October 13, 2025 • 46 mins
When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped.
And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same.
Related resources
Karma Nirvana - https://karmanirvana.org.uk/
Unchained At Last (a US-based NGO) https://www.unchainedatlast.org/get-help/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hih listener.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
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,
(00:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We all thought Robina was fifteen and a half when
her marriage was arranged by their parents.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
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,
(01:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Neither Rabina nor just Finder wanted to marry like this,
but Rabina felt she had no choice.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
To do this.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Just Finder, on the other hand, saw it differently.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
At least, Just Spinder was part of a family in
which this scenario had played itself out generation after generation.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Today, on the show, the story of.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
How just Spinder challenged the way things had always been
in her family and her community.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
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
(03:09):
women women.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Today just finda redefines honor.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I was wondering as a small girl, what was your
understanding of what the future held for you?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
What did you see ahead?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
For me, this was the role of women.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
There was also another, much bleaker responsibility that just Finder's
mum wanted to drill into her daughters.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You don't dishonor a family, we were told by leaving
an abusive partner.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
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
(05:21):
it to calm it down. And that was a consistent
message that I heard from the age of eleven years old.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That is a tough one to hear growing up. Did
you talk to your sisters about how they felt.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
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
(06:02):
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
(06:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Wow. Wow, and the bar is so low.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Tell me a little bit more about your parents' specific
kind of roles within your family dynamic.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
What about your mom?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
So Mom came.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
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
(07:21):
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.
(07:43):
Everybody wants a boy, you know, the boy passes on
the family name. And so for my mother, she would
have carried that weight.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
She cooked. She was very quiet.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
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.
(08:15):
She would say to me, well, I was married, you
know when I was fifteen. Why are you any different?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, So she was.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Carrying on what she knew. Otherwise she wouldn't have had
the acceptance of the community.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
What was school life.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Like for you then? I imagine that you went to
a school that was mixed culturally. What was that like?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
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
(08:59):
craved that world where you could just be without somebody
telling you that it was wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And then there were perms.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
All the popular girls at school had a perm, and naturally,
Just Finder also wanted some of that chemically treated pool.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Do you think you were going to get away with that.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The freedom of wanting to do this, wanting to be like.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I remember my younger sister saying to.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
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
(10:37):
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
(10:59):
go back home. They allowed me to go back.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
My goodness, did your sister not get it?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
From my mum as well.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, but my dad gave me this sense of it's
okay to be different.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And that's what I.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Then, when just Finder was fourteen, her mother finally sat
her down to break the news Just Finder had always
known was coming.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I came home from school one day, joyfully skipping home from.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
School, etc.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
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
(12:41):
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
(13:04):
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
(13:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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
(13:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
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
(14:39):
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
(15:03):
education and locked me in a room with a padlock
on the outside of the door because they found out
about this boy.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
That is so shameful.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Just Finder stayed locked in her room like a princess
in a tower for several days.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It felt like an eternity.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Just Finder knew that there was a boy eager to
help her run away.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
His name was Jesse, but he couldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If she stayed trapped in her room, her chance at
freedom was slipping away. Then she had an idea.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
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
(15:55):
that I was part of this fasad that was going on,
but smiling in all the right places.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
But what it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Gave me was a little bit of freedom to plan
my escape.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wow. And then when did you finally make your escape?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
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
(16:32):
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,
(16:55):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Where should we go? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
He's as close your eyes where every finger lands will
go there And it landed on Newcastle.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Newcastle.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
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
(17:50):
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,
(18:11):
I want to come home, but I won't.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Marry that man. I want to go to school. I
want to go to college.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
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
(18:40):
mother that, Mom, I'm only just sixteen. I don't want
to marry a stranger.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Please.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Is it okay.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
After the break, just Finder tries to adjust to this
new reality.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Glad you, glad you, glad you.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I'm glad you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Just He was a little bit older than me, and
he didn't take advantage of my vulnerability.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He was kind, he looked up to me, and I
just felt, well, as well get married now, as will
marry him.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
So you married the boyfriend who helped you escape.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
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
(20:21):
accept me. But they never did because the worst thing
for my mother was the fact that this man was
from a lower cast.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
A cast basically means social class in Indian culture.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Not only have you run away from home and shamed
this family, you ran away with somebody from the lowest
of the low.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
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.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
It wasn't never going to last.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
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
(21:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It was around this time that just Finder got some
awful news.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
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?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
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?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And she said, she set herself on fire and she's
committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
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
(22:56):
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
(23:17):
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
(23:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
She came back to England with an eight week old baby,
and my mother accepted her back.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
And slowly we began to talk in secret.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Being hearded, Robina told just Finder she'd met someone new.
