Training
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Call us for help on 07480 621711 or email contact@truehonour.org.uk
Trusted Expertise — Why Professionals Choose True Honour
True Honour is a nationally recognised, survivor-led provider of specialist training, grounded in lived experience and strengthened by frontline safeguarding expertise. Organisations across the UK, including police forces, NHS Trusts, local authorities, safeguarding boards, schools, and community groups, rely on our training to improve their response to honour-based abuse and other harmful practices.
We have trained thousands of frontline professionals, equipping them with the confidence, skills, and cultural understanding needed to identify hidden risks early, respond safely, and uphold the One Chance Rule. Every session is rooted in real cases, survivor insight, and practical safeguarding knowledge, making our training both impactful and immediately applicable.
Our programmes are continuously updated with current legislation, national guidance, best-practice research, and lived experience. This ensures the content remains accurate, relevant, and aligned with multi-agency safeguarding expectations.
Professionals choose True Honour because our approach strengthens safeguarding, improves professional practice, reduces risk, and delivers measurable impact for victims, families, and communities.
We deliver specialist training for a wide range of frontline professionals, including police and law enforcement, NHS and healthcare teams, educational settings, housing organisations, local authorities, social care, safeguarding partners, community groups, and faith leaders.
True Honour provides training that is survivor-led, culturally informed, and designed to save lives.
Our Core Training Areas:
Law Enforcement – We train officers to recognise honour-based abuse, forced marriage, FGM, and modern slavery.
Sessions cover the One Chance Rule, learning from real case examples including landmark prosecutions, and understanding high-risk case management and multi-agency safeguarding.
Healthcare – Healthcare teams learn how to spot clinical and behavioural indicators of abuse, respond using trauma-informed and culturally sensitive approaches, and manage safe disclosures, referrals, and safeguarding pathways.
Education – Training helps teachers, safeguarding leads, and pastoral staff identify at-risk students, understand the signs of forced marriage, FGM and honour-based abuse, and respond safely to protect young people.
Housing & Local Authorities – We support housing and local authority teams to identify hidden abuse in homes, recognise escalation indicators, follow emergency safeguarding procedures, and record and report concerns effectively.
Community Groups – Community and faith leaders receive training on raising awareness, challenging harmful norms and myths, and creating safe, accessible spaces for victims and survivors to speak out.
Additional Specialist Modules
We also provide specialist modules on modern slavery and exploitation, coercive and controlling behaviour, multi-agency safeguarding practice, trauma-informed working, supporting male victims, and culturally informed safe practice.
5 Honour based abuse page
Understanding Honour-Based Violence (HBV)
Honour-Based Violence (HBV) is a severe, hidden, and highly dangerous form of abuse committed to protect or restore a family’s perceived ‘honour’. It is rooted in controlling beliefs, rigid cultural expectations, and strict rules about behaviour, relationships, gender, identity, and autonomy.
Honour-based abuse is not a cultural practice; it is a violation of human rights and a criminal offence.
HBV can involve multiple perpetrators, including parents, siblings, extended family, in-laws, and sometimes whole community networks. This makes it complex, high-risk, and often difficult for victims to escape alone.
Key Forms of Honour-Based Violence - Physical Abuse:
Violence, threats, beatings, and confinement are used to punish or control behaviour seen as dishonourable. This is often used to intimidate victims into silence or compliance.
Forced Marriage – When someone is coerced into marrying without free and informed consent. Victims may be threatened, emotionally manipulated, or taken abroad under false pretences.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) – The non-medical cutting or altering of female genitalia, justified as tradition or preparation for marriage. It has lifelong consequences and is illegal in the UK.
Honour Killing (Murder) – The most extreme form of HBV, where a victim is murdered for allegedly bringing ‘shame’ upon the family. These acts are often premeditated and involve multiple perpetrators.
Sexual Abuse – Sexual violence or forced sexual acts used to punish, shame, or control a victim who is perceived to have broken honour rules.
Isolation & Control – Victims may be cut off from friends, school, work, healthcare, and support networks to increase dependence and prevent them from seeking help.
Financial Abuse – Restricting access to money, documents, or essential resources to keep victims powerless and unable to escape.
Case Study: The Honour Killing of Surjit Kaur Athwal
A landmark example of the severity and complexity of honour-based violence.
In 1998, Surjit Kaur Athwal, a young mother from London, was murdered in a planned honour killing after being accused of bringing ‘shame’ on her family. She was lured abroad under false pretences, controlled by multiple relatives, and silenced because she sought independence and freedom.
Her case became one of the first landmark convictions for an honour killing in the UK, achieved without her body ever being found.
This was made possible through the extraordinary courage of her sister-in-law, Sarbjit Kaur Athwal, who risked her life for nine years to expose the truth. Her bravery broke through layers of fear, secrecy, and cultural silence, and her testimony brought the perpetrators to justice.
Surjit’s story is a powerful reminder that HBV can escalate quickly, involve multiple perpetrators, and result in the most extreme consequences.
Her legacy. through True Honour, continues to save lives today.
Other Harmful Practices
While our core focus is Honour-Based Violence, we also support victims facing other serious and interconnected forms of abuse. These include modern slavery and exploitation, coercive control, emotional and psychological abuse, financial abuse, spiritual or cultural abuse, and domestic abuse linked to family or community honour.
These harmful practices often overlap and reinforce one another, creating complex, high-risk situations where victims may be isolated, monitored, or silenced. Early identification is essential, and our specialist knowledge helps ensure victims receive the protection, support, and pathways to safety they deserve.
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