A husband and wife from Nottingham have been given suspended sentences after arranging for two boys under 18 to be taken to Pakistan to be married.
The defendants, who cannot be named to protect the identities of the victims, took the boys to Pakistan when they were 17 with the specific purpose of finding them someone to marry. One of the boys refused a proposed match, but the other was paired with a local girl and married in a Nikah ceremony.
Police were alerted to the marriage following a referral from the young person’s place of education.
The couple initially denied seeking marriages, but pleaded guilty to carrying out conduct to cause a child under 18 to enter a marriage on 17 February.
Today, 15 May, they were sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to two months’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work.
Emma Cornell from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm caused by entering a lifelong commitment at such an early age. These defendants disregarded that protection by taking the boys to Pakistan to be married. The law applies wherever the offending takes place and, on their return, these two defendants were rightly held to account.”
CPS – Building the Case: Child Marriage Overseas
The defendants took the two victims abroad to Pakistan to arrange marriages, with one of them actually taking place. The legislation in England and Wales is designed to protect children and young people who live in this country, regardless of whether they are taken overseas for marriages to be arranged. The laws increasing the minimum age for marriage to 18 came into force in 2023 and introduced an offence of carrying out conduct to cause anyone under 18 to enter into a marriage. The defendants claimed they were unaware of this legislation.
The defendants initially claimed that the visit had been a holiday or family trip. They asserted that the idea of marriage had come from one of the boys and that they had gone along with his wishes. Analysis of their phones showed this was not true.
One defendant had several messages on his phone referring to looking for a ‘rishta’, which can mean a spouse or marriage proposal. He had also said in messages to others that he was in Pakistan trying to find his son a wife. The other defendant’s phone showed detailed conversations about arrangements she was making with another family, including contingency plans when the boy announced that he did not like the match they had secured for him. Her phone also contained video footage of a wedding ceremony and showed her exchanging money with the bride’s family.
The wedding took place in the form of a Nikah ceremony. While this was required to be conducted in registered premises to constitute a legal marriage for UK purposes, the ceremony is binding under Islamic and Pakistani law.
The CPS secured independent advice from an expert in Islamic marriage issues, who confirmed the legal status of the marriage and clarified for the court the significance of the ceremony, including the social and legal constraints it placed upon the victims. This expert also provided evidence confirming to the court that the photographs showed that a Nikah ceremony had taken place.
During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution made it clear that, although the defendants had acted unlawfully, there had been no force or undue coercion involved. The prosecution also accepted the defendants’ assertion that they had been unaware of the change in the law. However, by taking their children overseas to arrange marriages for them, they had broken the law, and ignorance of the law is not a defence.
