Keeping Faith: A How To Guide

Keeping Faith in Justice with Sahdaish Pall (Sikh Women's Aid)

Women's Interfaith Network Season 1 Episode 9

Content Warning – This episode contains descriptions of Gender-Based Violence, including Harassment, Femicide and Domestic, Sexual, Spiritual and Financial Abuse. Please listen with care.

What does it look like to shine a light on violence against women and girls (VAWG) when others are trying to sweep it under the rug? Why do harmful narratives stay so entrenched across communities and traditions when our scriptures preach egalitarianism? How do we keep faith in meaningful justice when the institutions designed to protect women and girls all too often let us down? 

In this episode, we speak to Sahdaish Pall (BEM), Co-Founder and CEO of Sikh Women’s Aid – an organisation founded by and for Sikh and Punjabi women to support victims of domestic & sexual abuse in the UK. This confronting conversation spans Sahdaish’s journey through the VAWG sector, the importance of specialist services and the backlash she’s faced in tackling taboo topics.

You can read Sikh Women’s Aid’s reports and surveys here or listen to their podcast, The Phulkaari, on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Follow Sikh Women’s Aid on Instagram, Facebook and X/Twitter to keep up with their vital work. 

The Faiths Against Domestic Abuse Campaign was founded in 2020 by Tara Corry from Women’s Interfaith Network and Jeeves Rohilla, formerly of Faiths Forum for London, and is now run as an independent project.  

If you need support or are affected by the issues discussed in this episode, please reach out to Sikh Women's Aid, the organisations below, or call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247. Please note that WIN is not a frontline organisation. 

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide is part of Women’s Interfaith Network's 2024 Keeping Faith Programme. Read more about the programme here and be the first to hear about upcoming events and ways to get involved by signing up to our newsletter. Views expressed on this podcast are the speaker’s own and may not reflect the views of Women’s Interfaith Network.

Hosted by Maeve Carlin

Produced by Maeve Carlin and Adam Brichto

Edited by Adam Brichto

Executive Produced by Lady Gilda Levy

Theme music composed by Jamie Payne

Logo and Artwork designed by Jasey Finesilver

Support from Tara Corry

Maeve Carlin: I’m your host, Maeve Carlin and today we’re speaking to Sahdaish Pall, co-founder and CEO of Sikh Women’s Aid – a charity run by and for Sikh and Punjabi women supporting survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. In this episode, we speak about Sahdaish’s insights from her long career in the VAWG sector – i.e. organisations tackling Violence Against Women and Girls – and the challenges of shining a light on an issue which impacts every community, but is all too often treated as taboo.

This episode contains confronting stories of domestic, sexual and spiritual abuse. If this isn’t a safe listen for you right now, or if you’re affected by any of the issues discussed here, please know that you are not alone and there is support available through the organisations linked in our show notes. 

This podcast is part of Women’s Interfaith Network’s 20th Keeping Faith programme, which continues to bring communities together across secular and religious divides, to explore how we keep faith in the things that matter most. You can find out more about the programme, including recent and upcoming events, via the links in our shownotes. 

But for now, let’s jump into our conversation with Sahdaish Pall. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, Sahdaish, thank you for coming on the podcast. 

Sahdaish: Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I’ve been looking forward to this. 

Maeve Carlin: We've been looking forward to it too. And I mean, you've had this amazing journey in the VAWG sector. Can you share with us how you started working with survivors and why you felt called to do this work?

Sahdaish: So, um, I got married quite young. Um, I was only 21 when I got married. I was the eldest in my family. And, um, I come from a very small town in Hertfordshire. So it wasn't very culturally diverse. And, um, if anything, I think I, I grew up in quite a bubble. My dad was very protective, if anything, he was overprotective. And I got married and I came to Birmingham, which is one of the most diverse cities in the country. And, um, I started seeing and hearing about what was happening in people's homes. And people close to me were experiencing abuse. And I just felt really strongly that I needed to do something about it. 

And I had been working, I had my son, I was on maternity leave, and I decided that I didn't want to go back to work and that I would move forward and go back to college. And basically, I started a counselling course because I thought, well, I've got the language skills. I can speak Punjabi, I can speak Hindi and Urdu. And I wanted to really provide support to women from South Asian communities. And as part of that, I had to do some voluntary work and I was introduced to a South Asian women's refuge as part of that voluntary work. And basically my journey started there in, back in 1996. And I didn't, become a counsellor, um, in the end, because I then started working at the refuge part time and and obviously I had my son and then I had, um, my second child and my journey just started from there and from there, VAWG work is the only thing that I've ever done. 

Maeve Carlin: I'm sure that will resonate with so many people because, I mean, tragically, probably most women listening to this, or most people listening to this, will have been touched by domestic abuse or the issues we're talking about. Um, so I know it will be close to a lot of listeners hearts, this topic. And Sikh Women's Aid was founded in 2021, becoming a charity in 2022, in response to the lack of a specialist service run by and for Sikh Punjabi women that could speak their language and understand the nuances of their cultural and religious identities. So why are specialist services so important for survivors? 

Sahdaish: I mean, whilst I was working at the refuge, you know, in a specialist South Asian refuge, and then I became a manager and I went on to manage services, which were outreach as well. One of the things that I saw was that South Asian women were reporting, but then if you broke that sort of the ethnicity down of those women that were coming through the door, Sikh women were the least likely to be coming through the door. And obviously coming from the community, I'd, you know, witnessed abuse, I’d talked to people who were experiencing it. 

