A woman from Birmingham has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for duping her 17-year-old daughter into travelling to Pakistan and forcing her to marry a man 16 years her senior.

The 45-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty on two counts of forced marriage and a third charge of perjury. The jury returned a not guilty verdict for a further charge of perverting the course of justice.

The judge, Patrick Thomas QC, told the defendant: “You had cruelly deceived her. She was frightened, alone, held against her will, being forced into a marriage she dreaded. You must have known that was her state of mind. Yet for your own purposes, you drove the marriage through.

“Her courage and respect for the truth throughout these proceedings have been admirable, and are a marked contrast to your own cowardice and deceit, continuing right through this trial and no doubt hereafter.”

He added: “You have sought to blame her for everything, and yourself have accepted responsibility for nothing.”

Thomas explained how the maximum term for forced marriage offences was seven years. But in this case he imposed three-and-a-half years for forced marriage, and one year for perjury.

The defendant’s family listened to the judge’s remarks from the public gallery, but her daughter, whose evidence was crucial to securing the conviction, sat separately.

Before the sentencing, which was unusually attended by eight members of the jury, the prosecuting barrister read out the victim’s impact statement to the packed court. The daughter, now 19, described how she felt her mother had “ditched” her in Pakistan and her disbelief at how she had been treated.

She also used the statement to urge other young women at risk of forced marriage to ask for help and to “say something to someone”.



Prosecutor Deborah Gould said the victim “feels guilty” for taking her mother to court. She said on the daughter’s behalf: “If it wasn’t me in this position could it have been one of my brothers or sisters?” She added: “She was proud of herself for coming to court.”

Christopher Gibbons, defending, said because this was only the second conviction for forced marriage in the UK he was finding it “very difficult” to advise the judge on what sentence he should pass. However, he accepted his client would be receiving a custodial sentence.

The landmark case is the first conviction for forced marriage in England. It is the first time a victim has given evidence against her family in a trial for this type of offence.



During the trial, jurors heard how the woman had promised the troubled teenager a family holiday and bribed her with a phone.

But instead, after taking her to Pakistan, the woman told her daughter on her 18th birthday that she would marry a family relative by whom she had become pregnant on a previous visit in 2012 when she was 13 and he was 29.

Despite her daughter’s pleas that she did not want to marry the 34-year-old Pakistani national, the defendant planned the wedding day for later that month, on 18 September 2016.

Giving evidence, the defendant’s daughter had told Birmingham crown court how she had cried during the wedding and begged her mother not to send her home with the groom after being forced to sign marriage papers.

Her mother later abandoned her in Pakistan before lying under oath to a high court judge in the UK about what had happened.

Earlier in the trial, jurors were told how the mother had betrothed her daughter to her second husband’s nephew on a previous visit to Pakistan in 2012 before the girl fell pregnant.

After the trip the girl’s pregnancy was terminated and she was taken into the care of a children’s home.

Deborah Gould, prosecuting, told jurors the defendant had psychologically and emotionally manipulated her daughter – a vulnerable person with learning disabilities – who craved the affection of her parents and wanted nothing more than the love and approval of her mother.



The NSPCC said it hoped the sentence would show that young victims could come forward and would be supported when they bravely report abuse they have suffered at the hands of their families.



The charity told the Guardian it had held 205 counselling sessions for children concerned about a forced marriage in 2016-17, up from 183 in 2015-16. There were 6,099 visits to the Childline forced marriage online page during the same period.

A spokesman said: “Children as young as 13 have contacted Childline about being forced into marriage yet fearing they will be cut out of their family if they refuse. Forced marriage is a form of child abuse and this case has laid bare the effect it has on young lives.

“The secretive and isolating nature of forced marriage means that it is difficult to grasp the true scale of the problem, but we know that our Childline service counsels hundreds of children.

“We would urge anyone worried about a child to speak up before it is too late, so that we can get help and prevent them being bound into something they would never ask for.”



The former Chief Prosecutor for the north west of England, Nazir Afzal, welcomed both the conviction and the sentence passed.

He told The Guardian: “This behaviour is so rampant that deterrence comes from both prosecution and sentencing. The message is don’t do it or pay the consequences if you do.”



Adults can call the NSPCC Helpline in confidence, 24/7, on 0808 800 5000 while Childline is there for young people on 0800 1111 or via www.childline.org.uk.