{"id":201,"date":"2013-08-12T11:45:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T11:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/?p=201"},"modified":"2013-08-12T10:19:07","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T10:19:07","slug":"forced-marriage-ruins-the-lives-of-too-many-girls-so-were-working-to-end-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/forced-marriage-ruins-the-lives-of-too-many-girls-so-were-working-to-end-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced marriage unit deals with 114 cases involving mental disability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Campaigners say case of Sikh man &#8216;married off&#8217; to Indian woman despite not having capacity to consent highlights &#8216;horrendous&#8217; issue<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The government dealt with 114 cases of forced\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Marriage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/marriage\">marriage<\/a>\u00a0last year that involved mentally disabled people \u2013 a number government experts admit is only the tip of the\u00a0iceberg of a horrendous hidden problem.\u00a0The Foreign Office, which runs the government&#8217;s\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Forced marriage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/forced-marriage\">forced marriage<\/a>\u00a0unit with the Ministry of Justice, released the figure after a high court judge was criticised by campaigners for refusing to\u00a0annul the marriage of a mentally incapacitated Sikh man from the West Midlands whose parents had imported a\u00a0wife from India for him.\u00a0Mr Justice Holman ruled that the 38-year-old Briton, named only as RG, was unable to consent to marriage because of his learning difficulties. He requires full-time residential care provided by Sandwell borough council. But the judge decided not to recommend a\u00a0petition of nullity be issued on RG&#8217;s behalf after deciding that RG &#8220;gained pleasure&#8221; from his Indian-born wife, SK, who told the court she did not know about her husband&#8217;s significant disabilities until their wedding day.<\/p>\n<p>The judgment drew strong criticism from campaigners against forced marriage, who claim parents in certain communities in Britain often marry off\u00a0their disabled children in the hope that their (often unwitting) spouses will\u00a0act\u00a0as\u00a0carers.\u00a0&#8220;The ruling has sent the wrong message,&#8221; said Jasvinder Sanghera from the charity\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.karmanirvana.org.uk\/\">Karma Nirvana<\/a>, which runs a\u00a0helpline for victims. &#8220;One of the definitions of forced marriage is a marriage in which one or both spouses do not or cannot consent and in this case the judge clearly ruled that RG was not capable of consenting to his marriage.&#8221;\u00a0Commending Sandwell council for raising the alarm, Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East, described forced marriage as &#8220;wrong, wrong, wrong&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Read more:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/aug\/09\/mentally-disabled-forced-marriages-parents\">http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/aug\/09\/mentally-disabled-forced-marriages-parents<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Campaigners say case of Sikh man &#8216;married off&#8217; to Indian woman despite not having capacity to consent highlights &#8216;horrendous&#8217; issue The government dealt with 114 cases of forced\u00a0marriage\u00a0last year that involved mentally disabled people \u2013 a number government experts admit is only the tip of the\u00a0iceberg of a horrendous hidden problem.\u00a0The Foreign Office, which runs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[90,7,4,89,18,91,31],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-annul","tag-forced-marriage","tag-halo-project","tag-incapacitated","tag-marriage","tag-sikh","tag-victims"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}