And so it was really important that we set up a service which really focused on the community coming from that community because we're like a by and for service. So originally, actually, we started as a community organization sort of back in 2014. And there were two reasons for that.

One was the fact that Sikh women were not reporting domestic abuse and we knew it was very prevalent, um, but also there was an issue around the grooming of, um, young Sikh girls, for example, and, what was happening was that there'd been a sort of movement of male led, you know, predominantly religious organizations setting themselves up to do this work with the, with young girls who'd been exploited, had no training, no experience, qualifications, and there were just like groups of men, really, who had set up to do this. And I found that really, really scary. And having done the work for such a long time, I understood the risk associated to working in this sector. And if you get something wrong, potentially people could end up dying. 

So they were the sort of main two reasons we set up as a sort of community group, group of women coming together, trying to raise awareness. And then, you know, fast forward, you know, to 2021 when we actually registered Sikh Women's Aid as a not for profit to become a charity. We wanted to do it sooner actually, but COVID hit, and sort of that, that delayed us somewhat. And what, what's been evidenced over these last three years of working and running, um, Sikh Women's Aid and working as CEO is that sort of, we know we did the right thing.

People said to us, “well, why not be a South Asian service or why not be a black and minoritised service so that you're covering like a wider diaspora?” And, and actually what I said was “because there is nothing for women from our community. There are no specialist services across England and Wales for Sikh Punjabi women.”

Um, we really need to focus, not just, not necessarily faith-based, but from a community-based, uh, um, perspective. And, you know, now, around 90 percent of our referrals are from the Sikh Punjabi community. Those women are reaching out to us, they're looking us up. Most of them are self –referrals, so they're finding us on all the different sort of social media platforms, they're discovering our website and reaching out or word of mouth. So we do get referrals through like GPs or social services or through the police, but a majority of them come directly from women in the community, somebody's told them about us or they've heard about us, they've Googled us. And so we know we did the right thing by setting up a specialist service.

And the other thing is there were so many gaps in, in, in understanding the experiences of Sikh Punjabi women. So we, you know, did, um, the very first survey back in 2021. We've just finished the, our third survey now, over the last three years. And, um, that's followed by extracting that data and then writing a report. To really evidence the need for these services so that obviously we could apply for funding, but also to show commissioners and public health officials and the government that actually, they think the Sikh community has got it, like, “together”, inverted commas that we've come from abroad and, you know, we've done really well, which we have. We contribute immensely to the economy. One of our pillars is providing selfless services. So we do a lot of voluntary work. Um, you know, people have come over and set up businesses or they've worked really hard or got educated. Um, you know, there's research out there that talks about the Sikh community more likely to own their home compared to any other community in the country, you know, these types of things. And, you know, and we have, we've done so, so much in the community, we've progressed, we've integrated really well, we're a very progressive community. 

But one of the things I think that that has really sort of hidden underneath all of that is the abuse of women and girls. And, um, What we needed to do was actually to expose that, which didn't come easily because obviously with, with any of minority group, there's always some backlash that comes along with, um, talking openly about the things that are wrong with our community and what we need to change and improve.

So setting up Sikh Women's Aid was one of the best things I've ever done. So I'm one of the co-founders. There are a number of, um, very strong, formidable women behind Sikh Women's Aid who still today support it. They're on the board as well. And the statistics and data as well, just evidences how serious the problem of domestic and sexual violence is within our community. And, you know, the knock-on effect, the impact of that is obviously, um, affecting so many women and children in our community. And we need to do something about that because, you know, it's hugely impactful on the next generation, around people's mental health and health and well-being, and we need to change that.

Maeve Carlin: Wow, that's so powerful. Just the fact that you've got that evidence there of women coming to you because they know the space is for them. I mean, women wouldn't be self-referring if they didn't think “these women understand, this is a safe place for me.” Um, and I think, you know, that idea that domestic abuse violence against women and girls, and you might not be able to spot it unless you really go and do that focused specialist work. 

Sahdaish: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I mean, domestic abuse and sort of general violence against women and girls impact all communities. You know, we, we know it's a massive problem, you know, in every single community in this country.

What our community has been really good at doing is hiding it. And that's the issue here. We've, we've sort of glossed over and perpetrators have thrived within that. And because nobody talks about it, nobody will challenge it. You know, the issues around honour and shame, they all exist in our community.

And so, yeah, perpetrators do thrive. And we, we always say in amongst our, our sort of team, um, that rape and sexual violence, for example, is the perfect crime. Because people are too scared to report it. Their family members, they won't challenge it. And these, these perpetrators, knowing that will confidently continue with their abuse of women and children.

So this is why we feel really strongly that we needed to become activists, we needed to challenge. And like I said, it hasn't come without its own challenges for us as women. But somebody's got to be the voice of the women in our community and so we consciously made that decision, um, and here we are three years on with our third survey and report will be released during the 16 days of action and the statistics are still very harrowing.

Maeve Carlin: Yes, and we need to put that shame back where it belongs with the perpetrators, not with the victims. 

And we've been talking about this idea that every community is impacted by domestic abuse, but you're saying this impact can be hidden and underreported, particularly with Sikh and Punjabi women. In your experience, why do you think that is, and how do we go about changing that? 

Sahdaish: Yeah, so the Sikh faith in itself, um, is actually a very egalitarian faith. It's always been from the day one, because Sikhi was founded on equality. It was founded to abolish the caste system that existed 500 years ago. And then as time progressed within the next sort of 100 and 150 years, women were seen as equal. The founder of Sikhi - and it's all written in scripture - he said, you know that women should be respected.

