Woman's Hour - Artist and conservationist Sophie Green, Deepfake porn, British gymnastics

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

In China, the leader Xi Jinping has moved into a historic third term in power. He has just revealed his senior leadership team at the 20th Communist party congress in Beijing, and for the first time in 25 years, no women were included. We discuss what this means for women in China.A new BBC documentary looks at how deepfake technology is being used to create hardcore pornography of women without their consent. Presenter of the documentary Jess Davies and leading deepfake and synthetic media expert Henry Ajder join Krupa, alongside campaigner Kate Issacs who has been impacted by this form of image-based sexual abuse.In the next episode of Friends Forever? Dan and Nat have been best friends for 20 years but romantic relationships have put a strain on their friendship. How do you cope if you think your mate's boyfriend is bad for her? Jo Morris explores the tricky business of having a best mate and a partner. British Gymnastics have just published ‘Reform 25’, their 40 point response to the Whyte Review. The report was highly critical of the organisation saying it was enabling a toxic culture that prioritised profit over the wellbeing of young athletes, and encouraged an era in which they were subjected to shocking levels of emotional and physical abuse. Sarah Powell the new CEO of British Gymnastics joins Krupa Padhy, along with Claire Heafford, co-founder and campaign director of Gymnasts 4 Change.Sophie Green is an artist and conservationist. In her paintings she highlights some of the planet's most endangered animals and next month her work will be showcased in a new exhibition called Impermanence at the Oxo Tower Gallery in London.Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

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, this is Krupal Bharti and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. At the start of what looks set to be another rollercoaster week in British politics. In a matter of hours, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak could replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister. But the United Kingdom is not the only place where female politicians either entering or exiting the scene are in the spotlight. Georgia Maloney has been sworn in as Italy's first female Prime Minister, although she's picked a government in which only one in four ministers are women. And the country we're going to take a closer look at in a moment

is China. President Xi Jinping has unveiled his political team following the Communist Party Congress. And for the first time in 25 years, there's not a woman in sight. What does this mean for women in the country? Insight from Sophia Yan, the Telegraph's China correspondent in Beijing, coming up. We're also going to shed light on a worrying technological development known as deepfake porn. Put simply, anyone with access to an image of your face can, in a matter of seconds,

produce an extremely convincing video in which you appear as a porn star. We speak to Kate Isaacs, who, upon scrolling through her Twitter feed, learnt that she had been deep faked. We'll also learn about how the technology works as well. And this may be something that worries you. You may have a question about this. And it may be something that has impacted you personally. If you're willing to share, please do get in touch.

Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at female friendships and how partners impact those friendships, especially if one party dislikes the other. Two friends, Daniela and Natalia, share the story of their friendship journey. And I'll be joined by Sarah Powell, the CEO of British Gymnastics, as well as by Claire Hefford, co-founder and campaign director of Gymnasts for Change. They'll be talking about Reform 25. That's an action plan in response to a damning review of practices into British gymnastics known as the White Review. We are always keen to hear from you on any of the stories we cover here on Woman's Hour.

The way to get in touch is via text. That number is 84844. You can catch us on social media. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram at BBC Women's Hour. You can email us through our website and you can send us a WhatsApp voice note. The number to use there is 03700 100 444. Let's begin in China, where the leader Xi Jinping has moved into a historic third term in power. He's just revealed his senior leadership team at the 20th Communist Party Congress in Beijing. And for the first time in 25 years, no women were included.

Elsewhere in his speech to the Congress, President Xi said he would adhere to the basic state's policy of gender equality. So what does this all mean for women in China? Sophia Yan is the Telegraph's China correspondent. She joins me now from Beijing. Good to have you on the programme, Sophia. Well, let's start at the very basics. Can you explain the leadership structure for us? Because you've got this Politburo Standing Committee.

I imagine that's China's equivalent to a presidential cabinet. But how does it fit in to the larger Chinese political framework? At the very top of the Chinese Communist Party, you have three bodies in power. One is the Central Committee. That's about 200 members, plus an additional 170 alternate members. Bear with me, this is going to get a little tedious in all the details, but it's very important. Then on top of that is the Politburo. That's about two dozen members. And then even higher than that is a seven-member body, the Standing Committee of the Politburo. And then at the very top, you have the General Secretary.

