The Face Behind The Face
Two Asian women came to the enquiry desk with Bushra. They had found her wandering the streets of Bigmarket, obviously lost, begging passing women to help her find the Police. Many walked past on the other side and then luckily for Bushra, she ran into Sameena and her sister. Sameena works for the council as an outreach worker in the local Asian community.
I get a call to the front desk as the Public Enquiry Officer has correctly divined that this one is going to need a detective. I make my way downstairs and find Bushra in one of the private rooms just off the public lobby. Its a soulless blocky little room lit with a fluorescent strip full of dead insects, floored with plastic easy clean tiles and furnished with cheap office furniture dating from the early 80’s. Although the station has been non smoking for a good long time now, you can still smell last years cigarettes in here.
For a first account, Bushra’s words are relayed to me by Sameena and it boils down to this, she has been held prisoner, as a domestic slave, since her marriage. Bushra has been married to Saeed for 18 months during which she has never left the house alone. They are cousins, married in India and Bushra was very much what is jokingly referred to as a “Village Virgin.” She doesn’t have English as a second language. She doesn’t have a second language. Save for the fact of the marriage, she might just as well have been trafficked. Now she lives in a house in Bigmarket with her husband, father-in-law, sister-in-law and fatally her mother-in-law. She says that she has been cut, beaten and burned by her mother-in-law most days of her married life. Any hesitation in obeying orders, any dissent, any sign of having a will or a personality and Bushra says she is savagely assaulted. The rest of the family do nothing to stop it. When the family go out, they lock her in the cellar. Today, for the first time in 18 months they have forgotten to lock the door and Bushra has run. Past the end of the road, she has no mental map so she has thrown herself on the mercy of passing strangers. She cannot tell us her home address.
Next stop Bigmarket General Hospital and sure enough Bushra has healed burns, current burns, badly healed fractures, unhealed fractures, what looks a lot like knife scars and more bruises than have had a stick shaken at them. She provides a statement to an interpreter and she is whisked off to a specialist Asian women’s refuge who tell me that the only unusual thing about Bushra’s story is that she got away.
Next morning I drive to the family home with DC Michelle Cropper and Mommy Dearest knows exactly what its all about and runs the “Dying Swan” routine on us soon after arrest. DC Cropper walks to the open front door and starts saying in a very loud voice how we will have to come back and arrest this woman when she gets better. Shame is a cruel tool to use but it gets the job done and a miracle recovery occurs before the neighbours can hear. A search of the address discloses the hockey stick that is the favoured weapon. There is a cellar and it does lock. The interview is a denial that will not save this woman from conviction and imprisonment at Crown Court. The problem is, looking back at the huge scald scar on mother-in-laws neck and chin, and thinking about the mangled look of some of her fingers, I can’t help but wonder if what I have seen was just the latest incident of a history that keeps repeating itself at an interval of 20 years.
Have you met my daughter-in-law?
Heartbreaking…
Poweful stuff Nightjack.
sigh
we reguarly get abanonded 999 calls from the same address
we go there and no one has any idea why we’re there, we’re met by blank faces and a story that ‘one of the children must have done it’
occasionally though the girl who really made the call will be there alone and she will speak to us (usually she’s one of the blank faces). She’s given a couple of statements in the past and is in a similar situation but each time it looks like she’s leaving, she retracts and goes back. We refer all the jobs to the relevant people but just can’t do enough to make it safe for her and there isn’t enough for us to raid the address and do it the way we’d all like to!
I suppose the fear and the shame of being ostracised from her community is to large a price to pay.
I really hope one day she’ll be brave enough to make the step rather than being brave enough to stay.
A DC dealing with this ?
Normally this would come down to us lowly wooden tops who to be fair have on average less than 2 yrs in. I shudder to think how this would have been dealt with by our lot.
Hand on heart I can say that if this ever happened then luckly my releif have a couple of old timers ( not jesting but 6 yrs in and 5 yrs in each) who know how to deal with this kind if shit and they would probably nick the whole family.
Angry Dave – I’d nick the whole family too, mate.
We, the establishment, is too scared to tackle the real issues affecting.
Bushra….
Strange is’nt it. This uncaring force (according to some) who are instutionally racist (according to a small number indeed), are the first official group she asks for when she eventually finds a member of the public who will listen.
You can feel from nightjack’s words his anger and compassion, and his satisfaction at having played his part in righting a wrong.
