Forced Marriages at Record High in South Wales

[jordan179]

According to BBC News Wales:

South Wales Police say they are dealing with the largest number of cases of forced marriage and honour based-violence they have ever seen.

In the past 12 months, the force has dealt with 49 cases of forced marriage, up from a typical 30-35, with new cases almost every week.Now, stop and consider this for a moment. "

Comments

[anonymous]

Rape and such are not civil cases. The victim doesn't have to press charges for the charges to stick. Granted, it makes it hard to get witnesses and evidence, but it's not impossible if the government wanted to press charges.

If today's UK was serious about this, they'd bug everything like they did to the IRA and so forth.

I suppose the Victorian English would have put all the girls in heavily fortified state boarding schools to keep them safe until they reached their majority (probably converting them to Christianity at the same time) while putting all the boys also in heavily fortified state boarding schools (probably converting them to Christianity at the same time), and run the risk of people complaining of the cruel Victorian way in a hundred years. Plus, you know, killing a lot of rapists and murderers down to the last family member involved. But then, frankly, the Victorian English would never have let this situation emerge -- not in England, anyway. They were not nice, but they were often terribly practical.

Of course, I suppose Limehouse wasn't a haven of perfect peace back in the old days, but surely it wasn't this bad.

[jordan179]

Well, the Victorians had other blind spots regarding rape. In particular, they tolerated systems of prostitution which amounted to imprisonment and serial rape because the girl, once she had been raped the first time, was no longer "pure" and hence was lesser than the women whom the rape laws were supposed to protect.

This is sort of related to the situation regarding Muslim girls. The British Establishment essentially considers Muslim girls inferior to British ones and hence not worthy of the same protection under the law. They pretty-up this sentiment with mouthings about "multiculturalism," but that's to what it amounts.

[juliet_winters]

True on the "fallen woman" status, but towards the later Victorian period there were a number of do-gooding organizations (often headed by well-off women)which tried to rehabilitate the "soiled doves" for domestic work.
Difficult to overcome societal prejudices, but some of them did try, including William Gladstone who damaged his own reputation thereby.