Child marriage in the USA

And I would argue that a lot of it comes down to money. There isn't the will for funding for anything but window-dressing. We are living with a government that is still pursuing an austerity programme. The police force funding is being cut, health funding is being cut, education funding is being cut, there certainly isn;t an expansion in social services. The money is being cut - not expanded to actually, really fund protection of these vulnerable groups.

Blaming people who are actually doing their best, with very little, simply exonerates those who are actually responsible.

I think we are just going to have to disagree on this point. Personally, I think the myth of 'political correctness' is a useful lie. It masks a systemic and political decision to under-fund. It makes the jobs of people - for example, teachers and social workers, who carry a legal burden to not 'turn a blind eye - far harder. Not only do they carry a responsibility, without the resources to actually follow through effectively, they also risk carrying the can when, inevitably, they can't perform the impossible.

Political correctness affects the state, the police, education, social care, they are failing on this front.

Because we are taught to focus on the wrong thing, which you are also doing, rather than on the crime. That's down to poor management and a culture which discourages whistleblowing and the reporting of crimes.

That's the thing you need to tackle. Not prattle on about 'Muslims do this'. No rapists who use religion as a cover do this.

Change the language instead of using it poorly. Change the culture, of the institutions to work with community rather than merely attacking huge sections of the community unfairly.

We try to tackle too many problems by getting distracted and hitting out at the wrong group.

Political correctness does have a place in our society. When it is attacked, this leads to justifying racism, sexism etc.

Don't criticise liberals who see a different - but also legitimate - problem. You just create more social problems by doing so. It is not a failure of liberal principles. It is a failure of the application of those principles. You don't simply rip up those principles because its being poorly applied. Especially where the alternative is even worse and usually even more poorly applied.

You have to create an environment where you look at the issues side by side and say 'bad person bad' and a culture where victims are not treated poorly.

It's not hate filled, it's about protection of girls living in the uk. karma nirvana is a charity dedicated to helping victims and it was there I got the independent article from, because they know that knowledgw is lacking in this area and agencies tiptoe around the issues for fear of offending.

It's not just funding it's awareness, yes there are specialist safeguarding officers, there are also many front line staff who are first responders who are the ones that go to these incidents, that may miss the signs because they don't fully understand. Not just police but medical staff, social care etc.
It's not just the girls in education, it's the ones that are home schooled, removed from school, allowed to slip under the radar.

there have been numerous failures to protect victims. Frequently agencies get it wrong, for examine banax manhood was so let down by the police.
Nazir Afzal from the Crown Prosecution Service said a while ago that we have no idea how many unmarked graves there are in Britain, let alone the girls who are taken abroad, because their parents obviously don't report them missing.

“If you’re going to do a drama about this issue then it really has to be realistic, and not getting into the realms of fearing about cause and offence or offending communities — because these things are happening."- jasvinder sanghera.

A lot of this goes unreported, it's really a huge problem and I feel lacks attention and I do think part of the problem is political correctness and lack of understanding

Evil Sorry if my post made it sound as though the US, as a whole, is 'OK' with child marriage. I do realise the situation is more nuanced than that.

To be fair, I can tell the situation is more nuanced than that simply because I've watched 'Clueless', with it's joke at the end about marriage.

The Daily Mail will tell you it's all the fault of 'politically correct' social workers, police, health care providers and teachers.

All I can tell you is that it is drummed into us, explicitly - on PGCE courses and the like - that it is politically and legally wrong to 'turn a blind eye'.

Honestly, can you see the damage that idea of a legion of ill-defined 'liberals' does? It stops the clamour for funding and replaces it with vaguely hate-filled feelings towards some 'other' group, who are supposedly colluding. It stops people generally considering this to be a problem all of society has a responsibility towards. It stops a questioning of the funding priorities of society (more money for social services would be a good start). Ultimately, it leaves a vulnerable group without real protection and support.

Last post made it look like I think marriage at 15 is OK. It’s not, but given that 16 is a fairly normal legal age worldwide it’s not exactly medieval.

Half of the states do have rigid laws about minimum marriage age - most often 16 though there are some 15s and a few 14s and 13s. So it’s clearly not something that the US public as a whole won’t accept. Utah, for example, which you might expect to be dodgy, has a minimum age of 15 with parental consent.

Political correctness affects the state, the police, education, social care, they are failing on this front.

But it is about political correctness;

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-forced-marriage-fear-racism-accusations-islamophobia-a7995181.html

the problem is kept under the radar, not enough is being done about it. I think it's a genuine area in need of attention.
The problem of "honour/Izzat" exists here in the U.K. Girls are being abused and sent abroad. People are so scared of appearing to be racist it's being ignored. Yes it's not religion it's the notion of honour. Children are promised in marriage from a very young age, and are sent abroad or sometimes murdered when they don't go along with it.
It's relevant to this topic because it's making people aware that uk and USA girls are still becoming child brides and legislating against it in those respective countries is the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be done.

Another thing about the myth of this being the fault of 'political correctness' is that it transfers responsibility from the state to individuals - who can then be scapegoated under a demonised cloud of misnaming as 'politically correct liberals who did nothing' - when in fact it is the lack of actual state-funded mechanisms-to-do-something that prevents anything 'being done'.

It's all very well having a law. That's headline-grabbing and gives a right-wing, cutback-obsessed government a coating of caring, and allows them to look like social liberals whilst actually hammering the vulnerable. It's another thing entirely to actually put funding in place for the mechanisms that need to be there to protect vulnerable people (in this case, girl children).

