Hih listener.

In this episode, we mentioned some tough themes like domestic abuse, honor abuse, and suicide.

There's really no getting around it.

The woman whose story we're telling today has been on a rough ride.

I know that stuff can be really hard to listen to, but we also get to hear her thrive.

Among other things, she delightfully ends up as a double agent posing as a woman's fitness instructor.

Don't worry, it'll makes sense later.

There's also some swearing.

I'm so sorry about that.

Jas Finder's family is big.

She has five sisters and a brother, but just Finder grew close with one of her sisters, in particular, Rabina.

We went to school together, we shared a bed together, We were close in age as well.

And I remember once when she became engaged, before they took her to India, she ran away from home.

We all thought Robina was fifteen and a half when her marriage was arranged by their parents.

Her mother and father were all looking for her everywhere and nobody could find her.

And then our house back then, we was hav an outside toilet, so I went round the back and she was sitting in the outside toilet on the floor and she was crying and I held her, and that was the first time ever she said to me, I don't want to go to India.

And I said to her, let's run away, and you know, she just laughed and said, we can't do that.

Neither Rabina nor just Finder wanted to marry like this, but Rabina felt she had no choice.

She just said, it's what we do, you know, And I would say we don't have to do she goes, yes, yes, no, we have.

To do this.

Just Finder, on the other hand, saw it differently.

I'd watched this happen to so many of my sisters being taken to India to be married to strangers.

I didn't want that.

I was feeling this strong sense of that I'm not doing that.

I don't want that, but I couldn't voice that.

Not yet.

At least, Just Spinder was part of a family in which this scenario had played itself out generation after generation.

Today, on the show, the story of.

How just Spinder challenged the way things had always been in her family and her community.

You don't say no to a marriage that's dishonorable.

You don't integrate that's dishonorable.

You don't educate yourself that's dishonorable.

And how in that process she helped many thousands of other women and girls do the same thing.

I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where we tell stories of women women.

Today just finda redefines honor.

I was wondering as a small girl, what was your understanding of what the future held for you?

What did you see ahead?

Well, I grew up within a family whereby My parents were from the Punjab, from India, so they came to England in the late nineteen fifties in search of work and they settled here.

They brought with them their belief their value systems, their culture, their traditions.

So my upbringing was very much part of that dynamic.

And one of the things that I watched growing up was how women stood behind the men.

Always worked quietly, silently, normally in the kitchen, and the men laughed and joked, but the women were very quiet.

I remember my father coming home with local men from the pub, Indian men that he knew, and our job was to quickly get out the way and not be seen all this cooking and stuff for them and bringing the food in and serving them.

For me, this was the role of women.

There was also another, much bleaker responsibility that just Finder's mum wanted to drill into her daughters.

You don't dishonor a family, we were told by leaving an abusive partner.

Just Finder says that when she was a child, it was very common for her to see women being abused by their husbands, both in the community and in her family.

As I'm watching this, I began to think, this is what happens.

You get married, you get hurt, and nobody comes to rescue you.

And the analogy my mother used to use was you have to think of an abusive man as a pan of milk.

It boils to the top, and your role as a woman is to blow on it to calm it down.

And that was a consistent message that I heard from the age of eleven years old.

That is a tough one to hear growing up.

Did you talk to your sisters about how they felt.

Well, this is the thing.

My sister's just accepted it.

There was no challenge.

I learned from a very young age that I have the power as a female to bring dishonor to my family.

Or honor to my family through how I behaved.

The honor of my family was invested in my sexuality as well.

So my family raised me to understand what the rules of engagement were.

This is honorable, This isn't honorable.

If you do this, shame shame on you, Shame on the family.

Now, if we crossed the line and we bring shame to the family, you're going to be punished.

I could be harved, I could be forced into a marriage.

And this is why, in the extreme cases, women can be murdered by their families for bringing shame on their families.

Wow.

Wow, and the bar is so low.

Tell me a little bit more about your parents' specific kind of roles within your family dynamic.

What about your mom?

So, my mother came from India and didn't speak a word of English, as the women did.

They followed the men.

So the men came first, they settled, got somewhere to live, and then the women joined them.

So Mom came.

Over here very fearful of Britain.

You know, she lived in Aurora village in India.

She was scared of hospitals.

She'd never seen a white person before, or anybody other than her color.

