A husband and wife from Nottingham have been given a suspended sentence after arranging for taking two boys under 18 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 another was paired with a local girl and was married in a Nikah ceremony.
Police were alerted to the marriage following a referral from the young person’s place of education.
The couple at first denied that they had been seeking marriages, but pleaded guilty to carrying out conduct to cause a child under 18 to enter a marriage on 17 February.
They were today, 15 May, sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to two months' imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to do 100 hours' unpaid work.
Emma Cornell from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm done 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.”
Building the case: Child marriage overseas
The defendants took the two victims abroad to Pakistan to arrange the marriages, with one of them actually taking place. The legislation in England and Wales is in place 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 not aware of this legislation.
The defendants initially claimed that the visit had been a holiday or family visit. They asserted that the idea of marrying had come from one of the boys, and that they had gone along with his wishes. Analysis of their phones showed that 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 making contingency plans when the boy announced he did not like the match they had secured for him. Her phone also had video footage of a wedding ceremony and showed her exchanging money with the family of the bride.
The wedding took place in the form of a Nikah ceremony. While this required to be done in a registered premises to be 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 put upon the victims. This expert also provided evidence to confirm to the court that the photographs showed a Nikah ceremony had taken place.
During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution made it clear that, although the defendants had acted unlawfully, there was no force or undue coercion involved. The prosecution also accepted the defendants’ assertion that they had not been aware of the change in law. However, in taking their children overseas to arrange marriages for them, they had broken this law and ignorance of the law is not a defence.