Caroline Goode served for 33 years in the Metropolitan Police in London. She retired as a Detective Superintendent in the Counter-Terrorism Command after spending ten years leading more than 100 complex murder investigations.

One of those investigations, the so-called honour killing of a young Iraqi Kurdish woman by her family, was to become a life changer for Caroline. This investigation, which began as a simple missing person’s report, was particularly challenging and complex.

After the Banaz case, she trained thousands of police officers nationally and internationally in Honour Based Violence Awareness and was awarded the Queens Policing Medal for her work in 2012.

Caroline joins me today to detail the damage that honour-based violence still does to women in the UK and explains her role in the shocking murder of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, which was subsequently dramatised in the TV series Honour starring Keeley Hawes.

She shares her experience of joining the Metropolitan Police as an 18-year-old woman and some of the challenges she faced at the start of her career.

Caroline also discusses why she looked to progress her career in the Metropolitan Police in complex investigative work and why she has always preferred to work in teams that support victims.

"We need to keep raising awareness of honour-based violence about it in whichever format we can - there needs to be a wholly consistent approach, or we’re going to end up in a situation where these murders continue to happen ." - Caroline Goode

Today on The Community Safety Podcast:

How Caroline's interest in becoming a detective began with a traumatic experience Why she fought to get maternity regulations changed in the Metropolitan Police Caroline's first role as a Senior Investigating Officer and the investigation that changed her life The story of Caroline’s involvement in the horrific Banaz Mahmod case and the eureka moment that eventually helped her team to bring her murderers to justice The difficulty of extraditing two of Banaz’s killers from Iraqui Kurdistan and how Caroline made legal history during the process