Mother jailed for four-and-a-half years for duping daughter into forced marriage
A mother who duped her teenage daughter to go to Pakistan and forced her to marry has been jailed for four-and-a-half years, in the first successful prosecution of its type.
The unemployed woman, whom a judge said acted with "cowardice" and "deceit", was convicted Tuesday of tricking the victim to go to Pakistan for a false marriage and forced marriage and also convicted of perjury for lying about the incident in the High Court.
A jury at Birmingham Crown Court had heard how the victim sobbed as she was married to a male relative 16 years her senior.
Years earlier, the man had taken the girl's virginity after she was entered into a marriage contract against her will.
The then 13-year-old was forced to have an abortion when she returned to the UK, which led her GP reporting his concerns to social services.
Sentencing on Wednesday, Judge Patrick Thomas QC said: "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."
