Woman's Hour - Actor Geena Davis. Harry Dunn's Mother. Choreographer Jasmin Vardimon.

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Geena Davis is a two-time Academy award-winning actress, known for her role as Thelma in Thelma & Louise, among countless other parts she has played. She joins Jessica Creighton to talk about her impressive career as an actress, athlete and model – as well as why she’s such a champion of female representation in media, and why she chose the title of her new memoir, ‘Dying of Politeness’.Anne Sacoolas on Thursday admitted causing the death of 19 year old motorcyclist Harry Dunn in August 2019. Harry’s mother Charlotte spoke to Anita Rani about how she’s feeling after the trial, and how her and Harry’s family have kept up the fight for justice over the last three years. Choreographer Jasmin Vardimon talks to Jessica Creighton about her new production, ALiCE, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and looks at how current cultural themes that we wouldn’t expect, including how women change through puberty and the menopause, are central to the classic story.Domestic abuse figures in England and Wales are going up. Woman’s Hour has been hearing about sides of the issue we don’t really talk about. Winifred Robinson, presenter of the Radio 4 series, ‘Boy in the Woods’ talks to Krupa Pahdy about what it is that makes women want to stay with their abusers – and filmmaker Deeyah Khan tells Jessica Creighton about her new documentary, ‘Behind the Rage’, which focuses on the men who are violent towards their partners.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lottie Garton

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. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello, welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour and what a week it's been. We've had our second Prime Ministerial resignation in two months, launching the Conservative Party into yet another leadership contest. Feels like a deja vu, doesn't it? Well, as the turbulence rumbles on in government, for the next hour, you'll be treated to the best bits of Woman's Hour this week. Coming up, two-time Academy Award winning actor Gina Davis talks about her career, how Thelma and Louise changed her life and why she advocates so strongly for female representation in the media.

And we look at domestic violence, hearing from the men who are violent towards their partners and the women who are desperate to stay in a relationship with them. I felt love for him. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to have a kid with him. I wanted to marry him, grow old with him. It was just, I don't know, I never felt like this with someone before. When you love someone, you see their good sides and their bad sides. And if you feel like you love that person so much,

you just want to hold on to them. Plus, the choreographer Yasmin Vardimon tells us about her brand new production, Alice, which looks at Alice in Wonderland through the eyes of a modern woman. But first on Thursday Anne Sekoulas admitted causing the death of 19 year old motorcyclist Harry Dunn outside US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in August 2019. She appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from America and pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving. She'd been charged Old Bailey via video link from America and pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving. She'd been charged with causing death by dangerous driving, but her guilty plea to the lesser charge was accepted. She'll be sentenced next month. It was

a case that sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and US. 19 days after the crash, she left the country claiming diplomatic immunity. Well, Harry's family fought for three years for Anne to face the UK justice system. And yesterday I spoke to Harry's mother, Charlotte Charles, about how she was feeling after the trial. We've had a lot of letdowns over the last three years and had hopes built up to then be dashed. So I don't think any one of us actually believed what we were hearing until the guilty came out of her mouth. So it was a good thing that I was sat down and not stood because I just went to jelly from the inside out. It was just a phenomenal relief to know that, you know,

that that promise that I made to Harry on the night that he was killed was um for me uh fine finally done it's finally done it's all over to the courts now remind us of that promise what did you what promise did you make to Harry uh on the night that he died I got to the hospital just a few minutes uh late. Unfortunately, from what I know at the moment, because we've not had our inquest yet, of course, but in front of family and friends, I kissed his forehead and his bruised lip and I promised him that I would get him justice.

I had no idea of the difficult circumstances that were going to come about that surrounded that night. And I had no idea that it would take me this long, but I absolutely knew from that moment that I was going to give it my all, no matter what, to make sure justice was done. It's been a tough few years. And you really have given it your all.

You've fought so hard. You've dealt with prime it your all. You've fought so hard. You've dealt with prime ministers, presidents. You've gone to extraordinary lengths to get justice for Harry. Did you ever think this day would come? Yes. There's never been any doubt in my mind. When you've got that burning feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel so terribly nauseous

many for many hours of every day and it's still burning and it's still you've still got that yearning to to carry out that promise nothing will will stop you there wasn't a moment that I didn't think it would happen I had no idea how much longer it was going to take me and my little team, Harry. I had absolutely no idea, but there was no way that I was going to give up. So yes, Anita, I definitely knew this day would come. She was charged in 2019 with causing death by dangerous driving, but she's pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of death by careless driving. How does that sit with you? It's good with me. You know, we were approached about it beforehand. We were consulted about it.

