From The Telegraph:
Hidden tide of 'honour' violence in Britain's communities
The number of women from Britain’s ethnic communities coming forward to report so-called “honour” attacks has more than doubled in three years, new figures show.
8:00AM GMT 28 Dec 2011
But campaigners warn that recorded cases may be just the “tip of the iceberg” with thousands of incidents going unreported each year because of fear of reprisal, family pressure or inconsistent police recording.
Police figures also suggest that a significant proportion of victims drop their cases after initially coming forward.
It follows the launch of a Government consultation on plans to make forced marriage a criminal offence in Britain.
The proposal, backed by David Cameron, has been opposed by some groups on the grounds that it could “stigmatise” some communities.
It follows a string of high profile cases in which girls or young women were beaten, abducted and even murdered for supposedly bringing “dishonour” on their family by falling in love with someone they disapproved of.
Figures from the Metropolitan Police show that in the 12 months to April 2011 there were 443 incidents reported as cases of honour violence or forced marriage in London alone – more than double that in 2007-8.
A separate recent survey of all police forces, using Freedom of Information Act, estimated that there were nearly 3,600 reported cases nationwide in 2010.
The same study, by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) found that a 47 per cent rise in cases in a year.
Jasvinder Sanghera, the founder of the victim support group Karma Nirvana estimates that the true scale of the problem could be up to four times that figure.
The group’s Honour Network helpline is on course to have received 5,500 calls from women this year alone.
She said: “The figures are woefully underestimated, we are dealing with the tip of the iceberg, we don’t know how many thousands are at risk because it is a hidden crime and there is no statutory duty to record it.
“This is an issue for British born subjects, we have really got to acknowledge that and move away from being ‘culturally sensitive’ and fear of being called racist, it’s an issue of child protection.”
She urged people from all backgrounds to show support for criminalising forced marriage during the consultation.
“This is not a cultural issue, it’s an issue of abuse and while we tiptoe around it we are giving power to the perpetrators,” she said.
The recent IKWRO study asked all 52 police forces in the United Kingdom for figures on the number of reports of honour-based violence last year.
Of the 39 which responded, only 13 had been specifically recording honour crimes separately for more than a year, to make comparisons possible.
In Greater Manchester the number of complaints of honour attacks rose 80 per cent from 2009 to 2010, with 189 incidents recorded last year; in Northumbria it more than trebled from just 17 recorded cases in 2009 to 69 last year and in Bedfordshire it was up 41 per cent to 117.
The separate Met Police figures, which cover a more recent period, distinguish between complaints of honour violence and those logged as crimes.
Consistently only around half have been logged in the second category for the last four years, suggesting many women drop their complaints because of fear.
Police overhauled the way honour violence is treated following the case of Banaz Mahmod, an Iraqi Kurd from Mitcham, south London, who was killed and buried in a suitcase in a back garden in 2006 because she left her abusive husband and fell in love with another man.
She had told police of fears for her life before her murder but was not believed. A complex four year operation eventually saw her father, uncle and two cousins jailed for her murder.
In another landmark case Turkish-born Mehmet Goren was jailed for life two years ago for murdering his 15-year-old daughter Tulay, who was “disappeared” in London in 1999.
Tulay’s body was never found but police managed to secure the conviction after her mother, Hanim, broke ranks and gave evidence against her husband.
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