Why My Parents Tried to Kill Me. There's No Honour in Killing - Uncut with Nina Aouilk - Life Uncut

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands
were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders
past and present, always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
This episode was recorded on Drug Wallamata Land. Hi guys,

(00:23):
and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm
Brittany and today it is just me on this episode
as unfortunately Laura was unable to make it now. Today's
episode is a big one. You know that we never
shy away from the hard topics on Life Uncut, and
today is definitely no different. In fact, I can say
that today was probably one of the most confronting and

(00:46):
upsetting interviews that I have personally ever done. But I
do think it's so important to continue to have these
conversations so that we can all work towards a safer
future for women. Today I'm talking to a wonderful woman
named Nina Elk.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Nina is a mindset coach to some of the most
recognized boxes UFC fighters and entertainment personalities. She does a
lot of things, actually, She's a world leading activist, a businesswoman,
a mother, a best selling author and ted X speaker.
But most importantly, she is a survivor. A big part
of today's conversation is surrounding something we haven't ever spoken

(01:21):
about before, and it's something I'm probably embarrassed to say
I didn't know enough about, and that is on a
killings Now. Nina was born into a cultural context where
traditions clashed with personal freedom. She faced the absolute harrowing
reality of being born a girl, which meant she was
disadvantaged from literally her first breath. She faced a multitude

(01:42):
of horrors growing up. She was a victim of modern
day slavery and endured a life of domestic violence, multiple
rapes and beatings from family members and their friends, an
arranged marriage, and an attempted on a killing, a life
no one should have to endure, but unfortunately is still
so revelent. In Australia alone, one woman is killed every

(02:04):
five days.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Let that sink in for a second, every five days.
I came across a video of Nina online and I
just was hypnotized. I could not look away.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
There.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
I was watching this woman so bravely reliving her story
in the hopes of helping others, a story that is
honestly hard to fathom. She speaks about gender based violence,
cultural intelligence, and reclaiming control after experiencing adversity. She's a
founder of a nonprofit and Honor Killings that provides welfare

(02:37):
and support to these victims. I knew as I saw
Nina that I wanted to help her tell her story.
I took away so much from this conversation, and I
really hope you guys do too. Nina taught me that
we all need to be so much more aware of
the people around us and what they may be going through,
and that we need to ask people if they're okay,

(02:57):
We need to ask them what's going on at home,
and if something is wrong. If you do have any
sort of feeling that something is amiss with somebody or
they're going through something they shouldn't be in their own home,
then you need to ask them. That is something Nina
really reiterated in this conversation. I think Nina wonders, and
I definitely wondered if life would have been a little

(03:17):
bit different if somebody did just ask that question. Maybe
things would have changed if somebody asked that question. Now,
this interview does contain details of some very distressing content.
This includes emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, as well as
mentions of suicide and miscarriage. If this episode brings up
anything for you, you can reach out for help at one
eight hundred respect or Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen. If

(03:42):
it's not the right time for you to listen right now,
please sit this one out and we will be back
with you tomorrow for ask guncut. Nina, thank you so
much for giving up your time today to come and
tell your story. I imagine it can't be easy, but
welcome to life uncut.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Thank you thanks for having me, Nina.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
There is so much to your story. I guess we
just start back at the start. Can you just share
a little bit about your childhood, your background, religion, and
the cultural context in which you grew up.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah. So my father and mother are from the north
of India, which is called the Punjab. They moved over
to the United Kingdom in the nineteen sixties. It's a
lot of immigrants were moving to the world to England
at that time for a better life. I guess historically
they came from small villages in India where there's a
lot of control and there's not so much education, so

(04:31):
things don't really change. So whatever their forefathers did. They did,
and it continued. But the main thing that they brought
forward was they didn't like girls. They didn't want children
that were born girls, and there's a real stigma against women.
There was a real patriarchy and definitely a discrimination against girls.
So my childhood was sort of that was the foundation
of my childhood. I would say, whereby the day that

(04:53):
I was born, I was almost born into abuse because
I was never going to be accepted for who I was.
So being an unwanted child led me to believing from
a young age I was nothing. I was nobody. I
wasn't looked after in the same way as my brothers.
You know, there was a real difference.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
How is it if you're born a girl, you are
not wanted and as we're going to go on to discuss,
quite often you're killed. But then they expect to have
women to be able to look after the household and
to sell off, you know, into an arranged marriage when
they're older. So I don't understand the balance. How can
you expect to have both? How can you expect to
not want them but also need them.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, I get this question a lot when people are
commenting that how can they carry on living, you know.
But the statistics I don't like statistics, or because I
never was one, show that places like China, for instance,
there's a lack of women in comparison to men. So
the girls when they're born, they able to marry one
of many because they have choices because there's not many

(05:55):
girls comparison to the amount of men there are. But
they end up marrying older men who more established, because
that's the choice that their parents make for them too.
But I don't understand it because I'm not them. Firstly. Secondly,
it's something that they continue to do and it's carried
on and somewhere somewhere will have a daughter. She'll become

(06:15):
the bride. Somewhere she'll become that housekeeper, the housemaker. But
in my particular family, my father was one of seven brothers,
so there was more of a male presence than a
female presence. So I think everyone's individual, each family's individual,
each person is individual. But for my father, he had
this mentality that it has to be a boy. We
don't have girls, we don't want them. But there are

(06:37):
a lot of people, sadly who also think like that.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
So what is the difference in the word honor. What
does the word honor mean to you and yours compared
to what it means to us?

Speaker 3 (06:48):
My ted talk is called there is no honer in killing,
because there isn't. The two words just don't go together.
And we're taught from a young age, whether you're a
boy or a girl, that you do everything for your parents,
that you have to help to upkeep this respect which
is expected from your parents, so that the neighbors, the

(07:08):
people from the community, the people from the church, the
people from the towns that you know they might visit,
will respect your parents. And they're only respect if you
have good education, if you're a boy, if you're a girl,
that you look like a good girl. And what they
mean by look like a good girl is that you've
got long hair, that you don't make high contact with people,

(07:29):
that you haven't had any boyfriends, that you're a nice,
quiet little girl, and that's what they want, that's what
they create in their own families. But it's a huge thing.
The amount of violence that's caused because of the word
respect is crazy, because my father used it all the time.
You know that you're tainting my honor, you know you're

(07:51):
ruining nobody will respect me, everybody talk about me? What
do people think because of you? And I think that's
such a huge society little pressure on young people that
it really affects their mental health as well.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Were your parents a product of and arranged marriage?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
They were? Yeah, as far as I know, my father
was here first and then my mother came and they
always spoke about how they didn't even see a photo,
and in those times, nobody did. I think things develop
as you go along in time, you know, like at
the time they got married, fourteen fifteen was a good
age to get married. I think my mum was one
of the later ones because she was coming abroad and

(08:27):
she got married I think at seventeen or eighteen, and
that was quite late. But it then went on to
my time around the eighties, girls were getting married around
sixteen seventeen. If you went over that, you were sort
of like, well, why is she not getting married? There
must be something wrong. And then it's time progressed. You
got into the twenties and now it's the thirties. So
things are changing along the age expectations, but they're not

(08:50):
changing with the whole. What's expected of the bride, what's
expected of the girl that still stays.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
So what did your childhood look like? What was life
like at home for you and at school?

Speaker 3 (09:00):
So I've described it before, but obviously not to the
Australian audience. My life was very different to my brothers.
You know, that's the most significant thing I realized when
I was even a really young girl at six, I
was literally kept in my room like a modern day slavery.
And I didn't even know that was the terminology until
recently when I started working with a trafficking organization in

(09:23):
Switzerland that I'm now an ambassador for, and they sat
me down explained so much to me about modern day
slavery and human trafficking, explaining that when you're kept in
a room and you're not allowed to interact with your family,
that is a form of modern day slavery. And when
I was six, my routine was I would wake up
really early. I think I was always very stressed and

(09:45):
very anxious as a child. I would wait for my
mother to call me. Normally they would call me with
the word which because they didn't like to refer me
as a name. I would literally run down the stairs.
You know, I'm surprised I didn't fall and be there
really obediently, waiting to see what she needed me to do.
And she would use words like food, clean and cook

(10:07):
or come. It wasn't really a conversation we were having,
but I was happy. I was a happy child because
it meant I was interacting with the family. I didn't
speak to them, we had no verbal communication. My eyes
were always down, but I was happy that I was there.
You know, I was allowed to come out of the room.
It was almost like when you've kept your dog in
a room because you've got guests and you know the

(10:28):
dog's being too loud or something, and you open the
door of the dog came scarpering in. That was me. Literally.
I noticed that my mother's room and brother's rooms were
very different to mine, just because when I would go
and change my mum's douve covers, you know, it's really
hard getting that bottom sheet on, especially when you've got
little hands. As a six year old, I used to
sort of literally bounce off the bed.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
I mean, it's hard to put a sheet on now
as an adult alone.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Six, it's really difficult sometimes. But well, when I was six,
I just used to remember how soft everything felt, you know,
my mum room the carpet. I would squidge my feet
into the carpet because they were it was just so soft,
and how do ve cubs were really soft. And I'd
look around and they'd be pictures of I don't know,
temples or just sunsets that she had lots of things
in the room. I didn't have anything in my room,

(11:16):
whereas you know, my brother's door, I'd always put my
hand across the door and touch it and stroke it
as I walked past, because it was a painted, glossy door,
really nice. One had a blue door, one had a
green door, and they were just really soft doors. And
the contrast was I would go into my room and
they were different shades of gray. You know. My bed
was dirty. It was just a mattress with no pillow,

(11:38):
no duvet. And my wardrobe was a little box. It
was like a little white box that I had my
school uniform in my pajamas in and I kept everything
tied because that was me. And then I'd have a
pile of books I would constantly take from school, and
those books really were my friends. They were my savior,
you know, I would read. I would escape in that book.

