A man has become the second person in Australia to be convicted and sentenced for forced marriage after trying to find spouses for his two underage children.
His plans were thwarted after his 15-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, who spoke limited English, made a daring escape from a NSW Riverina home in the middle of the night, contacting relatives with a hidden SIM card and taking the family’s modem to prevent them from being caught.
The two children, aged 15 and 17, took the modem with them in their escape to stop their father and stepmother from catching them.
The pair said their lives had been “destroyed” by their father’s actions and requested Judge Kate Traill to punish him.
The 51-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced at Downing Centre District Court to a maximum of three years and four months in jail on Friday morning.
The children arrived in Australia in December 2021 to live with their father, his new wife, and the couple’s four children – the half-siblings of the children involved – in Leeton in southern NSW.
They had last visited in 2017 where the boy, then aged 10, was put to work by their father, undertaking mechanical work on cars and equipment while the girl, then aged 12 stayed at home.
This time, the girl was told she’d be allowed to go to school. However, when the pair arrived, their father searched their bags and confiscated their passports, visas and phones.
They weren’t allowed to contact friends or relatives in Pakistan without his supervision and the girl was told she wouldn’t be allowed to go to school until she was married. She was put to work cooking and cleaning.
Their father began making marriage arrangements, buying the children clothes, taking photos of them and arranging meetings with prospective spouses.
He told family members he wanted his kids to marry within his clan, instead of their mother’s, calling her a “lowlife” and a “bastard”.
In early 2022, he told his daughter she would marry a man who ran a chemist store in Pakistan, with their wedding ceremony to take place over the phone.
When their mother protested against the marriage, the father threatened via a voice message to “call immigration” to have them deported.
However, the boy had hidden a Pakistani SIM card from his father and inserted it into one of their half-sibling’s phones, which had been left unattended, and began contacting family in Pakistan via WhatsApp.
One aunt implored the children “not to get married, no matter what”.
“[Do] not say yes,” the aunt wrote.
When the siblings discovered their father would be travelling to Melbourne on February 3, they plotted their escape: they took back their passports from their father’s bedroom, packed backpacks and cut a hole in the window to escape.
At four the next morning they fled, taking the house modem with them so their stepmother and half-siblings couldn’t alert anyone to their disappearance.
A taxi prepaid by relatives picked them up nearly three kilometres away at a Leeton supermarket and took them to Narrandera Airport. They flew alone to Sydney, where they met a friend of their mother and went to the Mascot police station to report their father.
He was arrested later that month following an investigation by the AFP Eastern Command Human Trafficking Team, telling police in an interview he considered it his duty as a Punjabi father to arrange the marriage of his children.
In a victim impact statement submitted to the court, the girl said that her father’s actions had “shattered” the lives of herself and her brother.
“We have experienced feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, and a deep sense of heartbreak … These events have changed our lives forever,” she said, adding the pair faced homelessness following their escape.
“Our mother trusted that our father would give us a better life in Australia, and he betrayed all of us,” she said.
The man will be considered for parole in September 2026.
AFP Commander Kate Ferry said forced marriage was a form of human trafficking, and that the crime was often under-reported because people might not be aware they were victims or that they could seek help from police.
“This crime of type is one that generally involves perpetrators offending against younger, more vulnerable family members. In many situations, a young victim does not want their family to be ‘in trouble’ with police, leading to the offending being unreported,” she said.
AFP Sergeant Chantal Pravaz said the prosecution would not have been possible without the victims’ courage and bravery in coming forward.
The siblings have been supported by a specialist youth organisation working with children and young people affected by forced marriage.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.