- 2 days ago
- #truecrime
- #survivalstory
Today on Unfiltered Stories we are hearing from Jasvinder. To survive a forced marriage and be able to tell your story like this takes a sort of courage that few possess.
If you want to follow Jasvinder, you can find her here:
IG - jasvinder.sanghera7
Facebook - Jasvinder Sanghera
Website - jasvindersanghera.com
#truecrime #survivalstory
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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If you want to follow Jasvinder, you can find her here:
IG - jasvinder.sanghera7
Facebook - Jasvinder Sanghera
Website - jasvindersanghera.com
#truecrime #survivalstory
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
Snapchat âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, my name is Jasmine de Sanghera. I'm a survivor of a forced marriage. I was born in England. I
00:06am one of seven sisters and I have one brother. So growing up as a young Asian female in the
00:11household, we were taught that we had to be seen, not heard.
00:17Our lives were very much monitored and controlled, indirect, opposite, I should say, to my brother, who actually was allowed
00:27immense freedom and he could express himself.
00:30I watched how, in order of age, my sisters would be taken out of school at the age of 15,
00:37showing a photograph of a man somewhere in India and be told they would be marrying this man.
00:42None of them protested. And what I understand now, looking back, is that they were conditioned to believe that this
00:51was part of their religion, their culture, their tradition.
00:54They didn't question it because it's like grooming. So they'd already been taught that this was normal.
01:01My sisters all had horrific marriages. They experienced domestic abuse and being little and going to the house where they
01:09were with my mother, thinking that she was going to go and rescue them.
01:13But actually, she talked to them, encouraged them to stay with the perpetrator for the sake of the family's honour.
01:19When you think about arranged marriage and forced marriage, they are very clearly, distinctly different.
01:27One is where you have to give consent. And anything that is forced implies without consent.
01:35So a mother or father may identify somebody who they think is a suitable match for their child.
01:41And they ask them, would you like to marry this person?
01:45Where the issue is, is where an arranged marriage can become forced and then duress becomes a factor.
01:52That's when you see the family psychologically abusing the person.
01:57They can be physically abusing the person. They can threaten the person.
02:01They use force to get them to go through the marriage.
02:04As females, the honour of the family is invested in us, in our sexuality.
02:11There's a preference of males to females.
02:13I came in from school one day, I was 14 years old and my mother sat me down.
02:18She showed me a photograph of this man and she straight away said, you know, this is the man that
02:23you're going to marry.
02:24And I remember looking at this picture as a 14 year old thinking, ugh, he's shorter than me.
02:30I couldn't comprehend marrying a man and he's older than me.
02:34And I said to my mum, no.
02:37My mum was very calm to start with and she said, you've been promised to him from the age of
02:43eight, you will not dishonor this family and say no.
02:47Picking a husband in a family is quite easy actually because, I mean, the first thing they do is they
02:52ain't sure that, you know, the person is the same ethnicity, religion, social standing, caste matters.
02:59My family was Sikh, so Sikh family members will look to other Sikh family members.
03:05All my sisters were married to men in rural villages in India and the passage to the UK was something
03:12that was inviting.
03:13It gave my family greater status because then the next thing we would be expected to do is to sponsor
03:20that person to become a British citizen.
03:21Now, that carries a weight in gold in the UK.
03:25As soon as you get 15 and a half, almost 16, that's when they take you to India to marry
03:31you off.
03:31So they took me out of education and I was taken to my room upstairs, a bedroom, and the padlock
03:40was put on the outside of the door and I was locked in that room.
03:42That time of my life is so dark that I attempted to take my life on one occasion.
03:50There was nothing I could do to escape other than to agree to the marriage.
03:56I agreed to the marriage purely to buy about my freedom because I knew that if I said yes, I
04:03could be out of that room and the room would be locked.
04:06When I was allowed the freedom around the house, my mother started to plan the wedding very quickly.
04:11It was the most bizarre experience for me because I had to play the role of pretending to take part
04:17in this.
04:18And being in that charade was basically enabling my mother to trust me more and more.
04:24And then I escaped.
04:27I ran away from home at the age of 16 in the end.
04:30My parents reported me missing to the police.
04:32We were homeless for the first few weeks.
04:34We'd sleep on park benches, sleep in the car, etc.
04:37But we were tracked down by the police because of the number plate of the car.
04:42He was a police officer, you know, over 42 years ago with a young ageing girl begging him not to
04:49send her back home.
04:49I was saying, please, my parents are going to force me into marriage.
04:52Please don't send me back.