(11:58):
I understand that term in a good book, I really do,
because that's all I did. And I would daydream all
the time, but the majority of the day was spent
huddled up next to the door, waiting to be called.
But I would press my ears so hard because I
was so desperately wanting to be part of the family.
And I would listen to them watching television and think

(12:20):
to myself, you're there too, you know. I'd imagine it,
and I would imagine sitting on the sofa with them,
and it was looking back now, it upsets me because
I realized how detached I was, how separated I was.
And you know, as a child, you just want to
be part of a family.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Of course, so you were never if you were not
cooking or cleaning or doing some sort of a chore
for your family, you had to be in your room,
if you can call it a room. You were not
ever allowed to sit with the family watch TV. Did
you do you remember ever watching TV?

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Because I had my eyes down all the time. Sometimes
when I was putting the food down, I would glimpse
over to the television, you know, and see something. It
all just looked very animated and magical to me. It
was like a little magic box. But no, I didn't.
I longed, I really longed to sit with them and
just be part of their day. But I was kept

(13:13):
in my room. I wasn't allowed to come. It wasn't
an option for me.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Nina, Why did they call you a witch?

Speaker 3 (13:19):
They believed that because I was born a girl, they
believed I brought evil spirits with me, that I was
carrying this almost like bad entity, like a dark darkness,
because you know, the fact that I'd been born a
girl was a bad thing. You know, I've been told
that my mother told everyone not to pick me up
from my push my buggy when I was born the pram,

(13:41):
so relatives would come and see me, but they just
didn't pick me up, and they said that. I stopped
crying after a few days, knowing nobody was coming.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Did you know that at this stage, I mean you
just mentioned before that you know, you were actually still
a relatively happy child. Did you know that your life
was different to you know, the other kids at school's life,
or I mean everyone else's life, or did you just
think that this was how everyone must be?

Speaker 3 (14:07):
I thought it was normal for me. You know, I
knew that the other Indian girls, because we lived in
quite a white British area, so there weren't that many
people of color or my race or my culture in
the area. But when I did go to the Seakh
Temple with my mother occasionally, I did see the girls
looked quiet like me, and I thought it was just
that's the way it is for us. I was always

(14:30):
told by my mother and father that were not like
other cultures. You know, our culture is different. We're respectful
and the whole honor, you know, was always empowdering. It's
about we care more than other parents, so we care
what people say we care. So I knew that our
culture was different, so I didn't question why, and I
just felt it was just normality for me. I thought,

(14:52):
this is how my life is. And now, as I said,
I was happy. You know, looking back, I remember just
finding simple pleasures and little things.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
And were you good at school, like were you still
able to have an education? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
I was really good at school, and I'd be that
one that would sit right at the front of the
annoying child that would get a stars all the time
or one hundred percent because she wanted to please the
teachers too. I wanted to be good at something and
I wanted I liked the way some of the teachers
spoke to me, the way they recognized that there was
some talent in me, that I was good at something.
So I did feel a lot of the time I

(15:26):
wasn't good enough, but I didn't know what. That's the
way I felt. But looking back, it's easier, isn't it.
You could assess yourself. I know, looking back, I really
felt like I was just not good at anything, that
I wasn't good enough. That's why my parents didn't want me.
So I used to think, if I go back and
they get a report that I've done really well, that
they'll be happy with me. But nothing really seemed to work.

(15:46):
But school, to be honest with you, was a different
kind of problem in itself because other than the schooling,
which was great, I got bullied a lot because there
wasn't many people, as I said, that looked like me,
and playtimes or lunchtimes I either being piled upon and
getting beat up or my brother was and it became
the norm. You know, I expected someone to spit on

(16:06):
me when I walked past them, which is really unacceptable.
But if you don't know any different, you just take
it as that's the way is. I didn't think, why
they're not doing it to anyone else, you know, I
wished I wasn't meet so many times through my childhood.
I wished I was one of the other kids.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
When you say that you never ever looked at your
parents in the eyes, and I'm assuming your brothers as well,
was that because that was a rule that was put
in place not to make eye contact.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, I remember from a young age being slapped quite
a lot of times because my parents were quite physically
abusive as well as mentally abusive. But I remember when
I did make eye contact, I would be hit. You know.
My dad had this long wooden ruler that he would
use and if you stepped out of line, he would
hit you with the ruler and it hit. So I

(16:51):
did everything I could do not to be here, So
it was almost like I was scurry around like trying
to be invisible.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
By all accounts, anyone listening now would think that this is,
you know, a pretty horrific childhood. And I feel like
we haven't even started to touch the sides to just
how horrific it became. Talk to us about how life
changed so drastically for you in your teenage years.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, I didn't think it was a bad childhood until obviously,
like I said, as an adult, you look back. But
I did realize at fourteen something was very wrong in
my household, in my life with my parents. I realized
something was just it just didn't feel right anymore. And
that's because my job was to literally cook for my

(17:35):
father when he would come back from the pub, which
you know, every Friday or Saturday he would go, and
he would bring back his friends and they will they
knew me since I was probably six or seven, because
since six or seven I was doing this chore, this
job you know that I had that I would be
woken up by my mother. She would go back to sleep,
and I would come downstairs and I would cook them,

(17:56):
normally a big bowl of rice and make them some
fresh chapatti is like the bread that we make. I
would cook them some curries, meat and veg and my
job was literally to take it in with the plates
and they would serve themselves. But we had this huge
white train. As a young child, you know, I'd been
carrying this train in and out of the room, and
they knew me. They all knew me. But when I

(18:16):
was fourteen, my mum came to wake me up, and
I was very sleepy, very tired, and I remember I
was going through puberty, just starting to hit that age
my periods had started. And I came downstairs quite sluggishly,
not wanting to get out of bed, and made everything
so I was super quick and I still am and
presented them with the food. They were exceptionally drunk by

(18:38):
this time. They'd come in quite loudly, so I knew
they'd been drinking fair bit. But I was used to this.
A lot of people don't understand why did you go in?
But it was something I was used to.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Well, I don't imagine you would have had a choice either. No,
you didn't go in.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's something you have to do. It's like going into
workout on Monday morning. People that don't want to go
and say they don't have a choice. This for me
was my work, you know, is what I was there.
And I went in and gave them the food. Sat
on the bottom steps. We had this huge wooden staircase.
It was beautiful and I would sit on the bottom
stairs playing with my slippers. It's just what I used
to do from a child. When I remember flicking it

(19:15):
out too far and think it's not going to enough
to try and bring it back in with my foot.
I don't want to make the noise because I don't
want anyone to hear me and my dogs sitting at
the top of the stairs looking down. She used to
have a pool hanging down she'd be watching because she
slept outside my room most of the time and that
was her place. And I kept seeing bottles appearing, you know,
my dad's arm would come out. He would stick another

(19:35):
bottle outside, and I thought, well, how much are they
going to drink? And when can I go to bed?
I had all these questions in my head because I
would constantly talk to myself and I still do. I'm
always doing it. But on this occasion, something felt really wrong,
you know, and I wondered if it was the cramping
from having been on my periods, but something felt like
I should get up and leave, or go to bed

(19:55):
or go somewhere. But I knew I didn't have that option.
And when I did get called in and I just
kind of didn't want to go in. There was something
stopping me. And I would say that we have this
internal messaging service in our bodies that tells us whether
we're feeling okay or not. It's like sitting on a
train next to somebody and not feeling great. You sort
of pull your arm in, And I think we learned
to protect ourselves that way, but often a lot of

(20:17):
us will not listen to our intuition, and then later
on we'll say, well, I should have not done that.
I knew I shouldn't have done it, and it was
the same situation as a fourteen year old little girl
sitting on that step not wanting to go in. As
soon as I turned the handle and went in, I
knew it was probably not going to turn out bad,
and it did because my father was the first person

(20:40):
to grab my wrist. It's the first time you'd ever
touched me, but not in the way that our father
should really touch his child, because he threw me onto
the low table and he started to rape me, and
I didn't know what he was doing, but I kept
my eyes shut. But I remember being sorry. I remember

(21:04):
being thrown off the table literally, somebody else picking me up,
abusing me, punching me. I was being bitten by people,
and then somebody else would again drag me down, holding
my waist, and it wasn't just sexual abuse. It was
as though they were taking pent up aggression out on

(21:27):
me in the most horrific ways.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
I was raped in every way that you can imagine,
and they were laughing as they were doing it, and
I just knew that I'd been violated in a way
that I probably couldn't get over. And it was so
horrific that part of my hair had been pulled at,

(21:51):
you know, not a part of my body wasn't covered
in blood or a cut or a bruise or you know,
I'd been punched and everything. So they'd eventually left, a
lot of them had left, but my father was still
there with a few other people, and I remember passing
out and coming to and then they started again. And
it was the chap that kept biting me that was

(22:13):
the most horrific. And he, incidentally was somebody that was
from our local church. You know, he was a very
respected individual. I knew every one of them from their voices,
all the way they made, even a grunting noise. I
knew them because I'd been with these people since I
was six year old or seven year old, and I
called all of them unkle, even though they were not

(22:35):
related to me. But out of respect, we don't say names,
and you know I knew each one of them. It
was bad enough with my father, but it was just
that it was just very horrific and I felt that
night I was this delicate, little, not perfect flower that
had literally had all of our petals pulled off, and

(22:56):
I just felt completely broken.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that that happened
to you. And I know that you could hear that
a thousand times and it doesn't make a difference. And
thank you so much for sharing that, because I imagine
that that story will never get easier. Where was your
mum at this point?

