Teens Foil Forced Marriages with Spoon in Underwear

As Britain puts airport staff on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriage.

One campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved some youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands. The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain and the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be searched -- a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths.

The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people -- typically girls aged 15 and 16 -- being taken abroad on “holiday,” for a marriage without consent, the government says. The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to someone they have never met in a country they have never seen.

Hat tip: RoP