He's part of that Standing Committee. Now, what we have for the first time in 25 years is no women at the Politburo level. So this is a 24-member body that handles just about everything you can think of when it comes to governance of China. And this is really something that lays very bare the striking gender imbalance at the top ranks of China. We're talking the world's most populous country, the world's second largest economy, and to have no women near the top trying to advise decision making, policy making. This is really, really striking, I think, especially at a time when so many other governments, parliaments are trying to deal with this gender issue to have much more equal representation.

Well, let's get to the why then, because there are nearly 700 million women who live in China. And prior to this latest development, there was at least one place on that Politburo that was taken up by a woman. I understand that there were even women earmarked for this specific role. So why on this occasion has a woman not been appointed to that space? It's always been very difficult for women to be promoted up the ranks in China, in business, also in government. And politically speaking, on the last Politburo, the one that was in place for the previous five years before this new one that came into place over the weekend, there was, as you say, only one woman who was on that list. And even before that, only three women ever have made it that high up on their own,

of their own volition. There were a handful of others that had advanced politically as part of propaganda efforts or as the wives of other officials. Now, there has always been a pretty serious gender discrimination in China. Women are, odds are really stacked against them for making it up all the way. It really is a man's game. And that seven-member standing committee for the Politburo at the very top, not a single woman has ever been a part of that elite governing body. You call it a man's game. And I'm happy to be talking to you in Beijing.

You are in Beijing right now. And we don't often get to hear from women directly there. Can you give us a sense of the conversation then? How are women reacting to this change? Women in China, like women in many other countries, are faced with a lot of pressures. They have to be mothers, wives. They want to have careers. They want to have certain jobs.

They want to find their way up the career ladder, but also manage responsibilities and duties at home. And that has gotten harder and harder. And the cost of living in China, in many cities is increasing. And so it's very difficult for some couples to be able to afford to do all the things that they want to do with their families. So this is really something that women think about a lot. They talk about how they can't necessarily juggle all these rules and to meet all these demands that are placed on them. And so they're thinking about whether or not to have kids later in life. This is a very interesting situation because we're coming off decades of the one-child policy in China. For so many years, families could only have one kid, and there was always a favoritism for sons. Now, the government in China is faced with a huge demographics crisis.

What they really need is more women to have babies. They need women to give birth now so that in 20, 30 years' time, we've got more of a working-age population. Otherwise, the economy could be in even more trouble than it is today. So there's a lot asked of women at this point. And so in some sense, there's a lot of control over both their minds and their bodies trying to get them first not to procreate and now to procreate a lot. So you can imagine that it's a lot of pressure that they face. Conversely, Sophia, with that falling birth rate, you've also got a fast aging population in China as well. Is there a pressure on women to look after the elderly there?

Is that also an added cultural expectation? Absolutely. There is. Absolutely. There's pressure for younger generations to take care of the elderly population, of the parents. And this is a lot of stress for families with only one child. You've got parents on both sides. If you're married now, then you've got your in-laws as well. And so it's actually quite a lot of burden for some families to bear. And for women, they are actually forced to retire even earlier than men in China.

And so women are sort of let loose earlier than men are. It's a very different game. And so women are sort of let loose earlier than men are. It's a very different game. And so all of this stacks up. It just means more and more pressure for women to take care of things both at home and also at work, which is why, again, a lot of them are thinking, rethinking rather, whether or not to have children. But this is coming at a time when the government is telling them, have more kids. Just so I'm clear, when you say forced to retire early, is that by legislation or is that by cultural expectation? China has lower retirement ages for women. For civil servants, it's at 55. And for men, it's at the age of 60. And so it's quite a big age gap,

five year difference. So women in those positions have to stop working a lot earlier than their male counterparts. Going back to the politics of this, women make up about 30% of party members in the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. It's got nearly 100 million members. So less than a third of that rank and on file are women. And those numbers, they thin out the higher up its ranks you actually climb. Why might that be the case? Is it that women just with all these pressures on them from various directions, they just don't have the headspace, the capacity to invest or engage in politics? I think it comes from a lot of different places. They are, as I said before, the odds are stacked against them.

