On the success of the Berlin refuge approach

PAPATYA: shelter for girls and young women confronted with honour-related violence

PAPATYA is a shelter for girls and young women with a secret address in Berlin.

We have room for 8 girls between 13 and 21 years at a time.

For a very long time we did not know how to express in a short subtitle what is specific about the girls we take in. Subtitles we tried: girls from Turkey, girls of Turkish origin, girls from islamic contexts, girls with a migrant background - nothing seemed to really meet it.

Since this year the term honour-related violence fills this gap: we protect girls and young women from honour related violence.

At our shelter we take in girls, who are at risk of being harmed by their families. We take in girls and young women, who run away from their families, often without knowing where to turn to and where to look for help. They are that desperate that they only want to get away; the direction of their escape is: out of here. They have been beaten severely, they have been sexually abused, they have been trampeled on for a long time, they have heard themselves called whores and shit and dirt, they have been spat on, they have been wounded with objects, they were forced to marry someone they did not want and were forced to return to the country their parents came from.

I will try to give you an impression of what we actually do together with these girls and secondly I want to emphasize which background factors we need to be able to work successfully.

First some basic features

PAPATYA was founded in 1986, which means, that it exists for almost twenty years and that we have seen more than 1000 girls by now.

The Berlin city government, department for youth, felt that young girls who ran away from Turkish families could not be dealt with properly in the existing Jugendnotdienst. The Turkish population in Berlin is the biggest migrant group, they came as workers for the factories in the sixties and early seventies. In the eighties there were about 140 000 people of turkish origin in Berlin and the number has increased since then.

The Jugendnotdienst (youth emergency/crisis center) is the central place where young people in need can turn to and where the police bring young people they find in the streets. The accommodation there is for both girls and boys both, which increased the family conflicts for the Turkish girls who stayed there overnight. The address is wellknown so that the Turkish families could turn up and force their daughters home and the staff got threatened seriously when they tried to protect the girls.

So there was an agreement, that a secret place for girls should be founded with an all-women team which took notice of the special needs of these girls on one hand and the special fears of the parents on the other hand: PAPATYA.

The girls are taken care of by a multiprofessional intercultural team of women around the clock. The staff members have a Turkish, Kurdish and German background. PAPATYA is placed in a big flat in a normal backhouse in a quiet district with only a small Turkish or Arab population. We have four bedrooms, two bureaus, a big kitchen, three bathrooms and a big living room.

The address is secret to everyone besides the girls who are taken in , the staff members and the Jugendnotdienst, which is the outside front for contacts.

Each year 60-70 girls are taken in. The average time to stay is six weeks, but in the individual case this can be two hours or six months due to the problems and the needs of the girls.

In 2003 more than 60 % of the girls still has a Turkish origin , the remaining 40 % comes from a lot of countries: mainly from Arab countries (10 % from Lebanon) and Ex-yugoslawian countries (another 10 %), but also from Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Greece or Vietnam to name some.

We also take in girls who come from binational families, German girls who have to hide from Turkish or Arab boyfriends and the daughters of German convertites to Islam.

The team is very constant over the years. We are eight women who share six fulltime jobs, so everybody works parttime. These six jobs include house keeping and all the administrative work which we do on our own and also publicity work and networking.

Finances and legal basis

The legal basis of our work is "Inobhutnahme" (taking into care) according to the German Kinder- und Jugendhilfegesetz (child and youthcare law). Paragraph 42 states that children and young people who ask for it have to be taken into care. The social services department for youth, the Jugendamt, has to inform the parents as soon as possible. If they do not accept and the child refuses to return, a family court has to decide.

PAPATYA is financed by the city of Berlin with a certain amount in total every year. This is important because it enables us to take in girls immediately and without an assessment of their individual demand to welfare money. We can take in girls from other cities, we can take in girls with an unclear residence status and - probably most important: we can take in young women between 18 and 21 years also. They may have the status of an adult legally but this means nothing to their families and their need of protection is the same as of minors.

There exists also a dark side of this way to be financed: the amount of money has not been raised since more than eight years and we can be denied of it every year. For a long time now we depend also on sponsoring and on projects we add to our normal work which are financed from other sources.

Why do we need a secret address and what do the girls have in common?

