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Nearly half of South Sudanese girls between 15 and 19 years old are married. Some were as young as 12 years old when they were forced to marry men who, in many cases, were far older than them. The Old Man Can Feed Us So You Will Marry Him, a new report from Human Rights Watch, documents these facts and describes the terrible consequences of forced marriage for so many girls in South Sudan.
Groomed for sex at 12, stabbed to death at 17: Shocking life of white teenage mother murdered after Asian lover rejected her child
Teenage girl stabbed to death for bringing “shame” on two Asian families. She had a brief fling with a married man and became pregnant with his child while she was in a sexual relationship with another.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069055/Laura-Wilson-Groomed-sex-12-stabbed-death-17.html
A teenage student stabbed to death and dumped in a canal was groomed for sexual exploitation by adults from the age of 12, it has been revealed.
Laura Wilson, 17, had been tracked by social services since 2005 after she was identified as being ‘at risk’ of sexual exploitation by British Pakistani men.
But their work focused on other girls who were more closely associated with abusers in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
The student was murdered in October last year after bringing ‘shame’ on two Asian families.
Parents who coerce their children to marry will face jail under moves to be set out tomorrow by David Cameron.
The Prime Minister will announce that forced marriage will be made a criminal offence following reports that up to 8,000 Britons are made to marry against their consent every year. He has previously described the practice – which can include kidnapping, beatings and rape – as “little more than slavery” and “completely wrong”.
Most cases of forced marriage involve families from southern Asia, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Among them are hundreds of girls below the age of 16 who are taken abroad to be coerced into marriage. The Government’s forced-marriage unit – which dealt with 1,500 cases last year – has revealed that a five-year-old girl was one of 400 children it helped. One in five victims was male.
The Government is already committed to criminalising breaches of forced-marriage protection orders, which are criminal injunctions and carry jail terms of up to two years for contempt of court. But ministers have decided to go further and draw up a new criminal offence for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The offence will carry a prison sentence, but the maximum term has not yet been decided. During consultation on the move, concerns were expressed that criminalising forced marriage altogether could deter victims from coming forward to police.
