Charity Commission culture of fear – Aneeta Prem

Charity workers are facing a culture of fear. The Charity Commission is right to sound the alarm

The head of the Charity Commission has warned of death threats, rape threats and a "culture of fear" around charities that help women, refugees and faith communities. I recognise that world. My role is to call out abuse, protect the most vulnerable and stay brave, even when it would be easier to keep quiet.

When the Charity Commission's interim chair, Mark Simms, warns that charities in England and Wales are operating in a culture of fear, I recognise the landscape immediately.

He has set out how staff and volunteers at charities that support women, refugees and asylum seekers, ethnic minority communities, young people, homeless people and places of worship are facing death threats, rape threats, harassment and vandalism. He is disturbed not only by the abuse itself, but by how unsurprised much of the wider public now seems to be.

If we have reached the point where attacks on charity workers barely raise an eyebrow, something has gone badly wrong with the values we claim to live by.

For me, as founder of Freedom Charity, this is not a theoretical warning. It is the climate I have worked in for years.

What this climate looks like up close

My role has one core purpose: to protect the most vulnerable. That has meant speaking plainly about things many people would prefer not to discuss at all.

Forced marriage. Female genital mutilation. Child sexual exploitation and grooming. Dishonour abuse within families and communities. The unspoken risks around some first cousin marriages when there is no real consent and no honest conversation about health or choice.

On paper, the principles are simple. Every child has the right to safety, education and a future they choose for themselves. No girl or boy should be forced into marriage. No girl should be cut. No child should be groomed or exploited. No one should live in fear of violence because of family reputation.

In practice, the moment you name these abuses and say, calmly and clearly, that they are unacceptable and unlawful, you attract attention, and not all of it kind.

I have seen schools come under quiet but intense pressure for inviting us in to talk about forced marriage. I have watched people try to present safeguarding as an attack on culture or faith. I have heard the anger that surfaces when we speak about grooming gangs and exploitation, and insist that every child, whatever the ethnicity of the perpetrators, deserves protection and justice.

I remember one girl who told me, in a school corridor, that she felt safer speaking to us in those few minutes between lessons than she did in her own living room. That is the reality behind the headlines.

My role has never been to stir up hate against any community. My role is to shine a light on criminal behaviour and on systems that look away, and to stand beside the child or young person who would otherwise be left completely alone.

Why I talk about dishonour abuse

Years ago, I made a deliberate choice to stop using the phrase "honour based abuse". There is nothing honourable about forcing someone into marriage, cutting a girl's body, or imprisoning a teenager for wanting an education or a different life.

These are acts of dishonour.

I talk about dishonour abuse because language matters. If we allow the word "honour" anywhere near crimes that involve rape, physical violence and lifelong trauma, we help to hide the reality. Dishonour names the harm for what it is. It removes the excuse.

Dishonour abuse is what happens when reputation matters more than a child's safety.

That instinct runs through Freedom Charity's work. It is there in our campaigning for the law on forced marriage. Forcing someone into marriage is now a criminal offence in England and Wales under section 121 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, with a maximum sentence of seven years' imprisonment. It sits alongside the system of Forced Marriage Protection Orders in the family courts for people at risk.

It is there in our education programmes in schools and communities, our books for young people, our helpline and the Freedom Charity phone app, which is designed to put help only a couple of clicks away. It is there when we speak about grooming, exploitation and patterns of abuse that some people find uncomfortable to confront.

You cannot protect children and vulnerable adults if you are not prepared to name what is happening to them.

A regulator finally saying it out loud

This is why the Charity Commission's intervention matters. It does more than record a rise in threats and intimidation. It names the climate in which many of us are working.

The Commission's guidance on how charities can respond to the current hostile environment accepts that some organisations now operate in conditions where parts of the public are actively hostile to their work. It urges trustees to review security for staff, volunteers, visitors and premises, and to think carefully about practical questions that used to be taken for granted, such as how people safely arrive at and leave a building.

Importantly, it also recognises that transparency has limits when lives and safety are at stake. The Commission has said it will be sympathetic where charities ask for trustees' names to be removed or redacted from the public register if there is credible evidence that they might be identified and targeted by extremists. That is not about dodging accountability. It is about accepting that no one should have to put their family at risk in order to serve on a charity board.

Simms has also called out those who attempt to misuse the Commission's complaints system for political purposes. In recent years we have seen people try to use regulatory processes to punish charities they label "woke", even when those organisations are acting entirely within charity law.

For charities working on forced marriage, FGM, sexual exploitation, racism or refugee rights, all of this is very familiar. You are not only dealing with the trauma of survivors. You are navigating the anger of those who resent your very existence.

Brave, not reckless

People sometimes describe me as fearless. I am not. There have been moments when I have felt real fear. Fear for the girls who phone in whispers from abroad. Fear for the young people trapped between their own hopes and the expectations placed on them. At times, fear for my own safety and for those close to me.

The difference is that I decided long ago not to let that fear make the decisions.

My dad taught me to be brave. For him, bravery was not swagger or noise. It was quiet and steady. It meant not walking away when you knew something was wrong. It meant standing your ground beside the person who has no power, even when others tell you to stay out of it.

That is how I try to work. Brave, not reckless. Clear, not inflammatory. Focused on protecting the vulnerable, not on punishing whole communities.

I do not speak out because I enjoy controversy. I speak out because I meet children, women and families who pay the price when adults look away.

What kind of country do we want to be

The story that begins with the Charity Commission is not just about regulation. It is about what kind of country we are willing to become.

If charity workers, volunteers and trustees who support women, children, refugees, homeless people and faith communities are treated as fair game, the damage does not stop with them. It reaches the people they serve, who see that even those who try to help are at risk. It seeps into public life, where intimidation replaces argument and fear replaces reason.

Yet it does not need to be this way.

I have seen what happens when we do the opposite. When schools open their doors and let us speak honestly to pupils. When teachers, social workers and police officers pick up the phone early and ask for help. When politicians, regulators and faith leaders stand together and say, clearly, that abuse carried out in the name of family or reputation is still abuse, and that those who tackle it will be supported, not hounded.

I have seen people go on to live full, independent lives after escaping forced marriage. I have seen boys change their minds about what it means to be strong. I have seen communities move from denial to protection.

Those moments remind me why this work is worth doing, even when the cost is high.

Protecting the people who protect others

The principles are already written down. Charities must do everything they reasonably can to keep people safe. That includes the people who answer the phones, run the groups, manage the buildings and serve as trustees.

The Commission's warning is a sign that the ground has shifted. The threats that used to be occasional are becoming routine for some organisations. The question now is whether we adjust to that reality and protect the people on the frontline, or whether we pretend it is still the old world and leave them exposed.

My position is simple.

I will go on calling out forced marriage, FGM, grooming and every form of dishonour abuse. I will keep speaking about first cousin marriage where there is pressure, risk and no real consent. I will keep saying that the blame lies with perpetrators and with systems that fail to act, not with entire communities. I will keep working with anyone of goodwill, from any background, who wants to protect children and vulnerable adults.

And I will stand with every charity worker, volunteer and trustee who is facing abuse for doing what their role requires.

Protecting the people who protect others is not a luxury. It is a measure of who we are.

Aneeta Prem MBE  is founder of Freedom Charity and a long-standing campaigner against forced marriage, FGM, grooming and dishonour abuse.

‍

‍