California Coalition to Prevent Forced Marriage

While some may think of forced marriage – any marriage in which one or both parties do not or cannot consent – as an issue exclusive to other countries, this issue is also embedded within our own communities.

While forced marriage is illegal in California, existing restraining orders are not well-suited to this unique form of harm.

Criminal law reacts to crimes that have already been committed but forced marriages are often known about in advance, giving people at risk a key opportunity to prevent harm from happening in the first place. This is where civil law can step in, if restraining orders are constructed in a way that works for survivors.

Forced marriage differs from other forms of gender-based harm that existing restraining order were written to address:

• Forced marriages are often perpetrated by a constellation of multiple perpetrators in the individual’s family and community. This often includes close family members on whom the victim relies and lives with, including parents of children facing forced marriage;
• Forced marriages – and the other harms that come with them, including sexual assault – are often known about in advance, but there may not be hard evidence of past physical abuse as in other cases; and
• Forced marriage cases often involve imminent travel, removing the victim from California. Restraining orders that react to past harms do no good once the person has been taken elsewhere – it must be able to be issued in advance and able to take actions like prohibiting travel and securing identity documents.

These key differences make it difficult for Californians facing forced marriage to obtain appropriate restraining orders: the system just was not built to address this form of harm.

AB 2534 addresses these gaps, expanding the Domestic Violence Protection Act (DVPA) to create the United State’s first Forced Marriage Restraining Order here in California. Based on protection orders developed by the United Kingdom’s Forced Marriage Unit, these orders are constructed in a way that fits the particularly types of harm experienced by Californians facing forced marriage. Read the factsheet here.

California should take the lead on protecting survivors, creating the United States’ first Forced Marriage Restraining Order.