According to The Times, officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted the British government to block visas to the UK for men they had been made to marry in countries Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.
Records obtained by the London newspaper show the visas were approved in almost half of the cases, It appears that these women are effectively raped and often impregnated in arranged marriages abroad.
Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the home affairs select committee, said that she would demand answers from the Home Office over these alarming findings. Experts believe there are thousands of victims in Britain, but that the vast majority were too afraid to come forward.
In August a police officer phoned a charity to ask whether it was “culturally acceptable” for an Iraqi man to have a 12-year-old girlfriend, according to an investigative report from The Times.
The officer had arrested the 26-year-old man but wanted to be “culturally sensitive” after the suspect claimed his relationship was acceptable and normal in his community.
The charity, Karma Nirvana, however told the officer to deal with the man as he would any other suspected child abuser. The charity, which works with victims of forced marriage, said the case showed the danger of officers whose professional judgment was clouded by fear of being called “racists”.
The number of girls being forced into marriage ahead of the summer holiday period has increased by more than a third in recent years, according to Karma Nirvana, which provides training to the police, National Health Service and social services.
They the Home Office for shelving a campaign to raise awareness of the practice of girls taken abroad to be married off to strangers during the “critical” run-up to the summer break
Speaking to The Independent, the charity revealed that it had been alerted to 150 new cases of forced marriage from May to July, an increase of more than a third compared to the same period in 2015, when it received 99 new cases.
The charity also found that cases of forced marriage had increased by 40 percent at the start of the school holidays in 2018.
In July, it had received reports of cases at a rate of two a day, more than double the average of 25 seen in the first four months of the year, with 44 cases reported in May and June. They believe that thousands of girls would not be returning to school in September, having had their educations ended abruptly and, in many cases, been left trapped in a cycle of poverty after falling victim to the crime.