A legal definition of ‘honour’-based abuse will be brought into the government’s Crime and Policing Bill, alongside a power to issue statutory guidance for authorities, the Home Office has announced.
The Crown Prosecution Service has also introduced new guidance to include spiritual abuse, immigration abuse, forced marriage and a widening range of harmful practices.
The updated CPS guidance reflects growing concerns around evolving forms of abuse and sets out how prosecutors should build robust cases where victims may be controlled, coerced, or unable to safely support a prosecution.
Harmful practices such as dowry abuse, immigration-related exploitation, transnational marriage abandonment, and spiritual or ritualistic abuse linked to beliefs in witchcraft, spirit possession or demonic influence are included in the new guidance. Virginity testing and hymenoplasty have also been added to reflect changes in legislation.
The guidance recognises the close link between ‘honour’-based abuse and these harmful practices, emphasising the importance for prosecutors to consider family pressure, cultural expectations, and coercive control when making charging decisions and building cases.
“Honour’-based abuse in all its forms is a serious crime, and it has no place in our society,” Baljit Ubhey, director of policy at the Crown Prosecution Service, said.
“Victims often endure immense pressure, fear and coercive control from those closest to them, which can make seeking help incredibly difficult.
“Our updated guidance equips prosecutors to identify emerging patterns of abuse, understand the wider context in which it occurs, and take swift, effective action to safeguard victims and bring perpetrators to justice.”
Nearly 3,000 ‘honour’- based abuse related offences were recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025, although the government believes many more incidents go unreported.
Selma Taha is executive director of Southall Black Sisters. She said: “The explicit recognition of dowry-related abuse and immigration-related exploitation is critical. These are patterns we see routinely in our frontline work with Black, minoritised and migrant women, yet they are too often overlooked.
“That is why it matters that this guidance has been shaped through consultation with specialist ‘by and for’ organisations such as ours, grounded in frontline expertise. The real test now is action. It must deliver measurable improvements in safeguarding for victim-survivors and ensure real accountability for perpetrators, through sustained partnership with specialist services and a whole-system commitment to tackling the root causes of VAWG.”
The legal definition of ‘honour’- based abuse brought into the government’s Crime and Policing Bill will help the police, social workers and other public authorities better support victims, and set clear expectations for professionals with safeguarding responsibilities in the handling of these cases, the Home Office said in a statement.
“For too long, these devastating crimes have often been misunderstood and victims badly let dow,” Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said.
“Now we are tackling these crimes head on and bringing them out of the shadows. Introducing a new definition and important guidance into law will ensure professionals will work together to ensure more victims are protected and more perpetrators face justice.”
The definition, alongside a power to issue statutory guidance, has been introduced via an amendment at report stage of the Crime and Policing Bill in the House of Lords, making both measures law across England and Wales.
The bill aims to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system and drive forward the government’s highly ambitious missions to halve both knife crime and violence against women and girls within the next decade, the Home Office said.
The Home Office is also exploring the feasibility of a prevalence study for forced marriage and FGM to better understand how widespread these crimes are, alongside a community engagement campaign encouraging victims to come forward.
“These initiatives will help uncover the true scale of the abuse, ensure more victims receive the support they deserve, and bring the most dangerous offenders to justice,” it said.
The CPS defines ‘honour’-based abuse as an incident or crime involving violence, threats of violence, intimidation coercion or abuse (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial, or emotional abuse) which has or may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family and/or community for alleged or perceived breaches of the family and/or community’s code of behaviour.
It has expanded its guidance to support prosecutors handling reports of abuse linked to faith, belief or ritual and reflecting our growing understanding of how these cases present in real-life situations. This includes harm justified by accusations of witchcraft, spirit or demonic possession, or involvement in ritual or satanic practice.
“This type of abuse can impact anyone, including children, adults and vulnerable adults, and can take many forms including financial abuse, physical violence, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or homicide,” the CPS said.
Cases often involve violent exorcisms, beatings, starvation or forced ingestion of harmful substances, scapegoating children or vulnerable adults for misfortune, extreme psychological, emotional and sometimes sexual abuse, and homicide.
The updated guidance makes clear that prosecutors must treat these cases as serious criminality within the wider context of harmful practices and ‘honour’-based abuse, assessing which offences may apply on a case-by-case basis.
It also highlights immigration related abuse – a form of domestic abuse and harmful practice where perpetrators exploit a person’s immigration status to control and entrap them.
This can include threats of deportation, withholding vital documents, restricting access to support services, financial control, reporting them to the authorities – as well as practices such as transnational marriage abandonment, where a spouse is deliberately taken abroad and left there without resources to prevent their return to the UK.
