Nottingham couple get suspended sentences for taking sons to Pakistan for child marriages

A couple from Nottingham took their sons, both under 18, to Pakistan in early 2023 for marriages, Nottingham Crown Court heard Friday. The pair, unnamed for legal reasons, each received two months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, after pleading guilty to conduct intended to cause a child under 18 to enter a marriage.

The court learned the bride, from Pakistan, was first set to marry one brother. He did not like her, so she married the other in a Nikkah ceremony. The husband and wife, in their 50s and 40s, did not know a change in law had made such actions criminal, even without coercion and even for non-legally binding religious or traditional ceremonies abroad.

The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022 took effect February 27, 2023. It ended the prior allowance for 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent.

Police arrested the couple in June 2023 after a school raised concerns. An investigation showed they traveled to Pakistan with their sons in April 2023 to find marriage partners. They first claimed it was a family holiday, but phone messages and photos proved otherwise.

Two months earlier, on February 13, the father messaged he sought a rishta, or marriage proposal, for both sons. Asked if the boys wanted it, he replied: "Yes brother, my sons don't want to mess around."

On April 29, the mother messaged that one son "doesn't like the girl" and got advice to ask him again. After she said she had asked five or six times, the reply suggested an engagement instead of a Nikkah if he refused. The girl then married the other brother. Plans had called for her to move to the UK, but she remains in Pakistan, though the marriage stands.

A Nikkah requires registered premises to count as legal in the UK, but it binds under Islamic and Pakistani law.

Judge James Sampson, in sentencing, found no evidence of threats, violence or coercion. The parents, with clean records, acted from misguided cultural beliefs, not malice, he said. "Balancing these considerations in my view, including the public abhorrence to this practice, there has to be a custodial sentence."

He added: "Although the bride is said to have been 18 at the time, it is right to observe that having been rejected by one son, she became available to the other as if she were a piece of chattel, in other words, a piece of property."

The couple left court free but must each complete 100 hours of unpaid community work.

Emma Cornell of the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement: "Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm done by entering a lifelong commitment at such an early age."