“I didn’t want to bring more problems to my parents”: Understanding how young women seek help for forced marriage in Australia

In Australia, there have been several law, policy and programmatic responses aimed at addressing the issue of forced marriage, including support programs for individuals who are at risk or who have experienced forced marriage. The exploration of young women's navigation of support before, during or after an experience of forced marriage is relatively unexplored in the scholarship. This article draws on interviews with 12 young women who have an experience of forced marriage and 16 service-providers who provide support. At the time the study was conducted, support was contingent on engagement with federal law enforcement. This context has since changed; however, the findings provide both an important contribution to critiques about criminal justice responses to violence and harm experienced by women; and calls into question the conditional nature of support – both within and outside of the criminal justice system. The findings suggest that conditional support influences young women's decision-making in relation to disclosing risk and/or accessing support, which has varied impacts on young women's lives including increased insecurity. The empirical contribution of this research is an opportunity to reconsider the way support is conceptualised and delivered, including the dismantling of the victim-perpetrator binary between young women and their families, in turn creating the possibility for family members to be involved in safe intervention and prevention.