You know, it was very frightening for her.

So she lands here very isolated, and then the other people that look like her women become her friends because she can communicate with them in the language, share the food, etc.

And then she gives birth to daughters, not sons.

We were always taught and this is still the case that it's such a shame to give birth to a daughter.

Everybody wants a boy, you know, the boy passes on the family name.

And so for my mother, she would have carried that weight.

She cooked.

She was very quiet.

Rarely did I ever see my mother smile.

But she was for us, the disciplinarian.

So she was the one that made sure that we as girls behaved according to a system.

And if we crossed that line, my mother would be the one that would punish us.

You know.

She would say to me, well, I was married, you know when I was fifteen.

Why are you any different?

Yeah, So she was.

Carrying on what she knew.

Otherwise she wouldn't have had the acceptance of the community.

What was school life.

Like for you then?

I imagine that you went to a school that was mixed culturally.

What was that like?

I mean, I absolutely loved school, I really did enjoy school.

The Asian girls like me, the Indian girls like me, were all like me.

They behaved like me, very quiet, very subdued, and I was really attracted to the other girls who were westernized, who were expressive, and I really craved that world where you could just be without somebody telling you that it was wrong.

At school or whenever she was allowed out into town, Just Finder would look around her and see women expressing themselves.

I mean, it was the early eighties.

Shoulder pads ruled the world.

Bold makeup and clashing patterns marked you as a fun girly.

And then there were perms.

All the popular girls at school had a perm, and naturally, Just Finder also wanted some of that chemically treated pool.

I went to the hairdressers, Oh, and I wanted a PERM.

And I sat in this chair and I said to this hairdresser, saved it this morning, I want to PERM.

And I watched as she chopped all my long hair off, right up to my shoulders, and I had this PERM without thinking about the consequences.

Do you think you were going to get away with that.

The freedom of wanting to do this, wanting to be like.

Other people that were free.

Yeah, and I went home and thinking, oh shit, one's going to see this, and the worst thing you can do is quit your hair, because they're trying to be westernized.

I remember my younger sister saying to.

Me, you're going to get killed.

And I was fifteen years old at the time.

That consequence seemed so far away.

And so what I did was for three days, I put a towel on my head when my mom came home just about five o'clock, and then I'd say I just had a shower.

So I did that for three days and pretended I had to shower until one day she knocked the towel off my head.

Oh my word, she freaked out which she saw my hair.

She was screaming and shouting, and she sent me away to London to go live with my sister until my hair grew back, and my sister would oil my hair every day to drop these curls, to drop these kills.

And then the only way my head grown back, and I begged to go back home.

They allowed me to go back.

My goodness, did your sister not get it?

No?

No, my sisters were very much part of that system.

The thing about her system is it only continues, if you allow it to enable it, then you become part of that.

So they became the enforcers of it.

It often felt to just Finder like she was the only one who ever swam against the current in her family.

But she would notice that sometimes her dad couldn't resist going against her mum's wishes either.

You know, he smoked and you had a craft his cigarette and Mum wasn't watching, and you know, he went to the pub at the end of his day and he did all the things, but in a way he did them hidden.

From my mum as well.

Yeah, but my dad gave me this sense of it's okay to be different.

And that's what I.

Really struggled with because all this was happening to my sisters and Dad was quite it.

He didn't say anything, but you could see it in his face.

He was troubled.

Then, when just Finder was fourteen, her mother finally sat her down to break the news Just Finder had always known was coming.

I came home from school one day, joyfully skipping home from.

School, etc.

And I walk in and my mother comes home from work, and she sits me down, very jovial, and she presents me with a photograph of this man, who she tells me is going to be my husband.

And I remember looking at this photograph and thinking, Eh, he's shorter than me, you know, as a fourteen year old kid, he's older than me.

I don't want to marry a stranger.

Nobody ever challenged my mother, but I dared to say it.

I remember not marrying a stranger.

I wanted to go to school.

Mom didn't think anything of it.

She just laughed and smiled.

She said, I'm going to put it on the mantelpiece.

Keep looking at it, you'll grow to like him.

She left it on the mental piece, and I just carried on as normal.

And it was only when it became serious, almost fifteen years old, when my mother was saying, right now, the relatives of this person is coming to see you.

We've got to be thinking about the dress.