What is different from "normal" domestic violence if you are victim of honour related violence?

Neither nationality nor religion nor migration are the most important background factors on which a special need for safety is founded - although most of the girls and their parents come from islamic contexts and although the risks they face are connected with cultural traditions.

In other shelters for girls in Berlin without secret address there is also a percentage of girls with a Turkish or Arab background.

The special need for safety derives from families, who feel deeply attached to a code of honour. Girls who run away from these families for whatever reasons have to face the resistance of all relatives and have to reckon with the attempts of the family to force them to return at any price.

What a breach of the honour code is differs from family to family, but always the honour code does not only refer to what a girl does or has done but also to the situations she finds herself involved in. It is important to realise that it is not relevant how the girl actually behaves - whether or not she has a boyfriend and whether or not she actually sleeps with him - but simply external appearances - whether or not she is in a situation in which "dishonourable" behaviour COULD take place - like talking to a boy who is no family member at the bus station. She has to prevent herself from any situation in which a breach of rules may be possible. It is appearances that count.

Most of the time the honour codes have not been brought through time and migration unchanged. On the one hand it is common knowledge that parents of minority groups often have conservated idealized ideas of traditions which have undergone modernisations in the countries of origin. On the other hand they tend to see the outside world as more dangerous and full of potential harms for their daughters than they might see them in an monocultural surrounding. But also they themselves have not left traditions untouched.

We get the impression that often there are only pieces of the traditional codes of honour left, that what we face is only a caricature of the cultural contexts honour codes emerged from.

Fathers drink and gamble, mothers try to spend as much time as possible with the female neighbours, brothers take drugs and are imprisoned. But as a last sign before total breakdown the obedience and chastity of the daughters have to keep up a shining facade to the outside world and a structure of psychic stability inside.

The more families fear to be forced into marginalisation, the more dreams of a brilliant future through migration are frustrated, the more fathers and brothers have to face the loss of influence in the outside world they seem to need to keep up their power about women and children. This may be true in other contexts as well, but in the context of honour codes it can get very dangerous for the victims. In a kind of reactive culturalism the family wants the daughter to demonstrate that the parents are still in control of their own life and in connection with their country of origin and their past.

Control over the daughters has to compensate for losses the parents experienced and an honour code which keeps them enclosed in the family`s home stands central in this.

Long before girls could loose their virginity parents do lock them up at home and preventively forbid any contacts to the outside world.

No wonder the girls run away in the time of puberty when the parents limit their horizon more and more.

Rules the girls have to obey to concern especially

If girls do not follow these rules they are threatened to be excluded from the family, they are threatened to be brought back to the country of origin by force, they have to fear physical violence to the extent of honour killlings.

Honour related violence may already be the reason to run away - in cases of forced marriage for example. But also: whatever reason a girl has to leave: leaving the family itself is a violation of honour on which the family will react with violent means.

If a drunken father beats up wife and children regularly this may be just "normal" domestic violence. But the moment the daughter runs away and the breach of honour is likely to get public the mother who may have tried to protect her at home will take the side of her husband and try to get her home at any price and by all means.

Prosecution comes not from the parents alone but involves all family members. The violation of honour has social consequences for all of them. A family that gets known for a runaway daughter is seen as "dirty", as indecent. The siblings` chances for marriage are decreased, the parents do not dare to go back to their homevillage on holidays.

In danger is not only the girl, but also everybody who is seen as supporting her. First of all this concerns especially the boy the parents suspect to be her boyfriend. In some cases even the parents of this boy were threatened with raping the mother or kidnapping siblings.

But also social workers and teachers may face threats.

And of course PAPATYA has to be careful not to be attacked. Although we try to stay hidden, we have been found in the past. We had to move once and to close two times for a period of about a month. There is no total safety. Since we had to move to a new flat we have an alarm line to the police. Actually we did not have to use it yet but it makes us feel a lot more comfortable.

Social data of the background of the girls

We monitor all the data we get from the girls and keep detailed statistics.

This data show that a lot of the girls come from step-families or divorced families and sometimes only live with a single parent. In 2003 40 % came from broken homes.

