A LEADING campaigner against forced marriage and an advisor to the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) has said the latest “shocking” figures on the issue are the “tip of the iceberg”. Aneeta Prem, the founder of Freedom Charity, also revealed that 20 per cent of victims referred to the organisation are men and young […]

Teenagers can’t be expected to implicate their parents. Child protection services must be braver and intervene The 3,500 reports of forced marriage over a three-year period, revealed by the Guardian this week, translates to 22 unwilling brides (sometimes bridegrooms) every single week. That sounds bad enough, but what’s even less palatable is that every such “marriage” […]

For far too long the authorities in this country have backed off from talking about forced marriage – partly due to ignorance of what is involved, but mainly because they are scared of being called racist, writes Saira Khan As I watched those loving glances pass between Harry and Meghan last week, I couldn’t help […]

Experts say crime is woefully under-reported, as Guardian research shows large scale of domestic and sexual servitude. More than 3,500 reports of forced marriage were made to police over a three-year period, a Guardian investigation has found, as charities warned that there were thousands more victims living in conditions of modern slavery in homes across […]

Jury at Birmingham crown court convicts woman in first successful prosecution of its kind in the UK A woman from Birmingham has been found guilty of deceiving her teenage daughter into travelling to Pakistan and forcing her to marry a man nearly twice her age in the first successful prosecution of its kind. The jury […]

Britain is one of the only countries in Europe where not a single person has been convicted of female genital mutilation (FGM), a report will reveal tomorrow. Quilliam, the counter-terrorism think tank, says it is a “national scandal” that nobody has been jailed for the illegal procedure. FGM is the partial or complete removal of […]

The first clinic in Wales to provide medical and psychological help to victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) has opened. The specialist Women’s Wellbeing Clinic at Cardiff Royal Infirmary will offer individualised care, counselling and advice. An estimated 2,000 women and girls in Wales are living with FGM. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said […]

A Derby man who murdered and tortured his partner at their home was today jailed for life and must served at least 32 more years in prison. Atual Mustafa murdered Sohbia Khan at their home in Pear Tree Crescent in Normanton. On Tuesday, a jury needed just 45 minutes to convict him. The court heard that, […]

Official unit says issue is hidden crime and figures may not reflect full scale of abuse Nearly 1,200 possible forced marriage cases were flagged up to a specialist service last year, figures show. Of the 1,196 reports handled by the government’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), more than a quarter involved victims below the age of […]