve to publicly expose her husband's refusal.

Feeling like she had exhausted all other options, Meyer decided to go further afield. She flew to New York to visit the International Beit Din, an organization established by rabbis to help chained women nullify their marriages.

"It was extremely brutal," she said of the process. "I remember crying, really feeling very exhausted from it all."

The dayanim, or religious judges, spent months deliberating, she said. They reached a conclusion that she could have her marriage annulled, providing her with a document outlining the religious laws used to justify that decision.

"It took me a while to digest," she said. "But when I did digest it and told my family and friends, it kind of cut the noose around my neck a little bit."

But it would only have effect in the US — back in the UK her marriage still stood.

Meyer showed the document to the London Beth Din, who she said refused to approve an annulment because it would "set a precedent."

The London Beth Din denied saying this, telling Business Insider that it does not recognize the International Beit Din and rejected the annulment because there "were no grounds whatsoever" for it.

A novel approach

Hopeless and dejected, feeling let down by the London Beth Din after nine years of waiting, Meyer made a last-ditch attempt to escape her marriage. It worked.

She made contact with a British lawyer, Gary Lesin-Davis, who had previously worked with clients seeking getts.

The lawyer tried a novel approach — using English law to force her husband's hand.

Lesin-Davis wrote to Meyer's husband telling him that he was breaching UK laws against coercive and controlling behavior.

The specific law — Section 76 of Britain's Serious Crime Act 2015 — legislates against controlling or coercive behavior in an intimate or family relationship. It carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

The Crown Prosecution Service makes it clear that forced marriage is one example of this.

Lesin-Davis told Business Insider that the first response from Meyer's then-husband was "as you might expect, aggressive."

But eventually, with the prospect of prison time looming, there was a shift. Lesin-Davis said the then-husband changed his tune in a "relatively short" period of time.

"Perhaps he took legal advice, I'm not really quite sure," he added.

Elkouby gave BI a different account, saying that the timing was coincidental.

He didn't take "much notice" of Lesin-Davis or the legal threat, and instead granted the gett so he could remarry.

"The only way I could get remarried was if I gave a gett, that's why I gave it,' he said.

It took effect in September 2020, and Meyer was finally unshackled.

"I literally felt lighter," she recalled. "I felt like I could breathe and my lungs were now filling at full capacity."

But for others, it wouldn't be so easy.

Caroline Moher-Maxwell was refused a gett by her husband Alan Moher. In April 2022, instead of granting the document, Moher went to prison. In a landmark case, he was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to controlling or coercive behavior.

Since getting her freedom, Meyer has been working to establish her own organization, GETToutUK, dedicated to helping agunot in the UK.

She said that within the first week, it had 13 women seeking its help. It recently celebrated its third anniversary.

GETToutUK employs various strategies to aid these women, including sensitivity training for London religious bodies.

This led the London Beth Din to incorporate compassionate gestures into the gett process, such as placing tissue boxes in its rooms and asking women if they prefer to be referred to by their married or maiden names, she said.

GETToutUK has also contributed to the drafting of the statutory guidance in the UK's Domestic Abuse Act which explicitly addresses gett refusal.

Its work has also expanded to assisting men whose wives refuse to accept a gett.

'Chained' men

While it is less common, a religious authority may also not provide a gett if the woman refuses to accept it or to be present at the proceedings.

This happened to Shmuli Simon, a London-based lawyer.

Though Simon was never technically a "chained man," because no Jewish courts officially declared his ex-wife a gett-refuser, he spent years trying to extricate himself from his marriage.

Like Meyer, he felt let down by religious authorities.

"My issue is really not with my ex," he said. "My issue was with the inability of the Batei Din to exercise any authority whatsoever."

Simon and Meyer now share more than just a common experience with religious authorities — they share a life together. They married in December last year.

Reflecting on the unexpectedly joyful conclusion to a decade marked by tragedy, Meyer said she hopes her story offers glimmers of hope to people who are currently "chained".

"I hope it will give faith that it will end, one day, please God, and we will do what we can in order to help that happen," she said.