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Honour killings

by Sophie Baker

Honour killings

The leading police investigator in the first honour killings conviction in the UK agrees that specialist units should be established in police forces across the country in an effort to prevent honour based violence and honour killings.

Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt, based at Belgravia, said that these units would have to consist of fully-trained officers who would be equipped and prepared to deal with young women or men who feel their lives are at risk at the hands of their own families, due to the idea that they may have brought shame or dishonour upon them. The cultures in which honour killings and honour based violence predominantly exist cuts across many communities: records show evidence of these brutal murders in Turkish, Kurdish, South Asian, Southern and Eastern Europe and African cultures. But the fact that these communities are not traditionally British in origin does not mean that honour killings are therefore not our problem. These murders are happening in 21st century Britain.

In addition to these plans, the director of Derby-based support refuge Karma Nirvana, Jasvinder Sanghera, will this March launch the Survivors’ Helpline. The helpline is set up as an opportunity for men and women who feel they are at risk of honour based violence to get support and advice, but most importantly, Sanghera feels it will help show these people can survive: “It’s all about breaking that feeling of isolation. Around 20 people who have survived honour based violence will be fully trained by the Forced Marriage Unit and other experts to help build a family and coach those in need of help through their lives both during and following their escape.”

The special phone line has been based on the Childline model, and the 200 survivors in Karma Nirvana’s database will form the basis of the victim support family. Any victims who have broken away from Forced Marriage, honour based violence and culturally-related Domestic Violence will be encouraged to start a new life, and the workers behind the helpline will also aim to become the new family of the survivor: they will send them birthday cards and generally, according to Sanghera, be permanent, supportive members in their new lives. Sanghera hopes that in the future Karma Nirvana, the police and the Survivors’ Helpline can work closer together in order to eradicate these horrendous crimes. She is also keen for her organisation to continue working with the police in order to increase the knowledge and training police officers can access in relation to honour based violence.

When questioned about this, Hyatt agreed that more training is necessary for all police officers who are likely to come into contact with the general public, and therefore potentially with victims of honour based violence: “Young Asian women are not going to want to speak to people about their fears if they think they’re not being taken seriously, as we saw in the Banaz Mahmod case.”

Banaz Mahmod, 20, who was of Iraqi birth, went to the police four times and told them she was going to be killed before her death in January 2006. On one occasion she took a letter into a police station which named the five men she believed were going to murder her: this vital piece of paper did not reach the relevant police officer until a week after it was delivered.

On New Year’s Eve 2005, Banaz’s father took her to her grandmother’s house in Wimbledon and plied her with alcohol. She realised her father was planning to harm her, and, panicked, ran out of the house and smashed a neighbour’s window in a desperate effort to save herself. No-one came to her aid, and so Banaz ran to a nearby cafe, where an ambulance was summoned and police were called. Unfortunately, the situation was misunderstood and Banaz was thought not to be a victim but a troublemaker, and the police made moves to charge her with criminal damage. Less than a month later, Banaz was dead: she had been abducted, sexually assaulted and then strangled with a bootlace, by the very men who she predicted would end her life. Her crime? She shamed her family by escaping an abusive forced marriage and found happiness with another man.

Banaz’s father, Mahmod Mahmod, was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to 21 years imprisonment. But this was not the first crime to be recorded as an ‘honour killing’: on 12 October, 2002, Abdullah Yones took a kitchen knife, forced his way into the bathroom of his family home in Acton, West London, where his terrified 16 year old daughter Heshu had barricaded herself, and brutally murdered her. So violent was the attack that the tip of the knife broke off after cutting into bone in her back. She was found with the weapon under her body, and it was bent out of shape from the sheer force of his exerted anger. Heshu’s crime which caused her own father to take his daughter’s life? She had become too Westernised and therefore brought shame and dishonour upon the Yones family. He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, and was the first person in Britain to be convicted of an honour killing.

But the convictions do not account for all the honour killings which have occurred. Statistics from the Home Office suggest there are around 12 such murders every year, but police believe this is only the tip of a very bloody iceberg: officers are in the process of re-examining 2000 deaths between 1996 and 2006, in order to establish whether they involved honour killings. Not only are cases in which verdicts of accidental deaths are recorded being re-opened, but also suicides due to a link between honour based violence and forced suicide.

Hyatt is working to protect young people in these situations, and he believes a Victim Protection System should be developed in addition to the specialist units. This, he believes, would enable continuous help for any young person who feels they are under threat, once they have informed the police of their fears.

For more information, visit www.forcedmarriageunit.gov.uk or contact Jasvinder Sanghera at Karma Nirvana on: 01332 604098