When PAPATYA was founded the official expectation was it would not be necessary after ten years anymore. Integration would proceed and surely the third generation would not need special shelters anymore. Today it is common knowledge that it came out different.

Migration turned out not to be a single event once in the past but seems to be an ongoing process due to family reunification as well as to refugee reasons. Ever new generations have to cope with it. 2003 40 % of the girls at PAPATYA have faced a migration of their own.

As already said the group of Turkish origin is still the biggest group - but also a very diverse group: there are girls whose grandparents lived in Germany already but who may have grown up with their mother in Turkey, there are refugees, there are girls from Christian minorities who flee for the same reasons as girls with an islamic background.

More than 60 % of the girls come from families who have to live on social welfare money or on small pensions, in 2003 only 31 % of the girls had a father who works. In 21 % of the families we find addictions of any kind, mostly alcohol abuse by the fathers.

40 % of the girls have seen their mothers and stepmothers beaten by their fathers or stepfathers.

The girls do not run away for trivial reasons. Many have suffered for several years in an extremely stressful family situation. Between 14 and 20, when the rules the parents want them to obey get stricter and stricter, when their hope to escape to a bright future with a loving man are denied by forced marriage and when coming of age changes nothing, they run away.

Individual attempts to solve problems

One third of the girls report that they had already run away from home before - mostly for a couple of hours, staying with a girlfriend or relative, or sometimes also staying at Emergency Services or other counselling centres.

It is also shocking that almost 20 percent report having attempted suicide of some kind. Most of them swallowed pills. Some had to be hospitalised. These cries for help were usually responded to with helplessness on the part of the parents, who often ignored, denied or belittled their daughter's suicide attempt.

When girls decide to involve someone outside of the family, they often turn to teachers or school social workers. School is often the only place outside of the family with which the girl is allowed to have contact. The important function schools play as an initial contact in these situations can not be underestimated.´

Physical abuse

More than 80 percent of the girls have been physically abused. (2003: 85 %)

Most of them have been abused by their fathers or by both parents, many have also been beaten by brothers. The brothers are often encouraged to do this by the parents.

When the girls claim to be hit, they are usually referring to massive beatings with objects. The occasional slap is, for them, normal.

Many of them have the feeling that there is no connection between their behaviour and the punishment they receive. They feel they are beaten at random.

If we ask them, the girls report feeling much more hurt by the parents' verbal abuse than by their physical abuse. The girls are often insulted and degraded verbally, particularly concerning their sexuality - "whore" being one of the most harmless accusations - and it is often very difficult for them to tell us about it.

Sexual violence

When we started to work, we were immediately (and unexpectedly) confronted with the existence of sexual violence in Turkish families. In 1986, 21 girls were victims of sexual violence. The violence was of varying degrees - to the point that one girl became pregnant from the sexual abuse carried out by her brother-in-law.

On average, 30% of the girls have experienced sexual violence - in the context of the immediate family, 20%. If a girl is raped the blame is put usually on herself.

At this point, it is common knowledge that a strict sexual morality, as combined with the codes of honour, in no way protects girls and women. On the contrary, the gender hierarchy connected with it makes it extremely difficult for the girls to escape or resist abuse and get help. The high value placed on virginity sometimes leads to the preference for anal and oral sexual practices - in order to avoid scandal on the wedding night.

This mentality can also result in a situation in which the sexually abused girl is accused of wanting to cover-up sexual contact to a boyfriend by accusing a family member of sexual abuse.

Girls who reveal having been sexually abused are in great danger and in need of a safe place to which the family has no access.

Only in those cases where the girl hopes to be able to protect younger siblings does she decide to press charges - this is extremely seldom.

Forced marriages

A quickly arranged marriage is often chosen as a solution when the parents feel they are unable to control their daughter and her need for freedom. A forced marriage can also be connected with significant economic gains for the parents: Although girls who have grown up in Germany are viewed suspiciously in terms of their moral values, they are also a means - through marriage - of getting a "ticket" to Germany. Families in Turkey are often willing to pay a high price for this bride, as she makes it possible for a family member to immigrate to Germany.

About 30 % of the girls face forced marriage.

A group especially in need and extremely difficult to reach are young "import" brides from foreign countries. They often come with high hopes and their family back home expects them to be able to support them financially. Sometimes after arrival they find themselves in the position of rightless household slave at their husband´s home.

