A Birmingham woman who was tricked into forced marriage is backing an initiative by a school to stop other teenage girls becoming victims of the practice.
She was forced to marry a man in Bangladesh when she was 15 - after being told she was going to the country for a family holiday. Now she is an adult and campaigning against the practice.
She spoke out as a school in Leeds is tackling forced marriages by giving their pupils spoons to hide in their underwear, to trigger airport metal detectors.
This will enable the girl to speak privately to security staff when they are taken away to be searched.
Female pupils at the Co-Operative academy in Harehills have all been given spoons to hide in their underwear during the summer holidays - the time of year when most victims are spirited out of the country.
A teacher at the school told The Guardian: “In the six-weeks holidays we know there is no contact between school and the family, and families have that opportunity to go abroad, get their child married and come back.
“It's a way of making our children aware there is a safety net there."
The school is working with the charity, Karma Nirvana, which campaigns against problems such as "honour"-based abuse and forced marriage.
Also working with the charity is a woman from Birmingham who was herself tricked into a forced marriage.
The woman told a Birmingham newspaper how measures needed to be taken to stop more teenage girls becoming victims of forced marriages. She herself was tricked into a marriage in Bangladesh at the age of 15 and gave birth to a disabled child in the UK.
Now she is free from her husband she did her GCSEs and also started modelling and works with charities to campaign against the illegal practice.
