From Sandra Power Sir: Naeem Ali (Letters, 10 November) has
never come across a case of enforced marriage and therefore it doesn't exist. Gosh — proof of true assimilation into the chattering classes!
As a social worker specialising in child protection, I have never worked in leafy Richmond, but I lived and worked in an East Midlands town with a large Mirpuri population for many years. Enforced marriage of girls aged 14-plus was commonplace, although it rarely came to the attention of schools or social workers until long after the event. Girls were routinely taken out of school and sent to Pakistan (often with parental promises of there being no intention of marriage) on the pretext of an 'extended holiday' or a family death. Their passports were appropriated on arrival in Pakistan, and they would be told that they were to be married to a relative, often an illiterate and ill-educated cousin who spoke little or no English. They were then forced to marry and repeatedly raped until pregnant with their first child.
Don't tell me it doesn't happen — we received secret letters from Pakistan giving heartrending accounts of such treatment. If doubt and denial remains, I suggest Naeem Ali obtains a copy of A Choice By Right from the Home Office, which is a spirited report of the findings and recommendations of a working party on enforced marriage chaired by Lord Ahmed of Rotherham and Baroness Uddin of Bethnal Green, and which is also available in Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu.
Sandra Power
Hastings, East Sussex
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