She was only 17 when her family took her on a holiday to her ancestral home in Pakistan. There she was forced to marry a man whom she didn't know. She gave birth to a child and a couple of years later returned to the UK with her Pakistani husband, whom she had never loved. After she returned to Bradford she fled from her family and hid herself in a women's refuge in Derby. And she is not prepared to divulge her name. This week, she told her nightmarish story to the BBC's Today programme. In Pakistan she was beaten, abused and even raped. Her regret was that once she left the UK nobody thought of what happened to her, not even her secondary school, from where she was pulled out by her parents without any notice. “They let me down. When I was in Pakistan, I secretly used to wish maybe the school might search for me, as I wasn't going to school any more,” she said in her sinking voice, “Nobody looked for me. It was horrific.”She was not alone. In the West Yorkshire town of Bradford, largely inhabited by Pakistani immigrant community, at least 33 Asian girls vanished from the school rolls in a similar fashion. This week, Kevin Brennan, the minister responsible for children's welfare, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that authorities suspect that these girls have been taken abroad to be pushed into forced marriages. Brannan told the Committee that the Government had identified 14 other areas, like Luton, Bradford, Birmingham, Leeds and West London with substantial South Asian population - including Indians and Bangladeshis - where a count of missing schoolgirls has been ordered. Areas like these have high rates of so called “honour violence”.The chair of the Commons Committee and Labour MP, Keith Vaz, said that he was “shocked” by the figures. Brennan told the committee that Bradford City Council had lost track of 205 girls aged under 16 from its school rolls in 2007. Following inquiries, 172 were found - but 33 remained unaccounted for. “What we need to try to do is seek an explanation of what has happened,” he said. In 2004, after numerous reports of coerced marriage the British government set up a Forced Marriage Unit under the aegis of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It invites British youngsters to contact them if they are coerced into a forced marriage. They may ring a special hotline on + 44 20 7008 0151 or email to fmu@fco.gov.uk, if they are being tricked into a forced marriage. The unit handles about 300 cases a year. The FMU also carries out approximately 70 clandestine overseas rescue operations, most of them in Pakistan. But now after this new evidence women’s groups and social activists say that the problem of forced marriages is more widespread than previously thought.
