A culture of shame prevents victims from reporting crimes within South Asian-origin families in the UK including from India, new research has found.
The project, carried out across several counties in England and Wales over a period of two years, found that a lack of awareness about what constitutes criminal behaviour is endemic among first generation immigrant families from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
"There was certainly no awareness that there could be rape within a marriage," said Karen Harrison of Hull University who, with co-author Aisha Gill of the University of Roehampton, has carried out the project talking to women, charities, police officers and religious leaders, and holding focus groups.
"Rape for women was if their father-in-law or brother-in- law or someone in the extended family was the perpetrator. Nor had the Imams we spoke too ever heard of marital rape; they weren't aware it was against British law," she told the 'Observer'.
"In cases of historical abuse, where women had been abused as children, the parents had protected them by taking them away from the situation, but were too worried about the consequences for the family, the shame and the dishonour, to report the abuser," she added.
Official police data suggests that incidences of sexual violence among South Asian women and children are low, but Harrison said it was clear this was not the case: it is happening, she said, it is just not being reported.
Last week, an appeal court judge ruled that a paedophile was justifiably given a longer sentence because his two victims were from an Asian community, meaning an aggravating factor was that the girls' families feared they would not find husbands.