Speaker 3 (23:13):
They were all in the house, and I'm sure they
all heard, because no house can hold that much noise,
you know, it's not that sound proof. And even though
I didn't scream because I felt I couldn't scream, in
a lot of the time, they had their hands across
my mouth to the point where I didn't even think
I could breathe. I'm not even sure if my mom

(23:33):
knew what would happen and what happened, But you shouldn't
put your child in a position where they can be
subjected to such abuse. You know, it was neglect on
a completely different level.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
So what happened after that? Everybody left? You went to bed.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
No. I couldn't move because I physically had been hurt
so much. And I literally, I describe it as I
lay in a bath of my own blood, because that's
literally what it was. There was blood sodden into the carpet,
and I just remember waking up. My hair was matted
to my forehead with probably not just blood, and I

(24:11):
had no bottoms on. I remember there were no bottoms
on me. My top had almost been shredded. And I
woke up because my mother she opened the door and
closed it a couple of times, but she really slammed
it to wake me up. And when I looked to
my right hand side, I remember seeing a splatter of
food on the wallpaper that we had. It was like
a green, velvety wallpaper, and I remember thinking, I don't

(24:34):
know if I can get that off, and if I
don't get it off, my dad and mom are going
to be really angry with me. And I started to
get into like a panic mode, like I couldn't breathe,
and she said to get up, you know, And I
managed to get up, but everything hurt you know, my
legs were hurting. Everything hurt. I can't even describe how
much pain I was in. But I managed to go
upstairs and have a shower. Normally I wasn't allowed showers.

(24:57):
I had to shower. I act to use a bucket.
My parents didn't allow me to shower, they had it
used too much electricity, but my brothers could. But this
time my mum said I could have a shower. But
in hindsight, I wish I had had a shower, because
it's done so much having this shower, whereas with a
bucket bath, you fill a bucket up and you use
a jug and you pour it over yourself, which is

(25:17):
a little bit more gentler, I guess, than the harshness
of a shower. But I got cleaned up. I came downstairs.
My mum had given me my brother's old pajamas, which
is what I always had hand me down, and I
came down the stairs and she gave me a bucket
and some cloths and a scrubbing brush and told me
to clean up, and that's what I did. She gave

(25:38):
me another like a tray type thing, a deep tray,
and I put all the broken plates into that and
then I when I made the room look like nothing
had ever happened in there, I asked if I could
lay down, and I did, and I slept. I think
for a couple of days. I don't think I went
to school for a couple of days. And when I
did go to school, I wasn't skipping on the way

(26:00):
to school like I did with my friends. Normally, she
would sing me all the songs from Top of the Pops.
Because I didn't watch television, I couldn't, so she would
teach me things. She would teach me Abba songs, she
would teach me like Jackson songs and the moves and
the dances. And I used to like that part of
school because it was the best part walking to school.
But suddenly I didn't want to walk with her, and

(26:20):
she didn't ask why I didn't want to sit at
the front of the class, and the teacher didn't ask why.
If people beat me up, I just let them. I
didn't even put my hands to protect myself. I just
became this person that was in limbo. And it's the
first time I probably as a child, just wanted to
not be on the earth. I went into a very

(26:41):
deep depression. I wasn't doing great at school. I wasn't
even reading books. I remember not piling my books up.
I would just leave them scattered everywhere. You know, life
became very disorganized. In my head and in my life,
I just wasn't me and the light I reckon was
there as a child, that innocence had just out.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Did Nobody at school, like, no teachers or no people
in power, noticed that anything was wrong, or that you
had changed, or that you you know, you'd had those
days off. You were a shell of a human. You
weren't getting the grades that you used to, like you
were a different person.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
I know they noticed because my French teacher would normally
encourage me, told me to get out of the room
because I sat huddled at the back crying. And this
is one of the reasons I tell my story because
we've walked past a situation. All of us are guilty
of this, where we've walked past the situation and we've
thought that doesn't look right, or we've not stopped to
ask that person if they need help. We've not made

(27:37):
a discrete phone call, we haven't done something within our
capacity as human beings to be compassionate that person's needs.
And that one act can hugely change someone's life. If
somebody had sorry, no.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
If someone had asked you if you're okay?

Speaker 3 (27:54):
I wanted someone to ask me, are you okay? Because
I really wasn't. I was struggling and I just wanted
someone to say, let me help you.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
And the people that were suppotised you didn't. And then
how did things change at home after this incident?

Speaker 3 (28:14):
I ended up getting pregnant from that night. I don't
know who from, but I did. I just turned fifteen,
and I had to tell my parents, obviously, because my
periods had stopped, and my mom was so angry. She
said that I'd spoil myself, and my dad said that
I'd spoil myself, and I felt bad. I felt like
I'd done something wrong because everyone was telling me the

(28:37):
same thing. They blamed me. They said that I won't
be able to have an arranged marriage, that nobody would
want me, and they took me to a private clinic
to have an abortion. I remember everyone there were adults,
you know, because I've always looked smaller at that time
than I actually was. I was really young, say, even
though I was fifteen, I probably looked about twelve or eleven,

(28:57):
and I remember everything. I remember the gas and air,
I remember lying on the bed, so I remember what
they did. But the thing I choose to remember, this
is just my way maybe of coping with things. I
have selective memory, and I choose to remember that after
the operation, after the abortion, I was sitting outside on
the grass verge and a gown that they give you,

(29:20):
like a clinical gown. And I remember sitting outside and
there was a whole load of women sitting on the
grass with me, and a lady was handing out tea
and with the tea you would get a little round biscuit.
And I was looking at them getting the biscuits, thinking
at the corner of my eye, thinking how lucky they were.
But she brought me a cup of tea too, and

(29:40):
it was a biscuit on there as well. And she
did something that no one had ever done and of
my whole life, which was she stroked my hair. And
it was like that small act of kindness really went
far with me. I realized for the first time that
she didn't catch anything that she touched me, because I
was thought my mother wouldn't hold me the way she

(30:02):
hugged my brothers, because I had evil in me, and
she would catch this evil from me. But this woman
that I didn't know touched my hair and gave me
a drink, and I thought, I can't be that bad
if she's done that to me, because she did it voluntarily,
you know, I didn't force her nobody. And I sat
there for a long time, almost feeling okay because I'd

(30:25):
had this one person's touch. People say, well, you know,
you're glamorizing what she did because she didn't report your parents,
she didn't save you, shouldn't help you. But at that time,
in that place, I believe that's what I needed. I
needed some sort of sign. I needed that love, and
she extended some love which I was desperately in need of.

(30:46):
And when we left there, my parents drove me home
and they were really arguing. You know, my mom didn't
really argue with my dad very often, but they were
on this occasion and they were saying that what we're
going to do with her? Are we going to send
her to India? Because now she's had an abortion that's
really bad. And you know, I remember sitting in the
back and my little bit of hope that that lady
had given me started to diminish, and I started to

(31:08):
sit in the back, thinking, I have such a huge
problem to my parents. I'm causing such a huge stress
for them. I shouldn't be alive. I should be dead
in the way that they were saying that, you know,
we wish she had died at birth. And that's when
I decided when I got home that I would take
an overdose at some point and just end my life
because I didn't really want to be around either.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
When you're in the car and you're listening to your
parents say, should we send her to India? What did
they mean? Should they send you to India? Should they
just send you to another family member to get rid
of you and have you out of their hair? Should
they sell you? Was this a part of maybe when
an honor killing would have taken place.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, in our culture, that's when an honor killing would
have either taken place, or they would have married me
to an older man, or they would have just got
rid of me in the sense that they would have
just abandoned me somewhere, which is something that happens where
they'll drive out the middle of no when leave you
and somebody would take you, And what.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Did they end up doing well.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
They didn't end up doing that. My father was really unhappy,
as you can imagine, when I came back and he
was sulking. That's the only way I can describe it.
He was sulking for days. When I would take his food,
he would turn his back on me. And it made
me feel worse because even the jobs that I did
that they accepted me doing, suddenly became more difficult. I

(32:25):
was still doing the cleaning, I was still doing the cooking,
but if they saw me coming, they would like disappear
and shut the door on me. They just couldn't stand
the side of me. But I ended up being in
my room one day, still doing the same things as
a child, you know, pushed my ear against the door, listening,
and I heard my father saying this is amazing, Oh
my god, this is great. And suddenly I packed up

