5 Year Old Girl Victim Of Forced Marriage In UK

[Mame Biram Diouf]

A five-year-old girl is thought to have become the UK's youngest victim of forced marriage.

She was one of 400 children to receive assistance from the government's Forced Marriage Unit in the last year. The figures have emerged as the public consultation into criminalising forced marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland comes to an end. Amy Cumming, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit, said 29% of the cases it dealt with last year involved minors. "The youngest of these was actually five years old, so there are children involved in the practice across the school age range," she said. To protect the child, the authorities have not disclosed details of the case or where the marriage took place. But the case comes as no surprise to the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (IKWRO), which deals with more than 100 cases of forced marriage a year. "We have had clients who are in their very early teens, 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds, the youngest case we had was nine years old," said IKWRO campaigns officer Fionnuala Murphy. Now the consultation on forced marriage has come to an end, IKWROs hope it will become a criminal offence.

"Our organisation is pro-criminalisation because we believe that it will empower victims to know that this is a crime, to stand up to their parents and to stand up for their own rights and it will enable them to come forward and seek help and say what's happening to me is wrong." Author Sameem Ali is all too familiar with the trauma of being a child bride - she was only 13 years old when she was taken to Pakistan by her mother on a holiday.

As a teenager she was excited about the trip, but when she arrived at the family's ancestral village, she discovered she was to be married to a man twice her age, whom she had never met. "The whole family turned up with an imam and they forced me into this marriage. I didn't really understand what was happening at the time. "I was only a child. There was no way I could say no. There was no support there whatsoever." Eight months later she returned to the UK after suffering months of violent abuse. "I was brought back to this country when I was 14 years old and pregnant," she said

Forced marriage

• Every year hundreds of young people are at risk of being taken abroad, by their parents and forced to marry against their will.
  
• The majority of cases involve families from South Asia, particularly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
  
• Forced marriages can involve kidnapping, beatings and rape.
  
• In a speech last October, Prime Minister David Cameron compared the practice to modern day slavery and pledged to stamp it out.
  
• He said people should not "shy away" from addressing the issue because of "cultural concerns".
  

[Raegus]

Guessing it was Pakis, reading article now.

[time_bomb]

*waits for the muslim/Mohammed comments*

[EnglishBadboy]

Dirty Muslim's at it again