Posted on 12/17/2009 9:24:32 PM PST by myknowledge
A 15-year-old British girl murdered by her father in so-called honour killing was reportedly pregnant at the time of her death.
Tulay Goren disappeared in January 1999, shortly after her father told his eight-year-old son to kiss his sister goodbye as he would never see her again. Her body was never found.
Mehmet Goren, 49, was yesterday handed a life sentence for killing his daughter because of her relationship with an older man who belonged to a different branch of Islam.
As detectives admitted police had ignored “tell-tale signs” before the murder, an old school friend of Tulay’s told the BBC the teenager had admitted to being pregnant.
“One day she came in and said, ‘I’m pregnant and I’m going to run away,’ but I didn’t know if she was serious or not,” Nadia Mahmood recalled.
“I thought it was just one of those things you say.”
Tulay’s mother Hanim, who had suffered three decades of abuse at her husband’s hands, was among those who gave evidence against Goren, weeping and screaming in the witness box and demanding he reveal where the body was so she could bury it.
One of his other daughters, Nuray Guler, also testified against him, screaming: "Even animals would not do what you have done."
Prosecution lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw told the court that the Goren case was a "terrible reminder of what honour-based crime can involve" and a "wake-up call" to the existence of so-called "honour killings" in Britain.
Police had become involved with the family in the weeks before the murder, when Goren beat up his daughter's boyfriend, Halil Unal, then complained about their relationship to officers and demanded she take a virginity test.
Tulay ran away and told police her father had beaten her and she would rather go into care than return home, but her mother persuaded her to go back.
Goren attacked his daughter's boyfriend for a second time just 13 days after Tulay went missing, this time with a hatchet, and it was while in hospital that Unal reported his girlfriend missing.
But police failed to put two and two together and it was two months before they began to suspect Tulay had been murdered. They submitted a file to prosecutors in 2000 but were told there was not enough evidence for charges.
Goren was finally arrested in 2008, along with his two brothers, after a review.
Both his brothers were cleared of wrongdoing in court Thursday.
An ethnic Kurd from Elbistan in Turkey, Goren had moved to Britain claiming asylum in 1996. He was jailed in 2000 for his hatchet attack on Unal but escaped deportation because his family all lived in Britain.
The 49-year-old admitted hitting his daughter and wife but denied murder, saying he still believed Tulay was alive and "will turn up one day".
Eternal Islam.
I’ll bet the “older man” was dear old Dad. A chip off Mad Mo’s block.
Thats because it is a good system designed with the proviso that the onus of proof is on the accuser. There is no body, I believe the body has never been found, and a culture of oppression against witnesses that has to be broken down. And it has been broken down. All round good news.
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