Shazia was born in Birmingham. There was abuse in her childhood so private and appalling that I might be the only person she tells about it. That was the first betrayal. Then there was loss: her best friend, Samina, was 14 when she was murdered by her own father.

The last time they were together was a teachers’ training day. With free hours in hand, Shazia and Samina went to the park where they sat on the swings. They didn’t hear Samina’s father behind them.

The first Shazia knew of it was Samina’s cry of pain. “He was pulling her by the hair, shouting about her truanting, and I was shouting too, trying to tell him that it was an inset day, we weren’t supposed to be in school. But he wouldn’t listen.”

He forced Samina back home, shot her, then killed his wife, another daughter and himself. Shazia went to the house a few days later and took one of Samina’s cardigans: “I needed something to remember her.” Shazia was 17 when she was taken to Pakistan by her parents and forced into marriage with a man she had never met. Shazia refused to give in. She struck a deal with her husband: if you don’t force me to consummate this marriage and let me go home, I will fill in the forms to sponsor you into England.

When her husband arrived in England he started trying to kiss her. She called the police and asked for a safe escort. With her mother shrieking at the door and her father yelling by the police car, she left nearly all her possessions behind: “But I did have Samina’s cardigan. I was wearing that.”

She spent her first few days in a B&B near home, but moved on when her father tracked her down: “I think he did it through my National Insurance number. He’s got a friend at the job centre.” She kept moving until I found her in Stoke-on-Trent. Six years had passed in a fog of hopelessness.

Shazia now works with me at Karma Nirvana. She’s brilliant at it. I watch her supporting other women and she shines with radiance and compassion. For all she’s been through, she never allowed her spirit to be crushed and I admire that.

© Jasvinder Sanghera 2009

Extracted from Daughters of Shame by Jasvinder Sanghera, to be published on Thursday by Hodder & Stoughton at £12.99. Copies can be ordered for £11.69, including postage, from Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135

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