‘Frightened’ teenagers fear forced marriages

More children than ever are calling Childline with fears over forced marriage, the NSPCC has warned.

Hundreds of “frightened” and “helpless” teenagers as young as 13 are contacting the charity for support, resulting in it delivering 12 per cent more counselling sessions in 2016/17 than in 2015/16.

The NSPCC says some families use the long school summer holidays to pull children out of Britain and marry them off abroad to strangers. Family and community loyalties, mixed notions of honour and the film of secrecy over the taboo issue make its true scale hard to grasp, it says.