And so they're given less responsibility at lower levels. They're given more marginal positions. They have, in some cases, less of an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do. They also enter government perhaps later than men if they've had families, if they've had kids. And they are also asked to retire earlier than their male colleagues. And so their time for their career, the time that they have in which to build a career is already far less than it is for men. And then you have to think about on top of all of that, this pretty entrenched gender discrimination in China, this longtime centuries old cultural favoritism for sons. This is something that's just always there.

As much as there's discussion about equal representation, I mean, this doesn't always permeate through. Even in China, there have been a lot of scandals over Me Too, a lot of women trying to speak up about this. But the term Me Too itself has been censored in China. It's very, very complicated. It's very sensitive to talk about equal representation. So many layers to unpack with you, and I wish we had longer to talk. Sophia Yam, thank you for joining us there from Beijing. A new BBC TV documentary, Deepfake Porn, Could You Be Next, looks at how deepfake technology is being used to create

hardcore pornography of women without their consent. This technology enables the creator to replace a person in a video with someone else's face to make convincing fake content. And all that is needed is a photo which can be taken from Instagram, Facebook or even Zoom and then turned into a porn video. The documentary has found that women are being deepfaked not only by strangers, but by family members and colleagues too. I am joined by the presenter of the documentary, Jess Davies, as well as deepfake and synthetic media expert, Henry Ida, and Kate Isaacs, a campaigner who features in the documentary. Thank you to all three of you. Very good to have you on the programme. Thank you.

Jess, let me start with you and again let us start at the very basics what is a deep fake so a deep fake is a video or an image where someone else's face has been put onto someone else's body using artificial intelligence and traditionally it was celebrities that were targeted because you needed a lot of content to create these images and videos because of the technology but as we look at in a documentary technology has come along so quickly that it is just one or two images that you need now to create this content and it's not just celebrities as you've highlighted it is ordinary folk mothers daughters sisters friends yeah absolutely it was something that really shocked me when I was ordinary folk, mothers, daughters, sisters, friends. Yeah, absolutely.

It was something that really shocked me when I was investigating for this film and looking into all the forums, that it was a lot of family members that were being targeted, women that these perpetrators knew. They were posting Instagram links, social media links of the girls that they were requesting to be deepfaked and then asking other members to then go and share this content. So it seems like there was a real malicious drive to the content that they were creating. Malicious is a key word because I want to better understand the legal framework around this, which you do get into in your documentary. What is the current UK legislation surrounding this? And if there isn't why isn't there? So when it comes to deep

fake porn there isn't a targeted offence so it isn't necessarily illegal to create and distribute this content. When it comes to the upcoming online harm safety bill it suggested that it will be included in that but it really it falls under similar laws to revenge porn laws so you need to prove that there is intent to cause distress and harm when it comes to creating and distributing this content, which, as we all know with the internet, is extremely difficult to prove. And as we've seen with revenge-borne laws, this acts as a loophole that allows paper traders to get away with this.

And this loophole, it's seeing the industry increase, develop in extraordinary ways. You have the opportunity to speak to some people who are behind some of these websites. It made for extraordinary listening and viewing. What did they share with you? Yeah, so we spoke to one of the biggest, the founders, one of the biggest Deepfake poll websites and some of the creators on there as well. And what they shared with me and my team was that they didn't see an issue with this they felt like consent wasn't required they felt like because they knew these images and videos were fake that it wasn't a big deal that women should just get over it and I think it comes down to a huge conversation around consent that's needed within society because women aren't just objects you can't just swap our heads like

