Jasvinder Sanghera was born in Derby to a traditional Sikh family, one of many daughters whose fates were decided young. Her sisters were married off from fifteen. Jasvinder's own marriage had been agreed when she was only eight, to a man she had never met. At fourteen, told the day had come, she said no. Her family locked her in her room to break her will. Instead it hardened. She escaped through her bedroom window and never went back, a single act of defiance that cost her everything, her parents, her sisters, the only home she had known, with no reconciliation. She could have disappeared into her new life. Instead she chose to speak. Her memoir, Shame, became a Times bestseller, described in the House of Lords as a political w*apon. Her campaigning helped bring about a specific criminal offence for forced marriage in England and Wales in 2014. For refusing a marriage decided before she was old enough to understand it, Jasvinder Sanghera was appointed CBE in 2013 and made a Dame in 2024, for services to victims of forced marriage and honour based violence.