There were practices of something called sati, which was, you know, if a husband died and the community cremated people who die, the woman would have to put herself on the funeral pyre and take her own life because, now her husband wasn't there, then she no longer deserved to be alive either. So these were the sort of practices that existed and the gurus, um, spoke against this and, and, you know, they said it was wrong that women shouldn't be forced to do these things. Right up until much later and the 10th guru came along, because there’s 10 gurus all together where they had to fight for justice and equality and for themselves and the right to be Sikh, when they were fighting against other faiths who were trying to forcefully convert or oppress or stop them from practicing their faith. Um, they fought against those people. And what, what happened is women fought alongside them. You know, they, they saw women as being a hundred percent equal. 

They, they, you know, there's, um, scriptures around the menstrual cycle and how like, cause some people believe like, you know, that, um, uh, having a period is being unpure. And the guru spoke against that and said actually if we didn't have that, we wouldn't exist. So, um, The faith in itself, there is so much in there, which talks about women and keeping women on, if anything else, on a pedestal, really, I mean, one of our straplines is “from her kings are born”, and that comes directly from scripture, because there's a quite a long passage in there, which talks about, um, women and how men seek a woman to be married to, to have friendship with. From her, the next generation is born and from her kings are born. And without her, actually it says in there, without her, we are nothing. So that is the faith side of it. 

So, in a Gurdwara, in a Sikh temple, women are allowed to be priests. They're allowed to read from the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the, our, our version of the Bible. They, they can, you know, from a Sikh perspective, they can do everything a man can do. 

Let's put that to one side though. Then there is the culture and the historical issues around, um, you know, the value of women. Things like infanticide and foeticide are a massive issue in our community. People not wanting to have baby, um, female children, um, and aborting them before, um, they're even born and treating them unequally after they're born. 

So this is a more of a cultural issue that exists within our community. Because actually in the faith, there are scriptures about people who get rid of their daughters, and gurus have actually said that anybody who associates with people like that, who get rid of their daughters, will be punished. But culturally this is how it is and women are, uh, of less seen as of less value than men. And therefore, they are treated as a lesser human being and the expectations on them, um, are huge. 

They're expected to, after, you know, before they get married, they're expected to look after the parents, their family, uphold the family honour, you know, all of these types of things. And after they get married, they have to look after their husbands and then their children, and then their in laws. And anybody who wants a career of their own, or anybody who wants to make decisions for themselves and not get married, or whatever it is, or not have children, those sorts of people are frowned upon because it's not the norm, and they're going against, um, belief systems, or cultural systems. 

And I always say like, you know, that not with all families, but we are seeing it a lot that, you know, a woman is really only valued for her womb. She's brought into the family. She's married into the family. They have to do that because that's the respectable thing to do. But really, then she's there to give birth to the next generation. and to her husband's children. And other than that, she's pretty much expendable, which is an awful way of looking at it. But that's how a lot of the women that we work with feel. That they, they were only brought in to, you know, to clean and cook or to look after their in laws or to give birth to children. And unfortunately also, you know, give themselves and their bodies to their husbands at night when they feel like they need it. A lot of women don't have right to their own bodies and a right to have choice. Um, and, um, a right not to do things that they don't want to. And that all comes from culture because the expectations that are forced onto these women, um, who then obviously are suffering with huge issues around, you know, mental health, the depression, anxiety, you know, thoughts of suicide, all of these things.

And a lot of this gets highlighted in our survey, like our last survey, which was 2022, 62 percent of the women that responded said that they'd experienced domestic abuse. 32 percent said they'd experienced it as sexual abuse, and more than half of those that experienced sexual abuse had experienced it as children.

So, we know that we've got a massive problem with domestic and sexual abuse in our community. And, um, I've only just seen this year’s survey. We've got to analyse it now. But, initially you know, sort of had a quick overview of the numbers. The domestic abuse numbers are pretty much the same. I think it's about 0.5 percent out. So it's still up there in 60 plus percent, but the, the sexual abuse figures look like they're a bit higher. And then obviously we've built up a much bigger following and we've got more people like following us on our social media and stuff. So, and we've tried, we tried really hard to encourage people who have not experienced any abuse also to respond, because obviously we needed to get a fair reflection, a true reflection. And so it went out to like parenting groups, mother's groups, you know, like community organizations, um, WhatsApp groups, Facebook, business groups. So we've tried to get really like sort of cross, uh, across the board response from women and still the numbers are really, really scary. So, there's lots of different issues that are impacting, whether it's women and it's their own parents who are abusing them, whether it's their husbands that are abusing them.

And the scary thing is that it's multiple perpetrators as well. It's not one. The secondary perpetrator that comes up all the time is the mother-in-law and or the sister-in-law. And one of the conversations that aren't happening out there. generically, is that about the level of women involved in the abuse of women, particularly in South Asian communities. I was talking about Sikh community, but I know it's an issue across South Asian communities where mother in laws particularly are encouragers of abuse. Um, sometimes they themselves directly abuse their daughter in laws and it's a huge problem and needs to be dealt with.

Maeve Carlin: Yes, and we know about that issue of, uh, female perpetrators from some really horrifying high profile cases of honour-based violence and tragically femicides. Those are really confronting statistics and it's so important, the work that you're doing. This thing that we keep talking about of the unpicking of faith and culture, which is something that when we speak to women from across faith traditions, this comes up. Scripture advocates for the rights of women, but then this may not quite match up with cultural norms, and this comes up time and time again. How do you go about challenging these narratives when they're so embedded? 

