By Aneeta Prem MBE
There is a sentence I have heard many times in safeguarding: But they agreed.
That sentence can hide an enormous amount.
Agreement given because somebody is frightened is not free consent. Agreement given because refusing may mean losing family, home, money or safety is not the same as choosing freely.
That was one of the reasons I supported making forced marriage a specific criminal offence.
I did not believe legislation would solve forced marriage on its own. I still do not. But I believed the law needed to say something unambiguous: nobody has the right to force another person into marriage.
Why criminalisation mattered to me
I co-founded Freedom Charity with Lord Toby Harris in 2009. From the beginning, forced marriage was central to our work. We were speaking to young people, working in schools and trying to make something that could be hidden inside family life easier to recognise.
In June 2013, I gave evidence to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee considering what became the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. I told the Committee that Freedom had been established with a primary aim of seeing forced marriage become a criminal offence.
I supported criminalisation because prevention and protection need clear boundaries. There were legitimate concerns that creating an offence could make some victims more reluctant to report their families. That concern could not simply be dismissed. But neither could the opposite risk: that failing to criminalise forced marriage might continue to suggest that this form of coercion belonged in a different category from other serious abuse.
What changed on 16 June 2014
Forced marriage became a criminal offence in England and Wales on 16 June 2014.
The law covered violence, threats and other forms of coercion used to cause somebody to marry without free and full consent. It also protected people who lacked capacity to consent and addressed deception used to take somebody overseas for the purpose of forced marriage.
For me, the importance of the law was never simply the prospect of prosecution. Its wider message mattered too.
A young person should not have to wonder whether family expectation outranks their right to choose. It does not.
Criminalisation was not the end of the story
Passing a law is an event. Changing what happens to somebody at risk is a process.
Forced marriage can involve emotional pressure, financial control, threats, physical violence, restriction of movement, overseas travel, confiscation of documents or the fear of being rejected by the people a person depends upon.
Sometimes the warning signs are obvious. Often they are not.
That is why criminal law has to sit alongside education, safeguarding, professional training and routes to confidential help.
A teacher needs to recognise why a pupil suddenly talking about an unexpected overseas trip may need careful safeguarding. A health professional needs to know that family members should not automatically be used as interpreters. A police officer needs to understand that sending somebody back into a family meeting may increase risk rather than resolve it.
And every professional needs to understand the difference between an arranged marriage involving freely consenting adults and a forced marriage.
The law became stronger again in 2023
There was another important change on 27 February 2023.
The minimum age of marriage and civil partnership in England and Wales became 18. The forced-marriage offence was also expanded so that it can be an offence to carry out conduct intended to cause a child to enter into a marriage before their eighteenth birthday even where violence, threats or another form of coercion cannot be proved.
This includes ceremonies that are not legally binding.
This matters enormously. For a child, the law no longer asks whether an apparently willing marriage was really arranged or forced in the same way it does for consenting adults. Children should not be placed in that position.
What does forced-marriage law protect today?
For adults, free and full consent remains fundamental.
Where somebody lacks the mental capacity to consent to marriage, coercion does not have to be shown.
For children under 18, causing the child to enter into a marriage can itself engage the forced-marriage offence, whether or not coercion was used.
This is exactly why public discussion has to move beyond the idea that forced marriage always involves somebody being physically dragged towards a wedding. Coercion can be much quieter than that.
What the figures can and cannot tell us
Official figures tell us about cases that reach services. They do not reveal the true prevalence of hidden abuse.
That distinction matters. A rise in recorded cases may reflect more abuse, better recognition, different recording, greater awareness or more effective referral. Good safeguarding requires us to resist the temptation to turn every statistic into a headline.
Why education mattered alongside the law
I wrote But It’s Not Fair because laws written for adults do not automatically become understandable to children.
A child may not know the phrase “forced marriage”. They may simply know that they are expected to go abroad, that everyone has decided something for them, or that saying no does not feel possible.
Stories can give children language before they have the confidence to make a disclosure.
The UK Government has hosted But It’s Not Fair as a forced-marriage resource, and Freedom Charity later worked with the PSHE Association on educational resources for schools. That work sits alongside legislation rather than replacing it.
Would I still support criminalisation?
Yes.
But I would never claim that creating an offence finished the job.
A law can establish a boundary. It cannot guarantee that a frightened young person will tell somebody. It cannot guarantee that the first professional they speak to will understand the risk. It cannot ensure that prevention begins early enough.
More than a decade after forced marriage became a crime, the question is no longer simply whether Britain has a law against it.
The question is whether every person at risk can safely exercise the freedom that law was designed to protect: the freedom to choose.
Sources and further reading
- House of Commons Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2013
- Home Office: forced marriage becomes a criminal offence
- Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act implementation
- GOV.UK forced marriage guidance
