Bloodless cultural linchpin laws would protect young women from horrors like forced incest under threat of death

I was forced to marry my cousin - it's normal in my culture, but SO WRONG

Living in fear: Having escaped an arranged marriage, Khaleda Begum may never see her family again

These days Khaleda Begum, 25, hardly leaves the confines of her one-bedroom flat.

And when she does, her heart thumps and she looks over her shoulder in terror. For, in the eyes of her Muslim family, Khaleda has done the unthinkable.

Disgusted by her arranged marriage to a cousin - a suitor found for her by her father - she has fled her family home and now, fearful of reprisals, lives under police protection.

Khaleda's story makes shocking reading for anyone who is under the misguided belief that such marriages do not regularly go on in Britain today.

For Khaleda, who was born in Britain and took GCSEs and A-levels at her British school in the hope of becoming a teacher in this country, was forced by her father to go to Pakistan and marry his cousin - a man 20 years her senior, who spoke no English and whom she had never even met.

And according to Khaleda - who today, having escaped "the marriage from hell," lives in hiding with her British partner, Phil - she is far from alone.

She says: "Virtually every Asian girl I have ever met has an arranged marriage and the vast majority of them are to their cousins.

"It is well known within the community that such marriages do produce deformed babies. No one talks about it, but it is one of the reasons why I found such a marriage to someone so closely related to myself to be so very repugnant.

"Just before I was forced to marry I heard of one of my cousins who'd been forced to marry her auntie's son.