What is a forced marriage?
A forced marriage is when one or both people do not agree to the marriage or cannot agree to it. Pressure or abuse is used to make the marriage happen.
Pressure can take many forms. This can include physical violence, threats, emotional and psychological abuse, financial control, or making someone feel that refusing will bring shame or dishonour.
It is also a forced marriage if one or both people cannot give consent. This might be because of their age, learning disability or lack of mental capacity.
Forced marriages can happen to anyone from any background and nationality. They can affect both males and females.
The law sets out four types of conduct that amount to forced marriage:
- Using violence, threats, or any other form of coercion to make someone enter into a marriage without their full and free consent
- Deceiving a person so that they leave the UK for the purpose of a marriage they have not freely consented to, because of violence, threats, or coercion
- Any conduct intended to make a person who lacks capacity (as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005) to enter into a marriage (s.121(2)).
- Any conduct intended to cause a person under the age of 18 to enter into a marriage (from 27 February 2023)
The marriage does not have to actually happen. The crime is committed if the behaviour is intended to bring about a forced marriage.
For the purposes of the law, marriage means any religious or civil ceremony of marriage. It does not matter if the ceremony is legally binding or not.
Harmful practices can happen before forced marriage. People may be pressured, forced or shamed into these procedures. This often happens under pressure from family or community members to uphold the "honour" of the family or as a condition before marriage.
Forced marriage situations may also involve other criminal offences, such as:
- Violence and intimidation: assault, threats to kill, harassment, false imprisonment, kidnap
- Sexual offences: rape, sexual assault, virginity testing, hymenoplasty, exploitation through prostitution
- Exploitation and coercion: blackmail, people trafficking, child abduction
- Fraud and immigration-related offences: marriage offences, immigration offences, fraud
This is not a full list, but examples of the types of offending that may take place alongside forced marriage.