By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A guest speaker at City of Casey’s victims-of-crime forum has lashed out at a failure to strongly punish perpetrators of child marriage.
Betul Tuna, a policy officer at Ethnic Council of Shepparton, asked gatherers on 8 October why perpetrators were regarded as different to paedophiles.
She later told Star News that the ‘husbands’ were charged with marrying an underage bride, but why not with child sexual abuse?
“The perpetrators try to justify this with something else like cultural or religious practices.
“What is happening is that girls are given to someone a lot older than them, and we’re referring to the paedophile as a ‘husband’.
“Isn’t it paedophilia? What is the difference?”
Ms Tuna says the double standard is shown by the crime of a man “shopping” for a child online. That man’s intentions or cultural practices are not then elevated above children’s rights.
The parents of the bride, if they’re knowing participants, should also be held culpable, Ms Tuna says.
The offences are written down as cultural practices performed in the offenders’ country-of-origin. They are downplayed because they are not “white” or “mainstream” – at least not these days, Ms Tuna says.
“Child marriage was not far away from Australian culture 100 years ago, 50 years ago or even 20 years ago,” she says.
In September, a 35-year-old man was convicted and jailed by the Victorian County Court for 12 months for marrying a 14-year-old girl in Noble Park.
He was the first to be sentenced in Australia under the federal offence of marrying a person under 16.
The imam Ibrahim Omerdic, 62, who was charged with conducting the marriage, is appealing his conviction.
Though there are no statistics, the issue is common in Australia – and the world, Ms Tuna says.
It’s a risk not just for migrants but for children born in Australia. It’s a problem not just in some regions of the world but it’s a global problem, Ms Tuna argues.
Ms Tuna works in Shepparton to prevent female genital mutilation and to support affected women.
Child trafficking, child abuse and female genital mutilation are issues that affect “all of us”.
