There were 6,000 women there, and when I spoke there were women outside in the hallway waiting for me because they couldn't get in. We had to take the furniture out because they wanted to hear. When I was done they said, “Please don't stop talking about it. Where we come from we can't go back if we talk about it. So continue talking about honour-based violence and how it differs from other forms of violence.”
I've just been invited to go to the Netherlands to represent Canada to talk about how it differs. Why do we have to talk about it? It's because the police officers and the social workers who help these women need to know the cultural background and the context because if the risk assessment is flawed, then the safety plans are flawed. We've had a lot of problems with not doing accurate risk assessments.
I know from my experience that I couldn't explain it even when I spoke English because I was protecting my dad, who was a Seventh-day Adventist church pastor. Everybody knew him in Ontario. I couldn't explain why it was more important to protect my dad and my ex-husband and that it was okay for me to die. Do you see what I mean? So, it has taken me 30 years to find those words and say this is how a woman might feel, and this is the question you want to ask her and not perpetuate the guilt and shame that she's feeling. Sometimes service providers don't know that. That's my focus.