We've got to be thinking about these things.

That's when it became really, really real to me.

And that's when the rebel em was coming out.

And I know that girls normally disappear when they're fifteen or sixteen, and now I'm getting closer to that asia.

Now girls from the community would be taken away from school without any notice and sent to India to get married.

Jasminder says that these marriages were arranged with Indian men, family relations, or friends who wanted to move to the UK for a better life.

So once a girl was sent away, she would begin married life overseas and then she'd return with her, often much older husband.

What seems most shocking to me is that often this raised no eyebrows with any authorities.

Just finda knew that she was set to disappear like this too.

But then, as they do, a boy came onto the scene.

My mother almost allowed me to have a little bit more freedom because what she was trying to do was sweeten me up in order to marry this man.

So that meant I could go to my Indian girlfriend's house.

I could even go out with her if I wanted to do.

And her brother started to look at me, smile at me.

We started talking and I started to tell him what was happening to me.

So I started to date her brother and seeing his secret, and we got to know each othern He was the first boy I ever kissed, and he said he would help me to leave, and for me, that was a way out.

But the thing here is my mother found out about him.

And that was when my parents took me out of education and locked me in a room with a padlock on the outside of the door because they found out about this boy.

That is so shameful.

Just Finder stayed locked in her room like a princess in a tower for several days.

It felt like an eternity.

Just Finder knew that there was a boy eager to help her run away.

His name was Jesse, but he couldn't do anything.

If she stayed trapped in her room, her chance at freedom was slipping away.

Then she had an idea.

Okay, I'll tell my mother I will marry this man, because if I tell her that, then the front door will open and then I can plumb my escape.

She was elated.

I was allowed out the bedroom.

All the plans were being made, the dress, the gown, the people come to see the bride, and I had to pretend that I was part of this fasad that was going on, but smiling in all the right places.

But what it.

Gave me was a little bit of freedom to plan my escape.

Wow.

And then when did you finally make your escape?

It was when I turned sixteen, when I heard my mother on the phone planning tickets to go to India, and my name was given on the ticket as well.

I knew it was imminent.

I knew they're going to take me now.

So that was when I thought I have to go now.

Every day the pattern was my father worked a night shift, you'll sleep all day.

My mother would leave the house.

My sister was good to school, but I was the one at home.

And on this particular day, I wrote a note for my mother and father, told them how much I loved them, left it in the bedroom.

I didn't take anything with me apart from about two photographs, and I just ran out the front door, literally ran and ran and ran as fast as I could, and I ran to where the boyfriend works a round to him.

So we have to leave, and we have to leave now.

It sounds very Romeo and Juliet, because he opened them up.

Where should we go?

And I said, I don't know.

He's as close your eyes where every finger lands will go there And it landed on Newcastle.

Newcastle.

It was as good a candidate for her and Jessie's Hollywood style getaway as any other, and crucially, it was one hundred and sixty two miles away from just Binder's home in Derby.

I was trying to give my parents the message I don't want to marry a stranger, and I thought this will be the thing that makes them see me running away from home.

My parents reported me missing to the police.

Please did find me.

I begged this police officer, as a sixteen year old girl not to send me home because they're going to marry me off to this stranger.

And I'm begging him and he says, okay, I won't send you home, but you need to bring home.

And my mother runs the phone and I said it's me.

She starts screaming down the phone and I said, Mom, I want to come home, but I won't.

Marry that man.

I want to go to school.

I want to go to college.

And she just responded with you either come home and marry who we say, or from this day forward, you are dead in our eyes.

I hope you give birth to a daughter who does to you what you have done to me.

Then you will know what it feels like to raise a prostitute.

And I said to my mother that, Mom, I'm only just sixteen.

I don't want to marry a stranger.

Please.

I want to come home.

She says, you're dead in our eyes from this day forward.

I was in a red payphone and I slipped down the phone box on the floor, my head in my hands, and Jesse was saying, and it's okay, and I said, she.

Is it okay.

After the break, just Finder tries to adjust to this new reality.

Glad you, glad you, glad you.

I'm glad you.

Just Finder had escaped from home with only the clothes she was wearing.

Her family had disowned her, and she was all alone in a strange city with just her boyfriend Jesse.

She was desperate to find some sort of stability in her life, a home base, so she ended up moving in with Jesse and his family.