We knew that the death by dangerous was something that the police had put the charge in for, but we were always very aware of the circumstances surrounding the two charges, that it could come under the death by careless instead. To be perfectly honest, each of them carry similar sentences depending on the circumstances. You know, if you're drinking when you're driving

and so on and so forth, the sentence is more and that would come under the dangerous more than the careless. But we've never really focused on any of that side of it we've never allowed ourselves to worry or focus on the outcome and the sentencing because to be perfectly honest nothing's ever enough when you've had a loved one taken from you whether it's a child or another family member you know when you've been a loved one taken from you, whether it's a child or another family member, you know, when you've been robbed of seeing that person grow, nothing's ever enough. So enough damage has been done to our lives. We've always promised ourselves that we wouldn't focus on that. So we're good. We're good with the outcome of yesterday. And you've never physically been in the same room, despite Donald Trump trying to orchestrate it when you went to America.

What was the experience like yesterday of seeing her face, albeit on video? The first time I saw her face on video was three weeks ago at the magistrate's court. That was, for me, the day where I just didn't take my eyes off of that video screen. I needed her if she could see me. I'm still not aware whether she could or not. I needed her to see that those who tried very, very hard to break me and my family, they didn't quite succeed. Yesterday was just another one of those days,

but my eyes did divert away from her on occasions when Duncan, our barrister, was talking for us and when the judge was talking. I prefer to be able to look people in the eyes, and that's when I feel that I can absorb more information. You know, my brain doesn't work like it used to. We have no idea yet of the depth of mental health problems that we've got. We know we've got a number. We've buried our grief for three years and we've been robbed of, we've not been afforded that time to be able to grieve. So yesterday was perhaps for us

the start of now really getting in depth with our therapy, but I took my eyes off the screen only when I needed to. I was aware that she could see more of the courtroom yesterday and it was important to me. For Harry's sake, hopefully he could see us up there with the angels to show him that, you know what, we've still got the strength and to look up to him and say, you know what, darling, we've done it. So, yeah, it was a big day, a big, big day.

Well, we have to talk about Harry, don't we? Remind us, what was he like? That's the easy part, talking about Harry. He was just amazing. A larger-than-life character. Big heart, generous, kind, would do anything for anyone. Very, very wacky sense of humour. I think very many of us are aware of his passion for motorbikes,

but he also had a passion for IT. You know, he built his first gaming computer from scratch at the age of 13. He's always been into his gadgets and the latest technology out there, which is another reason why we were willing to go ahead with the video link. You know, we're proving to Harry that we can move with the times too and that we're not dinosaurs. But yeah, he was just a wonderful, wonderful character. He'd do anything for anyone and just loved to have a laugh. He loved life.

You know, he would work extra shifts if he needed to. You know, he would cover sick cover for colleagues of his at the very last minute, sometimes doing 16-hour shifts, coming home, sleeping for four, going back in. He'd done for others what he would have expected any other human to do for another human. He had a very, very big heart and he was so family orientated. And you met him, I'm sure, and he sounds great. He was. Wonderful son.

He was, he was. And you've talked about the toll it's taken on your mental health and that of the family, because we know how tirelessly you've worked to get justice. And Harry has a twin, Niall. How is Niall coping? He's doing better now. Thank you, Anita, for asking. This time last year, we had an extremely terrifying time with him. He couldn't see a future. He honestly didn't know who he was without his twin. He's finding his way through. He's done what we need to do, which is engage in some therapy, proper sessions, long sessions, and a long stint of it.

And we need to show him that we're going to do that too. He's getting there. He is getting there. But he is still trying to figure out who he is. He's come a long way in the last 12 months, but he's gone from being a twin and having someone by his side from the moment he was born to sadly essentially feeling like he's an only child. You know, yes, he has stepbrothers and a stepsister. But I think for him, you know, there's nothing like having a twin.

And us as parents can't even understand that. You know, we feel our loss as losing a child. But we're not able to understand his grief. Of course. So it's been a long road. And he's got a long way to go. but he's come a long way as well. And I'm so, so proud of him. So proud. Very powerful conversation there with Charlotte Charles, the mother of 19-year-old Harry Dunn, talking to me about her relief at Ansoculis,

admitting causing her son's death by careless driving. Now, Yasmin Vardaman is one of the UK's leading choreographers. She was awarded an MBE for services to dance in the late Queen's final birthday honours list in June. And this month, she's bringing us a new interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, called Alice, to Sadler's Wells in London. And she's interpreted the story in a way that's relevant to all of us. She spoke to Jessica Crichton during the week and told her why she chose this story to base her production on. Over the years, I, in my work, mainly observe and got inspired by current events, our way of living, but also with sort of reflection on our history and our culture. So as you say, Alice's adventure in Wonderland have been part of our culture

and inspired many creations and interpretations in the last 150 or 60 years. And I always believe that stories that are retold over a generation do so because they carry some social significance in them. So creating my interpretation of this classic tale, I was looking for what is it for me that is so significant for it to be retold. I see Alice in transition from childhood to womanhood. Her body is changing. She's questioning her identity and her place in the world. She's in the place, the world that she is, and the place in her world that she's entering to. So I feel my interpretation has been mainly inspired by my personal current perspective and experience

of being a mother of a teenage girl going through the confusing period of adolescence. But during the research period, I've explored Alice from various angles. And I find my interpretation mainly focused on Alice as a teenage girl going through those changes we all go through during adolescence and the effect this has on her identity and their relationship and understanding of the world around her, but also reflected in parallel on the changes we women later on are going through in menopause through the character of the Red Queen. And in fact, I feel that most of the characters in the story are all going through some transformational change or even metamorphosis.

