The brutal alleged murder of a 14-year-old girl at the hands of her father has led to a call from Iran’s president to speed up laws punishing so-called honour killings. 

Romina Ashrafi, from the Iranian town of Talesh, was reportedly beheaded while sleeping by her father Reza Ashrafi, who is accused of using a farming sickle to kill her.

He is believed to have murdered Romina after she eloped with her 34-year-old boyfriend.

Girls can legally marry from the age of 13 in Iran, but the average age of marriage is 23, and it is unheard of in rural areas for teenage girls to run away from home to be with their boyfriend.

Five days after the couple ran away, Romina was found and taken to the police, who she reportedly warned of her concern that her father may be violent.

Ashrafi then took his daughter back to the family home, where he is alleged to have killed her.

He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

https://news.sky.com/story/brutal-alleged-murder-of-girl-14-by-father-may-lead-to-law-change-in-iran-11995634

Religious leaders have warned that domestic abuse victims in their communities face the greatest obstacles to getting help, and raised fears that the coronavirus lockdown was causing such violence to soar.

Figures from Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh communities said they had heard reports of abuse in the home ranging from psychological and physical violence to spiritual abuse during the Covid-19 emergency.

Campaigners have previously warned there would be a spike in victims fleeing their abusive partners as lockdown eases, with support services, already struggling to make ends meet, being hit with an even higher demand.

A joint statement, signed by leading figures from a range of faith-based domestic abuse charities, said women in faith and black and minority ethnic (BME) communities stay with abusive partners for longer than women in the wider population and are less likely to access support.

“We cannot ignore that there are perpetrators within all our faith communities,” the statement says. “At our best, our faith communities nurture healthy relationships and strengthen society. The home exists alongside our churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples, to enable growth within both faith and our local communities”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-domestic-abuse-religious-leaders-spiritual-faith-bme-a9533016.html

Girls at risk of child marriage are falling under the radar of authorities in England and Wales because of a lack of record-keeping by more than half of the departments responsible for children’s social care, a charity has warned.

IKWRO women’s rights organisationsays it is preparing for a spike in cases following the easing of lockdown and is urging social workers to be ready to respond.

It has written to local authorities amid concerns that some social workers were not fully trained or aware of the complexities around “honour”-based abuse including child marriage.

Responses collected under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that between 2018 and 2019, the latest data available, there were 165 children in England and Wales at risk of child marriage.

Yet 56% of departments responsible for children’s social care in the two countries were found not recording how many minors were at risk of child marriage.

During the same period 280 children in England and Wales, including 117 looked-after children, were identified by those departments that were collecting data as at risk of “honour”-based abuse. Yet 66 local authorities out of those questioned said they had no process for recording those at risk.

IKWRO says it is vital authorities record every potential case of these complex crimes to understand and respond to their prevalence on a national scale.https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/18/girls-at-risk-of-child-marriage-as-half-of-local-authorities-fail-to-keep-records

Somalia’s coronavirus lockdown has led to a huge increase in female genital mutilation (FGM), with circumcisers going door to door offering to cut girls stuck at home during the pandemic, according to Plan International.

The crisis is undermining efforts to eradicate the practice in Somalia, which has the world’s highest FGM rate, with about 98% of women having been cut, the charity warned.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in recent weeks,” said Sadia Allin, Plan International’s head of mission in Somalia. “We want the government to ensure FGM is included in all Covid responses.”

She said nurses across the country had also reported a surge in requests from parents wanting them to carry out FGM on their daughters while they were off school because of the lockdown.

FGM, which affects 200 million girls and women globally, involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia. In Somalia the vaginal opening is also often sewn up – a practice called infibulation.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned that the pandemic could lead to an extra 2 million girls worldwide being cut in the next decade as the crisis stymies global efforts to end the practice.

Allin said families in Somalia were taking advantage of school closures to carry out FGM so that the girls had time to recover from the ritual, which can take weeks.

The economic downturn caused by coronavirus has also spurred cutters to tout for more business, she said. “The cutters have been knocking on doors, including mine, asking if there are young girls they can cut. I was so shocked,” said Allin, who has two daughters aged five and nine.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/fgm-risk-in-somalia-heightened-by-coronavirus-crisis

Calls to a national domestic abuse helpline rose by 49% and killings doubled weeks after lockdown, a report by MPs has revealed.