Since some years PAPATYA has founded a workgroup against forced marriage in Berlin which has given out a booklet and a flyer.

Closely connected with forced marriages is often also....

A forced return to the country of origin

Approximately one fourth of the girls have been threatened with this. Usually it has nothing to do with the parents' own plans to return and also it is not always connected with forced marriage. The parents are most often settled in Berlin and imagine, at the most, commuting between countries after retirement.

Some of the girls who fear being shipped back have already been left behind in the country of origin by the parents after holidays there, and had only been able to arrange a return to Berlin by begging, promising good behaviour, hunger strikes, etc.

Getting in contact: how to be easy to approach and hidden at the same time

The girls cannot reach us directly - nobody can. Even our telephone number is secret, we only hand out the number of the Jugendnotdienst. They take our calls, call us and then we call back the person who wants to talk to us. This is functioning very well. We do not want to be too well known in the migrant communities but we do everything to be wellknown by other professionals. So most of the girls turn to social workers at their schools, at counselling centres, the police or the Jugendnotdienst and get in contact through them. Then our first step is to call the girl on the telephone. This first call is very important. We want the girls to think and to decide, whether they really need anonimity and whether they can fit in with all the rules and regulations we want them to accept if they come. Secrecy means that they cannot be visited, that they cannot be called, they can just make calls themselves and that - whether 13 or 20 years old - they only can go out in the afternoons and have to be back by seven p.m. and even this might not be possible the first days.

Second purpose of this first call is to talk about needs and expectations, we call it: making a first work contract. We tell them what we are able to offer and what we cannot do for them.

We will listen, we offer time and support and we will help them to direct their life in the direction they want. We cannot promise them they will never have to meet their parents again, and we will not support them if they want to quit school and marry the man they are madly in love with since three days. And of course we try to get a first idea about the danger they are in.

It is very important that the girls come voluntarily and we always tell them they can leave any time they want: it is difficult to get in - it is easy to get out. We also tell them that we will throw them out immediately if they mess around with our address, what ever reason they might have. In this case we will look for another place in youth care for them which will not have a secret address which means that their safety will be much more difficult to achieve.

We will start a project of internet counselling this year to give the girls a better chance to reach us directly.

If the girl accepts the rules she can come immediately. Most times she has to go to the Jugendnotdienst whome we call to announce her coming and who will take her to our place. If she is under age the Jugendnotdienst also has the function to take her into care legally without the permission of the parents. When she comes, she first is given food and is shown her room and her bed and introduced to the other girls. We can provide her with toothbrush, soap and clothes - very often the girls were not able to bring anything with them to cover their flight.

Depending on her state of mind we do an intake interview in which we get an impression of her past and present, her situation in the family, her education, her health status, the reasons why she left and the last little thing which made her go today, her attempts to change something until now and her ideas of her future. If she is under age and the time is between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. we find out which department of the youth social services is responsible for her

and talk to them on the telephone. They will call the parents and tell them, that their daughter is in a shelter. Any other time or in the weekend or if the girl is of age we will call the parents very shortly and inform them that their daughter has not been kidnapped or had an accident but has left the family out of free will. The families react differently - sometimes calm and thankful, sometimes they accuse the girl as liar, curse her and us - most times they want to talk to her immediately which we always deny. If she wants, the girl can listen to get a first impression of the reaction of her family.

We want to pass two messages to her: first that we will stand by her side in her conflict with the family, second, that we want to stay fair towards her family at the same time and do not want her relatives to spend sleepless nights worrying about her whereabouts.

Two other messages are passed implicitly: meeting other girls who left home shows every girl that she is not the only black sheep looking for a better future. And the intercultural team gives an idea that you can come from different origins and build up a system of values together and that you can decide against your family without deciding against your roots and your community.

The extent of danger and the extent of safety: Risk analysis

The first days at PAPATYA the girls feel quite unsafe. They cannot sleep the first night, they are afraid of the doorbell and they do not dare to go out.