The caterpillar who is during the story become a butterfly constantly questioning alice who who are you we ask her various timing while transforming transforming himself which i feel is a vocan of a reflection on one's own identity as we progress through life so you've mentioned quite a few themes there about change and growth and transformation. So how did you visually try and create that on stage? Okay, so we have Alice is performed on a massive revolving stage, which is like a massive clock representing time, which is again, another big subject in the book and in my interpretation.

And on the top of that revolve, there is a large five meter high book, which is like a real life pop-up book, which each page represent a chapter in the story and in Ali's journey. And I've collaborated with a very talented projection designer, Andrew Croft, who created a very clever integration of magical words that appear on and transform the whole scenery. It's really hard to describe visual performance, but the cast, the group of performers are multi-talented dancers from various backgrounds and bring their own unique skill and talent and ability to the story. Yeah, it's hard to describe, but let's just try and give the listeners an idea because

you're very much known for physical theatre. And in Alice, the dancers, the performance is very intense. It's very physical. It's almost acrobatic. They use every part of their body. What were you trying to communicate? So dance is my language. It's my mother tongue. It's a language I both feel very fluent in many ways, but also misunderstood. But I feel like it has this wonderful ability to communicate in a physical, but also visual and intellectual and emotional level, sometimes through the subconscious. So meanings are slowly filtering in. I'm retelling a story in a different way.

I'm interested in putting a light on things and exposing realities in different ways. The story of Alice is retold for our current time and with a different perspective of a woman going through or a child going through adolescence. And what does it mean to her? She's questioning the world around her. She sees herself differently and she's seen differently. She's experiencing new realities. I see Alice as a traveler in a new world, but also as a young explorer, almost facing the subject or the problems of the past,

almost like our children. And she has to find her own reality and her own way to deal with it. Now, you came to London in the 90s from Israel. So how different were those two dance scenes in each country? The dance scenes are very different in Israel. Actually, a lot of it is almost against retelling story. And I think, but in the UK, I mean, it's so diverse and rich. And I think because there are so many influences

and so many different words and I feel, I don't know, there is a room for almost different art from within the dance. But myself, I grew up in a kibbutz, which was a community based on a mix of socialism and Marxism philosophies. And although it was like a bubble in many aspects, in terms of cultural influences, it was very diverse and exposed to what influences. My kibbutz members were from all across the globes,

from Eastern Europe where my grandparents came, but South America and Yemen and Iraq and Russia. And we had a lot of volunteers from, mainly from Europe, who brought with them music and fashion and cultural influence when I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when I grew through those kind of adolescence years. And because of that, I felt like we were exposed to a lot of diverse kind of ideas and morals and way of living and way of behavior and a lot of stories as well. And I,

on top of that, my parents exposed me to other things. My father was an executive director of a venue in Tel Aviv called Sabta, which was a political left-wing production venue that belonged to the Kibbutz movement. And at the time, it was focusing on producing collaboration between Palestinian, Israeli Arabs, and Jews with the aim to build positive bridges. So I was very much exposed to political theatre and telling stories of others and building awareness of difficulties and problems. And I think that's what influenced me the most, creating my art with observing our contemporary society and reflecting on our culture and history.

Yasmin Vardimon there speaking to Jessica about her new production Alice, which is on Friday and Saturday next week at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Still to come on the programme, find out how the actor Gina Davis, known for her role as Thelma in Thelma and Louise, came dangerously close to death, all because of politeness. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, you can listen to us on BBC Sounds.

Just search for Woman's Hour. Now, the number of police-recorded domestic abuse-related crimes in England and Wales rose by 6% in a year. That's according to the latest figures in March 2021 from the Home Office for National Statistics. That's more than 800,000 victims. And here on Woman's Hour, we've been looking at areas of domestic abuse that you don't often hear about. Earlier this week, the award-winning filmmaker Thea Khan joined Jessica Crichton to talk about her documentary Behind the Rage, which features voices of the men who are violent

towards their partners. So why did she decide to look at domestic violence? I've been involved in women's rights activism for very many years. And my focus, along with many of my colleagues' focus, has always been how do we get the criminal justice system to respond properly to women and children trying to escape domestic violence? How do we ensure the criminal justice system to respond properly to women and children trying to escape domestic violence? How do we ensure that there's enough support and refuges for women? How do we ensure that there are enough resources to provide the support that women need when they're trying to leave violence and abuse in the home? But what's been, what sort of started frustrating me a lot over the last few years, and especially I think COVID is what really brought this home, seeing the rise in domestic violence, you know, during COVID.

