A young woman who escaped a forced marriage. We're calling her Aisha for her own safety, but that's not her real name. Aisha was engaged by the time she was 13. Within three years, she'd taken her parents to court to stop them taking her out of the country and being married against her will. Forced marriage is the most common form of human trafficking in Australia. But despite how common it is, victim-survivors face high personal costs for speaking out.
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00:00Aisha's a really vivacious, sharp 26-year-old, originally from Western Sydney.
00:08When she was 12, she recalls really clearly her mum sitting her down, patting the bed
00:13and saying, come here, I want to show you a photo of a much older relative, the man
00:17that you're going to marry.
00:19Aisha grew up in a very traditional Muslim Indian household, and she knew from a young
00:25age that her parents had aspirations for her to go down that same traditional pathway,
00:31to be married quite young and to have a family.
00:35But Aisha always wanted a little bit more for herself, and that really led to a lot
00:39of clashes with her parents.
00:41It all came to a head when she was 15.
00:44She overheard a conversation between her mum and her auntie in India, where her mum said,
00:49with book tickets, she's out of control and we need to get her married off.
00:53Aisha knew that this meant that her parents were planning to send her overseas to marry
00:58that older relative, and she also knew that if she went down that pathway, that there
01:02would be no recourse for her, that that was the pathway she would be on.
01:07So Aisha essentially planned her escape.
01:10First thing she did was went to her school principal, a trusted figure, and told him
01:14exactly what was going on, told him that her parents had booked these plane tickets.
01:18And he said to her, you need to get your passport, you need to bring it over.
01:22Just a little aside here, at the time that this was all going on, forced marriage was
01:25not yet a legal, a crime, I should say.
01:29And so there were very few legal avenues, there were few support services available
01:33for victim survivors.
01:35So Aisha's principal got her legal aid, got legal aid involved in this, and legal aid
01:42said, we can put you on an airport watch list.
01:45However, there was a catch at 15, Aisha was a minor, and in order to get on that airport
01:51watch list, she needed to take her parents to court.
01:54So she did that, but she knew instinctively that that was a very risky move for her personally.
02:00And she also knew that it would mean that she would potentially never get to see her
02:04parents again.
02:06Let's have a listen to what Aisha had to say about that.
02:08The thing that's unfortunate about my situation is that it wasn't just my parents, it was
02:14my whole community, it was my whole extended family that were quite indoctrinated into
02:19this belief.
02:20It wasn't just my family, and it was also my cousins, and I couldn't see my sister or
02:24my brother.
02:25I still can't see my sister or my brother because they are all so scared to do the wrong
02:31thing and hurt my family that they don't want to come see me.
02:35So it's like, I don't have any members of my family that I can talk to.
02:38And it's really, it's like a big piece of your life is missing.
02:42It's brief.
02:43I've been grieving for the last 10 years, and I'm still grieving.
02:46According to the AFP, in the last financial year, there were 91 reported cases of forced
02:52marriage in Australia.
02:54Since 2018, that's around 530 cases.
02:57So it is really, really common.
03:00We also know that it doesn't necessarily discriminate according to demographics.
03:04There's not one group of people who we can say, this is going to be something that's
03:09a problem in this community.
03:11It's across the communities in Australia, though it is predominantly a crime, specifically
03:17for young women.
03:19Most of the reported cases to the AFP involve girls under the age of 16.
03:25So it is very much a young woman's problem here.