A mother-of-four who tricked her teenage daughter into going to Pakistan for a forced marriage has been jailed for four-and-a-half years, in the first successful prosecution of its kind in England.
A jury at Birmingham Crown Court heard that the woman - who cannot be named for legal reasons - took her daughter to Pakistan when she was 13 and forced her into a “marriage contract” with a man 16 years her senior, who got the teenager pregnant.
After returning to the UK, an abortion was arranged for the girl, who was then put into a children’s home following reports to social services. While in care, she was raped and had a second abortion, The Guardian reports.
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The girl remained in contact with her mother, who persuaded her to travel to Pakistan when she was 17 for a “family holiday”. But once there, she was forced to wed the man who had got her pregnant.
The court heard that her mother, now 45, threatened to burn the girl’s passport if the wedding did not go ahead, and that the teenager “sobbed as the marriage took place”.
The conviction marks the first time a forced marriage case of this kind has been successfully prosecuted in a criminal court in England.
The law prohibiting forced marriage came into effect in June 2014 as part of the wider Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act.
Until now it had led to just one successful prosecution, in Wales in 2015, despite the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit providing support in about 1,200 potential cases in 2017.
Jasvinder Sanghera, director at Karma Nirvana, a charity for forced marriage victims, said she was “elated” by the Birmingham court’s verdict.
“I hope this is going to pave the way for future victims to have more confidence in the criminal justice system,” she said.
“Since 2014 we have not had one [other] criminal conviction where a victim has stood up and spoken out so courageously about her experiences against the person who has the most responsibility for her well-being – her mother.”
