TRANSCRIPT
Ruqia Haidari was 21 and excited for a life of opportunity
In 2020, that life was cut short by Muhammad Ali Halimi. She was murdered by the man she married only six weeks earlier, and was forced to - by her mother.
Sakina Muhammad Jan walked into the County Court of Victoria court today with more than a dozen family members.
She became the first person in Australia to be convicted of causing a person to enter a forced marriage, sentenced to three years jail with a conditional agreement for her to be released after 12 months, Justice Frances Dalziel telling Jan, "you abused your power as her mother, as the person with whom she lived and respected."
The sentence triggered a wave of distress in the courtroom. Jan pleaded her innocence before being taken away. One family member broke down and was helped to hospital.
Her daughter sobbed in the arms of another person, saying, "I lost my sister and I lost my mum".
Jan also now faces possible deportation to Afghanistan, a dire concern for the Hazara community - which faces persecution from the Taliban. But the judge said this offence needs a strong deterrent – to ensure everyone in the country knows forced marriage is a serious offence.
Distinctly different to arranged marriage, forced marriage is when someone gets married without their full and free consent.
It's been criminalised in Australia for more than a decade but nobody has been convicted until this year.
Helen Schneider is the Australian Federal Police commander for human exploitaton.
"This is a problem that goes across different ethnic groups, cultural groups, religious groups, it's an issue across all of our communities in Australia and that is why all of us in community need to be alive to the indicators of human traffickng."
Other victims are lucky to have escaped their own separate forced marriages - like Laila. We are using a pseudonym and hiding her identity for her safety.
Laila says she was lured to the US after high school to meet and live with her cousins.
"Two weeks in, that cousin was introducing me as his fiancée. He was telling people we're together"
What she initially thought was a joke, she says, turned into real threats from her family to marry him.
"I was very isolated. I didnt have any support from anyone. I didn’t think I had support from the police if I was to go to the police. I had no money. I felt like there was nothing else I could do besides stay with this person."
But when they married, she says she was trapped in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship.
"I did not want to get close to him a lot of the time. He's a lot bigger than me, a lot stronger than me. There's no way I could push him off or fight it."
Years later, Laila found out forced marriage was a crime, and the police immediately planned her daring escape from the US, back home to Australia.
"I was stressed, I was scared, I was excited, I was happy, just so many emotions."
Over the past five years, police received 440 reports of forced marriage. More than half of the victims were under 18 ... and nearly a third were under 16.
Here's Helen Schneider again.
"Forced marriage, we believe is something that's definitely underreported because of the nature of the offending being potentially involving coercion, threats or deception."
Police say their main priority has always been to protect victim-survivors.
For Laila, that protection came quick - and it made all the difference.
"Within the same week I was back, I found out I was pregnant. I think it happened at the perfect time. Because if I was there one week longer and found out that I was pregnant when I was there, my whole life would have stayed the same. I think my life would have been over."
