In 2002, Shafilea began to miss school. Her teachers heard that she was being held at home by her parents against her will. Her father had set fire to all of her school books. The school took no action. Social services and the police took no action. Shafilea ran away from home numerous times. She informed social services that she was afraid of being forced into a marriage. She had asked for somewhere to safe to live away from the family home and away from her parents who continued to bully and beat her.

In February 2003, she ran away from home but was found by her parents who drugged her and took her to Pakistan where they tried to force her to marry a man against her wishes. Shafilea drank bleach to avoid being forced into the marriage. The family returned to the UK where she spent many weeks in hospital and suffered permanent throat damage. Her parents told the hospital that she drank the bleach by accident. There was no police investigation and no referral was made to social services.

After returning from Pakistan, Shafelia started a part-time job. In September 2003, Shafilea disappeared after finishing a shift. Her parents did not report her missing; they claimed that she had run away. At school, a teacher overhead her siblings talking about their fears for her safety. Her college reported her missing after she had been absent for a week. Her parents and five other members of her family were arrested but all were released without charge.

Shafilea’s father, Iftikhar Ahmed, and her mother, Farzana Ahmed, had killed her in their family home in Warrington, Cheshire, on the 11th September 2003. They forced a plastic bag into her mouth to stop her breathing. They beat and dismembered her body, and disposed of it. Shafilea's siblings, who witnessed her murder, were told by their parents that if they spoke to anyone about what had happened, they too would be killed.

Shafilea's parents told the police that they had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

In February 2004, Shafilea’s body was found on the bank of the river Kent in Cumbria. Nobody was arrested for her murder. In 2010, Shafilea's sister Alesha told the police that she had seen her parents kill her seven years earlier. They were arrested and, in 2011, they were charged with her murder and nine months later, they were found guilty, nine years after her death. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Shafilea’s tragic and needless death revealed severe flaws in risk assessment, and safeguarding of victims of honour-bases abuse and forced marriage in the UK. The only answer to ensuring that what happened to Shafilea never again happens to another person is mandatory training for frontline professionals in the police, social services, education and health sectors.

Click here to read more about Shafilea’s case, via BBC News.