Woman's Hour - 29/02/2020

Episode Date: February 29, 2020

On Monday, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of committing a criminal sexual act and third degree rape - and could go to jail for over 20 years. He was acquitted of two counts of predatory sexual assault. While some are celebrating the verdict as the start of a new era and a sign of changing public attitudes towards sexual assault, Weinstein's lead attorney Donna Rotunno promised to appeal, saying "the fight is not over". So what does the ruling mean for women?The man booker prize winning author Anne Enright discusses her new novel Actress, her fascination with strong love between mothers and daughters, and the parallels between her own life and her heroine’s.An estimated 1.24 million people are affected by eating disorders in the UK yet the treatment and diagnosis is still comparatively misunderstood. A new research programme launched this week will examine the genetic element of eating disorders and how this interacts with environmental factors.Childhood cancer is thankfully rare and the past few decades have seen dramatic improvements in the outlook for children diagnosed with the disease; today more than three-quarters survive. We hear from three mothers – Sam, June and Jenny - whose children were diagnosed. How did they cope day to day watching their offspring struggle through endless treatment? How does it impact the rest of the family? And how has the experience affected their response to the world around them?A young Muslim woman, Noor Inayat-Khan was many things: a dutiful daughter, a musician, an artist, a poet fluent in several languages and a published writer. Later, she was a vital part of the fight against Nazism, as a wireless telephonist in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She sacrificed her life for the cause of freedom and now a new interactive exhibition is keeping her story alive. Lynelle Howson, an historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission tells us about her life and work.Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Rosie Stopher Editor Karen Dalziel

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Noor Inayat Khan was an agent with the Special Operations Executive in World War II. She died in Dachau when she was only 30, but she's to be remembered with a blue plaque and an exhibition about her life and work. A new novel by the Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright. Actress is set in Dublin where Anne has spent most of her life. I'm a reluctant Irish woman and I live reluctantly in Ireland. And, you know, late in life I've come to realise

that I really love the place and that there's much to be celebrated there. New research into the cause of eating disorders. Why is attention now being paid to the genetic element in anorexia and bulimia? And the mothers whose children have been diagnosed with cancer. Even if the child is in remission, does the anxiety ever go away? I know what I saw and what I heard and I can't unsee it or unhear it and I do take it round with me like a grey cloud. It was on Monday at the beginning of the week that the news came through from New York that Harvey Weinstein had been found guilty of committing a criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. As accusations of sexual harassment began to flood in

from women who'd been forced to be unwillingly close to Weinstein, the MeToo hashtag began to spread around the world. It had been created by Tarana Burke in 2006, but it was not until 2017 and Weinstein that it really took hold. Nevertheless, there was widespread surprise that he had actually been found guilty and sent to prison. Joan Smith chairs the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Board.

Amanda Taub is a journalist at the New York Times. Would she say this verdict means things have changed around sexual violence and the law? I think they are changing. I think that this is a sign that the Me Too movement started by Tarana Burke and continued by many women, including the women who came forward in this case, have had a real impact on the way that we see sexual assault and in particular on who we think deserves protection. What do you mean by that? So in this case one of the things that made the prosecution challenging was that the women had had business and personal relationships with Harvey Weinstein and that is often seen as something that is

discrediting to victims of sexual assault. This is key, isn't it? I've got a quote here from a member of his defense team who argued that his relationships were consensual and transactional. Yes. And that was very much the line pushed as his defense at trial and also the claim that he has made to the public in defense to really be a victim, that on some level they were complicit in the violence that was perpetrated against them. It isn't an uncommon view to hear people saying, what was she doing in his hotel room? People do say that, don't they? Right. They absolutely do. And I think that one of the reasons why it has been so common to say that is that that lets all of us off the hook a little bit for not having to question the way that we judge the people in our own lives, as well as celebrities like the ones involved in this case. If you say it was the

victim's fault, then you don't have to think about who we really are kind of allowing the power to commit acts like this. Because if you turn that around and say that if somebody comes into your hotel room, you are permitted to do whatever you want to them. Once you put it in the active focus on the perpetrator rather than the victim's agency, then you can see how crazy it is. Yes. Joan Smith, what about this? This business of transactional behaviour between men like Harvey Weinstein in positions of power and their female victims? Well, it's another attempt to whitewash predatory behaviour, isn't it?

So it's actually suggesting there's an equality on the two sides and that both these people come into this relationship and they both have equal power and agency, which clearly isn't the case. And in this country, coercive control became a criminal offence in 2015. And that was a recognition that there is power in these relationships. And sometimes that power is used in a way that's criminal. And in these instances, you're actually talking about it being used to actually facilitate assaults. What I'm hoping about this case is that it will change our idea of what victims are,

who victims are, how they behave, change our view of how predators behave, because there is still this persistent idea that rape is a stranger offence, that it's committed by people, someone you've never met who jumps out at night. We know the majority of rapes and sexual assaults take place in the context of quite often continuing relationships. And it's important to remember that sexual predators are not rapists all the time. They can be charming, they can offer you things, which is the point about supposedly being transactional, that these women had very little power, they wanted a career,

and this man was actually using that to turn them into victims. What is going to happen next, Amanda? We know he is going to appeal. I think there's also that there was a claim of a mistrial as well, wasn't there? I'm sure that his attorneys will raise every procedural defense that they can. That's absolutely standard for this type of case. The way these cases work in the United States is that on appeal, the findings of fact from the jury will stand unless there is some jury-related misconduct discovered. So essentially, unless there is a mistrial declared, then the findings of fact, what he did to these victims, that will stand on appeal. They can only challenge procedural legal matters, things like what evidence should and shouldn't have been introduced.

