Legal News
16-year jail sentence for forced marriage in first ever prosecution (12 June 2015)
Date: 12/06/2015
A 34-year-old man from Cardiff in South Wales has become the first person to be prosecuted under laws banning forced marriage, which were introduced in the UK in 2014.
BBC News reports that the man – who cannot be named for legal reasons – pleaded guilty to forcing a 25-year-old woman to marry him last year.
He also pleaded guilty to rape, bigamy and voyeurism at Merthyr Crown Court.
He was sentenced to a total of 16 years in jail – four years in jail for the offence of forced marriage, as well as a year in jail for bigamy and voyeurism, all to run concurrently with a 16-year jail sentence for rape.
The court was told that he had threatened to kill the woman’s father unless she married him.
He had become “obsessed” with the woman – who is Muslim – and threatened to publish videos of her he had secretly filmed while she was taking a shower.
In 2014, the Forced Marriages Unit (FMU) run by the Home Office and the Foreign Office jointly offered advice and support in a total of 1,267 cases of possible forced marriage.
Many women and girls forced into marriage are reluctant or scared of coming forward because of the possibility they would dishonour their families.
At Merthyr Crown Court, Judge Daniel Williams described the unnamed defendant as an “arrogant, manipulative and devious man”.
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