Who? Anne-Marie Hutchinson, partner and head of the children department at specialist family firm Dawson Cornwell in London.


Why is she in the news? Represented a 20-year-old English-born woman from Peterborough who had a forced marriage to her Pakistani cousin annulled at the High Court. Before granting a decree nisi of nullity, the court heard that the petitioner, known only as NS, had been lured to Pakistan on the pretence of a holiday and kept in a remote part of the country for months. While she was not physically harmed, she was subjected to unrelenting pressure and emotional blackmail from her parents and wider family members to marry her cousin. Her mother retained her passport and her family told her she would only return to the UK if she married the respondent. The pair were married in 2003, when both parties were 17, but the marriage was never consummated and the respondent agreed that the marriage was a ploy to get him into England. The evidence was unchallenged at the hearing by either the respondent or the girl's parents. Granting the nullity, Mr Justice Munby commented that while arranged marriages were perfectly legal, forced marriages were utterly unacceptable and a gross abuse of human rights.


Background: International history and international politics degree at Leeds University, before doing the common professional exam and Law Society finals at Nottingham Trent Law School, then training at central London firm Beckman & Beckman. She qualified in 1985, and made partner in 1988. Ms Hutchinson joined her present firm in 1998 as head of the children department and received an OBE in the 2002 Queen's New Year honours list for her services to international child abduction and adoption.


Route to the case: 'The case was referred to me by another girl I'd helped escape from a potential forced marriage.'


Thoughts on the case: 'There are any number of nullities each year resulting from forced marriages, and what was needed was a comprehensive judgement to gather together all the past decisions and emphasise the fact that nullity needs to be dealt with at High Court level. It is an acknowledgment of the identity of the vulnerable adults and children affected as a special category of family law. The case highlighted the difficulties that arise in most cases of this nature - the reluctance of the victim to be a litigant due to their unwillingness to commence proceedings that involve defendants who are those closest to them (their parents), the reluctance of those who are supporting them to be identified, and the difficulties the young people have with freedom of movement and independent communication. They often also have an ingrained fear of taking a stand against authority. I could only communicate with the client by getting another girl to meet her in a library or job centre to take instructions for me. I had to text to say whenever I wanted to phone her, because her family would often answer her mobile.'


Dealing with the media: 'The media has been very supportive but, as always with these cases, we have been inundated with requests to have access to the client, who, apart from not wanting to be identified, has an understandable reluctance for her family to be identified as the perpetrators in her community.'


Catherine Baksi