(32:46):
and I'm thinking, oh, what's going on? You know what's happening.
And he was on the phone and I could hear
him saying yes, yes, yes, this is great, this is great.
And my mom then I could hear her walking because
I could tell everybody even the way they opened the door.
I could tell because my hearing was so heightened because
my sight was almost taken away. And they were happy,
and I kept hearing them happy, happy. And then the

(33:09):
next day I was asked to come downstairs from my room.
My mother came to get me, which she never did.
She always just would yell up, come, you know. She
came to get me. She brought me an Indian suit,
a Punjabi suit. It's caught like a tunic with some bottoms,
with a chiff on scarf, and I thought, this is
quite nice. I wonder why I've got this. She asked
me to put it on, took me down the stairs

(33:30):
and took me into the front room. But where she
was guiding me into the front room, I felt very
nervous again because I was always having flashbacks of the
rape and always feeling very anxious going into that room.
I was never allowed in that room because it was
a guest room, so rather than handing food out, I
was never allowed to go in there. And suddenly I
was in this room. I was sat on the sofa

(33:52):
in between my parents, and I could hear voices because
my head's down and I could hear the voices, and
the voices were my two brothers and the person that
stayed behind the one that was raping me, continuously inviting me,
and I felt very nervous around him anyway. But he
was saying that we'll take her. And there was this

(34:12):
bartering going on that if you want the secret to
stay quiet, if you want me to take her, you
have to give me this much money. My father saying
I won't give you this much, I'll give you less.
But they came to an agreement and I was literally
traded to this man. And I didn't understand why or
what was going to happen. But the reason I was
traded was to keep the secret quiet that I had

(34:34):
been as they called, sexually active, even though I wasn't
sexually active. I was raped that these words were in
my head, and I'm thinking to myself, was I is
that what I did?

Speaker 1 (34:44):
You know?

Speaker 3 (34:44):
You start to question yourself. But they did this or
that the secret will stay safe, and that his son,
who was dating a white British girl, would look in
the community's eyes as having an arranged marriage so that
they would hold their respect and their honor. He hadn't
gone out of line, He'd stayed in line to what's expecting,
the cultural norms. So he was having a relationship. He

(35:07):
was forced into marrying me on paper so that the
outside world saw him as a good boy that followed
the traditional route. But I had nothing to do with him.
It was a sham wedding. And it came very clear
in that discussion on that day that I was there
to cook and clean in the way that I cleaned
and cooked here in my parents' house, I would do

(35:29):
exactly the same here in their house. But the additional
thing is that my father in law would have me
as a sex slave. He would have access to me
at any time, and I had to give him what
he was asking for. And that's what happened, you know.
To cut a long story short, I got married on
the day of the wedding. I was told to go
home straight after the wedding. So there's a huge party,

(35:51):
and anybody there would remember I wasn't there, which is unusual,
But nobody asked questions. Nobody that was invited said where
is the bride? Usual for her not to be here?
And I remember sitting at home waiting for them to come,
and I felt like I was going to be sick.
I imagined getting a knife and stabbing myself in the stomach.

(36:12):
I just didn't want to go to somebody else's house.
I was attached to my room. Even though it was
a basic room that no child deserved, it was still
my room, my books, my things, and it was quite
daunting at the age of sixteen turning seventeen to be
told you're being married, you know, it was quite a

(36:33):
big thing. And I remember going into my in law's house.
My mother in law asked me to remove my clothes,
and there were other people there, and I thought different
of everyone, but it was almost to humiliate me, and
I took off my clothes. I had my underwear on,
and she gave me some old clothes that belonged to
her daughter and said, you won't have anything that you've
come with. You will sleep in this room, which was downstairs.

(36:54):
It was like a little cupboard with no door, and
she said that you will stay there and that's what
your job was. You could start cooking now. And the
guests are all hovering around, and they were looking uncomfortable,
if I'm being honest, but nobody said anything. And their
house was so much smaller than my dad's house. My
dad's house was huge, it had big rooms, and suddenly
I was in this tiny little house where you could

(37:15):
see the neighbors, and it was terrorist. You know, everyone
was literally on top of each other. And I felt
quite cloustrophobic, if I'm being honest, because the room was
so small. Everything was just tiny. I struggled for four
years in this sham wedding. I got a job because
they forced me to get a job. I got two jobs.
I became a manager very quickly a large corporation. I

(37:36):
was the first person of that age to ever become
a manager, and then on top of that of an
ethnic minority. But I was people pleasing again. I was
trying to please my in laws because they took all
of my money, and I thought if I give them
more money, they might be happier with me and leave
me alone. But it didn't work like that. But in
the second job that I got, I made friends and
they were like, why are your ankles bleeding? And I

(38:00):
I still have wanted someone to ask me this question,
that uncomfortable conversation that we said earlier. Nobody wants to
have those uncomfortable conversations that they're so important. And I
told her that my father in law would get a
metal coat haanger and he would straighten it, and they
were really thick in those days, and he would wrap
it around my ankles and the ends of it would
dig into my skin, so it would constantly poke at

(38:23):
my skin. If I even moved slightly, it would make
a cut. So that was why my ankles were bleeding.
And I would patch them up and I'd put socks
on top of it. Would bleed through the socks often.
And she noticed, you know, she noticed everything. She was
from my culture, and she said, that's not okay. And
the thing is, I was so scared. I was so
worried all the time. I wouldn't even ask for help.

(38:44):
But he was not going to go and ask for
help from We were told never to call the police
under any circumstances. We were told never to talk about
what goes on in our families outside of the home.
We were told if I did do anything like that,
they would kill me. So I was too scared. You know, work,
I would pretend everything was fine. I had this alter ego.
I think that I would turn up and say hi.

(39:05):
I was the opposite of what I was at home.
So everyone saw this confident person. They didn't see someone
who was scared. But if you knew the signs and
you were from my culture, you probably would spot them
like this girl did that I befriended, and you know,
she said that what's really happening? And I just opened up.
It was like a can of worms. Literally, everything just

(39:26):
kept coming out. And I told her about my father
in law raping me. I didn't tell her about my
father raping me. I didn't tell her that I had
a really bad childhood, because we kind of make excuses
for the people we think we love, and I just
sort of said it was no Cay childhood. I didn't
tell her about the neglect. I told her all about
my in law. So it sounded like the in laws

(39:46):
were the only people that were abusive and horrible to me.
And you see, in our culture want your marriage. A
lot of the time, you don't have anything to do
with your parents again. They literally hand you over to
another family and that's it. That hands are washed of you.
You're their daughter, you're their responsibility, you're their property now.
So I hadn't seen my parents for four years.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh you had not seen that. You so you had
completely cut off contact with them.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
They'd kept contact with me.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
They yeah, literally they sold you a then contact when
you're married to this young Indian man. Was he involved
in any capacity? Did he understand what was going on?
Was he living in the house. Was he complicit?

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Well, everyone slept upstairs apart from me. I slept downstairs
in this little makeshift bedroom, so I didn't see people
because I was in my room again all the time
while I was at work. If I was at home,
I'd be waiting in my room. My father and I
would come and rap me early in the morning. It
was like a very early morning thing. He would come
down to do his prayers, but before the prayers he

(40:50):
would normally come and abuse miss sexually. Sometimes you would
make me go and have a shower and he wanted
to watch me, and then he would take me into
my room and rate me. There. There was a lot of,
as I said, control and a different kind of abuse
that I suffered from him. I was very scared of him,
very afraid of what he would do to me because

(41:11):
he enjoyed inflicting pain in different ways that I don't
really want to talk about, no.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
And you do not have to.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
But my mother in law and husband at the time knew.
I'm sure what was going on but my mother in
law was very abusive. And I remember when I used
to make the food for everyone. She would stand and watch.
My mother in law and I would plate everyone's food,
and I would give her the plates and she would
take them in. That was the way it worked in

(41:39):
their house. It wasn't just me taking the money, it
was her as well. And I remember when I would
put a little bit, very small portions, but on a
plate for myself, and she would. You know, at the beginning,
I think I ate one or two meals, but I
don't know what came over her. She got very angry
and snatched the plate from me, put it into the dustbin,

(41:59):
the whole plate with the food, and then opened the
bin and pushed my head into the bin as an
eat out of that if you want to beat because
this is not your father's house. And I took the
plate out and she pushed it back in, and then
she said, eat out of the bin. She called me
a dog and all sorts of names in our language.
And I remember eating out the despin because I thought

(42:21):
I had to because I was scared, but also because
part of me was hungry. But then you kind of
lose the will to do anything, and I just thought,
I don't want to, so I stopped plating myself food.
I avoided her it all past because she was angry,
and I thought, is she angry because he's sexually active
with me? Is because he comes to me? I don't know.

