Honour Based Abuse

Honour based abuse is a collection of practices used to control behaviour within families in order to protect perceived cultural and religious beliefs and/or honour. It includes forced marriage and female genital mutilation

Honour based abuse is a crime, often involving:

violence
threats of violence
intimidation
coercion
abuse (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse).

Using any of the above to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family or community constitutes honour based abuse.

Honour based abuse can affect both men and women. Everyday choices made by an individual could impact on a family's or communities’ honour and therefore violence and abuse can occur. These simple choices could include:

choice of clothes
choice of friends
relationships with members of the opposite sex
career choice.

Honour based abuse can result in the following:

threats and intimidation
rape
assault
abduction
murder
physical, sexual, emotional, financial or psychological, or domestic abuse
forced marriage (where you not are given a choice if you want to marry the other person, in the UK or be taken abroad to marry).

In every case police have a responsibility to ensure safety, whether that is by offering advice or prosecuting offenders.

Report it

If you believe that you or anyone you know is a victim of honour based abuse, forced marriage or female genital mutilation, please call Norfolk Constabulary on 101 or 999 if it is an emergency.

You can also contact Social Services on 0344 800 8020 for welfare/safety concerns relating to a child, young person or vulnerable adult

Please don’t be worried about talking to us, we will always listen to you and do everything we can to help.

Cover your tracks

As you surf the internet your internet browser will save certain information, such as the websites you have visited and images or publications you have downloaded. If you do not want people who may have access to your computer to know which websites you have been viewing, you should use a safe computer such as a friend’s, library or work.

There are different methods to hide your tracks and delete your history for each internet browser. We have provided information about how to delete your history from some of the most popular browsers, which can be viewed here

It should be noted that if you are using someone else’s computer they may notice if you delete the computer history and cookies.

Disclaimer: If you don’t want someone to see that you’re viewing this website, you can click on the ‘escape’ button on the right, which will take you away from this page to the BBC news website.

Please be aware that the time it will take to load the BBC website will depend on your connectivity speed and device performance. It may be better to keep another document or website open in a new tab or window while browsing. If someone comes in the room and you don’t want them to see what you’re looking at, you can quickly switch views.

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