A TOT aged TWO was Britain’s youngest ‘victim’ of forced marriage in Britain last year, shock official figures revealed yesterday.

The Home Office revealed the toddler was one of 1,196 cases dealt with by officials investigating potential forced marriages by expat families in the UK last year.

1 Almost 1,200 allegedly non-consensual weddings were investigated by the Forced Marriages Unit last year Credit: Alamy

The oldest involved a 100 year-old pensioner.

The infant was one of 355 children under 18 helped by the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit last year.

One in five cases related to male victims.

More than a third of cases related to Pakistan but the number of Somalian cases has increased by a massive 100 per cent year on year.

The FMU dealt with 1,196 cases last year - a decline of 19 per cent on 2016.

But experts said that did not represent a reduction in the number of forced marriages in Britain.

Forcing someone to marry against their will is a criminal offence which carries a maximum sentence of seven years.

A forced marriage is defined as one in which one or both spouses do not consent to the marriage and violence, threats or any other form of coercion is involved.

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Established in 2005, the FMU is jointly run by the Home Office and Foreign Office.

Since 2012, the facility has provided support in between 1,200 and 1,400 cases per year.

But a report published by the two departments on Thursday stressed that the statistics only represent cases reported to the unit.

It added: “Forced marriage is a hidden crime, and these figures may not reflect the full scale of the abuse.”

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