04:53He said, I won't tell your family where you are and the condition that you ring home and you tell
04:58them you are safe and well.
04:59It's a call that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
05:02I said, Mum, you know, it's me.
05:04And that was it.
05:06You've shamed us.
05:07You've shamed us.
05:08You have shamed this family.
05:10People spit at me in the street.
05:12How could you do this to your family?
05:14You know, you are no better than, her words, a prostitute.
05:19You know, I hope you give birth to a daughter who does to you what you've done to me.
05:23Then you will know what it feels like to raise a daughter such as you.
05:27And I begged her.
05:28I said, Mum, I'm only just 16.
05:30I want to come home.
05:31I just don't want to marry that man.
05:33I want to go to school.
05:34I was talking as quickly as I could.
05:36And that was it.
05:37It ended the conversation.
05:38She said, you either come home and marry who we say or from this day forward, you are now dead
05:44in our eyes.
05:45Sadly, that was the case.
05:47You know, I'd write letters.
05:48I'd ring.
05:49The phone would go down on me.
05:50I felt that I had done this to them.
05:53All my sisters had done it the right way.
05:56Did I love my parents any less that I could do this to them?
05:59Because they'd made me feel so guilty.
06:03They disowned me, not just me, my children as well and my grandchildren.
06:06So my family haven't spoken to me for 42 years.
06:11It was later on that I had a secret relationship with my sister Robina.
06:17And my mother and father did talk to me later on in their lives.
06:21But in secret, it was never in full view of the family.
06:24And we shared moments, but we never, ever reconciled.
06:29Robina was the one who was forced to marry when she was 15 and a half.
06:33And she suffered an abusive marriage in that marriage.
06:37And she actually managed to leave him.
06:41My mother accepted her back.
06:43And later on in her life, she married for love.
06:46Now, I say it like that because when you have an arranged marriage, you don't marry for love.
06:51You're made to grow to love the person.
06:53That's how it works.
06:54My parents accepted it because he ticked all the boxes.
06:57But within that marriage, she suffered horrendous domestic abuse.
07:02She was telling my mother, my mother was sending her back because that was always a pattern.
07:06But it was harder for Robina because my mother would then say, well, you chose him.
07:11My mother sent this communitally just to see my sister Robina.
07:15And he again reinforced to her that she had a duty to stay with this man for the sake of
07:22the family.
07:23What he means by that is for the sake of the family's reputation.
07:26So Robina went back to him.
07:30And this woman came to my market stall on a Sunday.
07:32And she said to me, you need to ring home.
07:35Something has happened.
07:36And I said, well, what's happened?
07:37She goes, no, I know your family.
07:38And you need to ring home and ask them.
07:40My mother answered the phone.
07:42And I said, mum, you know, what's happened?
07:45And she said, it's Robina.
07:48You know, she's died.
07:50She's dead.
07:51And I said, what?
07:52What do you mean she's dead?
07:54She's died.
07:55Well, I don't know what you mean.
07:56I saw her three days ago.
07:59What do you mean?
08:00And she said, she set herself on fire and she's committed suicide.
08:06And I said, you know, I'm coming to the house.
08:10And my mother said, don't come here.
08:14Don't show your face.
08:16But I know you, you will come.
08:18So you can come when it's dark and nobody sees your face.
08:22And I thought in that moment, even now, you've lost a daughter in such a horrific way.
08:29And you're still telling me not to show my face.
08:34And this is the thing that really turned it all around for me from feeling that I was the bad
08:41guy.
08:41I no longer felt it on this day when she said it was better for Robina to take her life
08:47than for her to dishonor her family and divorce her husband.
08:53And that was it.
08:54It was Robina that gave me a voice.
08:56It was Robina that enabled me to have the courage to come out and speak out.
09:03There's death by fire called saddi.
09:06And what that is, I'm not suggesting this is a tradition because it's not.
09:11There is a tradition, a barbaric practice, I'll call it, in India, whereby when your husband dies, as a woman,
09:19you're meant to sacrifice yourself by throwing yourself alive on the fire.
09:23There is something symbolic about dying by fire because it's deemed as a personal sacrifice.
09:31I still went to the funeral.
09:33My sister's face couldn't even be shown because she was completely burnt.
09:38And I looked around the room and I thought, you all have blood on your hands.
09:42You know, the community leader was there.
09:43The family were there.
09:45You all knew what she was going through.
09:48And yet not one of you came to rescue her.
09:51How many more Robinas or Jasvindas are there out there?
09:55There are thousands of us, but we are just not hearing us.
