The AHA Foundation’s Conference on Honor Violence & Forced Marriage

On June 6th, 2011, the AHA Foundation held the first ever conference on honor violence and forced marriage in the United States.  The day’s events are described in detail in our Events page titled “The AHA Foundation Honor Violence Symposium.”  However, we wanted to highlight to you that we now have the video from our conference available for anyone to view.

We particularly urge service providers, law enforcement, first responders and criminal justice practitioners to take the time to review these lectures as the information provided can save lives.

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Founder of the AHA Foundation, joined us via Skype for “Honor Violence 101.”

• Nazir Afzal OBE, Director of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service discussed the UK’s response to honor crime, forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

• Laura Reckart, Lead prosecutor in Arizona v. Almaleki, spoke on the first case in the U.S. where an honor violence theory was successfully used to obtain a conviction of a father who murdered his daughter, along with Detective Chris Boughey, who led the investigation into the murder.

• Sabatina James, Forced marriage and honor violence survivor as well as founder of Sabatina EV, an award-winning foundation that protects women from religious oppression, spoke on her experience with service providers and law enforcement during her traumatic experience.