Sahdaish: So it's a really difficult job to do. Um, for us, it's about education. It's about helping women to understand what their rights are. Obviously we do all the crisis intervention and we will help women to understand what they've experienced isn't their fault. Because for many that's what they think is because they think there's something lacking in them that they've been treated in this way. So that building of their, you know, sort of self-esteem and self-confidence, all of that's really important. And we do that through our therapy work that. that we do, we've got two therapeutic counsellors who have the language skills as well, which is really good. 

But it is about awareness and education and about encouraging women to report. And even if they don't report to the police, which we do try and urge them to do, but even if they don't report to the police to come to services like ours, and they don't have to come to us, there will be women out there who maybe don't feel comfortable coming to an organisation which is of their community, because maybe they don't trust their community anymore.

So it is about, um, helping the community to learn about what support's available, what's right and wrong in a relationship, what's healthy, what isn't. And, you know, we've started to do that recently with a role which is around community development work, for example, which is about, going out to where there are already women's groups that exist, where maybe we can talk to employers, for example, we can talk to commissioners, we'll be at events like festivals, where we can, sort of hand out leaflets, talk to people, answer questions. 

And ideally we'd like to be talking to congregations in Sikh temples, but unfortunately it's one of the hardest things to do. People don't want us in their temples, you know, and they don't want us talking to people encouraging them to speak up against any oppression or abuse. And I know that's very similar to many other places of worship. Um, but we have tried and we will sort of intermittently carry on trying. It uses up so much of your energy, the frustration sort of just drains you because you think it would be really easy just to be able to, you know, stand in a corner in the foyer area of a temple and just be able to talk to people, hand leaflets out. But no, we can't even get them to allow us to leave, you know, stickers up in toilets, for example. 

And we've heard too often as well, where women have come to us and said they've been to their local place of worship, and actually they were told that they, they shouldn't leave their husband, or they shouldn't file for divorce, or they shouldn't tell anybody about what's happening. This is their karma. You know, this is, you know, they must have done something in a past life. And then women are being silenced. 

And more than that, actually, there are places of worship who are giving character references, for example, to perpetrators, um, to present in court. Um, and, you know, we were in a court case about five, six weeks ago, where the perpetrator, both his daughters had had, um, had written witness’ statements against him. They were both in their thirties. His wife is in her sixties. And, um, they'd given witness statements about what they'd witnessed all their life and how their mother had been treated. And, um, he was there with this, uh, fabulous, glowing character reference from the local temple.

Maeve Carlin: Wow. 

Sahdaish: Which talked about what a wonderful man he was, how much selfless service he gave, how he, you know, supported the community, did all these voluntary hours, and what a great person he was. And at the end of it all, um, he wasn't found guilty of the abuse that he inflicted. Because, um, the victims, all they had was their testimonies. They had no other evidence, uh, like physical, visual evidence and the judge decided there wasn't enough to, um, convict him. And they really had to fight to get an injunction. 

And ultimately we know that a lot of women are not reporting to the police. They're not going down that route. We're sitting on probably five domestic homicide reviews right now. Um, which involves Sikh women up and down the country. And many of them never reported to anybody what happened to them -whether that's an elderly woman, whether that's a younger woman - then they didn't report to the police, or if the police were involved, they never gave statements.

So, um, we need to try and change that, um, you know, and try and encourage women to report, but also to access the right help, because the work we do, as with all domestic abuse charities, is life-saving work. And we might understand the risk better than they themselves do, because they're so in this bubble where it's all happening, they can't see the risk that when they decide maybe, or he finds out she's going to leave, how that could increase risk.

But having worked in this environment for such a long time, we know, we know what the risk is. And sitting on domestic homicide reviews and you start seeing these patterns appearing in, in these cases. And you just think if only we could have talked to them beforehand, if only we could have, you know, sort of got them the right support or maybe got an injunction or something. Maybe they would still be here today. I don't know. 

But you know, we need to try, um, and educate and support and guide. And ultimately that's all we can do. We can't force people to do anything. We would never force anyone to do anything against their will, but what we can do is at least plant the seeds and help them to realize what's happening to them is wrong and that actually they do have a choice. They can leave if that's what they want to do.

So that's the sort of angle that we have to take with this, as well as our conferences, making sure that we've got commissioners there, that, you know, that, that even up to like government level, they understand what the issues and concerns are within our community, so that when they're commissioning, or when they're delivering training to GPs, for example, you know, or health visitors. Health visitors are trained: for example, FGM, female genital mutilation, they know what to look out for. They've all had the training. We need to make sure that when they go to a Sikh household, just because it's a lovely, nice home and, you know, they're very educated or, um, you know, they've got good jobs, that doesn't mean to say that everything's okay. We need to make sure that they also understand to look out for those signs and not to ignore them.

So, yeah, that's where we want to get to, that commissioners and public health and all those people involved and engaged in the community, that they also understand that, that potentially that there could be something going on here. 

Maeve Carlin: Wow. There's so much to unpack in, in what you just said there. I mean, that idea of your Gurdwara writing a letter of recommendation for your perpetrator, I know we'll go on to talk about spiritual abuse, but there is a strong element of spiritual abuse in, in that, isn't there? I mean, if you're, you the victim, that's your congregation as well. That's your community. That's your place of worship. Uh, yes, very, very confronting. 