And his conviction for third-degree rape, a lot of people in this country won't know what that means. What does it mean? So in the US and in New York in particular, different degrees of rape depend on things like whether the victim was a child, whether there was violence and injury as a result of the rape, how violent, how exploitative it was, that sort of thing. So third-degree rape is still rape. It is not in any way a lesser offence. The change really is that it can be heightened by... Right, and American various states have different laws, but the statute of limitations is important here. We don't, Joan, we don't

have a British equivalent, do we? Not an exact replica of what happens in the States. So in fact, I was thinking only this morning of a case we drew attention to on the programme yesterday of a brave woman who'd managed to get her stepfather convicted of sexual assault against her and it was many, many

decades after it had happened. So women in this country can still come forward years after offences have taken place. Yes, and of course, it was when Jimmy Savile was exposed. I think the oldest case that was brought to the attention of the police was about 40 or 45 years beforehand. And so sometimes women are living with this for an incredibly long time before they feel able to come forward. But of course, you know, in that case, Saville was dead by the time that the whole thing came into the open. And I think what we need is a much more sophisticated understanding of what 2% of the rapes that are reported to the

police. And we know there's a vast number that never get there. So I think this is all incredibly, you know, it's powerful, it's important, but we're starting from such a bad situation. Well, we are. And of course, the jury here didn't convict on all accounts and took five days to come to their decision. Amanda, what would you say about that? I would say that this was a tricky decision, both for the jury and for the prosecution. They brought additional charges of predatory sexual behavior, which required the jury to find that he had committed serious sexual offenses against at least three women. There were only two individual women whose cases were before the jury, the two who he was convicted of assaulting. And there wasella Sciorra, an actress who said that Mr. Weinstein had forcibly raped her. But her case was outside the statute of limitations. And so the jury were not asked to convict Mr. Weinstein on those charges directly. And that's the type of situation where juries are often just very reluctant to move forward.

We need jury education, I think you probably, well, we need public education, don't we, Jo? Yes, and particularly public education, because, you know, we look at these high profile cases and then a few months later, a survey will come out showing really alarming punitive attitudes towards victims. You know, if women have been drinking, if this idea that you go back to a hotel room constitutes consent. It's a complete and utter nonsense. You can refuse sexual activity even when it's started. And the idea that by saying, yes, I'll come up for a drink, you've consented to a whole load of other things on a menu you know nothing about. It's just a nonsense, but a lot

of people believe it. And we need to make clear that Tarana Burke, when she started the Me Too movement back in 2006, it was about women in marginalised communities and there will be a lot of people listening today who think, well, acting, the world of Hollywood, this is a million, it's a million miles away from me in my daily existence. And this court ruling in a foreign court, how would it really impact on the lives of women, marginalised women in this country, Jane? What would you say about that? I think overall the feeling will be that someone has actually,

someone really powerful and important who's got the best possible advice money can buy has actually had to answer for what he did. And I think regardless of the kind of celebrity element to this, I think it's a very powerful message to women that it may take years, but we are moving very slowly towards a situation where more victims are believed, and that's a good thing. Joan Smith and Amanda Taub were talking to Jane. It was in 2007 that Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering, and as she publishes her ninth work of fiction, she's described as one of the most significant writers of her generation, a master.

Her new novel is called Actress. In it, a daughter, Nora, tells the story of her mother, Catherine O'Dell, who was a great film and theatre actress in the 1960s and 70s in America, London and Dublin. People ask me, what was she like? And I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person, what was she like in her slippers eating toast and marmalade?

Or what was she like as a mother? Or what was she like as an actress who did not use the word star? Something happens as they talk to me. I'm used to it now. It works in them slowly, a growing wonder, as though recognising an old flame after many years. You have her eyes, they say. People loved her.

Strangers, I mean. I saw them looking at her and nodding, though they failed to hear a single word she said. And yes, I have her eyes. At least I have the same colour eyes as my mother. A hazel that in her case people like to call green indeed whole paragraphs were penned about bog and field when journalists looked into my mother's eyes and we have the same way of blinking slow and fond as

though thinking of something very beautiful I know this because she taught me how to do it think about cherry blossoms she, drifting on the wind. And sometimes I do. Such were the gifts I got from Catherine O'Dell, star of Stage and Screen. Anne, why were you keen to write a novel about a mother-daughter relationship where there is deep, deep love? Because I'd done other kinds, I suppose, other kinds of mothers, other kinds of connections. And I had the opportunity in this one to show a daughter at that moment of idealisation, daughters wouldn't hear a word against them, that they adored their mothers. And this kind of romance that sometimes happens between mother and daughter was very interesting to me. And in Catherine O'Dell's case, the world agreed with her daughter, Nora, that she was amazing. So she's in that unique position of, you know,

