It happens here: Underage forced marriage in suburban Australia

For decades, Australian girls (and a small number of boys) have been married off to much-older partners against their will. The weddings are sometimes large and lavish, but rarely does anyone speak out.

Sarah doesn’t look happy in her wedding photos. In her sister Bee’s words, her make-up was “something else,” an attempt to make a girl look like a woman that came off as clownish.

“I sat there forcing a smile,” remembers Sarah. “Everyone wasn’t happy with me because you can’t look miserable.”

Sarah had only just started taking an interest in makeup – and boys, for that matter – like most girls her age. She was 14.

It was this interest that triggered her mother – a conservative Iraqi-Australian woman – to arrange her daughter’s forced marriage.

At 16, Sarah gave birth in a public hospital with her much-older husband at her side. No one raised concerns about their relationship.

Not long after that, when the relationship soured and police were involved, it was filed as a domestic violence case. Even then, no one took action over Sarah’s status as a child bride.

Not all cases of young Australians being forced to marry play out like Sarah. It many cases, girls have been taken to their parents’ country of birth to marry.

Source: It happens here: Underage forced marriage in suburban Australia | SBS News