Jasvinder Sanghera
When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 14, her mother showed her a picture of the man the young teenager would marry. When Jasvinder was 16, she ran away to escape the marriage.
Disowned by her parents who said she had shamed them, Jasvinder lived in hiding for eight years, sleeping rough and fearing reprisals from her family who moved to Britain from India in the 1950s. Two years after her elder sister Robina, 24, set herself alight and committed suicide to escape her own abusive marriage, Jasvinder returned to her home town of Derby determined to help others suffering in silence.
She set up the charity Karma Nirvana in 1994 and has dedicated her life to helping men and women fleeing forced marriages, domestic violence and threats of honour killings.
Despite receiving death threats, having human faeces smeared on her office and needing to check under her car for bombs, Jasvinder, now 44, campaigns tirelessly, telling her own story to encourage others to break their silence.
Her helpline, The Honour Network, receives more than 300 calls per month, some from girls as young as 11. Her team works with Refuge to find safe places for fugitives to stay.
"Robina's death was the trigger for me to come out of hiding," Jasvinder says, "to hold my head up and say, ‘You are the perpetrators, not me'. "My family sent her back to her husband to make her marriage work for the sake of honour and she died in a horrific way. "To this day my family do not speak to me, but I will not be silenced any more."
Jasvinder shares her knowledge with politicians, police, social services and schools to make sure they can better understand and prevent this abuse. She has written two best-selling books: Shame, her autobiography, and Daughters Of Shame, which tells the stories of men and women bullied into marriage.
The publication of Shame was instrumental in putting the Forced Marriage Act through Parliament. It became law in November 2008, giving courts powers to help protect those being forced into marriage.
Jasvinder has also been praised by America's First Lady, Michelle Obama. "Karma Nirvana was set up in my front room and at first I came across many obstacles," Jasvinder says. "Yet we are making progress. My biggest achievement will always be getting this into the open. "I constantly come across people who are in denial about this. Forced marriage isn't an issue of cultural understanding. It's about people abusing other people. "I will fight until I die to free people from forced marriages. There are mountains to climb but I won't stop climbing."