U.K. Girls Pushed into Pakistani Marriages

Tania was 16 when she was given a one-way ticket from her native U.K. to Pakistan for her birthday. She didn’t know that at the end of the flight she’d find a husband waiting for her. In Pakistan, she was held against her will, beaten, ostracized, and not allowed to leave the house. She contemplated suicide until a man with two armored SUVs arrived to rescue her. For the most part, Great Britain's thriving Pakistani community is very Westernized—money sent back to Pakistan helps build lavish homes in villages as well as support extended family members there. Sometimes, though, those family members are desperate to get to the U.K., and the best way to do it is to force their teenage, British-citizen relatives to marry them. Albert David rescues those girls as part of the United Kingdom’s forced-marriages unit. He’s been chased by women in beauty masks, run from gangs of men, and dodged bricks hurled in his direction, all with the hope of limiting “the collateral damage from the culture clash.”