Barbie dolls or trade our images like Pokemon cards we are real people and unfortunately in these conversations in these forums women aren't looked at as real people they're looked as commodities and just objects for these men to do what they want with it and that could be deep faking you into a porn video without your consent. Jess, you've got personal experience of your own images, in which case they were of you being stolen and shared. How different do you think it is that these women's images aren't real and are being shared around? It was extremely difficult for me to see my images being used

in a way that wasn't something that I consented to being sold and traded online. But I think knowing that they were real and knowing that they were mine, even though it felt a loss of control, you weren't having that added worry of where these come from. What are they? And I think with deep fakes, it's just another layer of trying to take control away from women

and saying, I don't even care if you have taken this image or not. If it's real, I'm going to put you into that position anyway. So I can imagine the trauma is even deeper, really, because you don't know where this has come from. And it's a constant worry added on to that. And I think that's what we got from speaking to our contributors like Kate in the film is just that loss of control and that sense of why is someone doing this? Because it does feel like a targeted attack. Someone's chosen to go out out their way to make this content or pay someone else to make this content you mentioned kate let's bring in kate isaac so kate welcome to the program you are a campaigner working on this your your your work has helped to lead to the deletion of lots of non-consensual videos and images on such sites but you came to be involved in this

and you've also got personal experience of this as well. Explain that journey to us. So back in 2019, a friend of mine ended up having an iCloud account hacked and a number of videos having sex with a partner ended up on a very popular porn website that we won't name. And I tried to get that content down it became incredibly difficult to do so and i started digging into the law and researching some of these

moderation practices online and speaking to the companies and found that there wasn't really any sort of regulation in terms of how they should be monitoring non-consensual image-based sexual abuse and actually that there is no law either protecting anyone from it, apart from the revenge porn law, which has its own sort of holes and issues. After campaigning for a number of years, well, I think it was about a year and a half actually in 2020, we managed to get about 80% of Pornhub deleted. It was about 10 million videos because they were unverifiable, basically in terms of consent and age. And although there was a really great reception

around that, there were a lot of victims and survivors that we worked with that were thrilled that that content had finally been deleted, that they'd never authorized to be uploaded in the first place. And unfortunately, there were a number of people who weren't quite happy with the fact that their videos or videos they enjoyed watching were deleted. And as a result, I ended up being a target online on Twitter specifically. And one of the methods of their attack was to deep fake me into a porn film and try to convince others that it was actually me in the video. I know that what happened to you impacted you in so many ways, emotionally, physically, in terms of your relationships. Can you give us a sense of just how hard it has been for you? It was really challenging. And I think that, you know, Jess talked about it earlier,

that lack of control over your own image and your reputation is very, very scary. I've been campaigning and going on TV and radio for a bit of time at that point. And, you know, there's an element of that you have control over the things you're saying and doing, and I didn't have that anymore. And to think that someone was able to take my image and my reputation and put it into something that I did not consent to felt like an act of sexual violence. It was used to silence me, but it was also used because they wanted to reduce me down to a porn star. And, you know, although there's nothing wrong with the sex industry, I didn't choose to be used in that form. And the fact that someone could take that consent away from me in a

sexual manner feels like sexual abuse. And I want to be able to just be able to make my own choices the way I want to put myself across in society and in my work. So for someone to do that to me, to scare me into basically shutting up and to stop campaigning, it was very, very scary. And, you know, there were other elements of the abuse in that that kind of amalgamated together so I was doxxed my address was put online my work address was put online and there were comments around on Twitter finding me and sexually assaulting me and filming it and putting it on the internet as a kind of the fact I deleted their photo so it was like this sort of punishment fit the crime of getting rid of their pornography so they they wanted to make me into it. And that is very, very violent and very scary as a woman. I think anyone listening today, who is a woman living in the UK knows it's terrifying to walk home by yourself at night

anyway, in this society that we live in. So to have the added threat, and that added forcing of my image into something for them to enjoy sexual gratification was was really terrifying thank you for sharing that and it does sound horrific from from every angle that you have talked about and um your your good work in this area does continue um thank you for sharing that i want to bring in henry ida here who uh looks specifically at the technology around synthetic media. Welcome to the programme, Henry. How exactly does this technology work? Sure, yes. So Deepfakes use a specific kind of artificial intelligence called deep learning. And when Deepfakes first emerged in late 2017, this used a specific kind of deep learning called an autoencoder. What this technology does is it takes source footage, images of a target, and it takes a destination video where the face is to be