I didn't misunderstand the American poster. I think she's spot on. That principle goes really deep - along with ideas about religious freedom (which also facilitates this). What I also think I see is that this comes into conflict with the rights to autonomy of vulnerable individuals (namely girl children), and that those rights ultimately come second (partially through refusing to acknowledge that vulnerability or a rephrasing of lack of autonomy as an expression of autonomy.

I doubt it will be exposed tbh, social services are massively over stretched and a law to prevent spouses from coming here will never be passed as they are a cheap form on unskilled labour willing to generally speaking work long hours in poor conditions.

I think you’re slightly misunderstand the US poster - I think their reference to “freedom” didn’t mean the freedom for paedophiles to marry their victims, but the freedom of the individual states to set laws on certain subjects. I think that in the UK we can’t really comprehend the importance of that subject to Americans.

However regardless of the politics of federal legislation there is absolutely nothing stopping people in each state from campaigning for a change in the law state by state. Virginia for example changed their laws to mirror English ones last year. US girls need a two-pronged approach - an attempt at federal lawmaking and state by state campaigns.

Advice please-
i do care very much about this issue. It's an area that's being neglected and I think could be the next scandal exposed.
i have done more to help than most people assume

As for America, absolutely a law needs to be introduced. I wonder why it hasn't? The individuals may not have integrated into society but surely law makers know better

I don't agree political correctness is the issue, after all much worse is often said about Muslims/asians etc its more indifference to the suffering of women and girls.

@RTB - great post.

I can't see the US shifting on it any time soon, though. It seems to be a really fundamental bedrock of the way freedom is conceptualised at a legal level. Not surprising that the rights of girl children are at risk in that conceptualisation.

Btw, the poster who said that, with fundamentalist religions, it tended to be that both partners were young - a quick google suggests this to be untrue. I think the figures are something like 80+% girls, only 17% boys. It's mainly girls being married to older men. Which is not a great surprise.

No you are deflecting from the real issue that girls, especially Muslim girls are going missing, forced into marriage and the system is failing them. People skirt round it because they are scared of causing offence. See this extract from karma nirvana website;

“The evidence is clear, as with past public inquiries such as Rotherham and others, that police and other professionals fear treading on cultural toes - the consequences for victims are devastating.” Jasvinder Sanghera CBE

Help us help your local Police Force better understand the issues and give them the confidence to stand firm. Recommend they take our #ForcedMarriage training course.

im not making the problem worse, I am highlighting that this is going on. People who say something are shut down.

Missymoo if you truly care about stopping kids being taken to a foreign country to marry, the first thing we need to do is stop spouses from pakistan, india, Bangladesh etc coming to the UK from these countries. The people coming over are obsessed with this notion of respect and then getting people from these poorer cointries here to work and help their family. Once we stop allowing spouses here, people will marry other integrated people abd the cycle will stop.

Missymoo I don't think there is an issue about 'political correctness leading to moral blindness'. It's illegal, and schools have a safeguarding duty to report if they suspect it's going to take place.

The problem is not one of 'political correctness', it's one of pragmatism: it's hard to spot and stop until it's too late. It's also a problem of cost: presently we have no government that is seriously putting money into addressing this. That's not because of 'political correctness', or a desire not to offend. Quite the opposite. Just as there is very little money for social services generally, there is very little money for this because not enough people care and not enough value is placed upon these lives.

It's not 'political correctness', it's a cynical reflection of lack of concern for the societally powerless.

Stop with this 'political correctness' nonsense. Think about what you're saying.

Just in case you can't work out what you're saying, I'l spell it out for you: you're saying that the vast majority of people working in education, social services and health care (the people most likely to get a chance to raise safeguarding concerns) in the UK are what RTB terms 'fake liberals' (great term, by the way, RTB), who place some weird cultural and individualist ideology above safety concerns for children.

You are saying that they knowingly let this practice continue and collude, in the interests of 'political correctness'.

Ask yourself: is this likely?

No. It isn't.

It helps absolutely no-one to give this the window-dressing of 'political correctness'. It is not premissed in some sort of unwillingness to offend. It is premissed in a structural cynicism. Calling it 'political correctness' tarnishes progressive ideologies and let's people get away with doing nothing.

Yes there are safeguarding units- but it's largely unreported, it's a huge problem and mostly ignored. It's a fact girls are going missing from education going abroad and not being returned. People are largely turning a blind eye.

We have an ability to prosecute in this country. This is good. We should do more to pursue it. I'm not arguing with that.

Your argument is that to distract from the fact that there is LESS political will to protect children elsewhere. Not to draw attention to problems here.

Not only that, but what you are doing is putting the focus on Muslims, rather than the focus on the crime. There are plenty of Muslims who DO NOT do this yet are caught up in your criticism because you focus on the religion and not the problem. This is not an Islamic problem as such. It is a cultural one, which too often uses religion as the excuse.

Political correctness has failed in the same way: by not focusing on the crime and instead being worried about the causing a religious outcry.

You are not making the situation any better.

Focus on the REAL issue. That is, bad people use whatever means they can to justify or excuse themselves when they do bad things.

Precisely what could we do? They are sovereign states, we can't force them to change their laws. And maybe it would help if they couldn't point that the US, a western democracy, also has the same laws?