by, CHRIS BARTLETT / News Limited Network
While mainly a third world problem, Australia is not immune to teenage and prepubescent girls being forced into marrying older men.
Among the shocking statistics are:
* 37,000 girls under 18 are forced into marriage every day
* 13 million underage girls married off each year
* Girls under 15 five times more likely to die in childbirth
* Most are in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East
* Australian girls have fought back against forced marriage
Taken against their will
In May 2010, a 14-year-old girl in Victoria was banned from leaving Australia and her parents forced to surrender her passport to save her from an arranged marriage.
The girl had old her teacher that she wouldn't be attending classes anymore because she was due to travel overseas to be married. She was just 13. According to court documents, the girl's teacher contacted Victoria's Department of Human Services, which sent two officers to the girl's home while her parents were at work. The girl let them in, telling the workers that "she was not attending school because her father had said that he did not like her going to school" and because she was "engaged to be married and was planning to travel overseas in two or three weeks' time in order to meet her fiance ... she had only seen a photograph of this man".
When asked how she felt about getting married, the child said she "did not know what to say as she had not met her fiance". When asked if she understood whether she was expected to have sex, she indicated that she did not know what that really meant.
Two months later, a 17-year-old Sydney girl called Australian Federal Police and told them she was being taken against her will by her mother to Lebanon to be married.
The girl told police that she might have to "hang up at any time" because she didn't have much freedom to use the phone. She wanted to be placed on the Airport Watch List so she could not be taken out of the country against her will.
In a third case, a Sydney girl aged 16 confided to a teacher that her parents were planning to take her abroad to marry a man she did not know.
Read it all at: http://www.news.com.au/wo...
