91Èȱ¬

The Government has been defending how it deals with forced marriages after a 15-year-old girl described her ordeal of being sold into marriage on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 1's Newsbeat.

The teenager was sent to Pakistan by her father to marry a man 16 years older than her so he could gain a British passport.

Sharing her story with Newsbeat, ahead of the programme's special reports from Tulip Mazumdar in the region this week, the girl said schools and other agencies are failing victims like her.

Responding to her claims, the Minister in joint-charge of the UK's Forced Marriage Unit, Jeremy Browne, said he was "sorry" the victim feels so badly let down. But the Foreign Office Minister went on to defend the actions of the British Government saying: "We try and do what we can. I am not aware of any other country in the world that does more than Britain in terms of forced marriage."

The teenager says she was tricked into going to Pakistan. She managed to escape, risking her life just days before her wedding to the 31-year-old so he could live in the UK. More than half of the cases the FMU dealt with last year were related to the country.

According to new figures seen by Radio 1 Newsbeat, there were 1,735 incidents of potential or actual forced marriage involving British nationals reported to the FMU in 2010. Almost a third of them involved people under 18. The youngest the FMU has ever dealt with was a 13-year-old girl.

In the interview the girl, who Newsbeat agreed not to name, told the programme: "It was just about the money. He was literally selling me and he was selling my nationality so I could bring the person back. In pounds I think it would have been £10,000."

When she refused to marry the man, the beatings began. "He [my father] whacked me across the face... then I started rebelling more saying 'no'. Then he actually got a glass and scarred my arms... he had somebody holding me from behind, one of his servants, and he got a glass and was actually cutting very deep cuts into it."

She says after that her father started locking her in her room and wouldn't give her food or water for hours on end. She says she felt "depressed, scared... I didn't see any ray of light or hope. I thought he might kill me... I just thought I was going to die there in that room."

She managed to escape and get to the British High Commission where staff placed her in a secret women's refuge. She was then flown back to the UK and reunited with her mother. She is now safe.

The victim says she went to a predominantly Asian school but was never made aware of any help available to people like her.

Every secondary school in England and Wales is supposed to be sent statutory guidelines which they are meant to implement. It puts a particular member of staff in charge of raising awareness of the issue in schools and looking out for signs of potential forced marriage.

There are concerns however that this is not happening in practice. Jasvinder Sanghera is from the forced marriage charity Karma Nirvana. She wants the issue put on the school curriculum.

Speaking to Newsbeat Jasvinder Sanghera said: "There should be mandatory awareness of forced marriages in schools. We need to ensure that young people are aware there is help available.

"That should be on PHSE programmes, through posters in schools, we can't even get posters in schools and for me that's unacceptable."

Talking about the Government's record in light of the teenager's experiences Mr Browne said: "More can always be done, we are trying to get out there, we're trying to make a real positive go of it. There's nothing that says the Foreign Office has to be doing this, we're doing it because we believe in it, we think it's a genuine priority, we want to help people."

Please credit any use of this story to 91Èȱ¬ Radio 1 Newsbeat.

HB