Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

From Sex Trafficking to FGM: Emerging Issues 375
trafficking case and they face “extreme hardship” in their home countries, they
may be eligible for “T Visas.” Internet brides who have suffered substantial
physical or mental abuse as the result of crimes committed against them by their
husbands, such as rape and domestic violence, and who cooperate with the
investigation and prosecution of these crimes are eligible for U Visas.
Early Marriage and Forced Marriage
You may discover that your client was betrothed and married as a child
and/or was forced into a marriage against her will. Forced marriage and child
marriage are most likely to occur in countries in the Middle East, Africa, and
South Asia. 19 These marriages should be distinguished from arranged marriages,
where family matchmakers recommend but do not impose eligible suitors on
marriage-aged sons and daughters. Immigrant parents from traditional societies
who are worried about the westernization and assimilation of their daughters
may take them back to their home countries, perhaps on the pretext of a vacation,
and force them into marriages. Lawyers at Sanctuary for Families helped a
Bangladeshi high school student, whose parents were trying to force her into an
unwanted marriage, obtain a civil order of protection against them and legal
emancipation. Sanctuary’s legal staff also represented a Palestinian-American
teenager, whose father had forced her into a marriage during a family vacation
in Jordan, in a divorce action against her construction worker husband, who
raped and beat her until her mother engineered her escape. Back in the United
States, the young woman was beaten by her older brother, who was furious that
she had defied her father’s wishes.
Actual or potential victims may need protection from the criminal justice
system to prevent family members from coercing them into marriages or retaliating
against them when they refuse to accede to their wishes. Protection is also available
in family court, where victims can initiate family offense proceedings to obtain
civil protective orders against coercive relatives and child welfare authorities
can initiate neglect and abuse proceedings.
Lawyers representing immigrants have encountered cases in which parents
are pressuring or forcing their daughter, who holds permanent resident status or
citizenship, to sponsor a fiancé or husband from her home country. Assisting
families to carry out such plans is highly unethical. Alerting immigration
authorities to the young woman’s plight, while stressing the importance of