5 questions for … papatya

With the action programme “Perspectives for Women”, Rajapack GmbH is committed to three organisations that work throughout Germany on the topics of training and equal opportunities at work, integration of women and girls, and protection of women from violence. We fully support the work of each organisation and would like to give them the opportunity here to introduce themselves and their commitment in a little more detail.

We would like to start with papatya, the anonymous crisis facility for girls and young women with a migration background in Berlin. Thank you, Ms Kaiser, for answering our questions!

Who is the person answering our questions? Please introduce yourself briefly…

“My name is Eva Kaiser, I have been running the crisis facility Papatya for more than 20 years and also the online counselling service SIBEL since its foundation. I am an educationalist by profession.”

With the donations collected at Perspectives for Women, RAJA specifically supports the SIBEL project. Could you describe the project in more detail?

“SIBEL is our counselling centre that mainly counsels online via email contact. It specifically targets girls and young women who have a migration background and problems with their family. Most of the time, the problems are related to violence in connection with the parents’ traditional ideas of honour, planned and already performed forced marriages or also the fear of being left behind in the parents’ country of origin without a passport in order to make the daughter submissive.

The advantage of online counselling is that those seeking advice can contact us from anywhere, even in the smallest town in Germany or abroad, via computer or smartphone, at any time of the day or night, when it is convenient and safe for the person concerned. Even our replies can be read secretly when no one is paying attention. This is especially important for girls who are under the constant control of parents or brothers.

Often, contact with SIBEL (which, by the way, is a Turkish girl’s name that we have deliberately chosen to encourage girls of Turkish, Kurdish or Arab origin to contact us) goes on for a long time. Especially when it comes to weighing up the different options in the run-up to the decision to flee the family or when ways to return from abroad are to be found, frequent and longer-term counselling contacts are needed.

We counsel about 400 girls and young women every year, most of them between the ages of 15 and 25. Occasionally, young men also ask us, either because they are seeking advice for their girlfriend or because they themselves suffer from violence in the name of honour. Professional helpers, such as teachers, social workers, lawyers or doctors, etc. also seek advice from us.”

We understand the importance of anonymous counselling via the internet. But what if you and the person seeking help realise that further help is needed? How does the “transition” from anonymous help to personal contact work?

“Through our online counselling service SIBEL, girls and young women can make the first contact, anonymously if they wish. If necessary, in the course of the counselling we can also move on to a telephone or personal conversation; in case of an acute need for protection, admission to our crisis facility Papatya is also possible.”

Tell us something about the genesis of papatya: Who was involved in the founding, what was the motivation for the founding?

“Papatya is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year; the secret protection facility has been around since 1986. We set up the online counselling service SIBEL 10 years ago (before that, the internet was not so widespread).

Papatya was founded by the Turkish-German Women’s Association (Türkisch-Deutsche Frauenverein e.V.) because girls, mainly of Turkish and Kurdish origin, reported to the Berlin Youth Emergency Service that they were being beaten and locked up at home. Because the families of these girls insisted on the immediate return of their daughter without acknowledging the existing problems, but these girls were afraid of getting more beatings at home, Papatya was founded as a secret shelter where the girls could come to rest, talk without fear and think about their future plans with the help of pedagogical counsellors. The Berlin Senate has supported the Papatya crisis facility from the beginning, even though over the years the financial allocation was no longer sufficient to cover the costs.”

You often help in extreme situations. The work is stressful. What does a staff member have to “bring along” to work at papatya?

“We are an all-women team. We employ 10 women, many of them part-time, who take care of the girls at Papatya as well as the online counselling SIBEL. All of them have pedagogical training (educators, social pedagogues, educationalists and a psychologist), and we are multicultural with Turkish, Kurdish and German staff. We are often asked if we employ volunteers, but we refuse because the work is really very stressful and can only be done with the support of a team. We also have the support of a supervisor at regular intervals to be able to deal better with particularly difficult situations.

We expect all staff members and also interns who work with us to support the emancipation efforts of the girls and young women who turn to us. We do not see ourselves as mediators between girls and their parents, but as partisan and as advocates for those affected.”

Can you describe the life story of a person involved in the project that particularly touched you?

“I always prefer to report on the success stories of girls who have freed themselves from family violence and are now young, self-confident women who are in the middle of life and proudly show us their school-leaving certificates, their training certificates or even their newborn babies.

But I was particularly touched by a very sad story last year:

Rokstan, a 20-year-old Syrian, contacted us in April 2015 because she could no longer stand the constant beatings and insults at home. She had been living in Germany with her family for 2 years and was actually considered a role model for integration. She had learned German so well within a very short time that she could translate for other refugees and wanted to help them get started in Germany. But her home was hell on earth for her, because since she had been raped in Syria, she was considered a slut, dirt and worth nothing in the eyes of her family. Her mother wanted her to die because she was no longer a virgin due to the rape and had thus defiled the family honour.

After 3 weeks in our Papatya shelter, she decided against our advice to move in with a relative who promised her protection. After that, we had no more contact with her. In October 2015, we learned of her death, presumably murdered by her own father, who has since gone into hiding, in the name of so-called “honour”.

Her death spurs us on to constantly improve the protection services for girls and young women. Never again should a girl or young woman have to die for “family honour”!”