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Nearly 2 million people a year in England and Wales experience domestic abuse, and many endure long-term harm from their experiences.

Each year around 2.1m people suffer some form of domestic abuse - 1.4 million women (8.5% of the population) and 700,000 men (4.5% of the population)

An estimated 4.6m women (28% of the adult population) have experienced domestic abuse at some point since the age of 16

A quarter of 13-18 year old girls report experiencing physical abuse in their own intimate partner relationships, and one-third sexual abuse

Sahdaish Pall

Director at Gender Equality Matters
Chair of Sikh Women’s Action Network CIC
and Domestic Violence Service Manager at
a large Midlands based Housing Association

Sahdaish Pall is an Author, qualified Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, qualified trainer, an outspoken campaigner and women’s rights activist. She has dedicated 23 years of her life in supporting victims of abuse. Sahdaish was born in Bedford but lived in Hertfordshire for most of her life before marrying her husband and moving to Birmingham to live with him. It was a complete culture shock and eye opener for Sahdaish and at the age of 21, and having lived a protective life, Sahdaish hadn’t realised the pain and torture women had to endure, especially those within South Asian Communities.

After giving birth to her eldest child, Sahdaish decided to go back to college and train to become a therapeutic counsellor. It became an aspiration and having the skills to speak a number of South Asian languages, she decided she specifically wanted to work with and support women from South Asian communities. As part of her training, Sahdaish was expected to find a voluntary placement and that’s where her journey began working with victims and survivors of domestic violence and abuse.

Sahdaish has worked in this field for over 23 years, dealing with everything from housing and welfare advice, immigration and homelessness, setting up projects, and campaigning on behalf of victims. She has managed budgets to the value of over 2 million pounds, secured grants and services through tendering processes including from local authorities.

In 2018, Sahdaish had an idea for domestic abuse awareness board games. Since then, she has worked with hundreds of children, young people, parents, teachers and the community to identify the need for this learning in schools and also to help develop and amend the games until she produced a product that could work. Fair PlayTM are 2 games that can be used by children, young people and adults from age five upwards. The idea behind Fair Play ™ is prevention. Sahdaish has an aspiration to end domestic abuse and she believes that if we can change attitudes and mind sets, if we can get children to understand equality and choice, then maybe one day in the future, we can reduce the pressure on the police, the NHS and on mental health services. But most of all, people will be able to live their lives, free from fear and children will have the opportunity to thrive.

Sahdaish has also appeared on numerous television channels including Brit Asia, Noor TV and the Sikh Channel, raising awareness of domestic violence and abuse and the cultural aspects of this horrific crime. She has also appeared on local and national news broadcasts. Sahdaish’s work has been recognised locally and nationally with articles appearing in many different major publications including The Independent and The Guardian newspapers.

Sahdaish is a creative public speaker, often requested to speak at conferences across the country about delivering expert services and how to provide every opportunity possible for victims and their families to be able to rebuild their lives and have the opportunity to thrive.

Sahdaish is an experienced trainer, often invited to train agencies, staff, teachers and the police on domestic violence and abuse, and its impact. She has delivered workshops within community centres and to the public in different languages including faith centres and Sikh camps.

Having worked in this field for such a long time, Sahdaish was aware that women from particular communities were not reporting abuse to professionals and were therefore not receiving the right support. Along with other professional women in the community, Sahdaish set up a women’s organisation called the Sikh Women’s Action Network CIC (SWAN) to empower vulnerable women to live independent and fulfilled lives.

The organisation is also tackling issues surrounding the negative impact of cultural influences, and specifically where this influence can lead to the exploitation of women. The work has included the delivery of an Honour Based Violence workshop to 80 statutory and third sector organisations at the Birmingham City Council House. She has delivered domestic violence training to voluntary and statutory organisations as well as Child Sexual Exploitation awareness workshops to parents.

Her work has also included providing one to one support to victims and their children which has included challenging agencies and campaigning for changes in local policy. She is currently delivering a weekly TV chat show on a satellite channel which is broadcast worldwide. The idea of this show is to raise awareness of domestic violence and abuse, child abuse, CSE and other negative practices by debating and discussing why this happens and challenging historical practices. The show hosts guest speakers from statutory agencies, professionals and community members to assist with tackling these commonly-held misconceptions and general ‘myth-busting’. The appeal of using TV is that victims in these circumstances are often isolated in the home and the TV is something they will have ready access to.

In 2013 Sahdaish was shortlisted as ‘Inspirational Employee of the Year’ in the Chartered Institute of Housing National awards and in 2016 she was shortlisted from over 20,000 nominations for the ‘Positive Role Model’ Award in the National Diversity awards. In 2017, the Sikh Network team named Sahdaish as one of 350 Sikh Women in history who are inspirational role models to others recognising her for her work within the field of human rights. In 2018 for International Women’s Day, Sahdaish was recognised in the top 10 British Asian women in the UK who have been working hard to ‘press for progress’ and help women achieve their potential.

Sahdaish is also an author and her debut novel ‘The Perfect Match’ tells the harrowing tale of violence, abuse and ostracism but ultimately, triumph over adversity. The novel is based on Sahdaish’s experience of working with victims and includes the stories of many men, women and children she has supported. Sahdaish’s second novel, ‘The Perfect Dress’ is aimed at young people aged 14+ to help raise awareness of forced marriage, abuse, and grooming. This is a clever adaptation of the Cinderella story with a Indian twist. It was launched in November 2015 to mark the Human Rights campaign, ‘International day to end violence against women and girls’.
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