Reviewed and updated 22 August 2026.
By Aneeta Prem MBE
Forced marriage is sometimes described as if one person applies pressure and one person resists it.
Real cases can be more complicated. A parent may arrange the marriage. Another relative may control travel or documents. A sibling may monitor messages. Extended family or community members may reinforce the pressure.
The victim experiences one system of control even when several people perform different parts of it.
UK law can already address more than one offender
It would be wrong to say UK forced-marriage law only works where there is a single perpetrator.
Section 121 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 criminalises specified conduct intended to cause a forced marriage. Depending on the evidence, more than one person can be investigated or prosecuted for their own conduct, and other offences may also apply.
Forced Marriage Protection Orders can also protect against a spouse, prospective spouse, family member or another person involved in forcing or attempting to force the marriage.
The challenge is therefore not that the law is blind to multiple people. It is whether the whole pattern is identified, evidenced and joined together early enough.
What current CPS guidance says
The Crown Prosecution Service recognises that so-called honour-based abuse and harmful practices can involve family, extended family and members of a wider community.
Its 2026 guidance tells prosecutors to consider the full context and whether individual incidents form part of a wider pattern of abuse.
That is particularly important where no single act looks decisive on its own.
What collective coercion can look like
Different people may contribute different forms of pressure:
- one person makes the marriage arrangement;
- another controls a passport, phone or money;
- someone else threatens rejection or violence;
- a relative monitors school, work or friendships;
- another person organises travel or accommodation; or
- several people repeat the message that refusal will shame or damage the family.
Not every relative who knows about a marriage is an offender. Criminal responsibility still depends on evidence of what each person did and the relevant legal test.
But safeguarding professionals need to be able to see the network without assuming that only the loudest person matters.
Why isolated incident thinking is dangerous
A school may record a sudden absence. A GP may hear that somebody is frightened. Police may have attended an earlier family incident. A friend may know that travel is being arranged.
None of those facts necessarily proves forced marriage.
Together, they may reveal escalating control.
This is why multi-agency information sharing matters. A fragmented system can mirror the fragmentation of the abuse: each professional sees one piece and nobody sees the whole pattern.
What the Crime and Policing Act 2026 adds
Sections 143 and 144 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 have enacted a future statutory-guidance framework for “honour-based abuse”.
The explanatory notes explicitly recognise collective dynamics and state that the definition allows for abuse to be perpetrated by more than one person against a single victim.
That is useful because it gives frontline agencies a shared framework for recognising the pattern.
But the provisions do not create a new offence and do not alter the criminal law governing individual conduct.
As of 22 August 2026, sections 143 and 144 still require commencement regulations and are not yet in force.
The distinction between safeguarding and prosecution
Safeguarding can act on risk before there is enough evidence to prosecute somebody.
That does not mean abandoning fairness. It means recognising that the threshold for taking protective action is not the same as the criminal standard of proof.
A professional may need to protect a person from travel, unsafe family contact or escalating coercion while police and prosecutors determine whether offences can be proved.
Both processes need accurate records and a clear distinction between fact, allegation, concern and inference.
Do not respond with family mediation
Government forced-marriage guidance is clear that mediation, reconciliation or family counselling can be dangerous in a forced-marriage case.
Where several relatives may be involved, contacting the family without considering risk can alert the people applying pressure and reduce the victim’s remaining options.
The person at risk should be given the opportunity to speak privately and safely.
What professionals should ask
Useful questions include:
- Who is making the decision about the marriage?
- Who knows about the plan?
- Who controls travel, money, documents or communication?
- Who would react if the person refused?
- Is anybody monitoring or reporting their movements?
- Are several people reinforcing the same threat or expectation?
- What information might another agency already hold?
These are questions about behaviour, not ethnicity or religion.
Why this matters to me
I co-founded Freedom Charity with Lord Toby Harris in 2009. Forced-marriage safeguarding has repeatedly shown me that the person applying the final pressure is not always the only person who matters.
Protection improves when professionals stop treating each incident as a self-contained event and start asking what pattern the person is living inside.
Final word
UK law already has routes for prosecuting more than one person where the evidence supports it.
The remaining challenge is practical as much as legal: recognising the network, joining information between agencies and preserving evidence without increasing the victim’s risk.
A victim may experience one system of coercion even when responsibility is distributed across several people. Safeguarding has to be capable of seeing the whole system.
Sources and further reading
- CPS: honour-based abuse, forced marriage and harmful practices
- GOV.UK: multi-agency forced-marriage guidance
- Crime and Policing Act 2026 explanatory notes: collective dynamics
- Crime and Policing Act 2026: commencement
