On a Tuesday morning in broad daylight, a young woman is bundled into the back seat of a car outside an Adelaide shopping centre.

WARNING: The details in this story might be distressing to some readers.

She hadn’t expected to see her father that morning, but her screams filled the car park as he ran towards her with a large kitchen knife, stabbing the 21-year-old multiple times.

Moments before the attack, she was resisting her mother and sister’s attempts to force her into their family car.

With serious wounds to her back and thigh, the family drove the victim away from Sefton Plaza in Adelaide’s inner northern suburbs, leaving behind horrified witnesses who began alerting police.

As the car drove towards the family’s nearby home, her family members continued to hurl abuse at her.

They were furious that she had been dating a Christian man outside their Muslim faith and that she’d recently tried to leave the family unit.

She had previously been promised to a cousin when she was six years old, and later to another cousin in her teenage years, but she refused the arranged marriage — her family saw this defiance as her first act of “non-compliance”.

In the days prior to the attack, her family had left more than 2,500 messages and calls asking where she was.

She was not unfamiliar with this level of control — one of her brothers had previously installed an app on her phone that tracked her location when her relationship came to light.

Once she was brought back to her family’s home after the stabbing, her mother and sister-in-law put the victim in the shower with the water running.

Her sister-in-law, who hadn’t been present for the attack, applied a cloth to her wounds.

No one from the victim’s family dialled triple-0 that morning, despite the victim earlier screaming out to be taken to hospital.

From the shower, the wounded 21-year-old could see her sister pacing in the hallway, telling the victim to lie to police and say it was her Christian boyfriend who had inflicted the wounds and not her father.

At 8:12am police arrived, activating their body-worn recording devices as they entered the property to find the victim still lying in the shower in a critical condition.

One device would later pick up her father saying “she deserved it” and “why did she do this?”.

The father was also recorded making a comment to the effect that “he should have finished her off”.

These details have unravelled over several years in the South Australian court system, since the attack in November 2021.

The crime has previously been described in court as an “attempted honour killing”.

The victim’s identity is protected, which means the ABC can not name her perpetrators.

She survived the stabbing while her mother, father, brother, sister and brother-in law were originally charged with serious offences including attempted murder.

But after a plea deal, her family entered guilty pleas into a series of lesser charges.

Almost three years on from the incident, the family all recently learnt their fate in court with her father jailed for more than 14 years and her mother over five years.

The victim’s older brother, who was also found guilty of trespassing at a property he thought belonged to the victim’s boyfriend before the attack, was handed more than nine years in jail.

Her remaining family members were handed suspended sentences on the condition of good behaviour bonds.

Case draws international attention

In the United Kingdom, Nina Aouilk has been closely following the Adelaide criminal case.

She has spoken publicly about her own experience with surviving honour-based violence for several years.

“It was because I left a forced arranged marriage as a child, I’d come back home hoping to be looked after but unfortunately, my father and family saw it as I was bringing shame upon the family,” Ms Aouilk said. 

“In which case the only thing to do is to kill a girl.

“An honour killing can take place because you are showing your hair, it could be that you have a different choice of partner from your own culture — it could be just that you are bringing shame on your family because you refuse to go to university.”

Ms Aoulik said since speaking about her experience, more women globally, including in Australia, have contacted her for help.

Honour-based violence ‘on the rise’

A leading Australian expert in the field, Carol Kaplanian, explained honour-based violence can be observed in collectivist cultures — and she says it’s on the rise.

“[It’s] started in the sub-Saharan region of Africa and then spread into a lot of the African continent, a lot of the middle-eastern countries, but also into the South-East Asian regions,” Dr Kaplanian said.

“It is always a premeditated act, that is used to instil or save the honour of the family and ensure that shame does not come on the collective family structure.”

The expert says honour-based violence is distinct from family and domestic violence, which is why the term “honour” is still used among academics and authorities.

“If we are speaking about crimes that fall under the umbrella of honour, then using honour-based violence as the language for this is very important to distinguish it from family domestic violence, due to the significant differences between those forms of violence.”

The academic says 5,000 to 6,000 so-called honour killings occur every year globally, but that figure is thought to be grossly underestimated due to a lack of official reporting.

Dr Kaplanian said research showed honour-based violence was on the rise internationally, with the increase of globalisation.

“In the last two years, from reports and research that is primarily emerging from the UK, it’s actually showing that honour-based violence is significantly on the rise,” she said.

“Families are fearful that their daughters may become westernised — or may not adhere to what’s expected in their cultures.”

She said more targeted support in women’s refuges was needed in Australia.

In response to the ABC’s questions about the federal government’s plans to address honour-based violence, Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said a national plan was underway to end violence against women and children.

“Our government has allocated more than $3.4 billion for women’s safety across three budgets and convened a dedicated National Cabinet on this issue earlier this year,” Ms Rishworth said.

Dr Kaplanian said there was no easy way to solve the deeply complex issue.

Ms Aouilk’s advice to women in similar situations is to seek out trusted people and speak out.

“Talk about it with your colleagues at work, to your friends at school, your teachers, because somebody somewhere will be able to enable you to leave that situation,” she said.