When Silence Becomes Fatal:
Control, Not Accountability
They don’t want accountability, they want control. And when that control slips, some will kill to get it back.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s happening in real time.
In April 2024, 27-year-old Kulsuma Akter was pushing her seven-month-old baby in a pram outside a women's refuge in Bradford, when her husband, Habibur Masum, tracked her down and stabbed her to death.
She had left. She was rebuilding. She was seeking safety. But he had warned her "If you ever leave me, I will kill you." And he did.
This is not love. This is not culture. This is coercive control taken to its most violent, narcissistic extreme. And we’ve seen it before.
In 2006, Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurdish woman living in Mitcham, South London, was murdered by her own father, uncle and three cousins in a so-called honour killing.
Her crime?
Escaping an abusive forced marriage and choosing to love someone freely. Her family believed they owned her.
These women weren’t just “tragic cases.” They were silenced because they found their voice.
As emotional abuse expert Sri Kaiser explains “Narcissists never want to talk about what they did. But they’ll talk endlessly about how you reacted.”
This is the strategy:
Deny. Attack. Shift blame.
Frame your pain as irrational.
Rewrite your survival as betrayal.
Emotional abuse is the gateway drug to physical violence and often, to murder. According to @nedratawwab, it looks like:
The silent treatment
Blame-shifting
Manipulating your emotions
Using shame and ridicule
Ignoring your cries for help
This isn’t a bad mood. This is a patterned power play.
Healing Exercise: Name It To Reclaim It
Take out a piece of paper. Write these questions and answer them honestly:
Have I been blamed for someone else’s abusive behaviour?
Do I feel like I have to “perform calmness” to avoid chaos?
Have I ever apologised just to stop the emotional tension?
Do I question my memory, feelings, or reality because of someone’s denial?
Then write:
“I do not deserve this.”
“My life is mine.”
“Their violence is not my shame.”
May Kulsuma and Banaz rest in power. May their stolen voices awaken ours.
If you need support, please don’t hesitate to send us a direct message, we’re here to listen.
Save this post so you can return to it whenever gaslighting makes you question your truth. If you’re beginning to reclaim your clarity, comment “I see it now” to affirm your awareness and strength. And most importantly, share this post, someone you care about may be silently suffering and need to know they’re not alone.
Let’s stop mistaking control for care and ownership for love.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-68854732
Source: https://forcedmarriagecommission.co.uk/banaz-mahmod/
