Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution v Jan, Victorian County Court (2024) is significant as it marks Australia’s first conviction for the offence of forced marriage. The defendant, a member of the Hazara Islamic community residing in Shepparton, Victoria, was convicted and sentenced for causing her 20-year-old daughter to enter into a forced marriage.
The amendment to the Swedish Act on Certain International Legal Relations Concerning Marriage and Guardianship, effective July 1, 2021, tightened the rules for recognizing foreign marriages in Sweden. Under the revised law, a marriage entered into abroad will not be recognized in Sweden if:
The Marriage Act 1978-40, as amended by 1979-13, 1979-32, 1980-55, 1982-27, 1983-2, 1994-11 and 1994-22, prohibits marriages between family members, according to Schedule 1. The Act does not expressly include or prohibit marriage between same-sex couples; however, same sex marriage is not recognized. Although the concept of “marriage” is not defined, the Act prohibits marriage between persons under 16 in section 4 (Marriage between persons under 16 years void).
The Marriage Ordinance Act provides the minimum age for a marriage to be lawful in Samoa. The minimum age for marriage was originally set at 18 years for men and 16 years for women, with parental or guardian consent required where the man was under 21 or the woman was under 19. In 2021, the Ordinance was amended to raise and equalize the age of marriage. The minimum age is now 18 years for both men and women. The parental or guardian consent threshold was also adjusted so that consent is required if either party is under 21 years old.
S was convicted for repeated violent rape within an arranged marriage over the course of 13 months. The court imposed a sentence of 13 years, six months imprisonment for the rape, with concurrent sentences for the lesser offenses, calculated as a 15 year base due to the violent nature of the acts and the vulnerability of the victim, with a downward adjustment for the respondent’s lack of prior convictions.
A citizen of Ghana sought protection for fear that she would be subject to arranged marriage and female genital mutilation. The Refugee Review Tribunal found the applicant to be not credible, in part because she could not identify the ethnic group that the proposed husband came from. The court found these factual conclusions satisfactory and affirmed.