Just He was a little bit older than me, and he didn't take advantage of my vulnerability.

He was kind, he looked up to me, and I just felt, well, as well get married now, as will marry him.

So you married the boyfriend who helped you escape.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I was sixteen, and then I fell into a space of thinking, well, if I marry him, my family might accept me, and if I educate myself and get a degree, they might accept me.

I started to do things in the hope that my family would see me as a person of worth and they may accept me.

But they never did because the worst thing for my mother was the fact that this man was from a lower cast.

A cast basically means social class in Indian culture.

Not only have you run away from home and shamed this family, you ran away with somebody from the lowest of the low.

Then, when j just Finder was nineteen, she and Jessie had a daughter together.

But after a few years they realized their relationship just wasn't working.

It wasn't never going to last.

Because look, would we say to any your person today who never kissed the boy though fifteen and a half, get married when you're eighteen?

Me seriously, Yeah, you had a lot of catching up to do in your early twenties.

It makes sense that you know, the wheels came off at points.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I was coping with this shit absence, And my coping mechanism was I remember being a market treasure at the time, and I would take a hip flask with me and I would have my whiskey on the market stall, drinking in the afternoon, and I was numbing myself through painkillers.

I was addicted to painkillers for a whole year.

You know, I can look back now and I get it, But at that time, that numbing is that numbing of those feelings you are not wanting to feel.

It was around this time that just Finder got some awful news.

One day, this woman came to my market stall and she said, you need to ring home because something has happened to your sister.

But she wouldn't tell me what.

So I ran to a pay phone.

My mother answered the phone, and what's the matter, What's happened?

Mom?

My mother said, it's Rabina.

She's died.

And I said how she died?

Mamma, I saw her, you know, just recently.

You know, she's my sister.

What you been dead?

And she said, she set herself on fire and she's committed suicide.

Jas Finder hadn't been in close touch with Rabina for years.

It all went back to what happened when Robina was forced to marry.

Things had changed between them.

Robina had changed.

She was always competitive.

She was almost six foot tall.

She could sew, she could do karate.

I remember Charlie's We used watched Charlie's Angels and she used to do all these charatic kicks and all sorts of things.

And one day she'd put her hand through a window and smashed it accidentally, and then we laughed and left and left knowing we were going to get into trouble, but we didn't care.

I looked up to her.

And then when she disappeared from school at fifteen and half, the absence of her was just immense for me, because she's no longer at school and she's gone, and I didn't want her to go off and get married.

I still wanted her to be my sister, playing and laughing and you know, going to school together.

But now she's getting married, and she had missed almost nine months of her education.

And when she came back from India, she was now somebody's wife, and I didn't recognize her because she looked different.

She had a weddinging on her finger, she wasn't wearing western dress, she was wearing traditional dress.

And she became really serious.

So she didn't mess around anymore, and she was different.

But then she still had to go back to school, and the school never asked where she'd been for almost a year, and then she just disappeared.

Rabina moved to where again, but this time to Germany to start a new life with her husband there.

It was a sort of stop gap before they were meant to return to England.

I missed her immensely and she missed me, and back in those days we'd write to each other.

But then I was going through what I was going through and she wasn't there, and I ran away and that was it.

We never picked up.

Robina ended up in Canada, and from what Robina told her, just Finder believed the marriage was abusive.

After some time, Robina left her husband.

She came back to England with an eight week old baby, and my mother accepted her back.

And slowly we began to talk in secret.

Being hearded, Robina told just Finder she'd met someone new.

Their mother accepted the new relationship, but with one big caveat.

She said to Rabina, you've made your bed.

If anything goes wrong in this marriage, it's up to you to make it work.

But just Finder soon became worried about Robina again, and so she decided to visit her.

Robina and her second husband lived in Leicester, a city in the midlands of England.

Just Finder took the bus there and when the bus pulled into the station.

Robina was already waiting for her.

I hooked her and she went, ah, and I'm like, what's the matter.

It's because all her body was bruised.

Hugging her was hard.

And when I went to the house, I could see all the physical signs, you know, broken windows, things around the house.

And I begged her.

I said, please come with me.

I'll protect you, and she said, I come because I have to think about mom and dad and what people think.

So she's putting this before her own life and independence and safety.

This was the last time just Finder ever saw her sister.