when the world agrees with you that your mother is the most beautiful and glamorous thing on the planet. And what drew you to the theatre, the film, the being a star? I actually resisted that for so long, but I used to be involved in the theatre as a student and briefly as an actress in Dublin, an actor, a female actor in Dublin very briefly and I just could never really noodle my way

into that world. It seemed too romantic and too tawdry and too colourful for me. I wanted to be more spare and interesting than that and of course the theatre is full of stories and I write about stories as well as writing stories so I had the opportunity to cycle this woman through a number of sort of second-hand fictions that were

written by men. Actors, female actors have such a life you know there's so many bad parts and so few good ones so I wanted to see what that might have been like maybe. How much of the Dublin in which they live, Nora witnesses a car bomb at one stage, is what you lived through yourself? Nora is 10 years older than me so when she's in her early 20s I would have been 10, 11, 12. And I do remember those times from a more unknowing angle. So it was interesting to me to dig into it a little bit. Late in life, I'm a reluctant Irish woman and I live reluctantly in Ireland.

And, you know, late in life, I've come to realise that I really love the place and that there's much to be celebrated there. And you make much of her not really being fully Irish. No, and I really wanted to do that. Catherine O'Dell is a mongrel. She was born in London and she claimed Irishness as her artistic right. She felt too interesting to be merely English.

She was a bohemian snob. She wanted a more rebellious sort of persona and more romantic persona. So she became that thing, the red-headed Irish beauty in a plaid shawl looking out over the waves. I married an English man called Murphy and that has given me pause

at various gatherings where I have to explain myself. Those Murphys were there since the 1840s and so I'm really interested in that dovetailing of nationalities. Ireland didn't become nationalistic in the way that we know from the, you know, from the 50s and 60s until sometime after independence. And before that, everything was a bit of a bit of a mixture.

It was a colonial mix. And I'm not nostalgic for the colonial mix, but I am very suspicious of how we identify our nationality one way or the other. Why did you decide to write the novel in the style of a biography, into which the writer's life, as well as her subject, is present? Nora takes over from her mother in the book as we take over from our parents I think there is a tug there of who's in charge one way or the other she writes it in response to a kind of academic who comes and wants to write a book about her

mother and she says no she she'll write the book so it's a kind of act of possession and when the academic, a young woman called Holly is asking her what was she like you know was she very sadistic, was she very narcissistic was she mommy dearest and she's and Nora says she was mine and so that sweetness of possession goes

through the book and I don't think she ever really wants to tell the reader who Catherine O'Dell was, I don't think she actually really knows herself so she goes through the book. And I don't think she ever really wants to tell the reader who Catherine O'Dell was. I don't think she actually really knows herself. So she goes through the facts of her life and the fictions with which she is engaged on the stage. And it's possible that we're not, I'm not going to say we're no further on,

but it's possible that the mystery that is Catherine O'Dell remains intact at the end of the book. I was talking to Anne Enright. Still to come on today's programme, the mothers whose children have been diagnosed with cancer. How do they support the child and who supports them? And Noor Inayat Khan, who's to be celebrated with a blue plaque and an exhibition of the work she did in the Special Operations Executive. She died in Dachau when she was only 30. And don't forget that if you miss the live programme during the week, it's easy to find us. All you have to do is subscribe to the daily podcast, which is, of course, on BBC Sounds. Now, we've known for some time that there's a strong genetic element in obesity,

but it was only last July that the results of an international study of anorexia were published and showed for the first time that it's not only the psychological disease we'd always assumed it to be, but has a genetic element too. The research is now being extended at King's College in London, and BEAT, the eating disorders charity, has expressed its excitement at the results so far. Andrew Radford is the charity's chief executive. Dr Janet Treasure is professor of psychiatry at King's and is leading the research. Why has the genetic aspect of eating disorders only recently been confirmed?

Well, over the centuries that these disorders have been discovered, there's been an oscillation between moral reasons and biological reasons. So we did a twin studies in the 80s, and that was quite shocking to people that we should be doing that. But then this has evolved and we've been able to get a large cohort and find out exactly what are the risk factors and how much genetic and how much environmental. And how much, how is the balance? Well, the genetic element for the population is over 60 percent. And so the rest is sort of environmental aspects. I said that BEAT was excited when those results first came out. How excited were you Andrew? Well it's an amazing first step on the pathway towards

working out how to get much better treatments and ultimately work towards a place where we can prevent the illnesses from affecting so many people. What eating disorders, Janet, are you including in your research as you carry it on? Well, this is the very interesting aspect of this new study because the first study was anorexia only. And as you know, there's been a expansion of eating disorders binge eating disorders bulimia nervosa and so we're going to be including all of those and that'll be particularly interesting because we do think that there may be similarities but differences

across that spectrum so what does the knowledge that there is a genetic element what impact does that have on diagnosis because I think at the moment diagnosis quite often comes very late. Yes I don't think it will perhaps affect diagnosis but it does have an impact on treatment and people coming forward because if there's no stigma about is this caused by myself is it it really an illness, people tend not to come forward. And wonderful work done by Beat has shown the duration of untreated illness is unfortunately over a year or more. And we know that the longer the illness is untreated,

the more it embeds itself and makes itself difficult to treat. So what difference, Andrew, do you expect to see now this new knowledge is coming and being accepted? Well, what we're really looking for is the duration that Janet mentioned. It's actually three and a half years on average from somebody falling ill to them actually starting treatment. And that's an average. It hides an awfully long range for some people for whom it's much, much longer than that. So if we can get better treatments, reduce the stigma around the illness, we can start shortening that duration between falling ill, realising that you've got the illness and starting treatment because it needs people to recognise that they're ill,

to make contact with people like Beats Helpline so that we can help them get into treatment. And if we can get that delay down to less than 12 months, then it means that people will be much more likely to get an effective treatment more quickly, with less suffering, and for that recovery that they then have to become sustainable and they don't relapse. How available is effective treatment? Well, it depends where you live, and it depends how old you are. So if you're under 18 and you're under the Children and Adolescent Services in England, things are improving quite a lot.

