CPS Updates Guidance on Honour-Based Abuse

0:00Today is February 26th. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. If you use public Wi-Fi or care about your privacy online, NordVPN helps keep your connection, secure across all your devices, links in the episode description. Here's what's making headlines across the UK. The Crown Prosecution Service just released updated guidance for prosecutors, handling so-called honor-based abuse cases. For the first time, it includes spiritual abuse and immigration-related exploitation, along with dowry demands and transnational marriage abandonment. This aims to address emerging harmful practices that control victims through threats, document withholding, or stranding them abroad without. Resources, prosecutors now have tools to spot these patterns, even though they are not standalone crimes. They can apply existing laws on domestic abuse and coercive control. The guidance also covers banned practices like virginity testing and high mental plastic, plus ritualistic harms tied to beliefs in witchcraft or possession,

1:01which can involve beatings, starvation, or worse. Experts from groups supporting minority women welcome the changes, saying they reflect real-front-mind experiences often ignored before. The solicitor general praised it as a step-to-cut violence against women and girls in half, giving prosecutors what they need for stronger cases. CPS leaders stressed that honor-based abuse has no place here and victims face huge barriers to speaking out. This builds on the CPS's five-year strategy against violence, against women and girls, launched last November with staff training to protect those at. Highest risk. Data shows 93.5% of honor crime charges overlap with domestic abuse. With partnerships and better recognition in place, authorities hope to deliver real safeguards and hold abusers accountable moving forward.