We try to get a picture of the extent of danger they are in. First, there are facts: how big is the risk that she might be found by chance: having eight brothers who all have friends hanging around at metro stations puts a bigger risk on a girl than one baby sister. A father driving taxi is a bigger risk than a father running a grocery store. Berlin is big - which places and districts might be dangerous, which are safe? Who will be looking for her? Will the family spread the news of her escape or will they try to hide it?

Other information we get by talking to teachers. Do they know the family, do they know the girl had problems at home, has the family turned up and looked for the girl, were they calm or did they threaten pupils or teachers? Often the girls call girlfriends or neighbours for information about the reaction of their parents.

Most times we are more successful taking away the girls` fears than we would like to be.

After a few days many girls want to go out and meet friends and we have to remind them of the risks. The first years we did take over the part of being afraid, even forcing them to stay in, when we thought they were in danger. We took the responsibility and they seemed to be all too glad to get rid of it.

Today we leave the decisions about their safety mostly to the girls. We tell them we can guarantee for their safety only in our house, not outside and that we will not rescue them, if they put themselves in danger deliberately. So responsibility stays with them which most times works well.

The work strategy of the team: respect to individuality and the search for an individual solution

The fact that PAPATYA's address is kept secret is absolutely necessary for being able to effectively support the girls.

Only under this condition are the girls able to reflect on their situation at their own pace and without constant pressure from their families. We try to find ways to support the girls in the difficult process of finding out what they want, feel and need, or help them develop plans for the future.

Most of the girls have not been allowed to make their own decisions up until this point. They must now learn how to articulate their needs and how to assert themselves.

Initially they are vehement about their desire never to see their parents again. This, however, often changes quickly and the girls must think about the direction in which they wish to proceed. For most of the girls, running away from home is not experienced as a release, but as an emergency measure, after all attempts at changing the family - be it by means of adaptation or rebellion - have failed. As a result, sorting through the ambivalent feelings with respect to the separation from the parents is a process we give considerable time and attention in PAPATYA.

We try to accompany and support the girls in their internal, psychological process of coming to terms with their families as well as with their very real situations.

Within the first couple of days after the girl has been taken on in our project, the Jugendamt talks with the girl and with the parents separately. We accompany the girls to these appointments. At this point, we can usually assess what kind of danger the girl is in and whether there is any chance of coming to some kind of understanding with the parents. In most cases, talks can be held with the girl together with her parents at some point in time.

Very often the danger is smaller than the girls fear. In the fears and fantasies of many of them their fathers and brothers have risen to almightiness. Many of them have heard death threats while still at home.

When possible, these talks are then accompanied by a German and a Turkish/Kurdish PAPATYA co-worker. We try to prepare the girls for these talks beforehand and see ourselves as representatives of the girl's interests.

Dealing with the parents - taking the side of the girls by taking into account their ambivalence

The girls are sceptical of us talking to their parents at all and we try to reduce their fears of the pending talk as much as possible.

It has been a long process for us in this area. At the beginning, we believed that it would be possible to find solutions that accommodate the needs and wishes of both the girls and the parents. This proved to be more difficult than we had anticipated.

In our experience it is possible to negotiate with the parents when it concerns calling off a forced engagement or wedding. It is also possible to find solutions in living by relatives, setting curfews, helping in the home, giving weekly allowances, setting clothing regulations and attending school. We are quite successful to stop severe beatings.

But two issues in particular appear to preclude all possible negotiations with the parents:

Both are central breaches of the codes of honour.

Pre-marital relationships are taboo, and yet most of the girls we see have boyfriends. These boyfriends are then carefully hidden from the parents.

This fact prevents us from speaking openly with the parents. We are caught in a circle of prohibitions and punishments from the parents' side and lies and the breaking of prohibitions from the girl's side - a situation we are seldom able to break through or de-escalate - at least not for longer periods of time.

The girl feels herself particularly trapped when her boyfriend himself insists that she return to the family: an "honourable" girl belongs with her family and he is only willing to be in a relationship with an "honourable" girl. Otherwise he may end the relationship.

It is difficult for us to accept the fact that peers also uphold the honour codes - a girl is often insulted and degraded by siblings and schoolmates when she runs away.

To prevent the loss of honour, the family will mobilise all its resources: they may try to coerce the girl with promises, or emotionally manipulate her (Grandma is dying, your little brother won't stop crying....) and they may be ready to use force.