There are targets and there's funding to reduce the waiting times. If you're a child outside England, it's not so good. And if you're an adult anyway, you can wait an awfully long time. There is movement from the governments in the four countries but it's slow and it needs more money and it needs a lot more staffing putting in place to actually spend the money in an effective way. How many sufferers do actually recover now? Well I don't think we can say with any great certainty

but the estimates that i i've seen say that around 50 will recover fully and then the other 50 will have um some form of ongoing illness or be sort of managing their illness uh on a longer term basis that will probably vary hugely between the the different diagnoses of eating disorders though. Yes, on average the illness lasts 10 years. But by 20 years, approximately 60% will have recovered both from bulimia and anorexia. But anorexia does tend to last a lot longer. When you're doing your research, how are you going to carry it out now? Well, this new project is going to get spit from patients, and that's how we can look at the genes. But also, what's very interesting,

we are going to get some questionnaires looking at environmental factors, because we know that it's probably an interaction between the environment and the genes that can trigger these disorders. What environmental issues do you think are coming into play here? Well, we have both the general ones of trauma and adversity that all psychiatric disorders have, but there are also specific ones related to food and fat talk, bullying, concern about weight and shape that are more specific for eating disorders. Is there a possibility that as a result of your research eating disorders might be prevented in the future?

Well, I think perhaps not be prevented but definitely a shorter illness, secondary prevention early treatment as we were saying and not maintained for so long because one of the problems why it lasts so long is that there are all these secondary factors that bind the illness in.

How are you going to contribute into this research Andrew? Well Beat's role is getting the message out there, encouraging people to sign up with the study. All it takes is a donation of a very small sample of your own saliva, fill in a questionnaire, and then you can really help the study.

And if people go to the website, which is edgiuk, I'm going to have to say that again, aren't I? edgiuk.org, and then all the information's there, and you can participate and push forward to making this illness a lot better understood i was talking to andrew radford and dr janet treasure you may remember a couple of months ago we talked to a young woman ellie about her treatment for cancer and how hard it had been she was 19 and she'd agreed to discuss her illness and her recovery when the Teenage Cancer Trust had released a report explaining how the management of cancer in young people means the fertility of 15% of patients will be impaired,

but they're often denied any proper information about what the effects will be. Well, it led us to wonder how parents manage to deal with the frightening news that their child has cancer. Would they be prepared to hold back on treatment to give their child a chance to express an opinion on how they want to proceed? Or would they be so desperate to save their child's life that they will rush into making decisions on the child's behalf? And how do you cope with standing by and watching your son or daughter suffer? I spoke to three women whose children have been diagnosed with cancer. June Williams' daughter Jodie had Ewing sarcoma at the age of 18 and she died last year. Sam Waters-Long is the mother of Ellie with whom we spoke earlier this year. Jenny Grenfell-Shaw is a GP whose son Luke was diagnosed in 2018 with an aggressive and

rare sarcoma at the age of 24 and he's now in remission. What does she remember of the moment she realised what illness her son had? We were on a Skype call at home and he said he found this lump and I was on the GP myself and I knew then. And then when he came back, we flew him back from Russia, before he could, I could see what it was. And it was, I mean, totally devastating. You think your world has come to an end and it was devastating.

What about for you, June? When Jodie was first diagnosed, like I say, the whole world stops for a minute, and you think the worst. The one thing I didn't do, which I'm really glad of, was Google it. I said to people, please don't Google things, because they come up with the worst case scenarios and all these things and actually look at it properly. If you want to get the medical, you need to stay in a positive frame of mind and Jodie took it so well all the way through.

It wasn't until after you passed away as a parent you think I was looking after her the whole time when actually how she handled it, she looked after us the whole way through it and and we just sort of bounced off how she was and she wanted the cancer to be second you know she didn't want her whole life to be revolved around that she wanted to fit the cancer into how she could be in her life and sam what do you recall of the moment you realised what it was? Unbelievable was like the first thing you know catastrophic I likened it to like a bomb going off in the in the middle of the family dynamic we've got five kids at home and you know they all have like different things going on and the prognosis was quite dim at the time as well and

