Five months before she was murdered by her new husband, Ruqia Haidari met the Australian federal police and told them she was being forced into the marriage by her mother.
But the 20-year-old did not want the police – or the support workers who were also in the meeting, or any of the other people she spoke to about the impending marriage – to take the matter further.
Nobody could know that 151 days later, and 3300 km away from her family’s regional Victorian home in Shepparton, Haidari would be killed by her husband.
That murder hung heavily over this week’s sentencing of Haidari’s mother, the first person to be convicted for the crime of forced marriage in Australia.
It was completely removed from the proceedings and yet intrinsically linked: would there have been a forced marriage prosecution if Haidari had not been killed, making redundant her wish for police to remain silent about what she had told them?
The question is not only relevant to Haidari’s case, but in considering why there have been so few prosecutions – when more than 500 referrals regarding forced marriage have been made to the AFP since 2018.
“We failed,” says Dr Laura Vidal, a lecturer at the University of Canberra and an expert in forced marriage.
“We left her without support, without a safety net, and can only then retrospectively prosecute because she died.
“That is something we need to be thinking really carefully about in terms of our critical response to this issue.”
‘Fear of shame or punishment’
Neither the Victorian county court – where Haidari’s mother, Sakina Muhammad Jan was sentenced this week – nor the Western Australia supreme court, where Haidari’s husband, Mohammad Ali Halimi, was sentenced for her murder, made adverse findings about the police response.
The Australian federal police says they provided Haidari with options for support, including suggesting that the AFP engage with her family members on her behalf to prevent the marriage, or for Haidari to leave her family and find accommodation and assistance through the Red Cross Support for Trafficked Persons program (STPP).
“Haidari declined accommodation assistance and stated she did not want the AFP to speak with her mother or other family members,” they say in a statement. “Due to complex cultural, religious, ethnic and community dynamics, which often coexist in instances of forced marriage, the AFP engages closely with vulnerable persons to offer support in circumstances where the person feels unable to leave their situation.
“A person being subjected to a forced marriage may not wish to leave their circumstances due to fear of shame or punishment, or being unwilling to cut family ties. Often this fear is stronger than the person’s desire not to marry.
“The AFP’s position is to accommodate the person’s wishes, with their overall welfare in mind. Removing a person from an anticipated forced marriage situation, or interceding with family members without the consent of the victim, risks creating a more harmful domestic situation for a vulnerable person.”
Vidal says that while the response to Haidari’s case should be critically analysed, it is simplistic to think that more criminal prosecutions would solve the issue of forced marriage. Women and girls who seek help must be offered a huge range of support. These must include practical responses available on the ground in communities like Shepparton – which has the largest Afghan population in regional Victoria – such as emergency housing. There should also be expertise such as interpreters who can speak a range of languages, and those who can formulate international escape plans for those who may be trafficked overseas.
Amid the thicket of complexity about how to deal with forced marriage, however, is a fairly simple commonality.
“What people are asking for the most is an opportunity to be able to resolve conflict within their families,” Vidal says.
“When we place the response to this purely in the criminal justice system we lose the opportunity to do that … we need a continuum of responses to meet people where they are, and make sure we’re keeping them safe while meeting their needs.
“It’s a bit like a constellation, all the stars have to be aligned at the moment for us to get that response.”
New measures considered
Last financial year alone, the AFP received 91 reports of forced marriage. The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, this week said it was “the most reported slavery-like offence” reported to the force.
The federal government is considering what more can be done. On Monday, the attorney general’s department released a consultation paper regarding the implementation of civil protections against forced marriage.
“The criminal justice response to forced marriage serves an important role as a deterrent, sending a clear message that this conduct is not accepted in Australia,” the paper notes.
“Stronger civil protections and remedies for forced marriage would complement the criminal justice response, providing practical tools that can achieve preventative and time-critical outcomes for victim-survivor safety and wellbeing.”
The paper notes that civil forced marriage protection orders were introduced in the UK in 2008, and that 200-250 of these orders were granted each year in England and Wales between 2014 and 2023.
The government said that feedback on the paper would guide its future responses.
In the meantime, other criminal prosecutions for forced marriage will make their way through the courts.
A New South Wales man has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted forced marriage relating to two young people, the AFP says, and is expected to be sentenced later this month. A suppression order prevents naming the man due to the likelihood of his victims being identified within the community.
‘You abused your power’
The county court in Melbourne heard this week that Jan, a Hazara who fled Afghanistan after her husband was killed by the Taliban, had no formal education.
“You were married at the age of 12 or 13, to a man you had never met,” Judge Fran Dalziel said in sentencing.
“You say you would have agreed to the marriage because your family told you to marry him.
“Your first daughter was born when you were still in your early teens.”
Her youngest child was Haidari – who was wedded to her first husband at age 15, had seen her sisters married off, and had decided she did not want to go down the same path again.
“You were the trusted and only living parent of the victim. It was your acts of coercion that caused her to enter the marriage,” Dalziel said.
“You abused your power as her mother, as the person with whom she lived and respected, to override her desire not to marry Mr Halimi.”
Towards the end of the sentencing, Dalziel told Jan that while she had good intentions in arranging the marriage, the outcome had been devastating. The police and support workers who met Haidari in Shepparton on that August day in 2019 may feel the same way.
“Whilst you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so,” Dalziel said.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
