How can we stop women being killed like this (very upsetting)?

[BitOfFun]

Henan Ahkter was only fourteen years old

What the fuck is going on that the world can stand by and allow this kind of thing to carry on?

I do think that you get a sticky time on threads sometimes mamazon - it's not you personally it is your job - which as you know is something a lot of people have a lot of views about (me included!).

I just wanted to say that as I think it is good to hear the SS "side" of these things - how they work in practice, what the actual laws and limitations are. Even if sometimes the way things work seems to be quite far from how people might hope they worked IYSWIM.

I'm sure you know all that anyway, just wanted to say it.

thanks Sardine.

I have pretty thick skin most of the time and take it on the chin mostly. On the SW threads i know that people aren't attacking me, but the job, Which is fair enough really.

I haven't worked in CP.

I took the job with Homestart as it was less stress and fewer hours. PAH!

It took me a long time to get my head round to this way of thinking. I was very much a "well we just need to tell them this is the UK and we don't do it like that"

But i can assure you that softly softly catchy monkey really is the only way to get anything done.

Oh I agree entirely.

I think that fear of racism accusations is common place in many situations. That and ignorance and misguided ideas of "that culture"

I was recently involved in a multi agency meeting about a child in a family i work with with SN. There are no issues at home other than this childs extensive additional needs. The level of cultural ignorance was breathtaking. there were assumptions being made about things that were laughable.

I do think that Britain has this very naive idea that we are a lovely multicultural nation and we are all very enlightened about other communities. The reality is that even those that should know better, don't.

female genital mutilation (i refuse to call it circumcision as that name somehow legitimises the practice) is already illegal in this counrty. The problem is finding out it has been done and then trying to find someone to prosecute.
I agree that we should try harder though.

under age marriages is something i have thankfully not come across. I seem to see more British men travelling to india/pakistan to pick their wife. Lying to them about their finances and social standing here, marrying them and bringing them over here purely to breed and serve.
the women in these situations had no choice in the matter, it was a deal made between the husband and the father.

I agree that there are a great number of practices that hide behind culture or religion that need to be addressed. But no one is willing to stand up and shout that out for fear of the "racism" backlash.

I do feel that the greatest changes are made from the inside. No one wants to be told what to do, it is always easier to make them think like it was their idea.

Fucking hellfire.

They whipped a child to death for being raped?

Until this country imposes and ACTS UPON laws dealing harshly with situations like these (and I mean harsh like the death penalty) I think the global community should cut all trade lines. ALL of them.

some of the stories i hear in my job horrify me. It makes me glad that i am British and yet angry that we do not do more to prevent certain practices in other lands.

I am due to visit a lady and her daughters next week. She is from the Congo and came to Britain as a refugee. She has been referred by her GP who she was seeing for the infections in her wounds. The wounds she got when the men came through her village and raped her and her daughters (youngest not yet 10) and killed her husband and son. They then slashed at her with machete's when she tried to stop them raping her daughters. All 4 of them had been raped over and over. The referral sheet says "she is unable to give an idea of numbers, just say's Lots"

Thing that makes me most mad is that we have known about what is going on in teh congo for years. Why are we not sending our Armies over there? Why instead are we occupying other countries years after we have bought down the oppresive rulers? Because the Congo doesn't have the Oil Afghan/Iraq does.

mamazon, i aree with the above post,

and i aree that women from abroad dont often have a say i marriae. but they also have a rose tinted view of life in britain and dont realise how hard it will be.

im not sure about the meat market thin thouh, imexperience women from uk are very fussy and reject a lot of partners in meetins before areein to one, and they are very aware, more so then elders, of their reliious rihts.

and female enital mutilation is definitely wron, and is different from female circumcision which is the operation known in uk as clitoral hood removal and is leal and a cosmetic surery.

i aree with the approach of chane from within and i feel many 2nd and 3rd eneration immirants are movin away from these cultural practices, and questionin them. in your experience is that true?

The thing is, Mamazon's culture is a patriarchy too, so she is a woman forced to play by the rules of her own patriarchal culture in order to help any women at all.

In a non-patriarchal culture, of course the idea that you have to kow-tow to the male abusers elders in order to get close to abused women and girls would be written off as the utter nonsense that it is

Unfortunately, to effect change within these kinds of enclosed entrenched woman-hating communities, you do have to move slowly and carefully and pander to the egos of shitbag men. It's maddening, but going in and laying down the law is going to mean the abuse going underground and getting worse throughout the community, with women's access to outside help and support being cut off.

And Sakura, don't be bloody silly. Attempts to change a culture, no matter how toxic, from outside that culture, are always going to have to be done slowly and carefully if the end result is not going to be major violence and additional suffering to those you are trying to help.

Yes, as abhorrent as some of these practices are, I agree one has to be pragmatic to some degree to gain access and then be in a position to start effecting change.

I'm glad Mamaz0n and others like her are doing this work. It needs to be done.

nailak - yes British born women do have a much greater say in their marriages usually. But many of the women i work with are Indian/pakistani who married an English man. They decide it is time for their son to marry, they retrun to their family village and take the son on a shopping trp for his bride.he literally choses his wife the way we would chose a handbag.

The women have very little say but yes, they are often misfed information about life in the UK. Many of the women I work with were told their husbands were engineers, scientists, accountants etc. it turns out they were Cab drivers or fast food chefs.

It is also thankfully, true that with each generation these traditions are becoming more and more diluted.

Religious school are a problem though. I am sure i read somewhere that they are totally independant and don't even have to answer to ofsted. That freedom allows them to abuse many of the children in them and for them to brainwash them about their cultures traditions and "ways"
That is not to say it is the case in all the schools, but there are ceertainly quite a few of the more extreme versions out there.

The trouble with mainstream schools attempting to tackle the children of these cultures about such practices is that you a teacher is standing as an outsider with little true understanding of a particular practice and trying to explain i is wrong to a child who has had it brainwashed into them from birth that itis the way of the world. Children may well think deeply about it and question the behaviour, but when they return home and tell their family the teacher ends up with a flea in her ear.

THis is one of the many reasons I am opposed to the pandering to superstition that the Blair government was so keen to foster. Religion is all shit anyway, but it is disgusting that men are allowed to hide behind it in order to justify abuse of women, children and indeed other men (for being unbelievers, or being gay).

SGB, If you'd actually READ my post, you'd see that I was supporting Mamazon in her difficult work.. and empathizing with her

But I was also expressing how ridiculous it was that she is forced into this position

which means I said the exact same thing as you.

Except one post before you.