I kept a lot of Ellie's prognosis away from her and in the beginning and it was like a day-to-day thing I did google and one of the things we do now with Ellie with her blogs and stuff is to show that there's a life outside of cancer because a lot of things you find online are doom gloom anything to do with cancer is going to be dead and all this sort of stuff but it's not quite like that and actually our lives are very very different because of cancer and i can't imagine what they'd be without it but why did you decide not to tell her how serious it was well it was a bombardment of things like she will she will most definitely be infertile they said she had a one in five chance of survival how do you tell your 14 year old that is laying in a bed that they think that

she's got 20 chance of being here like in the next few years so like your son as well the determination and jodie right from the beginning she just believed she was going to kick it and i think that that strength and that determination and i've seen it in a lot of cancer kids I think season way past like some of the stuff they have to deal with most adults couldn't cope with. How much did you try to shield Jodie June? Not at all really I mean Jodie was 18 when she's diagnosed and as a parent actually she's 18 and she can actually if she wanted to say no to certain treatments and she was very needle phobic so trying as a parent to then have to persuade an 18 year old yes you do need this treatment became quite difficult at times but we did have a ronical sense of humor and especially as kids and young adults when they're diagnosed it's almost like the whole

world gets taken off them jodie had to give up college she had to give up her jobs and i don't know how old i felt had jodie been younger but for me it was about giving jodie as much of control over what she could as she possibly could and that was with the treatments and and asking the questions she needed to ask. Now Luke is older and as a mother and a GP how difficult has it been to accept he's an adult it's his choice? Yes I think we had an early discussion with Luke about how you can't control what happens to you but you can control your response to what's happened and Luke's been utterly determined to live his life richly and fully for as long as he's got, and we've been trying to support him in doing that.

It's interesting, he wants to get on with his life, and he's wanting to do that, and he wants me to do all the stuff to do with the cancer, basically. So as far as possible, I'm the one who does all, manages all of that stuff with the doctors, with the nurses, with the scans, just sorting it out, so he has a limited, as close as manages all of that stuff with the doctors, with the nurses, with the scans, just sorting it out. So he has a limited, as close as possible, anything to do with the cancer. Obviously, during treatment, that's not possible.

What's been the hardest part for you in supporting him? Well, the hardest part was when he was in his first cycle of chemotherapy. He was in hospital and my husband was with him and I was at home. We got a knock at the door at four in the morning with two policemen to tell me about the eldest son, John, who'd had an accident in the Lake District and had fallen to his death. That was the hardest thing. So Luke was scarcely into treatment with a life

limiting condition and his only brother, his only sibling had died. How did Luke cope with that? Well, he's now doing this memorial bike ride, Bristol to Beijing, bristol2beijing.org, which is going to be a memory of his brother, John, who was also an enthusiastic cyclist. So he's really trying to, I think, honour John in the way he lives. How strong have you had to be? I mean, it's unimaginable what you've been going through.

Well, Luke's been the inspiration. He's the one who's got me through it because, I mean, to give you some examples, he did a half marathon while he was on chemotherapy. He knew when he had his surgery he wouldn't be able to do swimming because it was under his shoulder blade, a major surgery. So he did a half Ironman in Egypt a few days before the surgery and came second. He's just been so determined. And now he's doing this Bristol to Beijing bike ride on a tandem to take other canned liivers on the back.

He hates the term cancer survivor. You can't say you're a survivor, as these two mothers know. You can never say that. So he talks about can-livers, living richly and fully with cancer, being active, embracing the life you do have. And he's been such an inspiration to me about how I live. And he talks to schools and he says, you know, if you died tomorrow,

would you be happy with how you'd live today? And that's a real challenge to me every single day. I'm not any stronger than anybody else. I'm just in a position that most people don't have to face. But I have Luke and he's amazing. Both of you are going through terrible times and we cannot compare one terrible time with another. But to lose one son and to have your other one suffering from cancer,

it's almost impossible to even think about. But June, what was it like for you trying to support your child? I think the worst thing for any parent is seeing the child in pain because at times Jodie was in so much pain she couldn't have a blanket on her but people do often say oh aren't you being strong and I couldn't do what you was doing

but you actually find the majority of people when put into that situation they will shine and when you have a child who just shows such great spirit and love and warmth and I didn't hear Jodie once say it's not fair or why me, like I said I always thought I was looking after her but actually the way she was enabled me and the rest of the family and friends to be able to get on with our lives and help them not just continuously

think about the cancer all the time. We always said you can't have a bad day if you have at least one good moment in it and if that good moment is just a little bit of a laugh or a cuddle or anything. When you're in hospital for weeks we just go on midnight walks around the hospital and we try to do that now i always say to myself i can't have a bad day if i can have one smile and and she she helped me accomplish that every single day and she still does now sam what's been the hardest thing for you um i found it the hardest after treatment i likened it to going out of an airplane without a parachute because while you're in treatment it is very rigorous it is appointment

after appointment ellie had intensive chemotherapy she had maintenance chemo she had radiotherapy for six weeks it was one thing after another because you were doing something and then as soon as that stopped that is when you know i got massive anxieties over especially the other children things that i would have ordinarily solved with cowpole all of a sudden wasn't something I could solve with cowpole I would to see the the impossible in in everything and everything became sort of scarier I suppose but like you guys have said as well Ellie didn't see herself as defined by cancer she wasn't a survivor and she never said why me she was She was like, why not me?