We nevertheless try to talk with the parents in most cases.

This is because the girl's running away from home is often not only an attempt to get away from the family but also a last attempt to see whether and how much the parents love them and if the family is at last willing to change.

The girls want to know how the parents have reacted to their flight. In many of the families, there is not much talking going on in general and when the parents communicate with their daughters, it is often only in the form of hierarchical, uni-directional commands. The parents care for the material needs of their children. It doesn't occur to them to ask about their children's thoughts and feelings.

Often for the first time in the context of these talks, the girl experiences a situation where she can speak and the parents have to listen.

It is important to mention that the situation of some of the girls is so dangerous that we do not risk talking with the parents. Then we try to persuade the girl to write a letter or to talk on the telephone.

What happens to the girls after PAPATYA?

Approximately one third of the girls go back to their former situation: living with their parents, step-parents, etc.

Approximately 10% find a solution within the context of their (extended) family: they move to an older sister, or to an uncle or aunt, or to the other parent, or move away together with the mother but away from the father, etc.

Those girls who decide not to return to their families and who are still minors must go to the family courts, where the parents must be denied custody of their child. In most cases, this is successful.

Approximately 40% of all girls go to children's homes, youth co-ops, or are supervised by social workers in their own flats after leaving us. This is financed by "Jugendhilfe" (youth social welfare services). If they are still in danger with respect to their families, they sometimes have to move to another province.

The rest go to other crisis housing facilities, to clinics, to their own flats or they marry their boyfriends.

We usually lose contact relatively quickly with those girls who return to their families.

Their motto appears to be: "Forget about the past. Let's start with a clean slate."

Between 10-15% of the girls return to our facility every year for a second time. In most cases, these are girls who had been very sceptical but had gone back to their families in order to give them "a second chance".

Those girls who run away from home a second time usually leave the family for good.

Breaking stereotypes

So if you tried to imagine the girls and their families while I talked: don`t you think of whitebearded grave men and headscarfed shy girls. Both father and daughter might look like taking part in an MTV video clip and you would not expect the girl to live that imprisoned by the rules of honour, if you saw her at the bus station.

A big city, networks and Euros: background factors we need to be able to help

Since 1997 we have run two Daphne projects and through this have investigated the situation of young migrant women who suffer family violence in many European countries. It became very clear to us:

The protection of the girls depends heavily on the standard of care and protection which is offered to young people or girls in general in a country. If- like we learnt in Great Britain, there is almost no social money for young people between 16 and 18 and if the only accommodation you can get (if you are lucky) is a bed and breakfast, there is not much hope for migrant girls to get sufficient support if they have to flee from honour-related violence.

PAPATYA could not be successful if we were not part of a network which combines counselling centres which refer to us and housing opportunities for the time after.

But also: these institutions will be less successful if they cannot offer a secret shelter.

Anonymity can only be provided in big cities. So it is important, that we can also take in also girls from outside Berlin.

And last but not least as I told before the structure of our financing is part of our success.

Lack of data

Concerning honour related violence from UN-bodies to city police no one seems to have data. We cannot help with that. We know about two girls who were murdered years after they had been staying at PAPATYA. We know about a few cases of murdered female relatives. But a lot of the girls who turn to us are frightened with stories about honour killings - mostly in the home countries. How much reality lives in these stories is difficult to decide. Sometimes they have reached the papers, sometimes they are mere hearsay. At any case the fear of getting a victim of honour-related violence is very present and we hope that we have been successful in preventing honour-related violence in most of the cases we got involved with.

Central needs as we see them

One of our main battlefields at the moment is that the youth departments of social services deny their responsibility for anyone older than 18. According to the law (KJHG) there are possibilities for support up to the age of 27 but actually even 17 1/2 year olds have to fight for this and often are turned down.

Another focus are the immense difficulties the girls face if they have to hide from their families and try to build up a new life. It is already not an easy task to vanish without traces for the family in person but bureaucratically it is nearly impossible. Often the girls had to leave passports and other papers at home. To get new ones without the family noticing, to get social welfare money without being able to bring the parents` income documents and to get health insurance without naming your new place of residence often builds up an unaccessible mountain. We will need support from other actors in society to make this change

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