‘Disabled youngsters forced into marriage to provide passports’
July 28th, 2008From the [UK] Independent:
Advocates and officials held urgent talks in London last week to discuss the forced marriages of people with learning disabilities to foreigners seeking passports.
The Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with more than 80 cases of forced marriages involving people with learning disabilities last year, amounting to more than one in five of the total cases reported to the government. Experts fear the true scale of the problem is far worse.
Support groups attribute these forced marriages to the stigma of disability in some ethnic communities, the social and cultural isolation of people with disabilities, the fear of aging parents that their vulnerable children will not be cared for, and the view that people with disabilities are commodities.
Rape, domestic violence and abandonment are common consequences of such marriages, according to support groups.
This entry was posted
on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 4:49 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, abuse, criminal justice, cultural attitudes, human rights, intellectual/developmental disabilities, international, learning disabilities, marriage.
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