Campaigners are celebrating a law that comes into effect today (June 16) which punishes forcing someone into marriage in England and Wales with a maximum jail sentence of seven years.
Home Secretary Theresa May said that the law, which comes under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, will protect thousands of potential victims.
Forcing a British national into marriage outside the UK has also been outlawed under the Act and breaching a civil Forced Marriage Protection Order (FMPO) will be punishable by five years in jail.
Courts have been able to issue civil orders since 2008 but this is the first time that forcing someone to marry against their will, described by Prime Minister David Cameron as “little more than slavery”, has been a criminal offence.
A forced marriage is defined as one in which one or both spouses do not consent to the marriage but are coerced into it by physical, psychological, financial, sexual or emotional pressure.
Last year the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) dealt with 1,302 such cases, with over 80 per cent of the victims being female and 15 per cent under the age of 15. They involved 74 different countries, with 43 per cent relating to Pakistan, 11 per cent to India and 10 per cent to Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, in a separate report, the NSPCC said that children as young as 12 were calling ChildLine about forced marriage, with the number contacting them up two-thirds in the past year.
While campaigners agree that bringing in the law will help, some believe that implementing it could be challenging, as the coercion is likely to come from close family members, so support must be in place from the minute a victim reports such an abuse and all the way through the court process.