By Tim Katoga
As Britain puts airport staffs on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriages, one campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved many youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands.
The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain, and thus the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be thoroughly searched — a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths. When they go though security, it will highlight this spoon in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will then be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they’re being forced to marry, whereby the staffs will do what they can to stop it and ensure it doesn’t happen.
The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people — typically girls aged 15, 16 and 17 — being taken abroad on “holiday”, for a marriage without consent, the government says.
The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to a total stranger, whom they have never met in a country they have never seen.
The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, based in Derby, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honour-based abuse. Every year, the charity fields 6,500 calls per year from around the country.
It is a serious matter. Anyone who gets caught forcing their child(ren) or anyone else into forced marriage will receive a 7 year prison sentence.