(42:44):
I knew none of it was my fault. That's one
thing I did know that it wasn't my fault. I
wasn't doing anything too. If anything, my body rejected everything
and everyone around me. I didn't want to be there.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
I mean even that, I can't imagine how much work
you've done on yourself, Nina. But like, iven't you saying
I was just so submissive and said yes to everything?
What was the alternative? You didn't have an alternative, like
you were being beaten raped. I don't feel like I
think you are anything but a submissive person and a
submissive woman. I think that that option was taken away

(43:16):
from you to be anything else.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, maybe that's just how I saw myself. I'd had enough.
You know, you get to a point where you have enough.
And there was this thing in the nineties called the
bride Burnings in England, which was really calm and everyone
knew about it. The police knew about it. Nothing was
really being done. The news. It was always on the news,
but it would be a case of they would call
wives from India, you know, brides for their sons, and

(43:39):
they weren't giving them what they wanted, which was an
heir a boy. So they would pour petrol over the girl,
et cetera light and they would say to the police
when they arrived that she did it to herself. And
when I was walking home from work, sometimes I would
see the police and I would smell the smell of
human flesh is a real distinctive smell, and I became

(44:00):
paranoid a fire. I just became so paranoid. So I
felt like my time was coming to an end because
I hadn't had a child. Everyone was asking in the community,
why your son been married for such a long time
and you've got no son or daughter, you know, you've
not had a grandson. And I felt very pressured. Also,
somebody was giving me a way out and saying, go

(44:20):
back to your parents, go back to your parents.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Every time I saw this friend of mine at work
and her Nigerian boyfriend. She was Indian but born in
Britain like me, they would both say the same thing.
It was singing from the same hymn sheet. Go back home,
Go back home, It won't be that bad. So one
day I went to work and I didn't go to
my in laws. I'd gotten a bus and I went
back to my mum's and I had this romanticized ideology

(44:43):
that they're going to pull me in and love me
and it's all going to be okay. You know, That's
what I kept saying. It's going to be okay.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Be a safe place, which is what your family home
should be.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
It's what I knew, you know, It's where I knew.
I wanted my bedroom. I wanted to go back into
my bed. That's all I wanted. And when I did
get to the house, my mum already knew and Dad
knew that I was coming because someone had seen me
at the community. Because you can't do anything. It wasn't
a small town, but the community is so spread out.
They literally phoned and said that I was coming, and

(45:15):
they were asking why is she coming? Why? And my
father said, as soon as I walked in that everyone
knows you've left. Everyone knows you're on the wrong bus.
Why have you come in our doorstep? Why have you
come to us? And I was dragged in by my
ponytail that I used to wear back then, and you know,
it was a real horrible time because my body was

(45:36):
just like, oh, why have you come here? You know,
I knew that I'd made such a bad mistake going there,
but I didn't feel I had anywhere else to go,
and I thought it would be better there. But it
was the wrong decision that I'd made. As I went in,
my father dragged me into the same room that they
rate me, which instantly gave me that thought that something

(45:58):
bad's about to happen, because that room just seemed to
me that feeling all the time. And the beating started,
but I'd been beaten. You have to remember since a
very young age, I knew how they hit me is
a way that my brother would punch me, and he
was there too, one of them. But this was almost
that they decided between them before I got there, that

(46:18):
they would beat me in a different way. It was
to kill me. There was no other intention. And the
word honor killing was being thrown in the word respect
is that as we call it, means maintaining respect. That
they were saying that they had no respect in the community.
People would laugh at them, people will spit at them,
that they would become ridiculed. And now my brother can't

(46:40):
get married, my eldest brother, because nobody would want somebody
who's got a sister. That's they were calling me a prostitute.
And you know, I was always called fat and ugly
since I was a kid. They were calling me that.
They were saying that I should have died at birth.
And they broke my arm and my jaw. But you
have to remember as well, even though I was a
feeble person, you have to punch somebody so many times

(47:02):
to break a bone, and there were so many bones
that were broken in my whole body. But I ended
up collapsing. And when I collapsed, when they started kicking
and stamping on me, and I remember my father holding
his foot against my throat, and I remember at that
time feeling very numb, like I wasn't there anymore, and

(47:23):
I could almost see myself from the outside. I didn't
like this crumpled up little rag doll, thinking it's okay, Nina.
But then I was saying to myself, it's time. I
don't want to be here. But something was saying, no,
it's not your time to go. And then I remember
just feeling back in that body, but not necessarily feeling
their feet on me, you know, their kicks. I just

(47:46):
was watching blood trickling literally down my nose and going
into the swirly design of the carpet, and I was thinking,
you don't like this carpet. It's almost like a detached
from what was happening. And then my other brother came
and said, stop, I can't do this here. We're going
to kill her, but we'll kill her in India. We'll
take her and send her there. So they just stopped.

(48:06):
And I think they were exhausted because the amount of
force they were using to hurt me was taking it
out on them, because I could see their labored breath,
you know, and I could hear their labored breath rather
and I could feel that the stamping was getting less
and less intensive because they were tired. But they've broken
so many bones, as I said, and they'd displaced my hip,

(48:27):
and I remember lying there in the same position they
left me for days, and again I was covered in blood.
I was struggling to breathe. Even I wondered, if they
don't damage my chest or something, but I saw it
on myself there and it was after a few days
somebody opened the door and it was a friend of
my mother's who said, you need to leave, or when

(48:49):
you get to the airport, they're going to take you
to India to kill you. On Sunday. Ask for help
at the airport. And I thought, I can't ask for
help if I've got my mom and dad around me
and my brother next to be not too scared, how
do I ask about? I didn't have the courage, so
I lay there and thought, you know what, it's time
to go. I've had enough of life anyway. What am
I living for? You have I got? I'm alone. I've

(49:11):
felt very, very alone. But something said no, you can
get out. And I broke the journey of getting out
down into little segments and said, if you can get
to the door, then you can get out of this room.
If you can get to the hallway, you can get
into the kitchen. If you can get into the kitchen,
you can get into the garden and you'll be gone.
And that's what I did. I struggled. I couldn't crawl,

(49:33):
I couldn't walk, but I somehow dragged my body and
I was scared that they would hear me because there
was a house full of angry people. But I trusted
that I could do it. I trusted in me.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
How long had you been Was this a couple of days?
He How long had this been that you were laying
there in this state?

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Well, my body was stiff because I'd lay there for days.
Nobody can come and check me either, you know, I'd
lay there for a long time, but nobody sort of
called out or brought me tea or checked on me
your water. You know, I was more than likely I
needed water. You know. I was dehydrated, no doubt. But
I did get to the garden. But that's when my dogs.

(50:12):
You know, I'd had this dog since quite a young age,
and she was my first friend. She was that that
warmth or of cold night. I didn't have a douva
to pull over me, but she would like snuggle up
and she was loud. She came and looked at me,
and I said to her, please no, And I touched

(50:33):
her little wet nose, and I was saying to I,
please don't bark. Because when she bought, the whole neighborhood
would complain. She was always barking and I thought, why
she in the garden, you know, why she not with them?
But she looked at me. You know when sometimes someone
really looks at you when they see you. Yeah, she
saw me. People don't understand this. I think it's a
bit of a joke, but I believe sometimes you need

(50:55):
that one person to believe in you, whatever form they
come in. And I believe in angels, and they've crossed
my path many times, and I believe maybe she was
one of them, because she looked at me and looked
up and she really made a slow action of raising
her head and looking at me, and I felt like
she was saying, come on, you can do this. I
know you can do this, and it's time for you

(51:15):
to go. And I did. I found strength because she
was encouraging me, and I managed somehow, I don't know how,
but I got over the fence and I fell on
the other side, and she did a little whimper, but
I remember she made this sort of noise and I
just went into a park across the road and I
passed out, and I remember my father driving past me

(51:36):
at one point, but I was in and out of consciousness,
and when I did wake up again, properly. It was
like very early hours of the morning, I say, four o'clock.
I had no idea. I didn't have a watch or anything.
But I made my way to a taxi rank and
the taxi guy was really good, again, another good person
that I came across. He got me to my friends.
My friends weren't there. He took me to the police

(51:57):
station and that's where the policeman start to take photos
and write a report. And then when I said it
was a non killing, he literally threw down the file
because he didn't want to deal with it. And if
I had said I think it's a murder or attempted murder,
he would have done something about it. But we're taught
that word, so we use that word. You know, if
you don't know the word, you're not going to use it.

(52:19):
He basically told me, he said I had to go
to the hospital, that he couldn't do anything for me.
And I was very confused because I'd gone from having
photos taken to being told to go to the hospital.
And I was that obedient person. I didn't question it.
I went along with it, and he took me. He
didn't take me. He got an ambulance to come and

(52:40):
get me. And I was in the hospital for months,
and every time somebody would come, apart from the nurses
to do their observations, they would look at the file
and it had a sticky note on it which said
on a killing attempt, and they would throw it down
as though'd say, oh, I can't be bothered, you know,
And I felt like I was not important, so why
would anyone want to help me anyway?

Speaker 1 (53:02):
I cannot comprehend the fact that religion and race can
take such a stronghold on an entire community and all
the people that are supposed to be looking after you.
Is it because I don't want to quote unquote offend
your culture.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, it's the lack of cultural intelligence, which is why
I teach large corporations and companies about cultural intelligence to
how they can safeguard their employees. Just for awareness, you know.
I spread awareness so that people understand that when you're
a person born into this culture, you don't necessarily think
you have the rights. If you don't think you have
the rights to anything, then you won't ask for help.

(53:39):
And also for other people that can make a difference
to say we could step in and we know that
she's not going to us for help because of the
way she's been brought up, or because she can't go
against the cultural norms, you know, there's this unwritten rule
that you don't speak out, but also for them to
understand that this sort of thing continually goes on because
programming is passed down from generation to generation. But I

(54:01):
ended up in hospital, like I said, and when I
did come out, they put me into a refuge, and
I couldn't cope because the women's refuge was full of
people that had drug addictions and alcohol dependency, and I
didn't have the emotional intelligence or the awareness of knowing
how to help or talk to those people, or I
felt scared around them, to be honest. So I ended

(54:22):
up asking if I could go to my friends, and
I did. My friend had moved out because she herself
had either had a falling out. I've never met her.
I've never been able to ask her the question. But
her boyfriend said, or ex boyfriend now said, you can
stay with me. I've got a spare room, And I thought, wow,
this is my hero. He's amazing. He's just his best friend.