And of course, as you say, this is a crime that takes place behind closed doors. And, you know, this is something that women talk to each other about all the time, but we listen to each other and we believe each other because we know that there may not be any other proof, as it were of our experiences. Um, well, very powerful and very confronting. 

And also what you said about being able to go into a place of worship and have this conversation. My colleague, Tara, Tara Corry worked with Jeeves from, uh, Faith Forum for London on our Faiths Against Domestic Abuse campaign.

And the reason why we felt that was so important is because there's often this refrain that comes up, “Oh, that doesn't happen in my community.” But of course it happens in every community and the more effort we spend going, “Oh, no, that's, that's an issue that happens over there”, the more we're distracted from helping the women right in front of us who need help.

Well, let's go on to spiritual abuse then, something that often gets overlooked. in conversations about domestic abuse, and it can have a really insidious and devastating impact on victims. Could you give us an idea from your experience what spiritual abuse might look like and how we confront it? 

Sahdaish: The difficulty is that spiritual abuse can present itself in so many different ways. It could be anything from somebody going to the temple and speaking about what's happening to them, and their leadership within their place of worship is trying to discourage them from reporting, using scripture to try and keep them quiet.

In the Sikh community, there's a belief of reincarnation and the fact that you will be reincarnated over and over again until you reach salvation. You know, you've got to be a good person to do that. So the fact that you're here, is it maybe that, you know, previously you might have done something wrong? So they use scripture and stuff to silence victims. And we're seeing that quite a bit. 

We’ve seen women come to us who told us about what's happening to them. Then they've said, “Oh yeah, we're going to be going to talking to our, our local, you know, sort of baba leadership, in the, the committee at the Gurdwara.” And then we don't hear from them again. And we try and reach out to them. Um, we know, um, try and connect with them, send them messages, you know, and sometimes they'll come back and say, “no, I'm giving it another go”. Other times they just stop, stop engaging with us. Um, and we know why that's happening is because the, where they've been, they've been discouraged in accessing any help, um, for what's happening. And in some cases, you know, those women might come back much later, might be six months, might be a year down the line. We'll, we'll see them again. 

Um, but, you know, the more sort of insidious, um, I guess, um, ways in which women and children are exploited in faith settings where they're directly being abused, sexually abused, assaulted, raped.

Um, and we've had, you know, we've had cases of where a so-called preacher has claimed that he's getting divine energy from the gods themselves. And that by sleeping with him, all the women's sins will be eradicated, will be washed away, or they too can get salvation, or, you know, to show that they believe in God. Because they, the perpetrator has this divine energy, they have to, like God, you have to give up everything: you know, everything that you believe in, your body, your soul, your wealth, you've got to give that up and live a simple life. And so who, who do you give that up to? You give that up to that person who's saying he's got that divine energy. 

And, and we've seen it. We've, we've, we spent, um, five weeks in court, you know, literally in the summer of this year with four victims of, um, spiritual, physical, financial, sexual abuse. Three of them where it started as children and now they're adults, um, in the 20s and 30s. And it was shocking to see how this, the perpetrator, the way he behaved in court, they ended up in a civil court because the police, um, they have told us didn't follow through on the allegations that they'd made against the perpetrator, and it, it took them four, five years to pull enough evidence to get, to get it to civil court. 

And I think there's a massive issue about statutory organizations like the police, um, not understanding how to deal with these situations, not understanding spiritual abuse and what it could look like, how this happens. And these people are revered, you know, they're followed by, you know, thousands of people.

When we were in court, in the summer, his disciples, there were so many of them there. Like we had sort of our side of the benches and half the time they were empty, but they had their side and theirs was always full. And not only was that side always full, they had to open a secondary court so that the, the hearing could be live streamed into the secondary court, because that one was full with his disciples as well. And you can just see how he had brainwashed so many of them, and many of them were women as well, and they were verbally attacking, um, our, our clients, they were, um, through their body language, the way we're looking at them. If, in the lunch break, we stepped outside, we were being videoed by people on their mobile phones, all of these sorts of things. 

And the crazy thing is that I spoke to somebody about this, who's worked in the VAWG sector for probably longer than I have, from the sort of local authority area that this priest is from and she said, “Everybody knows what he's about. Everyone knows but nobody speaks up against him because people believe that he is so powerful in his local area.” And so what he does, he does in broad daylight in front of people, but they see it, but they don't see it. They ignore it. 

But it's, you know, how scriptures are used or twisted or changed and if people are not educated and understand it themselves, they, um, believe what they're being told.

But, you know, in Sikh temples as well, you've got priests, you've got what they call kirtanis, which do the music, the sermons, you know, the, the prayers, um, and you've got volunteers who work in these places because selfless service is a big thing. None of these people have been checked, you know, very rarely have I heard about a place of worship that does DBS checks, reference checks, for example, you know, sort of what we would call safe recruitment practice, you know, in doing references and DBS and doing checking characters, the gaps in their employment. What were they doing during that time? 

And, um, and what we see now more of is that in, um, with our community, the Sikh community, and again, I have to caveat this with it's not all Gurdwaras because obviously I don't know all 400 or however many it is in this country, but I reckon that we've definitely, um, supported victims from about 15 or 20 of them. And that number is growing. But we're seeing, you know, these sorts of people texting, um, young girls that they're meeting in the Gurdwara, um, they will contact them on Instagram or, you know, other social media platforms, they're getting their details. They know what they look like and then finding them online, sending them messages. And it's really difficult for a young person who maybe is a bit confused as to why somebody them or if they do tell their parents, the parents might say “don't engage, but don't say anything.” So nobody, nobody challenges these people. 