She later learned more details about Robina's death.

Allegedly, Robina had told her husband that she wanted to end her life, but he disregarded it.

He said he didn't think she'd really do anything.

I believe she was in such pain she wanted somebody to listen and hear.

Well.

I think a lot of what Suicyde prevention charities say is that it very rarely is that somebody really truly wants to end their life.

What they want to end is the life they're living right now, the moment they're in.

And it sounds like your sister tried to break out of that life many times, and it just seemed like the world was pushing her back towards it.

The family and community were pushing her back towards it because she went to them for help and they sent her back because of honor, it's dishonorable to leave an abusive partner.

Jaspinda says these were her family's attitudes even after Robina's death.

She heard them say things along these lines at her funeral.

That was a turning point for me in my life, because I thought, why are you putting your life on hold, waiting for this family to accept you, hoping that they will give.

You something to make you feel wanted.

This is wrong.

And then I let go and I accepted that I was the victim, not the perpetrator.

Finally, and I established a charity that is Carmen Havanna that you know was in Rabina's name, a charity that was going to speak out about forced marriages happening in England, child marriages, these abusive crimes, and I wanted to give voice to it.

J just Finda didn't see anyone else talking about this stuff.

She says.

She tried speaking to doctors, health agencies, and the police about force marriage and honor abuse.

She wanted help to start tackling it, but no one she talked to believed it was a widespread problem.

Everybody is telling me this doesn't happen in England.

Show me the.

Statistics, just Winder, So I'm saying I am a statistic.

Rabina is a statistic.

Two people is enough for me.

But I couldn't prove it that it was happening.

Just Findered had it up to hear being told that she was imagining this problem.

She was going to do something about it herself.

And what she did was set up that charity called Carmen Havana, which means peace and Enlightenment.

The idea was that women could call Just Finder and ask for help if they were stuck in a situation like hers or Rabina's.

The phone is in my front room.

You know, I'm a single mom, I'm raising my children and I'm waiting for this phone to ring.

But it wasn't ringing.

Days and weeks went by as Just Finder willed the phone to come to life.

Then it was months, which turned into years.

The only way I could get people to know I'm here was to find a way to keep on talking about it out there in the community, to put out flyers, to be a key fitting instructor.

I'd go to Indian Community Center Pakistani Community Centers doing a keep fit class for women.

But at the end of the class, I would say, this is me.

I was forced him to marriage.

There's a charity now that can help you.

And I kept on doing it and doing it and.

To find ways in, Oh, that's so clever, and then hope for the phone to ring.

Then finally, after around four years, just Vinda's Jane Fonder style gorilla warfare paid off, the phone rang, and.

I'm taking the call, trying to be really serious and everything.

Soon as the phone goes down, I'm jumping up and down the room, jumping up and down with the kids, and the kids are thinking, what is she doing?

Mom?

What happened?

What happened?

You know, and you can't really explain to them what has happened.

And then it gives me that energy.

There's going to be another one, and there's going to be another one.

And in a month we have two calls, and I'm celebrating two calls.

I can imagine how I feel when there's like ten.

Imagine how it feels when there's a hundred calls.

There were hundreds, and then there were thousands.

After the break, just Nder tates Carmen and Havana to the next level.

With every year that passed, more and more women and girls called Carmen and Havana.

The organization grew t exponentially.

After a while, it wasn't just Just Finder in her front room anymore.

There were volunteers and then half a dozen paid workers.

What just Finder had felt in her bones turned out to be true.

There were so many women out there in her position.

In twenty eighteen, j Just Finder decided to step back from running Carmen Evana.

By that point, the charity had reached staggering numbers.

We'd helped over one hundred and eighty five thirsand women had called the helpline wow, you know so and men because I'd started to recognize that men were also affected, predominantly gay men who had been forced into marriages to hide their sexuality.

So the charity today supports men and women, and they deal with over a thousand calls a month currently, and it's still under reported.

Schools are not talking about it.

Homeschool Leena's gone up through the roof here in the UK Muge what's going on behind those closed doors.

Has now handed the running of Carmen Evana over to her daughter Natasha, but she'll always be proud of what she started, inspired by her sister Rabina.

The feeling is of Rabina.

Your death is not in vain, Rabina, You're still with us.

You know, we all leave this planet in the end, and those that go in that way, remembering them is important.