And then also starting to rethink some of the public conversation that we often have around domestic violence, where we have a tendency to, I think, blame women for being victims, you know, where the questions that have often come up are, you know, why is she with him? Why won't she leave him? Why does she keep going back to him? Why won't she press charges against him? And I think all of those are actually the wrong questions. And I think the actual question that we need to ask is, why does he do it? And why doesn't he stop? And what can we as a society do to prevent this from happening in the first place? I mean, there's only so many shelters we can build. There are only so many women we can hide. So really, I wanted to look at and turn the camera towards the actual source of the problem,

which is the violent behavior and the perpetrator himself, in order to see if we can reframe and also put the responsibility and accountability where it actually belongs, which is with the person who actually does this, which I think is missing from our public discourse. It's almost as if we have this sort of low expectations of men, that this is somehow a given that men will know, men will always be violent. And that's just, you know, something that we should put up with. And that's just not true, you know. So that was the reason, yeah, for trying to delve into this aspect of it. Yeah. And you mentioned some key points there that we will definitely dive into. But first, let's hear a section of the programme so our listeners can get a feel of the interviews that you conducted. And just a warning, what we're about to hear is quite a distressing description of violence. Here it is.

I'd push her down. I'd hold her down. I picked her up and I choked her so severely. She shored her clothes and was out like a sleep sleep. Why choking? A lot of the men I've spoken to said that they would choke women. She's very good with words. So I would go straight to the source of the problem and cut it off. I was addicted to that dominance. I know without a doubt that it's not okay to harm a female for any reason, especially out of anger. Even then you knew that? Even then I knew that. So you knew you were doing the wrong thing?

Absolutely. So that was one of the male perpetrators you spoke to, Dia, called Marshall. What did you learn from speaking to him? What I learned from speaking to him and many of the men is that it was a combination of things. The men who engage in violence have very often either been subjected to violence themselves in their very early lives or have witnessed it happen towards their mother, for example, and have had no way to process that or be protected from that and truly not been able to develop an emotional capacity to deal with emotional difficulties, to deal with difficult feelings, to deal with vulnerable feelings,

to deal with their own rage and their anger in a healthy way. And they truly have just paid it forward when they have felt triggered emotionally in their own lives. I remember, as you said earlier, I've dealt with topics of male violence through many of my films and many of my films or most of my films have dealt with public violence. So looking at this private violence, what was really interesting for me is I've never been afraid of any of the men that I've filmed, whether they're jihadis, whether they're white supremacists, armed militias or convicted terrorists who blow up abortion clinics. And how did it feel sitting across from these particular men? This was different. This was I haven't personally experienced domestic violence, but why this was different for me is the night before I was going to interview one of these guys, suddenly I started feeling nervous and started feeling worried because I started thinking, most of the men that I filmed are able to commit the violence that they commit because they know nothing about the person that there is no knowledge of the other person, these guys have managed to dehumanize the women that they sleep with, that they hug, that they have kids with very

often. So this is a different category of a guy is in my mind what I was thinking. And I was thinking if they can do this to her, you know, who am I? Who are any of us? But what was interesting for me to hear from Marshall and from many of the other guys is their trigger in a way isn't the fact that someone is a woman. The trigger is intimacy and the vulnerability that comes with intimacy and relationships. So this woman knows his weaknesses, if we want to call it that. This woman is aware of and witnesses his worst qualities in a way. So for him to try and keep the power and the control and his sense of self in that relationship,

it comes down to dominance. Marshall in the film also says, because I asked him, why do you do it? And he says, because I can. And that to me is so chilling. And it's so, so truth truthful and so it's that it's they get what they want they they through violence and through brutalizing women they get everything so why would they stop yeah because they can i remember that line um yeah

quite vividly from the documentary and also one of the perpetrators saying that it was a fear of abandonment that led them to becoming violent as well. So what help, dear, is being offered to these men when they go to these perpetrator programs? Well, first of all, most of them are court mandated to go to these perpetrator programs. Very few of them do self-refer, but some do.

The help that they're given in the programs that I filmed with was to try and have them understand what they've done, why they've done it, have them connect with their own experiences of violence when they have had to sort of disconnect and divorce themselves from their own experiences to be able to then do that to somebody else, to explore when it is that their empathy has been cut off for themselves and also for other people. And what was interesting for me is how the men were able, eventually, it seems, many of them were very hostile, I can see in the early part of the process. Many of them think that they don't belong there.

