Current Affairs21st May 2026
A husband and wife from Nottingham have received a suspended sentence after arranging for two boys under the age of 18 to be married, following a complex forced marriage investigation.
The couple, who cannot be named in order 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 married in a Nikah ceremony. Police were alerted to the marriage following a safeguarding referral in May 2023.
The couple both pleaded guilty to two counts of carrying out conduct for the purpose of causing a child to enter into a marriage before that child’s eighteenth birthday. They were sentenced on 15th May 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 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.”
Child Marriage Law
After ten years of campaigning, on 26th April 2022 the government passed the Bill to end child marriage in England and Wales. The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act came into force on 27th February 2023, marking a significant step towards eliminating child marriage in all its forms. The legislation protects young people who live in the England and Wales, regardless of whether they are taken overseas for marriages to be arranged, and makes it a criminal offence to carry out any conduct, or intended conduct, to cause a child to marry before their 18th birthday, even if no ceremony takes place. It is illegal to exploit vulnerable children by arranging for them to marry under any circumstances, whether or not force is used.
The defendants claimed they were not aware of this legislation, however ignorance of the law is not a defence. This case represents one of the first convictions of its kind in the UK, and the first in Nottinghamshire since the new law came into force.
At Karma Nirvana
We welcome this conviction as a landmark moment in the fight against child marriage in the UK. Cases like this demonstrate that the law is being enforced, and the crucial role of education, early intervention, and referrals from safeguarding professionals on the frontline to protect victims.
We have campaigned for over a decade for stronger legal protections for children at risk of forced and child marriage, and we remain committed to ensuring those protections are upheld and understood. We continue to call on the government and statutory agencies to invest in specialist training and resources so that professionals across education, health and social care are equipped to identify and respond to these cases with confidence.
If you or someone you know is at risk of forced marriage or child marriage, please contact our helpline. We are here to help.