Why was she any different, special? Where did these kids get that amazing strength from? And, you know, talking the kind of sense that you wouldn't expect from a 50 or 60 year old. Where did it come from? I think it's the youth as well that really does power them through. I think they also feel so invincible and I've found this a lot especially with children and young adults. They hate being called brave. Jodie hated

that. She was like, I'm not a firefighter, I'm not a police, but we started calling her a gladiator instead because they don't have any choice. They're chucked into a ring, you fight for survival. So it was her way to want to try and change that word. Another thing that Jodie always found if you're having family gatherings you'll go up to another teenager go house things house

school you know if you've got a boyfriend girlfriend straight away people used to hone in on Jodie and I was almost like how's your cancer yeah you know a head till it's like no I'm still Jodie so I become a mama bear actually quite often then just trying to stare people and you know you do sort of become even more protective of them. June, you must miss Jodie Dreadful. I miss her terribly every day. You can be going about your day being normal, and I always call it a bullet of grief.

Especially at work, you can just be doing normal things, and then all of a sudden this bullet of grief will just hit you out of nowhere, and sometimes you'll try and disguise it or run to the bathroom and sometimes you've just got to let it go. It might only last five minutes, but just coming to places like this and talking about her and just being able to share her incredible story, it does help, but like you're saying,

it wasn't until just recently you realise, and I don't know how other parents and carers feel, it's not until after the event, I know obviously we lost Jodie, but it's not until after the event that you actually start thinking back. The trauma that you've been through, the actual, the treatments, you know, we had 19 months of intense chemotherapy, radiotherapy appointments, blood transfusions, and it's not until a few months afterwards that that starts to sink in,

not just the trauma of the cancer, all of that, being able to juggle your other children, your work, your everything, and it really does hit you and take you back. Exhausting. You must have been exhausted. Yeah, you are, but you do try to be as normal as possible, and the Teenage Cancer Trust was brilliant for that. You know, you have your own room as an older adult where I was able to stay. I stayed with Jodie every single night whether it was on a bed or a chair or stood up if we have to. They do make you understand as well at

18 or at 24 they're still your children and your children still want their mums as well or their dads or the parents or the carers. What sort of response have you had from family and friends sam we were inundated at the beginning everybody even people we didn't really know were were there and then that that peters off really quickly and especially with earlier as well friend groups they're there and then they're not and I found one of my best friends now Leah she's also a cancer mum our friendship has come from understanding what other people go through and the same with Teenage Cancer Trust as well I said to Ellie really early on I can't take it away from you but I'm going to be at every appointment I'm going to be there every single night I'm going to be at every scan and I can't have it for you but I'm going to damn well be

there for every bit and I think that gave her a strength but I do suffer off the back of it the stuff that you can't unsee you absorb it for them you can't unabsorb it the conversations you have to have you know you just can't ever wipe and it's not until months later that you think god that conversation is just coming to my head. Because when you're living it, you're just living it and you're just waiting for that bad bit of chemo or that bad poorly to just pass so you can make the next bit of good memory. We called it the new normal.

I remember leaving the hospital after she was diagnosed. Me and Ellie's dad aren't together and he did a night at the hospital to give me a break and I sobbed all the way home. And I was like, how do I live with the knowledge that she could die that I might lose her and my other half said to me we can't live like we're going to lose Ellie we have to live like every day as if she's going to be here and that's very true another cancer dad friend of mine he said he's glad that he felt like that with his daughter because she passed away. And they didn't want to be waiting for her to die.

They wanted to cherish every moment because nobody knows when their day is. June, what impact has it had on your other relationships besides with your children? At the moment, I've tried to go back to work and just try to be as positive as I can and live every day. Just sometimes getting up is just it's just a battle in itself but I've been really really lucky that I've been surrounded by great family great friends and they're the ones that keep me going and especially my girls. I don't know if this is appropriate but I went to the GP and she told me that we should be having sex more and I looked at her like she was crazy my daughter is definitely ill that's the last thing that I feel like and I found that it drew us all

closer together but I found relationship wise as husband and wife we weren't husband and wife anymore we were like clocking in and out yeah yeah yeah he was he was working away when we were home and then when Millie and Ellie were in hospital he was at home looking after the kids and family again a lot of them were very good in the beginning and then it was just us I just think you just get on with it but it is very different it makes you realize who the ones are and it makes you treasure your relationships Ellie's been in remission I think now for nearly three years. Yes in March. Does the worry ever go? No. Ellie's very good but you don't know what's going on in Ellie's head. Ellie's a go-getter. She's not letting it cancer define her. She's not

letting it hold her back and I don't know whether I try and take on a lot of that but I know what I saw and what I heard and I can't unsee it or unhear it and I do take it around with me like a grey cloud I'm hoping as we go on that that will diminish but I don't think it will fully ever go away but in the same sense it makes you treasure things more how has this all changed you Jenny because professionally you must be hearing from lots of other people very difficult stories you're a GP are there times when you think oh for goodness sake shut up you've got no idea what I'm going through. It's really interesting I took a long time off work after both John's death and Luke's diagnosis. I didn't get back to work for a year. And I thought at the time that I would never get back to work.

I'd never want to be a GP again. But I am working again now. And it's interesting how you just put on your GP hat and you go to work. And it's an act, it's a performance. And I find that, for the most part, I can put that all to one side and I can be Dr Grenfell. And it surprised me and surprises me how the brain can compartmentalise. And you can be as sympathetic with your patients as you ever were? You'd have to ask my patients, wouldn't you?