(54:42):
Now that I'm going to have that's offering me this
place to stay and I said, oh, I can't pay
for it straight away, and he said where you can
owe me? And my arm was in a sling because
I'm still out of the hospital, you know, quite soon,
not long come out of the hospital, still not healed.
I thought to myself, this is great, I'll get a job.
But I did get a really good job in the
local council and I was paying him rent everything fine.

(55:05):
He kept to himself. I kept to myself because I
was used to being in my room. That's what I
was used to. I was scared of my parents finding me,
and I told him that and he said he would
protect me if he had to, you know. But it
came to a point where we went to a party
because the landlord was having a party, and he said,
do you want to come? And I said, I've never
been to a party. Suddenly I was just excited. Almost

(55:28):
I was a twenty one year old, but I was
twenty two by this time. But I was almost like
a fifteen sixteen year old in my head because I
never had those opportunities. And he was handing me cups
of glasses of coke and I haven't really had fizzy
drinks because all I had was water. At home. I
wasn't allowed the fizzy drinks, and I think my parents
didn't really encourage fuzzy drinks back then either, and my

(55:49):
in laws. I know there was coca kernel. I used
to see the bottles, but I didn't get to have them,
didn't have them at work, So I thought the coke
was okay. I said, to my taste a bit odd,
and he gives, that's what it is, pepsi, not coke.
Maybe that's why you think it tastes odd. And I
just kept taking the drink. I think I had about three,
but that was enough because he'd laced them with alcohol,

(56:09):
so it wasn't coke I was drinking. It was an
alcoholic drink, and I became very woozy. I remember him saying,
I'll take you back to the flat. I remember passing
out as soon as I got there, and I don't
remember anything else, but I remember waking up feeling something
wrong had happened. But who was I to ask questions?
And I didn't want to have an uncomfortable conversation or

(56:31):
say to him if it was probably just me thinking it,
And I remember showering and thinking doesn't feel right. Months later,
I was pregnant, and I asked him and I said,
I'm pregnant and he said, oh yeah, well you know
that night you were asking for it. And I said,
I don't remember. I don't remember saying I wanted to
have sex with you or anything. And he made out
I was wrong and I accepted that because who was

(56:54):
I to question that again, It just happened because I
think I had that mentality as order that had been
brought forward. And to cut a long story short, I
stayed with him for twenty three years. And people say,
why you know if he was abusive, because he was
mentally abusive, physically abusive. But in my culture, you stay
with whoever you have a child with. That was what

(57:14):
I was taught. You don't have children with everyone. I mean,
what would the people say, you know? And I thought,
that's just the way it is. Also, my parents came
to look for my daughter because they wanted to abduct
my daughter and kill her because they heard about me
having a child out of wedding. So I was being
protected by being with him. And I remember sitting with
my back to the door. My daughter was asleep, and

(57:35):
they were knocking on my flat door and I said
to the landlord that was my mom and dad. They
trying to kill me. They said, yeah, we know, because
they offered us five thousand pounds and we said no
to it. We think we should move you to another
flat that we have. So I moved to another flat
that they have with my partner. But you see, I
never knew about dating and that you're supposed to go
out and look into each other's eyes and lose yourself.

(57:57):
I don't know anybo that butterfly feeling people talk about.
I didn't know about those things. I just knew I
should cook for him, I should work, I should do this,
I should provide. That's what I saw myself as the provider,
and he would go off and be with other people.
But I thought that was okay. My dad didn't often
come home. I thought that was the normality. If we
drank a lot of alcohol. That was familiar to me.

(58:19):
So we often accept what we see as familiar to
us because that's how life has presented itself. So that's
our ideology of what normality is. There was there no
part of you.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
That thought you could go to the police at all
at this point.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Because they hadn't helped me the first time, so I
thought they wouldn't help me again. But you know, life
just goes on you. You know, sometimes you don't realize
how quickly time passes, especially when you're raising a child.
But I started businesses, you know. I wanted to prove
to my dad I was as good as the boys.
And it was the wrong reason to do what I did,
but I'm glad I did it. I ended up starting
a business where my daughter was playing in the other room.

(58:55):
I started it in my flat, is what I'm saying.
She would be playing. I had somebody look after her
from the shop downstairs. The little girl would come up
and sit with her, and I would sell mobile phones.
And I'd got into this because I saw somebody go
into the shop and I chased them. Now there and
I was like, I want to know what you do.
But I started this business and it really took off
because mobile phones were a big thing back then. It
got so big I had to move it from my

(59:17):
spare room into a shop in the town center. And
my partner could see the money. He could see the
money coming in, so he didn't want to go anywhere
either in the sense of leave me. I ended up
getting pregnant again. I moved into a lovely house, you know,
with the white picket fence like I used to draw.
That's exactly the type of house I bought for my daughter.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Like you dream of when you're a kid.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yeah, and it did. It had the little side guard,
and it had the little white picket fence. It had
cows and sheep in the background. It was just beautiful,
and it had a little green in the center so
that children would play with their bikes. It was just
very safe and a very loving environment. And when I
moved there, I also bought a shop in the town center,

(59:57):
and the money was just coming in. It was almost
easy because I I didn't see it as being hard.
I believed I could do it. And then I got
pregnant again, and I had a gorgeous baby boy, you know,
and my partner at the time seemed happier that I
had a boy, and he was celebrating the boy. You know.
I also didn't think he needed to work, because I
didn't think he had that role. I just knew myself

(01:00:18):
as the provider. I'll do everything I can do it.
I'll make everyone happy. I've got this. And then I
got pregnant for the third time, and that's when things
turned a little bit in my mindset that this is
not where I want to be, because by now he'd
become very aggressive. But I was asleep, I was pregnant,
and he set my pillow on fire, and I remember

(01:00:38):
waking up to the smell of smoke, and he said
he did it because he wanted to end us all.
But in hindsight, I now know that he was trying
to end me, not all of us. He didn't really
make sense. He did a lot of erratic things. Domestic
violence doesn't just affect you either, it affects the whole family.
But I didn't see it back then. And my daughter,
she must have been about six. My son, other son

(01:01:02):
that I had not long had, he was probably ten
eleven months old, and I got pregnant and he said,
that's it now, I don't want to come near you.
I don't like you. You're actually disgusting. Your body's disgusting.
No man would want you. You're lucky that I've come
near you. And I thought, yeah, who would want me?
I really believed what he said. He was constantly calling
me fat and ugly, and again that's what i'd heard

(01:01:23):
from birth. So I believed what he said. And I
was eight months pregnant and I was coming downstairs and
he was ready to go to fly to Milana. I
remember it very clearly. Wanted a lot of money I
didn't have, and he was angry, so angry that I'm
going to go. I can't spend what I want now,
you put me on a budget. What kind of life
is this? And he pushed me, and he really pushed

(01:01:45):
me hard, and I fell, and I knew something was
going to happen at something bad. And he disappeared, and
my daughter had gone for sleep over at someone's house.
I had my other son, you know, my boy, and
I rang the Peace people that owned the shop where
I used to rent from. He said, can you help me?
I need you to look after my little pool. I

(01:02:05):
think I need to go into hospital. I accidentally fell downstairs,
and strangely, my old schoolfriend, who had been trying to
get hold of me for a long time, turned up,
saying that my ex partner wasn't passing on the messages
that she had been trying to get hold of me.
And I said, I need you to do something. I
need you to look and see if there's a foot
hanging out because I can feel something, and she said

(01:02:26):
she didn't want to, and I was begging her. You know,
by this time, my son had been picked up. It
was just the two of us, and she said, I'm
getting an ambulance and she called for an ambulance and
I said the same thing to him. I said, to
the ambulance person, can you the paramedic, can you check
if there's a foot and he said, yeah, I'll check
and he said, yes there is. And I immediately thought,

(01:02:48):
I'm not going to be able to hold onto this
baby that I desperately want. And when I got to
the hospital, they rushed me into the ward, the maternity ward.
I can hear babies crying and they're telling me to
and I'm thinking, I don't want to push. I want
to keep him safe within me. And he was breach,
so it was harder. My friend had unfortunately suffered from

(01:03:12):
an anxiety attack and had to be removed, so it
was just me on my own again, and I gave
birth to probably the most beautiful baby, and I held
him and then he stopped breathing, and let's he's quiet

(01:03:32):
in my arms. I'm listening to the babies cry I'm
begging God to make him cry, make him cry, and
it was one of the hardest things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
I'm so sorry, Nana.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
It was probably the worst thing that had happened in
my life. I wouldn't wish upon anyone, because your arms
are empty, your body's prepared for this baby, and then
there's no baby. And every time someone else's baby's born
in cries, your breast stopped leap because they're ready to
feed a child, and there is no child. But I

(01:04:12):
laid there for days, and I stopped speaking, I stopped teating,
I switched off. I think that again, that light you know,
for me, just stopped existing, and I became very depressed,
to the point where the medical staff were concerned. My
partner said he wouldn't organize the funeral because it wasn't

(01:04:32):
really a baby. I wasn't in the right mindset to
organize the funeral, but the nurses took pity on me
and said that they would arrange little ceremony. So I
got to say goodbye to him, and he had a
tiny little white coffin and somebody had bought a forever
friend's teeth to but on top of the coughin. Because
I called him. Tyler and I got home and I

(01:04:54):
just switched off and I wanted to shout out to
the world. Someone just died and you're all carrying your life.
It's okay, not okay what you ought to stop? Yeah,
new people that knew that I was pregnant were asking me,
what do you do? When are you having the baby?
And I haven't got the heart to tell them. So
I actually haven't said this before, but I wrote notes
to everybody that I knew say that i'd lost him,

(01:05:16):
and I think I was crying out for help.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Just hoping that somebody, somebody would question it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Yeah, ask me what really happened. Nobody did, And you know,
my partner was really dismissive of everything. He didn't allow
me to even warn the way I should have. But
then suddenly I have this thing that I want baby.
I want a baby. I need a baby. I have
to replace the baby I've lost. You can't replace what
you've lost, but in your head you think that you can.