And if anything, what we're seeing now is what happened with the church that came out about them putting priests on sick leave, for example, and then moving them on to other churches, because they didn't want their own church reputation to be tarnished in any way. So they don't disclose why somebody, a priest was moved on. That's what's happening in the Sikh community as well. Like, you know, they're, they're being moved on with the references, just to another place, another Gurdwara, or they're just being let go of instead of reporting to the police. And then particularly where there might be a shortage, for example, um, of, of priests, um, people are looking for someone to, to join their congregation, um, because they, they need it. And it's quite easy for them to just take somebody new on, not knowing what their background is. 

It can vary so much and the financial abuse is massive. I mean, two years ago, a priest was exposed in the West Midlands for, um, um, taking a lot of gold. Asian people tend to have gold because that's what they purchase, it’s what they invest in. And instead of asking people for money, he was saying to the women to bring gold, and to donate gold. And that's, that's what he did until he got exposed. Someone exposed him on social media, a video went viral of him, and nobody reported him to the police. And then he disappeared. And as far as we know, he went back to India, nobody knows where he is. So he's potentially financially, spiritually, sexually exploited lots of people, and we don't know how many of them there might be, how many victims. But he's disappeared, and the, and the people in the community knew this, they met with him, because they questioned him about it, but never reported him to the police. 

Maeve Carlin: It's, again, it's an issue that comes up in so many conversations that we have with women with, from so many communities. Because of course a faith institution can be a place of community, a place of safety, a place of belonging, support, but it can give so much power.

Sahdaish: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: And it's a tale as old as time, men use that power to exploit, uh, women and children and, and women and girls, I mean, it's, it's, yes, and all credit to you and other colleagues throughout the sector who are doing such important work in talking about safeguarding in places of worship, because it is such a critical issue, as you say, the idea that somebody could be in a faith institution with access to children, vulnerable people, without a DBS check is terrifying. 

Sahdaish: Yeah. I mean, you know, the government says, and it's put out policy legislation, they've really strengthened it because they say that safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. They've said that, you know, even people who don't report abuse, if they know about it, could be held accountable for that.

But I don't understand that when it comes to a place of worship, literally it stops at the door. I don't understand why those rules don't apply to people who are within those places of worship, in those buildings, why they are not expected to be held at the same standards as say, like, you know, a school or us as a charity, you know, we've got to have safeguarding in place before we get funding. We have to evidence that we have, you know, we do all our checks and balances of people that we have DBSs, that we have policies and procedures. 

But when it comes to a place of worship, literally the rules just stop when they get to that door and what happens inside. It's like people are too scared to challenge that. And I think it comes from the top. But my personal view is that, um, places of worship need to be governed appropriately. Like, I know you've got the CQC or you've got Ofsted for schools, you know, those types of places. They should be able to go in and do, um, sort of random spot checks and things like that. I'm not talking about how they pray or what they believe in or anything like that. But the policies, procedures and processes that they've got in place. Those need to be checked, um, because I remember during, um, the ICSA inquiries and the independent inquiry to child sexual abuse, there was a faith element to that. There was obviously looking at abuse of children across the board, but there was a faith element to that inquiry about what's happening in places of worship.

And I remember we submitted some evidence into that for, women who, who as children had been exploited and abused. And two Gurdwaras were invited to that inquiry and because I remember watching it online and one of them said that, you know, they have something like I don't know a hundred thousand people every week coming to their their Gurdwara and They said in ten years they'd had one report of abuse. It just does not sound right when you've got that many people coming in and out.

And we as a charity, over the course of three years, have had many, many, uh, dozens of people that have come to us that have, uh, talked to us about what's happened to them. Not necessarily in that place, but what's happened ujin Sikh temples. So it can't be right that in that many people that they've seen in 10 years, they've had one report, it just doesn't sound right to me.

And actually, reporting of abuse is a good thing, you know, it shows that you're, you take it seriously, that you, that you will, um, You know, investigate that you know, if somebody reports it to you, make a record of it. That's a good thing. Having high levels of reports is positive, not negative. And I just think that some of these places think, “oh, it's our reputation and we don't want anybody to, to, um, think that we're a bad place.” And what they end up doing is silencing victims. It’s just really, really unfair on those and then to be silenced by your family and maybe not, not get the right help through therapy or through, counselling, through a GP maybe, whatever it is, it affects everything about your life. And, and it all sits with that response right at the beginning.

Sometimes we might not be able to stop the abuse from taking place, but it's also about that response that you get when you do report. People need to believe you. When we first launched, the number of calls we had from women, literally women in their 60s and 70s, who said, “this happened to me, but nobody believed me. I've lived my whole life like this.” You know, whether it was a relative, whether it was in a place of worship, we had so many calls, saying to us, basically, we were silenced, um, or not believed. Some of them sent abroad, for example. I remember a woman phoning saying, “I was six years old and I told my mum and they thought I'd gone mental. They sent me to India for a number of years thinking, ‘oh, it will sort her out.’” Imagine that being punished and being extradited to a country that you hardly know anybody. 

Maeve Carlin: As a little girl. 

Sahdaish: Exactly. So are you going to next time tell anybody if something happens? No, you're not. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah. It's an education in silencing, isn't it? 

Sahdaish: Yes. 

Maeve Carlin: You're socialized. And it comes back to what you were saying again about the cultural and religious sensitivity of institutions that are there to support women. So that when you come and you say, “this happened to me”, they can understand the nuances of what it is you're talking about and not make some clumsy stereotyped response that just causes more harm and alienates you in that moment when you need support the most.

