A husband and wife from the East Midlands region of England have been convicted of child marriage offences after arranging to take their two teenage sons to Pakistan for nikah ceremonies.The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the British Pakistani couple from Nottingham — who cannot be named to protect the identities of the underage victims — took the boys to Pakistan when they were 17 “with the specific purpose of finding them someone to marry”.The couple was handed a two-month suspended sentence and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid community work by Nottingham Crown Court on Friday.“Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm caused by entering a lifelong commitment at such an early age,” said Emma Cornell, a senior prosecutor at the CPS East Midlands complex casework unit.“These defendants disregarded that protection by taking the boys to Pakistan to be married. The law applies wherever the offending takes place and, on their return, these two defendants were rightly held to account,” she said.The couple’s two-month sentence was suspended for 12 months, meaning they will avoid immediate imprisonment provided they commit no further offences and comply with conditions set by the court.The court heard that one of the boys refused a proposed match, while the other was married in a nikah ceremony to a local girl. Police were alerted to the marriage following a referral from the teenager’s educational institution.The parents initially denied seeking marriages for their sons, but later pleaded guilty on February 17 to carrying out conduct intended to cause a child under 18 to enter into marriage.The laws increasing the minimum age for marriage to 18 in England and Wales came into force in 2023, when the child marriage offence was introduced. The couple claimed they were unaware of the legislation.“The defendants initially claimed that the visit had been a holiday or family visit. They asserted that the idea of marriage had come from one of the boys and that they had simply gone along with his wishes. Analysis of their phones showed that this was not true,” the CPS said.Investigators found several messages on the father’s phone referring to searching for a rishta, or marriage proposal, for his sons. He had also told others in messages that he was in Pakistan trying to find a wife for his son.The mother’s phone contained detailed conversations about arrangements she was making with another family, including contingency plans for when the boy stated that he did not like the proposed match.Her phone also contained video footage of the wedding ceremony and showed her exchanging money with the bride’s family.“The wedding took place in the form of a nikah ceremony. While this would have needed to be conducted at a registered premises to qualify as a legal marriage under UK law, the ceremony is binding under Islamic and Pakistani law,” the CPS said.UK prosecutors secured independent advice from an expert in Islamic marriage matters, who confirmed the legal status of the marriage and explained the significance of the traditional ceremony, including the social and legal constraints it imposed on the victims.The expert also provided evidence confirming that the photographs showed a nikah ceremony had taken place.During the sentencing hearing this week, the CPS clarified that although the couple had acted unlawfully, there was no force or undue coercion involved. Prosecutors also accepted the couple’s claim that they had been unaware of the change in law.“However, in taking their children overseas to arrange marriages for them, they had broken the law, and ignorance of the law is not a defence,” the CPS stated.