(01:05:43):
And I did get pregnant again. I ended up having
a little boy, and he kind of made me want
to live again, and he gave me that purpose again
to live, which i'd lost, even though I've had the
two older children, I couldn't function, and I started to
live again, and time just went on. My older daughter
started university. My middle son I sent to boarding school

(01:06:06):
because he had altercations with his father, so I thought
to keep him safe on said boarding school. But that
was so you know, when I look back and see
how distorted my reality was, it's worrying. But when you're
in a relationship that you don't understand, or you don't
understand about life or how life's supposed to be, you
make bad choices. And I did make bad choices to

(01:06:27):
the children too. My daughter was at university, she received
a picture message on her phone that said I'm sorry,
and the picture message was me asleep on the sofa
her brother's slumped on a table. And she instantly knew
something was wrong because she always said to me when
I would walk her to the platform, when she'd come
to see me to get on her train to go

(01:06:47):
back to London. She'd always say, I don't know if
this is the last time i'll see you, mummy, you know,
And I was laughing, say, don't be silly, of course,
I'll see you soon. But I knew what she meant
because she knew that her father was so violent and
she felt helpless, you know, she felt helpless. My other
son felt guilty for being in a really nice school
and I'm working hard to keep him there, and his
brother's not there, so all everyone was affected, but I

(01:07:10):
couldn't see it. And this message shivers down her spine
because she thought we were dead, and she rang me
because she knew I didn't sleep. She knew I had
intosomnia because of the pillow being set alight. She knew
that my ex partner would lock us in our bedrooms
and then unlock us, so she knew I didn't sleep.
And when I did wake up, I said to her, look,
my throat is really dry. Bear with me. I want

(01:07:32):
to get some water. And I took the phone and
I just remember dropping the phone on the floor and
it smashed because of those times we didn't have screen protectors.
It smashed because I saw that he had switched on
all the gas taps on the cooker, on the stove,
and the whole house was full of gas, which had
caused us to pass out. And people say, you can't
die of that, but you can, because if I had
got up later and switched a light on the whole

(01:07:54):
house would have exploded or we would have died of
carbon monoxide. He attempted to kill me, and my young
said because the others weren't there, he had left. He
left the house and there was some messages going between
him and my daughter. She was asking him, what have
you done and why have you done it. I haven't
seen those messages, she says that they would upset me
too much. I'd like to see the pictures at some point,

(01:08:16):
but she's got them. I suppose when the times right,
she showed me them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Is this the moment where you thought, Okay, life has
to change, this can't be it. I need to leave.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
No, No, I stayed because I didn't think about leaving.
I went upstairs. I carried my son and took him
into the bedroom, and at eleven o'clock our doors were locked.
It was my son that was brave enough to go
to school and say, I can't take this anymore. My
mum's being beaten, my mum's being mentally and physically abused.
I'm being physically mentally abused. But you told them, and

(01:08:47):
that raised arms. Social services were involved, Please were involved.
I was given twenty minutes to leave the house, and
it's like me taking you to a supermarket, same brick.
You can have whatever you want. You got twenty minutes,
and you're going to panic and think what do I get?
I don't know what I need.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
You can't think, yeah, not to pack up your entire life.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
No, And this is my home, you know, I don't
really want to leave. I didn't know anything else. I've
never really had a home before. I felt that was
my place. But home isn't really a place. It's where
you know. It's the people you're around, It's how you feel,
It's how you feel within your own body and your
own mind. At that time, I didn't know that. Yeah,
but I remember looking around and I picked up a

(01:09:26):
plastic hammer, toy hammer that my son boarding school used
to play with when he was about five. And I
picked up a long coat. My son was in bright
orange top bright blue trainers, didn't pick up anything. We
got to the corner and he stuff forgot my phone,
so we had to turn back around. And the lady
driving us, who's my angel. She didn't want to go back,
but she did, and she said to me the other day,

(01:09:48):
she remember him saying, I want to take my bed,
and I said no. She said he was asking to
take his bed. You know, he was asking for all
these things that he couldn't take. But we ended up
in a safe home they call it in the United
king I'm supposed to keep you safe because the police
have a mark, is a marked property. The police will
turn up there quicker than they were anywhere else, which
is a load of nonsense. It was in this very

(01:10:10):
dangerous estate. As soon as I opened the door, you
could smell the urine because the carpet was sodden with
the urine from whoever lived there before. There were human
feces spread all across the walls. It was unfit for
any human to live there. And I had to stay
there because I had nowhere else to go. And I
remember wrapping my son up in my coat, laying him
down and going into the other room and crying for

(01:10:33):
the first time. Because we're told we shouldn't cry. We're
told it's weak to cry. That what are you crying about.
No one's going to stop you crying. My partner say,
he hated my ugly face crying. You know, I wouldn't cry.
And I cried and cried, and I couldn't stop. I
cried for the little nan Or. I cried for the
lost childhood. I cried for losing my innocence. I cried

(01:10:58):
for losing my son. I've tried for losing a lot
of my life's freedom that I never really thought I deserved.
I remember looking down and I created this puddle of tears,
and I said, what are you going to do?

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Mean?

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Or are you going to dance in your tears? Or
are you going to drown in them? And I stood
up and I started dancing, and it was really strange.
There was no music, but I felt the st freedom.
And from there we became homeless. Because the government will
only support you up to a certain point. I on
paper was a millionaire because I owned a lot of property,

(01:11:29):
a lot of business, a lot of assets. I couldn't
get access to them. I couldn't go and sell the
property and have money straight away, or go back into
the businesses and sell my assets, because these things take time.
But also he was around, and he wasn't going to
let me do any of these things. So all the
locks had been changed. I couldn't get access to anything.

(01:11:51):
The police couldn't help, lawyers couldn't help. Domestic violence is
one of the most common reasons women and children become homeless,
and the government don't help. They say they're going to help,
but they really don't. And I had this idealism again,
romanticizing that I'll be taken care of. But I had
no one to go to, no one to turn to.
The people that used to say there my friends suddenly disappeared.
And you always find that in a situation where you

(01:12:14):
really need help, people don't really want to offer that help.
That was a situation for me. I was alone. But
the lady that helped us move was somebody from the school.
I didn't know her, really, she was somebody knew that
had come into my life, but she offered me her home.
And I have a really bad way of accepting things.
You know, I don't I'm not very good at receiving.

(01:12:34):
I've always been good at giving. But because of my son,
I said yes, and I said, look, I'll stay on
a condition. You know, if I can stay here for
thirty days, I'll make enough money and I'll move out.
And that's what I did. I started working in the
same places. I would sell one hundred and sixty thousand
pounds worth of machinery. I worked there for two pounds
an hour packing. I would go and clean people's offices

(01:12:56):
for three or four pounds an hour. It didn't matter
as long as it was respectful. I did tax returns.
I did everything I could while my son was at school,
and when he came back, I wanted to be there
for him. But I managed to save enough money to
move into a home and that's when life started for us.
But it didn't start for him because suddenly he stopped
this running game and realized what's happened in my life

(01:13:19):
And that's when it really hit him. And they call
it adjustment disorder, where you've gone from one extreme to
another and you can't cope mentally. That trauma has to
go somewhere. His trauma was creating this almost volcanic type
of eruption that was going to happen, and I decided
to move away from the areas that he knew and

(01:13:39):
start afresh. The government was saying, we can't keep giving
you non melestation orders, we can't keep helping you. The
courts were turning their back on me, the police were
so I up to left everything I knew and started
in a scary new place. Which was hard. Even as
a forty five year old, it was hard, but I
really settled and found myself when I got to fifty.

