Forced marriage - girls being raped and enslaved so men can get visas

[ErrolTheDragon]

Main article in The Times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/forced-marriage-visas-for-men-who-force-teenagers-into-marriage-f82wkldp3?shareToken=4addff38edc802d69c8283ca9c820a4a

Investigation piece

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/forced-marriage-terrified-teenager-kept-like-a-house-slave-3wvzfr06g?shareToken=b8bb2b877490431186baad8234190490

Leading article in the comments section

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/forced-misery-pn6p5jjjc?shareToken=9c562886d2fe175b0e2952ff7309f129

I've not read it all, not sure I can bear to.

Sky website has an article about it as well.

news.sky.com/story/home-office-accused-of-failing-forced-marriage-victims-by-giving-husbands-visas-11456982

Don't know what to say. Just didn't want the thread to wither. Grim, grim.

I need to know more about this. Placemarling to read later

This makes me sick. It's utterly horrific and to think that it's happening in this day and age in this bloody country. And people think there's no need for feminism.

I didn't know what to say either. Or if there's anything we can do.

This is awful. 186 of the girls were 15 and under, another 169 aged 16-17.

Well done to the Times reporting on this, it seems like a situation where the authorities are fully aware of what is happening but are having difficulty getting convictions combined with some officials just waving the visa's through, probably because it's the path of least resistance.

Women are the gift that just keep on giving, aren't they?

Well done to the Times reporting on this, it seems like a situation where the authorities are fully aware of what is happening but are having difficulty getting convictions combined with some officials just waving the visa's through, probably because it's the path of least resistance.

Yes.

Officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted to block visas for men they had been made to marry in countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates. In almost half of their cases the visas were approved, records show

fucking hell.

a woman, a british citizen, requests that her husband doesn't get a visa.

and her request is ignored

forced marriage, cultural issue innit?

bloody moral relativism

This is shocking. We are letting down thousands of women and girls and especially the 42 brave women who came forward and were ignored. Disgusting!

This is shocking. We are letting down thousands of women and girls and especially the 42 brave women who came forward and were ignored. Disgusting!

I totally agree. What did they think these poor women were going to do if they approved the visas?

a woman, a british citizen, requests that her husband doesn't get a visa.

and her request is ignored

forced marriage, cultural issue innit?

bloody moral relativism

You're right. Women's rights come last, yet again.

Anyone who doesn't think the slave trade is alive and well in 2018 is naive at best.

This is shocking. We are letting down thousands of women and girls and especially the 42 brave women who came forward and were ignored. Disgusting

Oh i really hope that those women are safe

Well meaning progressives have made it very difficult to talk about this, but better late than never.

So frightening.

Well done to the Timescale then Sky for picking up therefore.

It's shocking but I'm not surprised anymore by UK authorities behaving in such ways.

Hipster, I used to think it was a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions but the longer I live, the more cynical I' become.

"The Times" apologies: I need to rein in AutoCorrect!

And it should read, " picking up the story."

..going back to lurking..

This is unforgivable and atrocious.

Our civility as a nation is on the surface only. We seem to be better at covering up abuse than other countries. And even when it is obvious, the authorities fail to act.

This highlights the ongoing, subconscious attitude in societies pretty much everywhere as women and children as the property of men, that if their men abuse them then that is a personal matter, and that the lives of women and girls are of lesser value.

I am waiting for someone to come on and say that men have forced marriages too and it's always wrong why make it about male/ female.

Well it's not the same. Yes both are wrong however the power dynamics, ages, and facts of pregnancy and the difference physically with rape or sexual abuse do mean that we need to talk about the fact the victims in these cases are female.

(Just pre empting what is said so often on these threads).

And if it's on the BBC website its not prominent as I can't see it.

The only relevant recent story I can find on the BBC website is this. Which doesn't really mention the scale of the problem or that most of the girls and women affected don't get justice.

Forced marriage: Leeds parents jailed over Bangladesh wedding www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-45010987

This is horrifying. Beyond description. And also really confusing considering that appearing racist, as is presented as a factor in the times article, is not normally something the Home Office loses too much sleep over. They regularly unfairly reject brown and black people who have far more solid grounds for citizenship than these child rapists. What’s going on here?

For more info on this type of thing, look at the Sharan Project or Karma Nirvana. It is an alarmingly prevalent thing.

Big vote of thanks to the Times for covering this - you're worth the money for my subscription.

Interesting when one goes back through which papers have broken which stories - the Times working on forced marriage, the FT breaking the President's Club scandal, the Mail unearthing Rotherham. (For Cologne I had to rely on the New York
Times, Washington Post and Frankfurter Allegemeine - none of the British press covered it adequately in real time).

Where is the Guardian in all this?