Criminalising forced marriage has not helped its victims
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
Criminalising forced marriage has not helped its victims
Aisha K. Gill, University of Roehampton
In the year since forced marriage was criminalised in the UK, only one conviction has taken place. In June, a 34-year-old man was jailed for forcing a 25-year-old woman to marry him under duress. Merthyr Crown Court in Wales heard that the man – who was already married to someone else – repeatedly raped his victim over a period of months, threatened to publish footage of her having a shower and told her that her parents would be killed, unless she agreed to become his wife.
The defendant was put on the sex offenders' register and sentenced to 16 years in custody, to be released under an extended licence for another five years afterwards. This is an important case, which will raise questions about whether these offences – which also included rape, voyeurism and bigamy, alongside forced marriage – could have been prosecuted under the existing criminal law.
Before forced marriage was crimin...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
