Muslim man who married child bride cries while being jailed for 18 months
A Muslim refugee has wept as he was jailed for marrying a Year 8 Melbourne schoolgirl in a secret Islamic ceremony.
The judge today condemned her mother for encouraging the union, which led to the first charges of their kind in Australia.
The girl was just 14-and-a-half when her mother encouraged her to marry a 34-year-old man who was living with her family in the city's south east.
The Victorian County Court heard her groom last September, Mohammed Shakir, knew what he was doing was wrong and tried to cover it up with the Imam at the Bosnian mosque in Noble Park.
He is the first in Australia to be convicted of marrying an underage person.
Shakir pleaded guilty but insisted he didn't know her age and there was no intimate relationship between the pair.
The court heard Shakir is a Burmese refugee who came to Australia by boat five years ago.
Judge Lisa Hannan condemned Shakir's actions.
"What you did was legally wrong and morally indefensible. The victim was entitled to a childhood you took from her," she told him in court.
"To say that you come from a culture permissive of child marriage carries no weight."
In June, the Imam, Ibrahim Omerdic, was given a suspended two month jail term, which he's appealing.
The girl's mother was never charged.
Shakir sobbed and shook as he was jailed for 12 months. With time already served he'll be out in a couple of weeks, but he will be placed back into a detention centre, and could possibly be deported.
