A NSW man has been jailed after allegedly trying to force his teenage children into two separate marriages, the AFP has said.
The children moved to Australia from Pakistan in 2021 to live with their father, 54, his new wife, and their half-siblings in Leeton, NSW.
But when they arrived in the Riverina town, he took their passports and phones from them.
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In 2022, he told his daughter, then 17, that she would marry a chemist in Pakistan, and the wedding ceremony would take place over the phone.
Her mother protested the marriage, but he threatened to have the children deported if she did not get married.
The siblings were not allowed to contact any family members in Pakistan without supervision.
He had told their family members that he wanted the kids to marry someone from within his clan, instead of their mothers, referring to her as a “lowlife” and “bastard,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
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They had previously visited in 2017.
The girl, 12 at the time, was told she could not go to school until she was married.
The boy, then 10, was doing mechanical work on cars, organised by his father.
The children’s escape
The man’s plans to marry his kids were foiled when his 15-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter snuck out of their home under the cover of darkness to escape.
They contacted their aunt in Pakistan with a secret hidden SIM card which they put into one of their half-sibling’s phones.
She begged them to not get married “no matter what.”
Then, the siblings discovered their father would be travelling to Melbourne on February 3, and they planned the escape for the next morning.
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They took their passports out of their father’s room, packed two backpacks, cut a hole in a window and fled.
They also took the internet modem with them to prevent their stepmother from being able to alert their dad.
Then, they were picked up three kilometres away from their home in a pre-paid taxi, organised by relatives, which took them to Narrandera Airport.
They flew alone to Sydney, over 550km away, where they met with a friend of their mums, who took them to Mascot Police Station to report their father.
He was arrested a month later, telling AFP officers it was his duty to arrange the marriage of his children as a Punjab father.
Court told he ‘destroyed’ his kids lives
The pair, who speak very little English, told the Downing Centre yesterday that their lives had been “destroyed” by their father’s actions.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting a forced marriage in the same court.
The siblings learned of their father’s plan to marry them to people they did not know once they arrived in Australia.
In the days following their escape from their NSW Riverina home, Australian Federal Police swooped in and executed a search warrant of the home.
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They found a phone that contained messages about planning their weddings.
The man was sentenced to three years and four months imprisonment.
It marks the second person convicted for a forced-marriage case in Australia.
The siblings have been supported by specialist youth organisations.
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