09:57And I have to say that my mother, when Robina died, her health just deteriorated completely.
10:05Ironically, that's when she let me back into her life, albeit in secret.
10:09And then quickly, my mother got cancer.
10:11She became sicker.
10:13And I remember visiting her in the hospice on the day when the nurse had said, she is going to
10:20die today.
10:21I remember saying to my mum, I'm not going to leave your bedside today.
10:27And my mother told me I had to leave because my sisters and my brother will be coming soon.
10:33And then her secret will be out, like she's been talking to me.
10:37And I'm thinking, you're dying.
10:39And you're telling me to go still.
10:42And then my sisters came in and my brother came in.
10:46And they were horrified and they were saying, why is she here?
10:49To my mum, even though they knew she was dying.
10:51And my mother just put her hand up very weakly and said, leave it.
10:55And I was right at the top of the bed.
10:56And I speak fluent Punjabi.
10:59I say that because my mother's last dying words in Punjabi were, Rebina, I'm coming to you.
11:04My mother was in her early 50s when she died.
11:06You know, and she carried that weight of my sister silently.
11:11But she couldn't express that.
11:13When my father died, he was in his 70s when my father died.
11:17He actually made me and my sister an executor of his will.
11:22I remember going into my father's bedroom.
11:24And in the corner of the wall, you'd miss it if you were not looking for it.
11:30There was a framed picture of me in my graduation gown.
11:33So, you know, I knew he was proud of me.
11:36He couldn't tell me that.
11:37I have never regretted my choice of saying no to a forced marriage.
11:42Absolutely not.
11:43That conviction of not regretting it gets stronger every single day.
11:49As I watch my children growing up, I look at them and think, you know, they have their freedom and
11:55independence because of the decision their mother made when she was 16.
12:00The choices you are making right now will affect the future.
12:04And you decide this is going to be my life now because I do deserve better.
12:09And you learn to live that life.
12:10I didn't actually speak out publicly until my father passed away.
12:15I decided to educate myself.
12:17I went to university when I was 28.
12:19Then I set up the charity.
12:21Karma Nirvana was the name for the charity because I wanted a charity that gave people a sense of peace,
12:29which is karma, and enlightenment, which is nirvana.
12:33Through informed choices, you are enlightened.
12:35So Karma Nirvana is a charity that supports both men and women.
12:39It supports victims and survivors who are fleeing forced marriages, honour-based abuse.
12:45One of the things that I'm also really proud of is the National Day of Remembrance.
12:50So I lobbied and campaigned for a national day to honour the memories of those women who were murdered in
12:57what I call dishonourable killings.
12:59Those people who commit these crimes perceive themselves to be dishonoured.
13:03So the motivation for the crime is honour-related.
13:06So that's how we use the word honour.
13:09The persistence that was required for me was where I was putting my pain, loss of rubina, my own experiences,
13:16the injustice.
13:17I had to put it somewhere, and it was in that charity.
13:20The charity is nearly 30 years old now, so the rest is history.
13:24The helpline that was in my front room is now a national helpline funded by government.
13:28It receives over 900 calls a month.
13:31We'd received over 190,000 calls to the helpline.
13:34I worked to change law, so forced marriage became a criminal offence after a 13-year campaign.
13:41One of the things that I wanted to do was write a book.
13:44So the title of my book is Shame, and the reason why it's called Shame is because my whole life
13:50upbringing was underpinned by this concept.
13:54But I actually called it Shame because I was reclaiming the word.
13:58And what I mean by that is I was saying my honour is your shame.
14:04It's for anybody that has experienced rejection, divorce, domestic abuse, childbirth, being homeless, uneducated, then educated.
14:15It's all those things.
14:16It's got to speak to everybody.
14:17There are millions of people out there that are affected by these issues, who are still out there, not knowing
14:24that there is support available.
14:27Not hearing women who have come out of it and come out the other end.
14:31You know, the hope.
14:33There are other ways.
14:35There are people there who understand.
14:37We are breaking a silence.
14:38I know that somebody could be watching this right now and be affected by what I'm saying.
14:43I want to tell you that you are the victim.
14:46You are not doing this to your family by asserting yourself and taking a stand.
14:52Take some time out to think about what you want because it's possible.
14:56Please don't be silent.
14:58There's help available.
14:59And, you know, tell somebody what you're going through.
15:03The only way we can make this a better space for people who are affected by it is by spreading
15:09the word until it spreads like wildflowers.
15:13So let's keep speaking.
15:15And thank you.
15:16I really appreciate you listening.
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