Sydney man abandons wife overseas after she fell out with his mother

A Sydney man who abandoned his wife in Afghanistan because she was at odds with his mother has been convicted of “exit trafficking”, a form of modern slavery in which women are tricked into leaving Australia and prevented from returning.

The exit trafficking conviction is the third in Australia’s legal history, and celebrated human rights activist Helena Hassani says it recognises the growing and deliberate oppression of women in Sydney and Melbourne, particularly within some migrant communities.

A Sydney man caught on CCTV threatening a woman and her child onto a flight to India from Sydney became the first person in Australia to be convicted for an exit human trafficking offence, in 2021. Credit: AFP

The convicted 44-year-old from the western suburb of Merrylands appeared in court this month and is known only as AR to protect his family’s identity. He convinced his wife to accompany him on “a charity mission” to their native Afghanistan in January 2018, police said.

He had drawn up an itinerary for his wife showing they would return to Sydney on February 13. The itinerary, however, was a fraud. AR had a return flight, but his wife’s ticket was one way.

One day after AR returned to Australia, he cancelled the sponsorship of his wife’s visa in a letter to the Department of Home Affairs, marooning his wife of four years in a barely functioning society crushed by decades of conflict, because his mother did not like her.

Relatives of the woman organised for her to be brought back to Australia before reporting AR to the police.

An Australian man has been convicted of abandoning his wife in Afghanistan. Pictured is a Taliban fighter and women lined up for food rations in Kabul in 2023.Credit: AP

Last Friday AR was given a two-year prison term in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, one year to be served in the community on a good behaviour bond.

Australian Federal Police Acting Detective Sergeant Sarah Manning said exit trafficking was an insidious, often unreported offence.

“No one has the right to ‘cancel’ another person’s visa, including the visa sponsor. This type of behaviour is a Commonwealth offence and carries a potential 12-year jail term,” Manning said.

Hassani told this masthead that there had been “many, many cases” in Afghan and other migrant communities where men had taken their wives abroad, never to return to Australia.

Helena Hassani, a human rights advocate, says exit trafficking, domestic servitude and forced marriages are plaguing Australian migrant communities.

“And a lot of Aussie men marry women from Asia, bring them here, but marry them into servitude, or treat them like sex workers.”

The women, including AR’s wife, are only in Australia on partner visas – which means they rely on their husband’s sponsorship to stay in the country.

Male members of some migrant communities discourage women in their families from handling money, going to school or becoming employed because they fear defiance and want a servant.

“It’s a cultural practice where the less educated women are, the happier men are, because then no one is challenging them, no one is confronting them, and they just live the way they want to live,” Hassani said.

The first exit-trafficking conviction, in 2021, was recorded after a man from the western Sydney suburb of Lidcombe threatened to murder a woman unless she boarded a flight to India with her infant child.

The anti-human trafficking group Anti Slavery Australia had passed on intelligence to the federal police, who found CCTV at the airport of the distressed woman at the departure gate.

That same year ASA helped 400 other people trafficked or enslaved in Australia – but it estimates only one in five victims are detected.

An ASA-hosted seminar this week noted exit trafficking often involves women being deceived into travelling out of Australia so they can be forced into marriage.

“You’re expected to marry them so the rest of the family can come here for a better life. It’s very hard to say no to that,” Ayra, a survivor of forced marriage, said earlier this year.

Hassani’s service, Boland Parwaz, is tasked by the courts with re-educating the perpetrators – men who have forced women and children into marriage, or abused or deprived them of their rights in Australia.

“I am supporting one girl overseas who was forced to marry an Australian citizen,” Hassani said.

“She never got here, though. She was sexually assaulted by her husband’s brother, so her husband flew from Australia to beat her up and divorce her – even though she was the victim.”

‘She was sexually assaulted by her husband’s brother, so her husband flew from Australia to beat her up and divorce her.’

Human rights advocate Helena Hassani on the fate of one woman

The men in Hassani’s course often defend the practice and claim women use only “half their brains”.

They are unaware Hassani is a UN delegate for Australia, a university researcher, and regularly appears before parliamentary inquiries about human rights. Crucially, she grew up in their community.

“I tell them I am from the same culture and no – this is not happening in my family,” Hassani said.

“It’s just your belief system.”

Last month she received a medal at the Women Changing the World Awards in London for her advocacy – that same week AR was led away in handcuffs as the third Australian sentenced for exit trafficking.

The AFP urges anyone with information about potential modern slavery or trafficking to contact 131 237

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