(01:14:00):
I remember being in the house that I'm in now.
I stood on a grass verge and I started doing affirmations,
you know, but this time I really believed them. And
I remember saying to myself that you don't have to
be anything that anyone ever told you were. You believe
what you want to believe. You can reprogram yourself, which
is hard. It's hard work. But I had this surge
of love come through because I knew I wasn't a

(01:14:21):
bad person for it. I'd never hurt anyone. If anything,
I always supported the people that were the horriblest to me,
the ones that mean to me. I loved them unconditionally.
And I say that my dad never taught me to
ride a bike. He taught me how to love unconditionally,
you know. So it's how you want to reframe your
past life and bring it forward. And recently I've done

(01:14:43):
over one hundred podcast as you know, and I know
that every time I go back into that six year
old self, I leave a little bit of me back
there with her. The only way for internal peace that
I've found is not to keep revisiting that past of
who you were, whether you had six or business. You
don't have it anymore. You can't keep going back there
because when you keep going back there, you leave fragments

(01:15:05):
of yourself there. You don't bring yourself as a whole.
And I've been doing that for the last year, and
it has taken a bit of a toll on me.
But I know the importance because every time I tell
my story, I have thousands or hundreds of people come forward.
And since I went viral in February, that video went
to twenty five million in three weeks on Facebook and

(01:15:25):
I had over fourteen thousand people reach out for help.
And I think divine timing is something I want to
speak about too, because I was doing lots of videos,
but I didn't have a nonprofit organization set up registered.
I didn't have the right people, you know, I was
doing it all on my own. I was helping one
or two people here and there. But as soon as

(01:15:47):
that was registered, the ninety seventh video wal and I
think that was the Universe saying to me, you're ready. Now,
you know you're mentally ready. You've got set up people
are coming. It's all right telling your story, but the
people are coming asking vout and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
You know we were talking just off Mike earlier, but
how many people reached out to you in Australia that
are going through something similar.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
I checked my messages this morning before I came on
because I got the times mixed up and I was
having a conversation with keishas got my times mixed up again,
and I was checking them and there were so many
messages from Australia again, and there's so many with domestic violence.
Even Catholic people have similar cultures, you know, with the
way they have the expectations from family, and they were

(01:16:31):
reaching out. But there are a lot of people from
my culture in your country that are reaching out because
they're forced into marriage, or they're suffering because of an
honor based killing threat that if they don't abide and
they don't do what they're told, they will be killed.
And there's a lot of people that have reached out
because they've been sexually abused whilst they were children in

(01:16:53):
the care of their parents or family relatives. And I
feel that because I am really open and honest about
my own feelings and what I went through that people
don't feel they're going to be judged because one of
the reasons people don't speak at is the sticker and
shame that's involved. But my thing is by speaking out,
I want to take that power away from those people
that are causing us to feel this way, because it

(01:17:15):
should be them that feel a shame, not us. We
carry this heavy weight around with us all our lives
because we feel it was us we must have done
something that we're not good enough. But we are good enough.
And that's my message out there that we are good
enough and we deserve more. And I'm not saying every
person from India or the Punjab has the same mannerisms
or intentions as my parents. Everyone's individual, everyone has their

(01:17:36):
own way of thinking. But the majority of people are
from South Asia that come forward saying can you help me?
And you imagine me opening my mail or messages across LinkedIn,
across my email, both my websites, across my social media
and they start with help me, please help me. That's
all I get. I don't get very many messages saying

(01:17:59):
I'm really taking back by you. I want to encourage you.
I don't get this. I either get the one saying
help me, or you need to stop talking because you're
bringing shame. Aren't you ashamed of saying that you were raped?
Have you got no self respect? So I get a
lot of hate as well, But there are a huge,
insane amount of people asking for help right now, and
my intention is to come over there next year and maybe,

(01:18:19):
you know, give a talk or two, because I think
it would encourage them to see that if I can
do it, and people say this all the time, if
I could do it, you could do But it's true,
I never thought anybody would listen to what I had
to say, and now you know I'm here talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
So what would you say to somebody that is in
this situation right now that's listening. Because I assume a
lot of people that are going to come to this
episode are people that are resonating with this or in
a similar situation and need help. What's the advice you
can give them?

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
Well, my arms are open wide anyone who's struggling with anything.
I'm not putting you into a category that you can
only contact me if you're South Asian, if you've had
domestic ad fiance, or if you've had a non a
killing attempt. I want them to know they're not alone
to start with. That's huge because I felt so alone.
I also want them to understand that we do things
to please our parents is how we're brought up, and

(01:19:07):
if we do anything for ourselves, we feel guilty. We
feel like it's something bad that we're doing. It makes
us feel bad inside. But there's nothing wrong with thinking
about yourself. We're supposed to be raised, you know, to
become adults that understand about self love and self care.
But we're always pleasing everyone else. But you imagine marrying
somebody who not dated or got to know for years,

(01:19:28):
and then having to share a bed with them, having
to be intimate with them, having to life with them.
It's not normal. It's not okay.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Are there organizations that are easily accessible to help that
people can reach out to.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
I mean, I would always tell people to come to
my organization, but don't go for the large organizations. I
started my organization because I went to a large organization
and they told me to google it. Wow, I emailed them,
I've got a long pay per trail and me is annoyed.
I'll be honest, because I needed help, and none of
them actually wanted to help me, and then people started

(01:20:03):
using my story and I had to contact them and
so you're using my story, you're not even tagging me
or my nonprofit. And it was one South Asian charity
that contacted me. It was a man and his job
is he helps people that have been sexually abused by family
members to press charges. But the country here that we
live in doesn't help us. So he does a lot
of helps a lot of people in Canada in America

(01:20:23):
because their laws are different. But he said to me.
The first thing he said to me is I saw
your story and I wanted to ask you do you
need any support? And can I offer our counseling services
to you? Now that to me. His name is Siavadari
runs at non course Seek Awareness Society. It took a
man from my culture to ask me do you need help?

Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
Do you know?

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
That really stuck with me because I was quite anti
men from my culture because of what's happened in my life.
But it took a man, not a woman. And they
see me as a threat because I say I'm the
specialist in this and I am because I've lived through
it and a lot of them haven't. How can you
understand someone else's pain if you've not even had any
pain yourself. Well, but you want to do the right thing,
and that's admirable. But unfortunately charities are not as they

(01:21:05):
make out to be, and I'm going to call them
out for it because I would like nothing more than
someone to go to someone and someone say to them,
I'm here to help you, then to be turned away
because sometimes people only ask one time. They'll only get
one opportunity to say help me, and that will be it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
Yeah, and then they're not going to come back.

Speaker 3 (01:21:22):
They won't because you feel like you don't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
And we will put all the links and the organization
in our show notes as well what happened because I
know people are going to ask what happened to your dad.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
I haven't told part of my story, which I'm going
to tell very quickly because of time as well. But
my father I was contacted by the police in twenty fifteen.
This really upsets me, so I'm sorry if I start
crying again. But they told me that my father had
had an i legitimate child with a Polish lady and
he waited until she was six years old and then

(01:21:53):
abducted her and took her to India and sold her
to human traffickers. Her name is Julia and now she
would be about fifteen or sixteen. She's still missing, but
because of the cultural influences and because he was doing

(01:22:13):
it to save honor, he was only given a jail
sentence of four years four four years, so he's out
of jail now. And I'm working really hard to change
the law and the wording so that there is no
such thing as not on a killing in the eyes
of the law, because the laws are what the police

(01:22:34):
work on. They can only put into place what is
decided in parliament in my country, and I am working
hard to make as much noise. I'm putting a lot
of effort into getting that word just araised because it
should be attempted murder or murder, because that's what it is.
Because my father should not be free, because she's still

(01:22:55):
missing and I don't know if she's okay where he
left her. The traffickers they harvest organs, which is a
huge business in India, and it was politically protected by
politicians the government, so the police, even though they went
all the way from the United Kingdom, couldn't get access
to where she was, and I've never forgiven myself for

(01:23:19):
not doing more to press charges, to stop him, to
make him feel accountable so that he won't do it again.
And I started this whole speaking up for her. But
then I realized that there's a lot of girls that
don't have sisters. I never had one to look out
for me, and I wanted to be that motherly figure,
that sisterly figure that's saying to everyone, you're not on

(01:23:40):
your own, I've got you. What can I do for you?
And now I will do everything I can in my
capacity to help somebody the way I wish somebody'd help me,
because I have found freedom I have. You know, I
can speak to you if I want to. At six
o'clock in the morning, I can, Whereas a lot of
girls can't even move, or they go to bed not
even knowing if they're going to wake up in the morning,
how their life is. That's my old life. I don't

(01:24:02):
want that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
I could talk to you for a million years. I
think you're just such an inspiration. You're so brave, and
your resilience is like nothing I have ever come across
in my life, and I hope, I hope that you
are extremely proud of yourself, and I hope you don't
hold any responsibility for what has happened to your sister,
because that is not your fault. Nothing that has happened
to you is your fault. I can only imagine this

(01:24:24):
must take it out of you every single time you
tell your story, and I know you've done a hundred podcasts,
which is incredible because that's so many people that are
hearing your story, but every single time that is traumatic
for you, I imagine. So I can't thank you enough
for your time today.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
No, thank you so much. It's really important that everyone
just knows that somebody cares. I care. It's really important.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
You're an incredible woman, Nina.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
Thank you. People like yourselves enable the voice to be
heard further, and I'm really appreciative. I don't take anything
for granted. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
The company them cut, the company, the cut of the property,
the cut of a the property, the cut of an

(01:25:32):
happen by the BA

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Why My Parents Tried to Kill Me. There's No Honour in Killing - Uncut with Nina Aouilk

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Why My Parents Tried to Kill Me. There's No Honour in Killing - Uncut with Nina Aouilk