Sahdaish: Yeah, yeah. And women are at risk of, in those situations, at risk of losing their faith. I mean, I've had women say to me, um, you know, that “I'm struggling to do my prayers in the morning. I'm struggling to believe in my faith.” And I would never force anybody to believe in anything they, they don't want to, but I don't want their abuse to be the cause of them detaching themselves from their faith because that's, that's not faith. That's the people, isn't it? So you have to, have to help them to understand that's, that's not what Sikhi is about. You know, this is, these are horrible, cruel people who are doing this. This is not the faith. And I don't want you to stop believing because of something that somebody did to you, you know, and that's how sometimes people can use faith very cruelly. Um, uh, and particularly in these situations with women and children. 

Maeve Carlin: And itself, that feels like a form of spiritual abuse to have your faith taken from you by an abuser, not from your own choice, your own process, but to have it taken from you by abuse seems just awful. 

When you shine a light on these issues that have been taboo for so many of us for so long, there is always going to be pushback and you've talked about that. I'd love to hear how you manage that and how you keep faith in this work. 

Sahdaish: I mean, it's not easy. At our last conference, which was 2022, I remember we were really buzzing at the end of it. You know, we had such great feedback and we'd launched our second report. I remember it because we always launch in the 16 days of action. And towards the end of November is Guru Nanak's birthday. He's the founder of Sikhi. So we sort of coincide it with both those things. And I recall us being really sort of ecstatic, happy. And by eight o'clock that evening, somebody had dropped a video in a WhatsApp group with around 150 different people and were demanding for me to apologize for making a comment and saying that Gurdwara weren't safe places for women.

And what they had done is somebody had attended the conference and recorded what I was saying, but then they'd cut the edited the clip down to just a line that I'd said. And actually, if you listen to the whole conversation, there was a lot of context around what I was saying. And we didn't say anything wrong, because we'd live streamed all of it. We'd live streamed on Facebook, on Instagram. So the whole thing was being live streamed out to people. Context was 100 percent, it was there. And in my other hat, I'm a politician, I'm a local councillor, so it was a WhatsApp group with lots of people who are aligned to a particular political party.

So it dropped in there and these demands happened. And from those demands, it then jumped on to a social media platform. And people jumped on to that social media platform. People who were very much involved in other Gurdwaras were also then saying, “oh, you know, you need to apologize” without even seeing any video at all. They just believed this person, what she was saying. 

Um, and it ended up that, after that day, that was a Thursday, by Friday I'd had to call an alarm company, I reported it to the police as harassment.

Maeve Carlin: Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. 

Sahdaish: And by Monday I'd had, yeah, doorbell alarm, general burglar alarm fitted, I'd had all of it done. Because it's not so much about me, but I've got two sons, you know, I’m with my husband, I'm sure he can protect himself, but you know, you do worry about your family.

And, I mean, we've had videos of us do the round on WhatsApp. Somebody's taking a screenshot of us out on an evening out, you know, there may be there's some alcoholic drinks on the table and things like that. And somebody's made up a video and sent it around saying that we're alcoholics and things like that.

So they try to, you know, use, honour, really, against us. So these are people from our community who understand the concept of honour and shame and, um, you, making, from their perspective, disrespectful videos about us and sending them around on WhatsApp, and the one that was made probably a few years ago, every now and again it does the round because it will land back in my WhatsApp. But this is what people are like. 

And also there are people out there who see what we do, and they directly challenge it. They'll say, “Oh, no, their report is flawed”, or “we don't believe in the statistics”, or “they're making this up”. I mean we've got the facts and figures, you know, with our surveys. They’re not threatening us directly, but that's an indirect threat to say you need to stop what you're doing. And then there are those who have got the power to support, probably open doors for us, but refuse to do it. They won't do it. And we've stopped knocking on those doors now. 

Um, but you know our chair of trustees has actually moved house because her car was smashed in and she was told by the police that actually they can't protect her. Because she is a turban wearing Sikh woman, for probably more than 10 years people have approached her about abuse within the faith settings and what a spiritual leader's done to them. And so she's been trying to sort of challenge that, that particular narrative for some time. And so, she ended up having to move out of the area, out of the region completely to protect herself. She's got two young children, mine are grown up, but hers are very young. And that's the reality of it. This is a risk to us. I've tried to remove, you know, my address online, things like that. And we have to always think about what we're saying. Like I caveated earlier, you know, we have to make sure we say these things so that people can't call us out for not saying it. 

Maeve Carlin: Like “not all Gurdwaras”, you mean? 

Sahdaish: Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. And you have to keep saying these things because otherwise they get, they jump down your throat saying, “Oh, you said this and you said that.” And nobody's thinking about the victims in all of this. Um, and it is, it's hard work and, you know, my family do worry. I'm talking to you, I talk to lots of people, we do our own podcasts, um, and you know, what we put out on social media, we have to re-read it and re-check it and make sure that we, we've said it in a way that we're not implicating everybody. 

But unfortunately, the truth is that every single week we're hearing about another Gurdwara or another place of worship, or, you know, another woman, I mean, it's crazy, like, since in the first six months of this year, I think we had five Sikh women die in the first six months. And when you look at that proportionately to domestic homicides nationally in this country, we make up something like 0. 8%. of the UK's population. But when you looked at the domestic homicide reviews of women in the first six months, we made up almost 10 percent of that proportion. That is hugely disproportionate, isn't it? And I thought, even if by the end of the year, no other Sikh woman dies, we're still at about a 5 percent mark, which is way higher proportionally.