Their mother accepted the new relationship, but with one big caveat.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And I begged her. I said, please come with me.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
I believe she was in such pain she wanted somebody
to listen and hear. Well.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
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
(26:40):
the world was pushing her back towards it.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Jaspinda says these were her family's attitudes even after Robina's death.
She heard them say things along these lines at her funeral.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You something to make you feel wanted. This is wrong.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
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
(27:46):
abusive crimes, and I wanted to give voice to it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
J just Finda didn't see anyone else talking about this stuff.
She says.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
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.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Everybody is telling me this doesn't happen in England. Show
me the.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
But it wasn't ringing.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Days and weeks went by as Just Finder willed the
phone to come to life.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Then it was months, which turned into years.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
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.
(29:26):
There's a charity now that can help you. And I
kept on doing it and doing it and.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
To find ways in, Oh, that's so clever, and then
hope for the phone to ring.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Then finally, after around four years, just Vinda's Jane Fonder
style gorilla warfare paid off, the phone rang, and.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I'm taking the call, trying to be really serious and everything.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
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?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Mom?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (30:02):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I can imagine how I feel when there's like ten.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Imagine how it feels when there's a hundred calls.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
There were hundreds, and then there were thousands. After the break,
just Nder tates Carmen and Havana to the next level.
(30:53):
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
(31:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
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,
(31:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
The feeling is of Rabina.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Being able to do something in their name is magnificent.
And you know I.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Would talk about her all the time, so she never
left me.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
And she's not leaving your minds either. You know I've
introduced you to her. She's still alive in your memory now.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, And that's proper honor, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Indeed?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah, absolutely, I know that there's a couple examples of
some of the girls that you helped.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Would you be able to tell me some of them stories?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Gosh, there are so many stories.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And my mobile rang and it was very early in
the morning, and it was a girl and she said,
I need your help.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
This time.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
She goes the light.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
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
(34:14):
and they're going to come and get you.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
A police officer picked the girl up. Some time later,
Just Finder met up with her and drove her to
a refuge.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
And I said to her, how did you find the helpline?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
You know you hear now you say that's okay. Anyway,
she's in the refuge.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
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,
(35:07):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Thought it's her. And there was this tall, young, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
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
(35:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
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.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
It. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
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
(36:58):
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
(37:19):
said it doesn't smell them, it's okay, and.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
She said, I really need to have a wash.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So I remember taking her upstairs for a bath, and
I remember taking her out the bath and lifting there
like a child.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
She said, this is wrong. You're the child, I'm the mother.