They're not as bad as the other guys, so they don't really need to be part of what helps to unlock their own experiences to the point where then they can also take responsibility for what they've actually done. But very many of them initially, you know, completely downplay and diminish what they've done. And very many of them will blame the woman. You know, if she wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have done this. It's her. It's not me. But eventually these therapists and social workers and counsellors are able to help them get to a point where they can accept responsibility. And once they do that, and once they face who they actually are and what they've done and caused for somebody, that's where the possibility for change happens for some, you know, not for everybody. You know, and, you know, one of my hopes in making this documentary,

other than trying to get to the source of this, is also women like myself and you can talk to a blue in the face about these issues. I've been to endless conferences about violence against women and spoken at them and seen maybe, if I'm lucky, a handful of guys in the audience. The reality is, like Dr. Jackson Cat says in the film, is that this is not a women's issue. This is a men's issue. And what I'm hoping is that maybe some of the viewers who might be

looking at this, maybe some of the guys who are right now engaging in this kind of violence at home, maybe they'll listen to these guys. They're not going to listen to us. Maybe these guys and their experiences and their openness can reach other men in realising that this is not carved in stone. You know, this can change. This is a choice. Your trauma, your childhood experiences aside, this is a choice and you can choose not to. Dia Khan speaking to Jessica Crichton about her new documentary, Behind the Rage, which is available now on the ITV Hub. That interview focused on the male perspective in domestic abuse cases,

but in a separate item on Thursday, we looked at the issue from a female point of view. Krupa Pardee spoke to Winifred Robinson about her series, The Boy in the Woods, which looks at the killing of six-year-old Ricky Neve in November 1994. Winifred looked into the life that Ricky and his family were leading at the time of his death, which was chaotic to say the least. At the centre of this was his stepdad, Dean Neve. Winifred told Krupa about how Ruth, Ricky's mum, didn't want to leave Dean despite

the fact that he was abusive towards her and the family. And I should say that this interview contains descriptions of domestic violence. The best way to describe Dean Neve, I suppose, is a sort of force for chaos in their lives. He was a drug dealer, he was a petty criminal, he was in and out of jail, he was abusive towards Ruth. And he was certainly violent and abusive towards the two children who were not his children, his natural children, so Ricky and Rebecca. Ruth went on to have two children with him who were aged three,

and there was a little baby by the time Ricky was murdered. But by then, Dean Neve had deserted her. He was never faithful to her. She says that he got her onto using drugs, that they were both using amphetamine. He wrecked the council house that they were living in. In anger, he punched the doors in and he would do up old cars in the back garden. He backed a car into the house and it meant that she was stranded. She couldn't leave that estate where she had lived with him because the council wouldn't let her go without paying for those repairs. And she had no money. You know, she was a lone parent.

She had no money. But the important thing, I suppose, the thing that struck me is that I know that women are in abusive relationships. But the thing is that Ruth really loved Dean Neve. And she carried on loving him even after Ricky had been murdered. And she carried on writing to him in Ricky had been murdered and she carried on writing to him in jail so that he was in jail the dream that it would somehow work out okay for them and that they would still be happy was so potent in Ruth's mind that it survived and that was the thing that struck me the way I guess that all of don't we, we long to have a partner for life.

That's perhaps an instinct in us. But I think for women in the culture, there's a big expectation that a woman will be very much in love with a man. Ruth herself had been in care from the age of two and she'd become pregnant with Rebecca, her first child, when she was 17 in a children's home. And I suppose what I learned from making the series was that for really disadvantaged women,

the dream of that, you know, the romantic dream of love and happiness, it's much more potent and much more is invested in it. And in the lives of many women and children, it's just so, so destructive. And you describe what is so complex and so multi-layered there. During the course of putting together The Boy in the Woods, you actually came across a woman on the same estate, living in very similar circumstances to Ruth Neve, albeit 30 years on.

A woman called Sarah, that's not her real name. And this is some exclusive material for us, which we are going to take a listen to now. This is you having knocked on her door as you want to look around the layout of her house as it's the same as the layout of Ricky's family home. Tell me the story of how the doors got the holes punched in. So me and my ex-partner was having an argument. He was scaring me, so at the time the only best place for me to hide was in the bathroom so i sat behind the door and he came out of this bedroom and in so much anger he punched the door in because i wouldn't let him in what made him angry so the thing is

like all the little things and so he had, like, no drugs, like, no weed, every little thing was getting to him. Obviously, the things that I do, he didn't like either. He would, like, try and control everything I did. Once he realised that he couldn't control what I did, I think that's when he decided that he would try a different way. So he threatened you? So he put his hands around my throat.