And so women are dying in our community and all these people can think about is their reputation, not about how, how can we come together to save, our community. There's shame in hiding this, not in exposing it. And, um, as you said earlier, shame needs to sit with the perpetrators where it belongs, not with victims. But unfortunately, there's too many people who think that we shouldn't be talking about it. 

But we have to keep going. We've got a conference at the end of the year and, and this year we, you know, we, our survey actually looks at faith-based and spiritual abuse specifically. So there's like a deep dive in it. So we already know that we need to be prepared for any backlash with regards to that. But we had to do that because we've had so many cases come through. So we had to do the deep dive. 

Maeve Carlin: I'm so sorry that that happened to you, and to your colleagues. And it really is, it's just a continuation of that cycle of abuse, you know, those same weapons of shame and honour being used against you for calling out the abuse in the first place. It's pretty damning. 

Sahdaish: Yeah. And it's a, it's a shame on those people, really it is. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, thank you so much for your insights, Sahdaish. We just have one last question. We know that women and particularly women from minoritised communities have all too often been let down by the institutions that are supposed to help them. And we've talked about examples of that today. But we have to keep faith in meaningful justice, to advocate for survivors and to encourage women to come forward and access support. What would you say to women listening who are struggling to hold on to that faith and perhaps feeling silenced as a result?

Sahdaish: So I think what I would say is to them is that do your own research, you know, like sometimes these people use, use faith against you, but if you understand your faith, then you would know that what people are saying to you is wrong. And then you can challenge that, you know, because ultimately, if you don't understand it, you're going to believe what somebody saying to you, you're going to believe what they say is right about you and your actions or what you can and cannot do. But if you know it in your heart and in your mind that what you're doing is right, and actually you are following the faith, because as I said, it's a very equal, egalitarian faith. 

You know, women have every right, um, they have freedom of choice, they have a right to be treated equally, they have a right to be, to be treated, like I said before, I don't know, on a pedestal because they are women know, give birth to the next generation, they are so important in the world that they should be treated as queens and that, that's the truth of it.

So I want women to know and understand their faith and actually separate faith from the people and understand that anybody who treats you in that way or talks to you twisting faith, they themselves are not of the faith. They aren't because they're not following it correctly. 

And if you're struggling, I would say reach out for help. You know, there are brilliant services out there. Reach out to us, and if not us, there are others. You know, we're part of the Women's Aid National Federation. There are hundreds of organisations that provide this specialist support. And reach out, talk to us. You know, I would say to people, you don't even have to give us your name if you just want to have a chat with us. We're happy to support. 

Now, our Chair of Trustees, as I said, she's a baptised Sikh. She is self-educated in Sikhism, so she understands it throughout. And if there's somebody who really wants in depth conversation about our faith, then I always refer them to her, and she's always open to have those conversations.

Sikhi is about a way of life. You know, we say faith, and that's why I'm not using the word religion, because it's about a way of life. And actually, it coaches you about how to live your life as a good human being, by working hard, meditating, giving back to the poor or to people less fortunate than you. That's all Sikhi is about. It's about challenging oppression. That's what we have to do. We have to challenge oppression if you're a true Sikh, and that includes oppression from individuals. And they might be your family. They might be your relatives, your friends, people that you, you know, have been intimate with. You know, if they are treating you poorly and oppressing you, then as a person who follows that faith, it's important to challenge that because that's not how you deserve to be treated. And it's important for us to help people to understand that.

And it's a really difficult conversation because, in any domestic abuse situation, you know, perpetrators make you believe that you aren't of value, that you're not worth anything, that nobody's going to believe you or, you know, you don't deserve to be treated well or deserve to be happy. And we have to work on helping people to change that narrative for themselves. Taking back control of your mind as in your mental health, um, is also talked about in Sikh scripture as well. Conquer your mind, you can conquer the world. That's what it says. So it's important to remind women of that, and, and, and actually we can help them get there. 

But definitely, you know, like I said, there are women who have moved away. They haven't lost faith, but maybe they've looked for faith in other places. And it's just unfair that they've been forced to do that, because the people in these institutions have forced them to do that. It's not the faith itself. And I wish that maybe we could have talked to them sooner. And then they could have made a more informed decision about which way they wanted to go, whatever, whatever direction that was, um. And we will support anyone, you know, regardless of their faith and their culture and, you know, the colour of their skin, because Sikhi is about equality. So if a Muslim woman comes to us, we will support them. We have got Muslim women on our books. 

Um, but what we do have is that the Sikh community know that there is specialist service for them. And then those women are reaching out for that help. And we're really proud of the work that we do. And we know the work that we do is life-changing and life-saving. And that's the most important thing. But faith is really important to our women. And we want them it to be a source of strength for them, and not a source of weakness. And that's, that's the sort of place that we want to get to.

Maeve Carlin: Well, thank you so much. I know this will have touched a lot of people and we will of course link to all of your contact information, Sikh Women's Aid, in the show notes so people can reach out for support if they need it. 

Sahdaish: Great. Thank you so much, Maeve, for inviting me.

Maeve Carlin: We are so grateful to Sahdaish for making the time to speak to us and for the work that her and her colleagues are doing to support women and girls when they need it most. We’ve discussed some painful topics in this episode and we know these stories, while so important to tell, are not easy to hear. Please reach out to the organisations in our shownotes if you need support or to find out more about the life-saving work they’re doing in communities across the country.