Acceptable Abuse?

[chrisgel]

Yet another consequence of integrating two widely differing cultures is that an estimated 5000 young women in the UK will be forced into marriage this year. A third of these will be under the age of 16.
These girls will be taken abroad during the school holidays on the pretext of attending a family wedding or visiting relatives and will find their lives forever changed.
Along with those being taken abroad to suffer FGM they form what appears to be a steady flow of young girls being taken abroad from this country every year in order to circumvent the laws of this country.
We seem to be unable to prevent this wholesale abuse of children and they seem to have no "Human Rights"
What can be done?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23639070

[naomi24]

//When was it that the last Royal married a foreign princess or prince? Early 20th Century?
The highest and 'lowest' in society endured the same family pressures. //

But not in several hundred years have they been little girls - and never have they been forced into a life of grim submission and drudgery. There is no excuse, nor any justification, for this.

[chrisgel]

Absolutely Naomi. Having found out what I've found out today I feel guilty at being part of a society that is willing to turn a blind eye to these hideous practices.
I realise that it would be very difficult to police these practices but that should not be an excuse for doing nothing.
In the case of FGM for example, where there is a law already in place to punish offenders, we have the situation of several 100 girls a year going to NHS hospitals for treatment after FGM and yet those hospitals are not reporting it to the authorities.
To make it worse I can find no mechanism in place for NHS staff to report these crimes to the relevant authorities.

[nungate]

It's been made illegal in Scotland to force young girls into marriage.
Unsure how they stop the practice but it is against the law up here

[chrisgel]

Nungate - Yes I was reading about it today. It seems that we are "considering" similar legislation. It must be very hard for them to think about because it's under discussion until at least March 2014.

[Jeza]

I do not agree with what is happening, but I will say their parents were probably in arranged marriages back in their homeland. They then came here and think the same for their children.

[nungate]

There was a big hoo ha over this a couple of years back hence the legislation. I did hear that it was being considered for England, can't come soon enough these children need protection now

[chrisgel]

Jeza - Understood. But we seem to be the only country in the world who are willing to let people flout the law. If I moved to Pakistan (unlikely I know) I would have to follow all their laws unquestioningly. I believe the punishment for breaking laws in Pakistan can be quite severe.
Here we talk about fines or maybe a couple of years in jail max. Yet we can't enforce even these petty punishments.

[naomi24]

The problem is, as I said before, the general reluctance and often outright refusal to criticise religion and the cultural practices it sanctions – and that needs to change. Wrong is wrong, but religion is deemed to be beyond criticism, regardless of what it does, and therefore arranged marriages are overlooked, and the mutilated victims of FGM who arrive at our hospitals are treated and sent away again without a word said – and so it continues. Every single incident that is discovered should be reported – and the perpetrators dealt with severely. However, that doesn’t happen because they are members of an ethnic minority – also deemed beyond criticism – and ‘respect’ for their beliefs, quite bizarrely, appears to take precedence over our own ethics. That is clearly demonstrated in our hospitals themselves, where Muslim staff, contrary to the rules of hygiene that apply to all other staff, are allowed to wear long sleeved clothing – but that aside what it amounts to is that instead of ensuring that to the best of our ability we protect the vulnerable, we turn a blind eye. In an effort to make allowances for the beliefs of others – albeit beliefs that actively endorse the appalling abuse of the young and defenceless - we are abandoning our own principles and in doing so we are allowing our own moral compass to spin awry – and frankly that is a sad and shameful indictment upon our society.

[hessian]

I thought that it was the practice in asia for the married girl to go to live with the husband's family. Not to live in the UK automatically.

[hessian]

I thought that it is the custom in the indian sub-continent for the bride to live with the husband's parental family (initially). I shouldn't be the practice that foreign newly=weds automatically live in the UK.

[chrisgel]

Did you read the article. These are girls born and brought up in the UK. One says she was told she couldn't return to the UK unless she got pregnant.