Being able to do something in their name is magnificent.

And you know I.

Would talk about her all the time, so she never left me.

And she's not leaving your minds either.

You know I've introduced you to her.

She's still alive in your memory now.

Yeah, And that's proper honor, isn't it.

Indeed?

Yeah, absolutely, I know that there's a couple examples of some of the girls that you helped.

Would you be able to tell me some of them stories?

Gosh, there are so many stories.

In one of them, there was a young woman and by this time I had developed relationships with the police and all sorts of organizations.

And my mobile rang and it was very early in the morning, and it was a girl and she said, I need your help.

I need your help.

I need your help.

I've got an opportunity.

I need to go.

I need to go now.

She's in a room.

There's bars on the window.

This is in London, and they've not locked the front door.

This time.

I can go, but I'm scared.

So I talked her through the whole thing.

Describe where you are.

Coming down the stairs.

She goes up.

She opens the front door and she goes fucking hell.

And I said, what's the matter, what's the matter.

She goes the light.

The light, Oh my word.

She wasn't used to light because she'd been kept in this room.

She was struggling to walk because because she'd been in this room, she hadn't moved her legs as much.

She was wobbling and she was nervous, so she was shaking.

She sat somewhere, she described where she was.

Stay on the phone, I said, and there's another phone.

I'm going to call the police and they're going to come and get you.

A police officer picked the girl up.

Some time later, Just Finder met up with her and drove her to a refuge.

And I said to her, how did you find the helpline?

And she went, fuck me, oh no, and she was this really cockney blond girl and she goes Mary Claire.

I read on the back page a whole article about you is under my bed and I say it's okay.

You know you hear now you say that's okay.

Anyway, she's in the refuge.

And that was when I started to get phone calls from her family saying, you've got a daughter, we know what you do, We're come to get you, we know where you live.

And then death threats started to happen, the threat there was a bomb under my car, and the threats didn't stop anyway.

To cut a long story short, with this young girl, almost eighteen months had passed and one day she just said can we meet up for a coffee And I said, yeah, sure, I'll meet you at the train station.

And she came and I'm looking for this person and I.

Thought it's her.

And there was this tall, young, beautiful.

Woman, head down, big high heels, doftering on these heels right, and I'm thinking, is that you?

And I'm looked at her.

She's there and she is full of life, and she's expressing herself and she's telling me everything she's doing.

And it was wonderful to witness that she'd embraced her independence with the support.

Yes, managing it in terms of I don't have family, but you know, we have support around that.

But she is me all those years ago, you know, and she's got there quicker.

She can see and hear people just like her, and it's given her hope and she's rebuilding her life.

Yeah, you're speeding up that process for so many women and girls because they've got examples to follow and support networks to fall into.

It.

Absolutely.

To this day, just Finder is separated from her family.

Although her parents have now died, her siblings won't talk to her.

They still think she dishonored them.

But towards the end of her parents' lives, just Finder was able to find some small moments of connection with them.

Mom was very young when she passed away.

When Beina passed away, within a year, my mother became ill.

She went quiet, she didn't speak.

Within eighteen months.

She's in a hospice and I remember going to this hospice when it's dark, nobody can hear me.

My mother was this formidable woman.

You know, she was five foot seven eight, She was strong as an ox, and she was this character that you did not cross a Mum was in her bed in the front room and she was very weak, and I walked into the room and she says that in Punjabbie, I'm sorry it smells in here, and I said it doesn't smell them, it's okay, and.

She said, I really need to have a wash.

So I remember taking her upstairs for a bath, and I remember taking her out the bath and lifting there like a child.

She said, this is wrong.

You're the child, I'm the mother.

And that was such a sad moment.

But I looked at her and I thought, all that time, we've lost But I get you.

You know, Mommy, you were a victim, and the perpetrators are the family and the community that allowed this to happen because she didn't have the freedom to break free from that.

She was only doing what she thought was best.

Doesn't make it right, But I get that.

And it was the same for my father.

Just Finder's dad died years after her mother.

In that time, just Finder had started Carmen Havanna, but she'd also gone to university.

I begged my father to come to my graduation and he didn't.

When my father passed away, he made me an executor of his will never told me, and my sisters were horrified because I was the sister that discided the family in death.