He did tell me to, like, top myself and stuff, like, go kill myself. He also tried to suffocate me with my own pillows and then he would put his own body weight over my face. Sorry, you're crying. Sorry, sorry, I'm making you remember this. It's horrible. Do you want to go on? Yeah, yeah, sorry. So he was violent towards you? Yeah.

But it was when he didn't have drugs? Pretty much. When he had the pillow around my face, he was proper, like, putting all his strength on it. I thought I was going to die. I'm so sorry. So he can't have been like that when you first met him because no one would live with someone like that no so tell me about the good side of him when we first started getting to know each other we always like video called everything two weeks of getting to know each other

he came into mine everything was going great like we're so happy i couldn't ask for anything better from him and then just gradually as as I got to know him, that's when, obviously, things turned for the worse. You loved him. Yeah, I did love him. I really cared about him. My past hasn't exactly been the best. Tell me what you mean by that.

So I was sexually assaulted at a young age. Well, I won't say young, I was 16 at the time. It's a guy that I knew raped me. So I went through all that as well. I'm not going to lie, like, that just made me feel like I shouldn't be loved. Like, I don't deserve anyone. So when Dave came along, everything was great. I felt love for him. I wanted to be with him

I wanted to have a kid with him I wanted to like marry him grow old with him it was just I don't know I never felt like this with someone before it's like the feelings that I got for him it was just have you ever heard of something that psychologists call projection, where you've got a lot of hopes and dreams inside you that we all have of finding someone to love us for the rest of our life, and you meet a stranger and you project on them everything you need and you decide they're the one, but all they are to you because you don't know them is a kind of blank screen?

Yeah. Do you think it was that probably like think about it now obviously it did hurt like when he ended it and he walked out my life it was like literally a situation that I never want to go through again but it was the end of your dreams yeah it really did hurt Can you understand then women who stay with men who have a good side and a really horrible side? When you love someone, you see their good sides and their bad sides. And if you feel like you love that person so much, you just want to hold on to them. But it wasn't him you really loved, was it? Because you didn't know him and he wasn't very nice. No. But I thought I did love him.

It's the dream, isn't it, that's hard to let go, isn't it? Yeah, I was planning to have a baby in February. What's really striking about this house and your story is that we've come in here to see the layout of a house very similar, well, the same as the house that Ruth was living in with Dean Neve and her children. It's a very similar story that Dean Neve had punched the doors through. He had a drug habit. He was not a nice man, certainly wasn't nice when he needed drugs. Ruth felt that she really, really loved him and it didn't seem to matter what he did. She still always wanted that dream that they would be together and they would have a family.

Lastly, every woman, every person, I think, want this dream of having the perfect relationship and having someone around your children. I think it's sometimes as well, though, it don't matter what people do. If you truly love them, you'll stick by them. You'll tell me that I look beautiful, it'll call me gorgeous, babe, princess, just everything that I've ever wanted from a guy to call me, and he was calling me all these.

Then, obviously, when he did have his bad days, then that's when I get called a lot worse than names what would you call you then he'll call me a slag a whore a tar an idiot he'll literally call me any other name that he can to hurt me there'll be times where he would like grab my hair so when he was trying to pin me down put the cushion down he got my hair here and literally grabbed it so tight on the crown of your head yeah but I'm like I'm kicking the floor he was like shut up we've met you really really by accident by just knocking on the door of a house that has the same layout as Ruth Neve's house. We've found here a similar story in some respects. A woman who's fallen in love with a man

who has turned out to be a really bad lot but still wanted to carry on with it, you know, carried on loving him. And that's the big mystery, really, in, I think, Ruth's case. Why does she stay really attached in her heart to Dean Neve when she knows he's not a good man? She would want to believe that he could be a really good person because he probably gave her some good times as well.

You don't want to lose that. You don't want to lose the person that you had such a strong connection with. You think you mentally love them so much that you just want to be with them constantly, no matter what they do. Sarah there, that's not her real name, speaking to my colleague, Winifred Robinson there. Winifred, you're still with us.

And I'm also joined by Sophie Humphries, who set up an organisation called PAWS, which works with women who are in domestic violence situations, and they've had their children removed. And Sophie has also recently co-founded Shift, which works with young people struggling in difficult family situations. Welcome to the programme, Sophie. Listening to that account from Sarah, is this a typical situation you hear from the women that you help? Yeah, good morning, Krupa. I mean, PAWS was set up to help break the cycle of women who are having repeat removals of children into care.

And that would be for numerous reasons. reasons however what became and we know for sure now is that you know in last year in our impact statement over 87 percent of the women that pause was working with have been in or out at one point of domestic violent relationships so we know it plays a massive part and also interestingly shift which actually works with young people predominantly boys boys, not all, but children and young people who are caught up in crime, gangs, county lines. And what's interesting with them is that you'll see also in their family backgrounds, this repeat cycle around domestic violence. And in some ways, some of the children we work with at Shift are actually really the children of the women that get removed at PAWS. So your question about whether it's typical, I think that obviously every situation is different. But yes, I think hearing Sarah talk, unfortunately, is very familiar.