And that was such a sad moment.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
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
(38:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I begged my father to come to my graduation and
he didn't.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
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
(38:51):
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
(39:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Course.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
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,
(39:55):
and everyone's kind of very sensitive to the touch.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
What would you say to people who kind of feel
like that. I know that I get a little.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Bit nervous to talk about these things, and I just
never want to say the wrong.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
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
(40:30):
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.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
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
(41:11):
over a hundred white British females went missing off for
school role in this country, gone don't know where they are,
we would.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Be jumping up and down everywhere.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
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
(41:58):
can now.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
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
(42:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
For all this work.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
In February twenty twenty five, Jafinder was knighted by King
Charles himself, so she's now officially a Dame.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Go just Finder.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Of work over in the States.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
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
(43:36):
of the Girlfriend's Gang. Next time on the Girlfriend's Spotlight
Phyllis saves the people from poisoning.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
They told me that they had noticed that the air
had become very toxic.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
They could not breathe.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The water they're sipped from the industry into the RuvA
had changed.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
The taste of the water distant metallic.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
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
(44:45):
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
(45:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Gerstein and Jemma Freeman.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
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
Hih listener.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
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,
(00:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We all thought Robina was fifteen and a half when
her marriage was arranged by their parents.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
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,
(01:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Neither Rabina nor just Finder wanted to marry like this,
but Rabina felt she had no choice.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
To do this.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Just Finder, on the other hand, saw it differently.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
At least, Just Spinder was part of a family in
which this scenario had played itself out generation after generation.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Today, on the show, the story of.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
How just Spinder challenged the way things had always been
in her family and her community.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
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
(03:09):
women women.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Today just finda redefines honor.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I was wondering as a small girl, what was your
understanding of what the future held for you?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
What did you see ahead?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:25):
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.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
For me, this was the role of women.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
There was also another, much bleaker responsibility that just Finder's
mum wanted to drill into her daughters.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
You don't dishonor a family, we were told by leaving
an abusive partner.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
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
(05:21):
it to calm it down. And that was a consistent
message that I heard from the age of eleven years old.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That is a tough one to hear growing up. Did
you talk to your sisters about how they felt.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
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
(06:02):
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
(06:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Wow. Wow, and the bar is so low.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Tell me a little bit more about your parents' specific
kind of roles within your family dynamic.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
What about your mom?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
So Mom came.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
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
(07:21):
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.
(07:43):
Everybody wants a boy, you know, the boy passes on
the family name. And so for my mother, she would
have carried that weight.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
She cooked. She was very quiet.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
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.
(08:15):
She would say to me, well, I was married, you
know when I was fifteen. Why are you any different?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, So she was.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Carrying on what she knew. Otherwise she wouldn't have had
the acceptance of the community.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
What was school life.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Like for you then? I imagine that you went to
a school that was mixed culturally. What was that like?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
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
(08:59):
craved that world where you could just be without somebody
telling you that it was wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And then there were perms.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
All the popular girls at school had a perm, and naturally,
Just Finder also wanted some of that chemically treated pool.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Do you think you were going to get away with that.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The freedom of wanting to do this, wanting to be like.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I remember my younger sister saying to.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
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
(10:37):
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
(10:59):
go back home. They allowed me to go back.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
My goodness, did your sister not get it?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
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.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
From my mum as well.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, but my dad gave me this sense of it's
okay to be different.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And that's what I.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Then, when just Finder was fourteen, her mother finally sat
her down to break the news Just Finder had always
known was coming.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I came home from school one day, joyfully skipping home from.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
School, etc.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
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
(12:41):
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
(13:04):
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
(13:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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
(13:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
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
(14:39):
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
(15:03):
education and locked me in a room with a padlock
on the outside of the door because they found out
about this boy.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
That is so shameful.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Just Finder stayed locked in her room like a princess
in a tower for several days.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It felt like an eternity.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Just Finder knew that there was a boy eager to
help her run away.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
His name was Jesse, but he couldn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If she stayed trapped in her room, her chance at
freedom was slipping away. Then she had an idea.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
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
(15:55):
that I was part of this fasad that was going on,
but smiling in all the right places.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
But what it.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Gave me was a little bit of freedom to plan
my escape.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Wow. And then when did you finally make your escape?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
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
(16:32):
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,
(16:55):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Where should we go? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
He's as close your eyes where every finger lands will
go there And it landed on Newcastle.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Newcastle.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
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
(17:50):
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,
(18:11):
I want to come home, but I won't.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Marry that man. I want to go to school. I
want to go to college.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
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
(18:40):
mother that, Mom, I'm only just sixteen. I don't want
to marry a stranger.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Please.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Is it okay.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
After the break, just Finder tries to adjust to this
new reality.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Glad you, glad you, glad you.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I'm glad you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Just He was a little bit older than me, and
he didn't take advantage of my vulnerability.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
He was kind, he looked up to me, and I
just felt, well, as well get married now, as will
marry him.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
So you married the boyfriend who helped you escape.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
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
(20:21):
accept me. But they never did because the worst thing
for my mother was the fact that this man was
from a lower cast.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
A cast basically means social class in Indian culture.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Not only have you run away from home and shamed
this family, you ran away with somebody from the lowest
of the low.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
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.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
It wasn't never going to last.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
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
(21:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It was around this time that just Finder got some
awful news.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
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?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
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?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And she said, she set herself on fire and she's
committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
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
(22:56):
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
(23:17):
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
(23:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
She came back to England with an eight week old baby,
and my mother accepted her back.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
And slowly we began to talk in secret.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Being hearded, Robina told just Finder she'd met someone new.