All too often in the current clmate the focus is on some stupid performance target (strangely, i remember there were performance targets evn in the 60’s, the jacks were expected to hit a detection level (no comments about how please), and even i as a probationer had targets – so many summons files, of certain types, the number of small crime arrests and case files you put together).
Is’nt it about time those on the front line were able to get back to these basics, and i include those few jacks still on something resembling the spike in front line?
You only have to read this to see the will to do the basic job well is not dead, despite the ravings of politicians of most political parties.
keep it up, a lot of us are relying on you.
“Strange is’nt it. This uncaring force (according to some) who are instutionally racist (according to a small number indeed), are the first official group she asks for when she eventually finds a member of the public who will listen.” That’s because the poor girl didn’t have enough English to ask for “A bilingual local authority accredited community and resettlement social worker”
Twining has hit the nail on the head when he says the establishment is scared to tackle the real issues. Bushra’s basic problem was that she came from a culture rooted in mediaeval ideas of servility and submission for women. Those values have no place in 21st Century Britain, but our caring, sharing multicultural Government doesn’t truly have the balls to speak out loud and meaningfully against them, let alone act. They twitter in the margins and “hope that the community itself will resolve the matter”, well Mrs Blears, the community bloody well won’t.
West Country JP just because Night Jack cares this does not mean we should blow the term institutional racism out of touch. The only thing that is strange is the ego of those that have tried to implement Macpherson. There has been a massive facade. Please don’t take this personally.
Race cases have been fought and won through struggle. Forces have never once admitted racism of their own accord. Why? Because managers fear their own prejudices.
The implementation of Macpherson has been led by a desire to progress carers, not a desire to understand what racism really is. So the problem may not be at root level, but more a branch level. You are right about the other matters. We twitter, not all of us. NighJack, I fear is, one of a few. He would stand besides me. Most won’t
(1) MANAGERS ASK US attend diversity courses where there are generalist trainers who have not EXPERIENCED MARGINALISATION, YET THE ORGANISATION GETS THEM TO FRONT TRAINING. AND NOW THEY ARE EXPERTS. THEY THINK THEY ARE EXPERTS.
(2) OUR LEADERS DON’T DO THIS TRAINING.
(3) IF PUSH CAME TO SHOVE WE MAY ALL ACT LIKE IMMIGRANTS TO MAYBE.
(4) I HAVE SEEN THE OTHER SIDE INSIDE BPA’S ALSO.I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE NATION OF ISLAM, NOR WITH PEOPLE THAT DON’T PRACTISE ANTI RACISM.
(5) WHAT’S BUSHRA’S LIFE WORTH? WELL IT’S A BALANCING ACT BETWEEN PRACTISING CULTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
(6) WHAT ABOUT HONOUR KILLINGS? WHAT ABOUT FORCED MARRIAGE?
Did I say carers, whoops, I meant careers.
It’s one culture verses another. At some point, one will win. The quicker, Women of all cultures are valued as equal citizens of the world, the better.
Corrupt, violent and dangerous men, with one-dimensional moral reasoning have, for too long, felt entitled to dominate and oppress women from far too many cultures.
I work (as a man) in the Area of Domestic Abuse. I sit on Countywide fora and stratagy groups and work directly with men who offend in this way.
I have worked in three places with high Asian populations. I have yet to work with one Asian Man on a Domestic Abuse Programme. Why is this ?
Because, as Nightjack so aptly points out, it’s not something talked about in polite circles.
Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest Domestic Abuse is being sanctioned in Christian Culture too.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=203
I think your blog is very thought-provoking
JVIP
Which Asian group are we talking about? Hindu? Sikh? Muslim?Chinese? The words corrupt, violent, (emotionally), and dangerous men and women….could apply to some of the worst racists I have met also. Some are just academic racists, I don’t mean here, I mean in life. Their’s may not be physical violence, but it’s emotional all right. I agree NJ is a good person, but he knows I think that.
Twining
All sorts really. Apologies for using “Asian”
In Slough, 29 percent of population Muslims and Sikhs. Some Hindus as well but mostly posh and not coming to the notice of CJS.
In Reading, Muslims mainly. Main crime, Drink impaired Driving and Benefit Fraud.
More lately Gloucester and Swindon. Mostly Muslims. A different vibe here where Communities are less integrated and (increasingly) politically conscious.
Many, having little English…..a bit like Bushra.
JVIP
Biggest shock as a police operator is seeing 90% of domestics coming from asian/muslim households,the so called perfect arranged marriages that us “westerns will never understand due to our lack of values”….our nights are always the same …3:00am,4:00am and they sob “police please,he will kill me,hurry”.