Zero tolerance: That forced marriage is traditional elsewhere in the world is no defence of this crime against women and girls

Perhaps if we simply called “forced marriage” rape many of the cultural and moral issues involved in it would fall into perspective. For that, after all, is what it is, though the rate of prosecution and conviction for forced marriage offences is even lower than that for rape. It is an unacceptable practice that has been allowed to persist for far too long, and certainly we need to acknowledge the strong ethnic and cultural bias in the statistics – the high proportion involving people of Pakistani heritage – in order to better understand and combat it.

Indeed forced marriage and the conspiracies that surround it were only made a specific criminal offence a year ago, and this week has seen only the first conviction, that of a 34-year-old Cardiff man also found guilty of rape, bigamy and voyeurism. His 16-year sentence is not too heavy for his attempt to effectively enslave another human being.

How many more young people, overwhelmingly women, have been subjected to this inhumanity over the years and decades? How many of our fellow citizens have watched them being subjected to this and turned a blind eye, or even condoned and encouraged it? How many have failed to report their concerns to the authorities? How many have connived in it? We can never know, but it must run into many thousands.

The Government’s Forced Marriages Unit says that last year alone it offered support to 1,267 people, which common sense tells us must be a small proportion of the total. Some say there are as many as 10,000 forced marriages a year and each one of those will yield its own pitiable story. For far too long those victims have been silent and silenced, imprisoned by threats and bogus traditions of “honour”, betrayed by their own parents, family and friends. If we are only now taking child abuse seriously and understanding the full scale of historical abuse, so we must now confront this no less grievous abuse, as it is happening in our time to our own neighbours.

Citing cultural tradition is no excuse, and it is here that multiculturalism – a doctrine of tolerance that has served the nation well – does find a limit (as it does with female genital mutilation, another wholesale crime against women derived from tradition). Whether forced marriage is intrinsic to the way of life in parts of the Indian subcontinent is no moral or legal defence, and we should not be afraid to say so. The political and religious leaders of those communities should be held accountable for any failure on their part to eradicate this cruel and violent practice.

We also need to understand why the Forced Marriages Unit has been repatriating back to the UK hundreds of British victims and yet not prosecuting those responsible. Many of these women are hardly adults. Has the FMU been liaising with the police? If not, why not?

The actions the authorities need to take urgently are clear. First, a rapid inquiry that determines the full scale of these crimes. Second, ministers need to review all the laws and police and other official activity and find out why the rate of prosecution is so low. The FMU needs more powers and more resources. Third, the authorities need to ask community leaders to send a clear message that forced marriage is wrong, and if they refuse, publicly name them.

Last, we simply need more prosecutions and more convictions, as nothing will make the point more graphically than justice being brought to bear on these abusers. Forced marriage has been an invisible national scandal, a crime against women, and requires a national campaign to expose it and end it.