I think we would have to come and ask your patients, yeah. How has it changed you, June, to have gone through what you've been through? I've always tried to be a positive person and just lately sometimes it really does sink in what's happened and you do sometimes want to stamp your feet and shout it's not fair do you just want to or do you do it sometimes I do it yeah sometimes I do have a little bit of a jump up and down and say it's not fair you have a cry and a scream and shout up to the universe and say why me and then you pick yourself back up and you go why not me and you spoke a bit about work going to work for me was my little bit of me some people can't but for the first part of jody's

thing i went to work and and jody encouraged it as well he encouraged me to to do a lot of things go to the gym go swimming find a little bit of yourself to do whatever that is because Luke's doing exactly the same with you yes he's keen for me to have a life as well and as him absolutely and Jodie paid for me to have a CBT license last April I don't drive but now I ride a little moped something that I'd never do never too old to start doing that so two weeks ago I was on the back of Luke's tandem on his Bristol for two-paging ride. There will be people listening to this who are going through the sort of difficult times

that you have all been through. What would you say to them about how you think is the best way to cope with it, Jenny? I think to start with I felt very isolated, very alone, very afraid but actually Teenage Cancer Trust and Click Sargent were two charities that once we got involved with them were hugely helpful and I think accepting help is important. I'd just like to say for your listeners because more of them will know people than actually be going through it themselves I always used to say when people had difficulties I'd'd say, well, let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

And then that would tick my box. I'd offer the help. They hadn't got in touch, so they must be OK. How wrong can you be? You don't want to be asking for help. You don't want to have to ask for help. You want people to say, I'm bringing you lunch tomorrow. I'm going to go and do your shopping for you,

who just do it. They just turn up. We have people who just left a meal at the front door. You still have to eat. Though I would say to people, they want to to be helpful use your imagination and be practical i had that a few times someone just said i bought you a lasagna i've bought you a shepherd's pie because when you're going through it you you don't ring up if you ring up somebody will go yes of course i will but you just don't you're just going through it you just get on with your day yeah i found we never asked for help as such you don't

expect help but i had a jehovah witness friend of mine and every single week she brought around a chickpea curry for us and just a little just just like that and just turn up with the chickpea you know even if they don't eat it just give it to them and on facebook i found a support group called my kid has Cancer and they were very very good and that's actually how I met one of my closest friends talking to other people that get it. The other thing I'd say some people were afraid if they might say the wrong thing and it's very hard to say the right thing to somebody in this sort of situation so my best friends were the ones who could take feedback from me when I would say actually that that subject or that topic or

that conversation that wasn't helpful, those words. A lot of people I found, they couldn't cope with Ellie's diagnosis. They didn't want to see it or be around it. Yeah. And you have to understand that. What kind of conversations might you have come back and said that was not appropriate? I think people who make assumptions, I suppose, about how I might be feeling. People say you must be feeling this or you must be that. Well, how can they possibly know how I must be feeling. People say, you must be feeling this or you must be that.

Well, how can they possibly know how I must be feeling? It's not a must at all. What you really want is a safe space where you can try and work out what on earth has happened to your life and this map that you had has gone. There isn't a new map and you're floundering. And there's somebody who can have a hug and just be with you and just let you talk and say strange things and stupid things

and not try and correct you or not try and fix it. The other thing is people always try and fix it and it can't be fixed. Strong was a bugbear of mine. I can't imagine. I didn't choose it. It chose me and I had no choice. Fight or flight was the aim of the game and I had to be strong. It was strong or crumble. So everything now has a pre-cancer, post-cancer.

I can look at a photo and know if it was pre--cancer post-cancer I can look at a photo and know if it was pre-cancer post-cancer and we actually use it as a timeline but before we were in that world it was unbelievable and you wouldn't imagine you could cope but you can cope with a lot of things if you have to. I was talking to Sam Waters-Long, June Williams and Jenny Grenfell-Shaw and a lot of you got in touch about our conversation. Melinda emailed, having just come through surgery, chemo and radiotherapy for breast cancer myself, the thought of seeing my children go through this is unbearable. Every admiration for those women, their children sound amazing. Melanie emailed, I had cancer last year. Your guests have managed to summarise

everything I feel and have felt about my cancer. How others view you, what others say, how you can be supported and what to say and what not to say. I'm in tears at the thought of one of my children going through what I did last year. It is beyond my comprehension. This needs to be shared with anyone affected by cancer and let's face it, that's all of us. Someone who didn't want us to use their name emailed, my family went through this experience with our 10-year-old son in the early 2000s. The advice to friends offering help,

do rather than offer or let me know, was spot on. The lasagna brought round, the offer to pick you up and go for a walk were moments of real support. 20 years later, I do wonder if this experience we all went through still leaves its mark. My son is well and happy, as is his sister. We're very proud of them. It's part of our family life and we have come through. Noah Inayat Khan was a hero of World War II. She was an agent with the Special Operations Executive of Indian and American descent. She'd been born in Moscow, spoke several languages, and died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944 when she was only 30. This year she's to be

honoured with a blue plaque in London and an exhibition at the Runnymede Air Force Memorial in Surrey. Lynelle Housen is an historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Noor is often described as having been an Indian princess, but is that really true? No. You'd have to go many, many, many generations back to trace some kind of lineage to one of the Indian royal houses. So you can understand why book marketers might like to call her a princess. But really, by the time she was born, the family is not in any way sort of recognized as royal or really functioning that way at all. I mean, she is when she's born, the first child of an itinerant musician and Sufi practitioner, someone who's really living

a hand toto-mouth existence and from country to country. Born in Moscow, where did she grow up? Well, she had a very unsettled life for the first sort of six to eight years because her father and his brothers were in a musical group and they were using the musical group to sort of spread Sufi ideas around Europe. And so they were going from gig to gig, really, but these gigs are in places like Moscow, Paris, London.