My father spoke a thousand words because nobody could touch him then, and he's saying, I trust you to do the right thing.

And remember walking through the house I grew up in, and in the corner was my graduation picture in a frame.

You'd miss it, he'd put it on a wall, but he was inwardly proud.

I have the love and the conviction that I know that deep down somewhere my parents love me deeply.

But they were suffocated on such a level by those around them that they were not able to demonstrate that.

There are loads of millions of women out there that are struggling to challenge this.

And then I get this, but it's never going to change unless you do that.

Course.

I think that kind of gets me onto one question that I wanted to ask you.

I think a lot of white, Western centered feminists struggle to talk about this topic of forced marriage because they worry about making comment or passing judgment on cultures and races that aren't their own, and everyone's kind of very sensitive to the touch.

What would you say to people who kind of feel like that.

I know that I get a little.

Bit nervous to talk about these things, and I just never want to say the wrong.

Thing, absolutely, and I never want to say the wrong thing.

But just remember this cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable.

So when I'm a sixteen year old in school or a fourteen year old school and I go missing, if the attitude is it's what they do, then that person is gone.

But if the attitude was, why is that young girl missing, that Indian girl missing, that Pakistani girl missing, somebody needs to check to make sure she's okay.

And if somebody's saying yeah, but I don't want to offend them, you know, it could be the culture.

We don't want to be called a racist.

We're going to be careful.

No, hang on, let's think about this person missing.

There's a city in West Yorkshire where there are predominantly Asian families in Bradford, and over one hundred young girls weren't missing off a school role in one academic year.

These were young Asian females age fifteen to sixteen.

Nobody asked where they were and I was up in arms about this, and the point I made was this if over a hundred white British females went missing off for school role in this country, gone don't know where they are, we would.

Be jumping up and down everywhere.

We didn't ask the question about these girls because of it were Pakistani, they were in the attitude of the teachers was it's what they do and that is sadly, it's still an attitude that exists today.

Yeah.

I campaign for the criminalization of forced marriage in this country for ten years and forced marriage is now a criminal offense in the UK.

The police to say other countries are followed.

And I was such a strong campaigner to make forced marriage a criminal offense because I could never say to my mother when I was fourteen, you can't do this and it's against the law, but they can now.

Thank you so much to just Finder Sanghera for this conversation, but mainly well for doing like everything that she's done.

What an amazing woman.

Just Finder has continued to work on behalf of Women since stepping back from Carmen Havana.

As I record this in twenty twenty five, she's working with Harold's as their independent Survivor Advocate in the wake of the huge Mohammed al Fayed sexual assault scandal.

In the past, she's held a similar role with the Church of England.

Jas Finder says she's now also training to become a therapist in her sixties, whereas I'm exhausted just at the prospect of taking my dog out for a walk around the block.

For all this work.

In February twenty twenty five, Jafinder was knighted by King Charles himself, so she's now officially a Dame.

Go just Finder.

If you want to find out more about Carmen Havana, check out the link in our show notes.

If you're in the UK and you want to reach their helpline, their number is eight hundred five nine nine nine two four seven.

If you're based in the US, you can contact Unchained at Last, who do similar kinds.

Of work over in the States.

Their website is also linked in the show notes.

If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed.

Do check them out, and please do spread the word and tell your friends about us.

We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriend's Gang.

Next time on the Girlfriend's Spotlight Phyllis saves the people from poisoning.

They told me that they had noticed that the air had become very toxic.

They could not breathe.

The water they're sipped from the industry into the RuvA had changed.

The taste of the water distant metallic.

This season, we're supporting the charity Womenkind worldwide.

They do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements to strengthen and grow.

If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe, you can go to Womenkind dot org dot UK.

The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.

The show is hosted by me Anna Sinfield.

This episode was written and produced by Jake o'taivich.

Our assistant for is Lucy Carr.

Our researcher is Zaiana Yusuf.

The editor is Hannah Marshall.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers.

Production management from Joe Savage, Srie Houston and Charlotte Wolfe.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempsen.

Music supervision by Jkotivich, Nicholas Alexander, and Anna Sinfield.

Original music composed by Louisa.

Gerstein and Jemma Freeman.

The series artwork was designed by Christina lemcol Willard Foxton is creative director of Development and Special thanks to Katrina Norvel, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carlie Frankel and the whole team at w M E