I think that it's very complex and it's not a black and white situation of kind of good and bad. What we've learned is the importance of working with the dynamic and actually even with that relationships in some circumstance. That is by no means and absolutely want to make clear, not condoning domestic violence in any way. But we do to actually break the cycle for good and to bring about long-lasting change, we need to understand. And I think Sarah said it very well about this sort of, I think this need for love. I think Winifred also talked about that, this great hole, this gap that needs to be filled. And it fulfills a need in some ways, often of great trauma for many of the women we work with. Certainly it pours from their own

childhood experiences the trauma of having children removed that fear of abandonment and so often people can't understand why women might stay in those relationships but actually they're very attached and the early stages of them in some ways are incredibly seductive because the men, usually men, that perpetrate domestic violence often also will have come from very complex backgrounds and may well also have vulnerability and trauma themselves. And so in some ways, they're very skilled at kind of, it's nearly identifying each other's vulnerabilities. But unfortunately, it manifests in a way that's obviously totally unacceptable. That's Sophie Humphries, founder of Paws, talking to Krupa, along with Radio 4's Winifred Robinson, about why women don't want to leave their abusers.

And if you have been affected by anything that's been discussed on the programme, there's help and guidance available on our website. Just follow the link to BBC Action Line. Now, this week saw the two-time Academy Award-winning actor Gina Davis in the Woman's Hour studio. You'll recognise her, of course you will, from an eclectic range of roles, from a soap star in her underwear in Tootsie to housewife-turned-road warrior in Thelma and Louise,

Muriel Pritchett in The Accidental Tourist and baseball phenomenon Dottie Hinson in A League of Their Own, as well as bug films The Fly and Beetlejuice. She's also a tireless advocate and founder and chair of the Gina Davis Institute on Gender in the Media. Gina spoke to Jessica Crichton about her career and her new memoir, Dying of Politeness. She started by explaining why she chose that title. Well, it was when I was deciding that I might want to write a book and thinking about what the arc that I might describe would be about. And I decided that in my life, the roles that I played were much more, let's say, I don't want to say impolite, but I mean, but, you know, were badasses before I ever was,

and it sort of was amazing that I got to play these characters and I could vicariously live like somebody like that. And then it rubbed off on my real life. But the actual politeness part was because my family was so profoundly obsessed with being polite and not being any trouble to anybody and being, you know, very humble and modest. And I almost did literally die of politeness. Yeah. In your book, you say you were trained to be insanely polite, that you learned to have no needs at all. But you mentioned how it became dangerous for you in a situation with your Uncle Jack, who was 99 years old at the time. Tell us about that. Yeah, he was driving in a car that my parents and I were in the back seat of. We'd gone out

to dinner with him and my aunt. And, you know, the 99-year-old guy is driving. And we're on this narrow, pretty empty road. But every once in a while, he'd veer into the oncoming traffic lane and then come back. And my parents said nothing about this at all. But then a car was actually coming in the other direction, and he veered into their lane. And he was staying there. And nobody said a word. And at the last instant before a head-on collision, my Aunt Marion said, a little to the right, Jack. And he kind of veered say anything to the gentleman. So, yeah, it was unbelievable. I'm glad they did. I'm very glad they did. And I'm very glad that you're here.

One of the things that struck me was that despite this way that you were brought up with this extreme politeness there was an inner steel to you and from three years old you declared you were going to be an actor where did that come from well I don't even remember saying it really I mean I don't remember much about being three but my parents assured me that that's what I said so I must have seen something. I must have known that that was a job, I guess. But it never, ever wavered. And I had this unshakable confidence that it was going to happen. That you could just decide you were going to be an actor in movies and that then you get to, you know. We were just so naive about anything to do with Hollywood. There was a time as well where you worked in a department store.

I think this was after college. And you created a role for yourself, I suppose, before you actually became an actor. Yes. You became one of the mannequins, didn't you? Yes. Tell me about that. Where did that idea come from?

So I was a sales girl, and I noticed one Saturday that in the window they had two mannequins sitting at a little tea table or something eating plastic food. And there was an empty chair. And I said to one of my girlfriends, dare me to get in the chair. And she was like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. So I didn't know what I thought I was going to do once I got there, but I went and sat in the chair, and some people were looking in the window at that time, and so I just froze like a mannequin. And they were kind of stunned,

and then somebody came by and said, What are you guys looking at? They were like, Well, just wait, because they wanted to wait and see what I was going to do. And then a whole crowd gathered. I was all made up and wearing the same clothes as the store. So I must have really looked like a manager. But anyway, I discovered that I had an uncanny ability for motionlessness and to go a long

time without blinking too. So anyway, the manager saw what was happening and they ended up hiring me every Saturday to be a mannequin in the window. And so eventually, you know, I mentioned this inner steel and your confidence in wanting to become an actor and then one of your first roles, you know, it happens and one of your first roles was in Tootsie, opposite, none other than Dustin Hoffman. What a great opportunity that was.

