Police avoid honour-based abuse cases because they fear being called racist

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Sometimes police fail to deal with victims of honour-based abuse for fear of being accused of racism, MPs have heard.

Honour-based abuse and violence is the term that refers to practices primarily used to control the behavior of women and girls in order to protect assumed cultural and religious beliefs.

Testifying before the House of Commons Women’s and Equality Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet – the head of the National Police Chiefs Council to Combat Honour-Based Abuse – admitted that the Cultural sensitivities around the subject can hamper the effectiveness of policing.

‘Look what you have in front of you’

Mr Balhatchet was asked if the police are “afraid of crossing cultural boundaries, stepping on the toes of the community or doing something that could be perceived as racist or culturally discriminatory”.

He said: “There will be times when officers and staff have not treated something or have treated it differently because of the background of the victim and survivor or the information given to them.

He said that while there may be real complexities that are not understood by everyone, he urged officers to look at what you have in front of you.

He added: This is coercion, this is control, this is violence and this is abuse of women and girls and this is what I try to point out to anyone who may have anxiety or do things differently because of the backgrounds of victims and survivors.

Honor-Based Abuse Is Widely Misunderstood

According to charity Karma Nirvana, honour-based abuse is widely misunderstood and is often seen as a cultural, religious or traditional problem – meaning hundreds of victims go unhelped and perpetrators go unpunished. justice.

It can take many forms, including child marriage, virginity testing, forced abortion, forced marriage and female genital mutilation, as well as physical, sexual and economic abuse and coercive control.

Jaswant Narwal, national honour-based violence manager at the Crown Prosecution Service, also told MPs there was no legal definition of honour-based violence, unlike domestic violence – so it remains difficult for prosecutors and juries to define.

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