Following the “surge” in violence, the report called for a government strategy on domestic abuse during the pandemic.

MPs also said “safe spaces”, where victims can seek help, should be rolled out to supermarkets and other shops.

The Home Office said it was increasing funding to support helplines and online services.

Researchers at the Counting Dead Women Project told MPs 14 women and two children had been killed in the first three weeks of lockdown.

The figure is the largest number of killings in a three-week period for 11 years and more than double the average rate, they said.

Meanwhile, the number of calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline run by Refuge was 25% above average in the second week of lockdown and 49% higher than normal after three weeks.

Without a comprehensive government strategy to cope with the consequences of this violence, the home affairs select committee said “we will be dealing with serious consequences for a generation”.

It said the strategy should include raising awareness, prevention, victim support, housing and a criminal justice response, supported with dedicated funding and ministerial leadership.

MPs have also called for more help to allow victims access support at times when they may be unable to use the phone or ask friends for help.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52433520

A surge in abuse-related searches could be a sign people are identifying themselves as victims for the first time, an expert says.

Victims of domestic abuse have been reaching out for help in ever increasing numbers.

Research has revealed a significant rise in online searches relating to domestic violence during the lockdown and since the spread of coronavirus increased.

From February to March, traffic to the website for the National Domestic Abuse Helpline increased by 156%, according to a study by online research company SEMrush.

Searches for “what is domestic abuse?” rose by 46% in the same period, and there was a 64% rise in searches for the phrases “domestic violence shelter” and “domestic abuse shelter”.

Lisa King, from the domestic violence charity Refuge, believes this is a sign some women are identifying themselves as being victims of domestic abuse for the first time and “are now reaching out for support in a way that they haven’t done before”.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-rise-in-domestic-abuse-related-web-searches-amid-covid-19-lockdown-11975235

“The message from government and from Refuge is that if you are experiencing domestic abuse and you want to leave your household and you are safe to do so, to then reach out and access support,” she said.

Around the world, as cities have gone into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, the mass efforts to save lives have put one vulnerable group more at risk.

Women and children who live with domestic violence have no escape from their abusers during quarantine, and from Brazil to Germany, Italy to China, activists and survivors say they are already seeing an alarming rise in abuse.

In Hubei province, the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, from 47 last year to 162 this year, activists told local media.

“The epidemic has had a huge impact on domestic violence,” Wan Fei, a retired police officer who founded a charity campaigning against abuse, told Sixth Tone website. “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence [in this period] are related to the Covid-19 epidemic.”

The increased threat to women and children was a predictable side effect of the coronavirus lockdowns, said activists. Increased abuse is a pattern repeated in many emergencies, whether conflict, economic crisis or during disease outbreaks, although the quarantine rules pose a particularly grave challenge.

“It happens in all crisis situations,” said Marcy Hersh, a senior manager for humanitarian advocacy at Women Deliver. “What we worry about is just as rates of violence are on the rise, the accessibility of services and the ability of women to access these services will decrease. This is a real challenge.”

In many countries there have been calls for legal or policy changes to reflect the increased risk to women and children in quarantine.

In the UK, Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality party, has called for special police powers to evict perpetrators from homes for the duration of the lockdown, and for authorities to waive court fees for the protection orders.

“I was taken on the pretext that I was going for a fun outing,” says Masooma Ranvali. “Little did I know that it would turn out to be one of the most horrible moments of my life. It was done very surreptitiously.”

Ranvali, who was seven years old at the time, says her grandmother took her to a dark, dingy building in India where she was immediately ordered to lie down on the floor by an elderly lady.

“I remember it very clearly,” she tells The Independent. “I was like, ‘Why should I lie down?’ But my grandmother pulled me down. She opened my legs and pulled down my panties. I was sobbing. It was brutal. The woman then took a blade or a knife to cut a part of me. It was painful. I know I came home and cried with my mother. I was small and innocent. I was in pain for about a week after.”