Did you enjoy that? Oh, God, yes, I enjoyed it so much. It was my first audition even, and I got the part. And partly I was stunned, but partly I was like, well, I mean, this is what was supposed to happen. So it makes sense. You know, it's such a strange reaction to this opportunity. But I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

Tell me about Thelma and Louise, because there'll be a lot of listeners hearing you on the program this morning and will have grown up watching that film. Right. And it would have very much become a part of their lives. How did that role change your life? It changed it tremendously. And from the minute I read the script, I wanted, you know, I have to be in this movie. I didn't even care which one I played.

And it took me a year to finally get cast in it. But I think it was because these were women that took control of their fate to the bitter end, you know, and for women to do something like that, to, you know, to just trust themselves and whatever mistakes they make, they never relinquish control of their lives. And I think that's that's why I wanted to be part of it. There's another actor who is still very much in Hollywood that was also part of that film, Thelma and Louise. And you've actually dedicated a whole chapter of the book to him. It's called The Blonde One. It's 20 pages long.

Tell me about your first meeting with Brad Pitt when you were auditioning for that role. Right, right. Well, I had got, by the way, the chapter's not all about him. It's about the whole Thelma and Laurie's experience. But he's referred to as The Blonde One. Yes. So I was cast and then they had four finalists for the role of J.D.

And they said, would I read with them to just see how we were together? And one by one they came in and each of them was handsome and did a great job. I had no preference at all. And then the final one was Brad Pitt. And when he came in and started reading, I was like, oh, my God, he's so incredible. I mean, obviously, you know how he looks, but he was an incredible actor. And I was totally screwing up his audition because I was so taken by him that I kept forgetting to say my lines. But, yeah, so then later when they asked me my opinion, who I thought was the guy, I said, the blonde one. And the rest is history.

Is history. How was it working alongside Susan Sarandon? You say that she played a big role in your life and she had a big impact on who you were as a person, not just as an actor? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Somehow I had got into my 30s without ever spending any extended time with a woman who says what she thinks and doesn't start by apologizing for existing first. And that had been my whole, you know, I couldn't say anything without a bunch of qualifiers in front of it. But she just modeled this unbelievable ease of moving through the world with just knowing

what you think and saying it and, you know, nothing confrontational about it, just very simply had opinions and wasn't shy to share them. And it was astounding to me. And the other big lesson is how nobody reacted to that negatively. Everybody loved her. And wait a minute, so you don't get punished for saying what you think was like just a revelation. So, yeah, she changed my whole life. And I think it was when you were working on another film, A League of Their Own.

It felt like during that time that you were being quite vocal about who you were and what you stood for. And you openly told people that you were a feminist. And this was at a time when that wasn't the popular thing to do. That wasn't the done thing to do that wasn't the done thing to do right yes what drove you to do that well uh when when uh we were shooting league of their own press came to the set often to interview us and um and every single person male or female said in a sort of winking tone like would you would you call yourself a—I mean, would you say this movie is a feminist movie? Like, hee-hee, you know, I actually brought up that word, and I said, yeah, yeah, it is.

And they were like, what, really? Well, are you saying that you're a feminist? And I would say, yeah, sure. And they almost invariably asked me if it was okay to actually print that, that I was okay with them actually writing that in the article. And I was like, yeah, but that's how sort of almost toxic the word was at that time. It's very strange. Yeah. And you are clearly very passionate about, I suppose, raising the profile of women and girls. You founded the Gina Davis Institute of Gender in the Media because you first noticed that onscreen representation when watching TV wasn't good enough and you wanted to change it. Right. Absolutely. I mean, I knew about the big gender imbalance in Hollywood, but my daughter was a toddler and I started

watching children's programs and movies with her. And I was stunned to see that in the 21st century, we were showing kids a world that was very dominated by male characters. And probably because I was a mother or whatever, but I thought, well, this is the completely wrong thing to be doing. You know, we're teaching kids to have gender bias from minute one. So then I became obsessed with trying to change that. Gina Davis there speaking to Jessica about her memoir, Dying of Politeness, and it's out now. And don't forget, Woman's Hour is back 10am on Monday. Creeper Paddy will be looking at what to do if your best friend's partner can't stand you or you can't stand them.

That's 10am on Monday or you can listen to us on BBC Sounds. Have a great weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven 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 was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I covered. There was somebody out there who was 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. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.