Their mother accepted the new relationship, but with one big caveat.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
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.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And I begged her. I said, please come with me.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
I believe she was in such pain she wanted somebody
to listen and hear. Well.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
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
(26:40):
the world was pushing her back towards it.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Jaspinda says these were her family's attitudes even after Robina's death.
She heard them say things along these lines at her funeral.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
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.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
You something to make you feel wanted. This is wrong.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
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
(27:46):
abusive crimes, and I wanted to give voice to it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
J just Finda didn't see anyone else talking about this stuff.
She says.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
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.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Everybody is telling me this doesn't happen in England. Show
me the.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
But it wasn't ringing.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Days and weeks went by as Just Finder willed the
phone to come to life.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Then it was months, which turned into years.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
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.
(29:26):
There's a charity now that can help you. And I
kept on doing it and doing it and.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
To find ways in, Oh, that's so clever, and then
hope for the phone to ring.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Then finally, after around four years, just Vinda's Jane Fonder
style gorilla warfare paid off, the phone rang, and.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I'm taking the call, trying to be really serious and everything.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
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?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Mom?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (30:02):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
I can imagine how I feel when there's like ten.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Imagine how it feels when there's a hundred calls.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
There were hundreds, and then there were thousands. After the break,
just Nder tates Carmen and Havana to the next level.
(30:53):
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
(31:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
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,
(31:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
The feeling is of Rabina.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
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.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Being able to do something in their name is magnificent.
And you know I.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Would talk about her all the time, so she never
left me.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
And she's not leaving your minds either. You know I've
introduced you to her. She's still alive in your memory now.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, And that's proper honor, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Indeed?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah, absolutely, I know that there's a couple examples of
some of the girls that you helped.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Would you be able to tell me some of them stories?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Gosh, there are so many stories.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And my mobile rang and it was very early in
the morning, and it was a girl and she said,
I need your help.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
This time.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
She goes the light.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
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
(34:14):
and they're going to come and get you.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
A police officer picked the girl up. Some time later,
Just Finder met up with her and drove her to
a refuge.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
And I said to her, how did you find the helpline?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
You know you hear now you say that's okay. Anyway,
she's in the refuge.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
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,
(35:07):
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.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Thought it's her. And there was this tall, young, beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
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
(35:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
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.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
It. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
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
(36:58):
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
(37:19):
said it doesn't smell them, it's okay, and.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
She said, I really need to have a wash.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So I remember taking her upstairs for a bath, and
I remember taking her out the bath and lifting there
like a child.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
She said, this is wrong. You're the child, I'm the mother.
And that was such a sad moment.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
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
(38:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
I begged my father to come to my graduation and
he didn't.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
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
(38:51):
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
(39:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Course.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
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,
(39:55):
and everyone's kind of very sensitive to the touch.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
What would you say to people who kind of feel
like that. I know that I get a little.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Bit nervous to talk about these things, and I just
never want to say the wrong.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
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
(40:30):
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.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
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
(41:11):
over a hundred white British females went missing off for
school role in this country, gone don't know where they are,
we would.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Be jumping up and down everywhere.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
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
(41:58):
can now.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
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
(42:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
For all this work.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
In February twenty twenty five, Jafinder was knighted by King
Charles himself, so she's now officially a Dame.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Go just Finder.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Of work over in the States.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
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
(43:36):
of the Girlfriend's Gang. Next time on the Girlfriend's Spotlight
Phyllis saves the people from poisoning.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
They told me that they had noticed that the air
had become very toxic.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
They could not breathe.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The water they're sipped from the industry into the RuvA
had changed.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
The taste of the water distant metallic.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
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
(44:45):
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
(45:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Gerstein and Jemma Freeman.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
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
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