So although born in Moscow, within a few months, they moved to Paris. And then this is 1914. In August, the war begins. And they decide that maybe London would be safer than Paris. So they moved to London. They spend the rest of the war in London. And then when the family is being kind of had very close attention being paid to them by some of the, well, really the Secret Service here. They were concerned about their connections potentially to the Indian independence movement.

And life was uncomfortable. And so they decided France might be a better place. So they moved to France. Isn't that ironic though? Yes. The Secret Service here, for whom she went on to work. Well, different organisation, but still secret, yes. Yes, well, you know what I mean.

Britain hadn't been all that kind to her. No, but I suppose, in the end, the reasons why she decided to join up when it came to the Second World War really override that sort of thing. Because we should make clear, she certainly didn't need to. She absolutely did not. So she grew up in France from the age of six in Paris.

So she was fluent in English and in French. And she also spoke Hindu, Stani and other languages, a little bit of German. And she and her brother both raised to believe very much in nonviolence as part of the gentle religion that they had grown up in. But when they saw Nazism on the rise, and in fact when it came really to their door in France, they both decided that they could not sit by and let other people fight Nazis for them.

So they decided that they would need to join up, and in order to do that, they made themselves refugees. They left France in order to come to the United Kingdom and play a part, some kind of part. And her brother, Vilayet, was of the opinion that if they were going to break their non-violent principles, that they would have to do it for a very good reason. They would have to do it and be the most brave to do things that are dangerous because you're not actually yourself holding a weapon to hurt people. It's all very humbling hearing this, actually, I have to say. It gives you tingles when you realise the sacrifices some people were prepared to make. So how did she get to work for SOE?

Because she seems an unlikely recruit. Well, she's both unlikely and likely. So SOE very much needed people who were fluent in French. And she absolutely was. They needed people who could blend into the societies of the countries they were going to be sent back into. She had grown up in France. So she was a wonderful candidate in that way. But actually, the part that makes her unlikely is that because she isn't typical. She's not white. When they found out about her father being a religious leader, some of them thought that was a bit strange. Because, of course, he's not a reverend religious leader. He's from an Indian religion. But also because she was a woman.

Fundamentally, this is a time when women are not allowed in combat roles. They're not allowed in the front line. they aren't given weapons and sent to fight. But this is really a combat role but without a gun when they send you in to be a wireless operator behind enemy lines. You put it like that, you wonder why anyone agrees and the life expectancy of somebody in that line of work? That is a very hard thing to express, mostly because averages don't really work

when you're talking about lots of different people. We know it was very, very dangerous and that wireless operating was actually more dangerous than the other roles. Because as long as you are on the air, you can be found. You can be tracked because they can track your transmissions. But you can't not transmit. That's your job. That's what you're there to be, is a link between the people in the field and headquarters. So she landed in France.

Was she on her own? She came into France actually on a two-aeroplane drop. So they brought in four people that night, three of them women, one man, and they dispersed to different parts of France immediately to join different circuits, which are the names of the groups of SOE agents and the resistance. And because she'd spent time in france when she

was younger did she have connections there people she could trust she did uh she wasn't supposed to be working in paris to start with where her connections were she ended up working in paris and definitely needing to use her connections from her childhood wireless operators in order to try not to get caught need to move as much as possible. You can't just pick a great place, set up your radio and just pop in twice a day because they're going to catch you. So you need to be able to move a lot and find the right place to put up. I mean, we're talking about a 70 foot aerial that you have to put up without someone seeing you. And you need to be able to transmit quietly, undisturbed. You need to be able to transmit quietly, undisturbed. You need to be able to see people coming.

So she did use her connections from her childhood to find new places to transmit. Perhaps inevitably, the Nazis did catch up with her, didn't they? They did. And as we've already said, she ended, unfortunately, ended up in Dachau. How long did she spend in custody? Do we know? She was caught in October 1943, maybe one to two days before she was due to be fetched out and brought back to the United Kingdom. Having been under difficult, difficult circumstances, working for four months in Paris, very dangerous. She was betrayed, actually. So they never discovered her through her transmitting, but she was betrayed by someone for money. So then she was in custody from October 43 until she was killed in September 44. Lynelle Harrison was talking to Jane. Now on Monday, she'll be talking to Hadley Freeman

about her memoir, House of Glass, where she describes the lives of her Jewish family, her grandmother, and three siblings in the 20th century. Also, what's it like trying to stay in touch with your children if you're in prison? That's Monday morning, two minutes past 10. Do join Jane if you can, but from me for today, bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.