NEWS STORY- CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE- Overseas child marriage leads to Nottingham conviction
“A husband and wife from Nottingham have been given a suspended sentence after arranging for taking two boys under 18 to Pakistan to be married.
The defendants, who cannot be named to protect the identities of the victims, took the boys to Pakistan when they were 17 with the specific purpose of finding them someone to marry. One of the boys refused a proposed match, but another was paired with a local girl and was married in a Nikah ceremony.
Police were alerted to the marriage following a referral from the young person’s place of education.
The couple at first denied that they had been seeking marriages, but pleaded guilty to carrying out conduct to cause a child under 18 to enter a marriage on 17 February.
They were today, 15 May, sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to two months' imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to do 100 hours' unpaid work.
Emma Cornell from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm done by entering a lifelong commitment at such an early age. These defendants disregarded that protection by taking the boys to Pakistan to be married. The law applies wherever the offending takes place and, on their return, these two defendants were rightly held to account.”
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