Parents who coerce their children to marry will face jail under moves to be set out tomorrow by David Cameron.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 which can include kidnapping, beatings and rape \u2013 as “little more than slavery” and “completely wrong”.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0The Government’s forced-marriage unit \u2013 which dealt with 1,500 cases last year \u2013 has revealed that a five-year-old girl was one of 400 children it helped. One in five victims was male.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The offence will carry a prison sentence, but the maximum term has not yet been decided.\u00a0During consultation on the move, concerns were expressed that criminalising forced marriage altogether could deter victims from coming forward to police.<\/p>\n
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