The 52-year-old, who is a survivor of female gender mutilation (FGM), says she blocked the memory out for many years due to being expressly forbidden from talking about the issue and there being a “shroud of silence” around it in her community. 

Her warnings come as Equality Now, a non-government organisation which promotes the rights of women and girls, found official data on the global prevalence of FGM released by Unicef, which claims it affects at least 200 million women, “woefully” underestimates both the nature and scale of the issue. 

The report, shared with The Independent ahead of its release date, found there is growing evidence that FGM takes place across the world, in numerous countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, North America and Latin America.

Divya Srinivasan, who wrote the report, says: “We are missing out on counting large groups of women and children who have undergone FGM. For example, after Indonesia conducted a national survey to estimate FGM prevalence for the first time, Unicef’s global estimates jumped from 125 million to 200 million.”

Srinivasan, an Indian lawyer who specialises in women’s rights and works for the south Asia branch of Equality Now, argued a dearth of accurate data can lead to governments being reluctant to tackle FGM and ignoring the issue.

FGM, internationally recognised as a human rights violation, refers to any procedure that intentionally alters female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure, which can cause a lifetime of severe health problems and pain, is often carried out without anaesthesia.

• Honour crimes convictions plummet amid national police crackdown

“It is a very painful, bitter, and scary memory,” Ranvali adds. “I did not speak to anyone. That includes my mother and sisters. As a child, it was very isolating. As a child, it was an inexplicable and horrible phenomenon. It has to do with the genitals which is something nobody talks about. It is that part of your body which is hush hush. It is a shameful area. It makes you feel like your genital area is dirty and like there is something wrong with you which had to be cut and removed.” 

“In my thirties, I read about the practice in Africa,” she adds. “It rang a bell in me. I thought, ‘Isn’t this what we also do? Isn’t this what happened to me?’ That was a horrible and painful moment. In my forties, I decided to break my silence. I had a young daughter who was not cut but I had the realisation that not everyone is as lucky as her. My daughter’s generation is also being cut.” 

Ranvali, who says “100 per cent” of her generation has been cut, argues FGM is carried out to control women’s sexual urges to ensure they do not have premarital sex or extramarital affairs due to the procedure making sex more painful. 

“The clitoris is the part of female anatomy where sexual pleasure is,” she adds. “To control your daughter you have to do it. There is this unsaid fear. It is fear sold to parents of girls that you have to be careful and if you do not do this then you will have trouble in your hands. It is part of patriarchal notions.”

Dr Tasneem Perry, who is also from the Bohra community, says she has hazy memories of the day she was subjected to FGM in a private GP clinic in Sri Lanka but can recall that her father accompanied her to the doctor.

“It was unusual for my father to come,” the 42-year-old explains. “I was seven. I have had a year of counselling and I still have not got this memory back.” 

Dr Perry, who says the procedure was carried out in a medical setting despite the practice being illegal, did not become aware of the fact she had been cut until she turned 16 or 17 and asked her mother about what had happened to her.

She adds: “My need to talk about it is to prevent another girl from going through what I went through. If you belong to the Bohra community FGM is a requirement. The dichotomy is the community is very open, liberal, educated and well-integrated.” 

Dr Perry, who now works as a teacher, says as she got older she started to question what normal sex would be like and started to feel a profound sense of loss. Her mother would cry when she brought it up with her as she got older, she adds.

Mohammed Abdul Shakur, 46, spent years on the run after killing 26-year-old Juli Begum and daughters Anika and Thanha, aged five and six, on New Year’s Day 2007

An abusive husband will be sentenced on Thursday for murdering his estranged wife and their two young children.

Mohammed Abdul Shakur, 46, spent years on the run after killing 26-year-old Juli Begum and daughters Anika and Thanha, aged five and six, on New Year’s Day 2007.

Following a trial at the Old Bailey last year, Shakur was found guilty of carrying out the murders at the family home in East Ham, east London.

The court had heard the couple had an arranged marriage in Bangladesh when Ms Begum was 19 but Shakur was repeatedly violent towards his wife and did not like their children much because they were not boys.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/abusive-husband-mohammed-abdul-shakur-17697780