swapped. And it trains on those different images and essentially learns to map the face from the target to the destination video. And as Jess mentioned, when this first emerged, this was an incredibly intensive process. You needed quite a lot of computational power, you needed lots of different images, and even then the results weren't of the highest quality. Whereas what we've seen over the last few years is that these technologies have become much more efficient, you need much less in the way of training data or those images. You can pre-train models now, so you only need one image in some cases. And we've also seen new techniques emerge, one specifically to the problem of deepfake image abuse or deepfake pornography is

called a nudifying app, which uses an image translation algorithm, which is originally designed to, let's say take a photo and make it look like a painting but what it's been used to do in the context of image abuse is synthetically strip images of women again in a few seconds because what we're seeing here Henry are apps that are easily accessible from regular app stores, not intended for this purpose, but being used for this purpose. There is a clip in the documentary when Jess manages to create content in a mere eight seconds, something along those lines. So whilst what you describe is extremely complex, it's getting easier and easier to create such content. Absolutely. The kind of gamification of this technology has been critical to its mass adoption.

Again, when this was first developed, this was people who had to have some knowledge of programming to make it work. It was very un-user friendly, took a lot of time to get the results. Whereas now, it's easily accessible through really user-friendly apps and tools online. And that's led to a massive scaling of the problem. Back in 2019, I did a report which found 96% of deepfake videos online were pornographic. But we were talking about 10,000, 15,000 videos at that time. Whereas now we're talking about millions of images and videos that are out there. And these aren't being created by computer science experts. These are being created by everyday people looking to target non-consensually, as you said, people they know,

or celebrities. And so it's scaled massively in a very short period of time. Back to the legal framework which I touched on earlier with Jess and Kate, it almost feels like the technology is far ahead of the legislation. I mean are we ever going to get to a point where the legal framework can catch up with what is what is happening here? Yes, it's really challenging. And if I'm completely honest, it's quite a depressing landscape, which is even if the legislation can adequately capture the harms that are being caused by deep pay pornography, actually using this legislation to make change and hold people to account and bring them to justice is very difficult. As Jess found, a lot of these people are anonymous online, it's hard to identify who they are. They may not even be in the same jurisdiction as you.

And also a lot of these tools, you know, they may get taken down, but they'll pop up somewhere else. It really is a bit like a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to trying to stop people accessing them. And again, with these nudifying apps back in 2019, the most popular one was taken down and about 10, 15 other services came up in its place. And so you can't really regulate mathematics, which is essentially what these tools are, right? It's code. And so if one person gets their service taken down, another person can just rebuild it from essentially from scratch or download it from another legal framework it's not particularly well equipped to both take down the tools and also identify perpetrators. And Henry is that just in this country because this is happening across the world are there any countries where that framework is on the same level as the pace of technology? Yeah absolutely it is a truly global problem

again something that the study I did in 2019 found one area in particular that was interesting was K-pop stars in South Korea, where a really big area where victims were being targeted. There is legislation coming forward across the world. Again, we're seeing in South Korea, in Japan, on the state level in the US, and also in the UK. There's been a recent recommendation by the Law Commission around intimate image abuse. So there is a global shift towards recognising this as a serious problem, but the same issues still apply, right, in terms of actually getting that legislation to work for victims and to hold perpetrators to account.

There have been a couple of cases that have been reported in the global media of people being arrested and identified. And again, perhaps in the case of revenge pornography, it's slightly easier to kind of understand who that might be who's targeting you. But it's very, very challenging to make it work and to kind of provide a conclusive case. And keep up clearly. Thank you so much, Henry Ida there, and also to Jess Davies and Kate Isaacs, both of whom are in that documentary, Deepfake Porn.

Could you be next? It is available to watch on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer now. Right, something we want to hear from you on. What is your experience of finding good quality, affordable childcare? On Friday's programme, we'll be exploring the UK's childcare system and whether it's working for parents,

children, childcare providers or employers. Maybe you're a mum who's had to give up her job after crunching the numbers and finding out that it's just not worth it. Maybe you're a mum who's had to give up her job after crunching the numbers and finding out that it's just not worth it maybe you're a dad in the same position or perhaps you're a nursery worker struggling to make ends meet or even an employer who struggles with flexible working requests is it working for you do let us know text us on 84844. Contact us on social media at BBC Women's Hour. And you can send us a voice note as well.

Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at female friendships. They are, I quote, the greatest romances of our lives. That is according to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But how do relationships with partners affect friendships? What if you can't stand your best mate's partner? Or maybe they don't like you? A couple of weeks ago, Daniela and Natalia shared their story of finding each other as teenagers, falling out, then coming back together. And you can still find that story on BBC Sounds. That was over on the 29th of September. And at the end of

that interview, Dan said that even after repairing their friendship, it was not plain sailing because then they started having boyfriends. Our reporter, Jo Morris, talked to them separately because she wanted to learn more. So how old are you now, Dan? 33. So you've been friends for over 20 years? Yes. God. Yeah, God. I just love hearing that. I haven't actually, like, 20 years. Yes. God. Yeah, God. I just love hearing that. I haven't actually, like, 20 years. Isn't that beautiful that you can have a friendship for 20 years? They love each other so much as teenagers,

but you've only really known each other for, like, a couple of years, really. And to be able to say 20 years, that's such a privilege, I think. I'm waiting to hear as old as me. I wouldn't even call it a friendship, because she, like, knows my soul better than anyone. Has it always felt like that? Yeah. Always?

Apart from the bit where we weren't friends. In the bits where we were friends, yes. I think it's only become really, really solid again in the last few years. I think having the rocky times and having each other around while we went through some rough romantic relationships has actually been the making of us in a strange way. A lot of the time when I talk about Daniela to partners, I think I'm trying to think of ways to justify her because I know they won't understand the way we function as friends. And I find that annoying because I shouldn't have to explain it.

I choose to have that kind of friendship and my ex-partner just didn't get it he didn't understand and he once thought Daniella was being rude to me and she probably was being a bit of a we were a bit drunk and playing a game and she was a bit mean but it doesn't matter but he held on to it so every time I then spoke about her it felt uncomfortable I don't think he was jealous or anything like that I think he was more protective in a irritating way and protective it was something I didn't need protecting from because it's my best friend what did it feel like having someone say I don't like your friend? Really uncomfortable.

We then hung out again and it was kind of fine, but there was always this kind of feeling where I didn't want to tell him too much. My now partner, he doesn't stick his nose into it. In the nicest way possible, it's not really anyone's business but mine and daniella's and i think as you get older you also can have a soulmate and a partner and a best friend and do you know what i mean and different people for different things i didn't acknowledge that i was not in a very good relationship until i was out of it and realized it was really really not healthy but you don't really see it when you're in it do you it takes a real skill to finally see it you don't sit down and go this

is really bad relationship let's stop it something else juts out of position which is what happened and we broke up I really regret I'm not seeing that a partner of hers was really bad for her I was so consumed by the fact he didn't like me maybe it's my ego that got in the way I was just like what I don't understand he thought I was bad for her and I put too much effort into, okay, I need to get him to see that I love her. I think that's how I fell into the trap of thinking that he was a good guy. Daniella, actually, she was a fan of him up until we broke up. And then I started kind of going through the way our relationship was. And she was oh my god I'm so sorry I was his fan I'm so sorry when you're in a whirlwind of a bad relationship and everything that comes with

that you start to think things that aren't your thoughts that are someone else's thoughts and ideas about what's going on with you he clearly wasn't that important because we're not together anymore. We ended up being friends. I think that pretty much sums it up. And how has Natalia navigated your partners? She has been excited for me to be loved. She was central to my support system when I needed to leave a bad relationship. It was really helpful because she was emotionally intelligent

enough to know that it's not that easy to leave situations like that. It wasn't, I leave this man right now. She knew that I'd probably be stuck in it for a while and I felt loved and supported in those moments because otherwise I felt like a failure and that helped me be a bit more honest, because you'd hide a lot of stuff from your friends, don't you, because you don't want them to be hurt on your behalf.

So you were hiding stuff from Natalia? Yeah, of course. I became distant, I think. I definitely drew away from her for a bit. So Dan's talked to me about difficulties in her previous relationship yes he was emotionally abusing her one night we were out somewhere and I saw the switch in his eyes you come from houses of men who are not delightful have all been there haven't we and we know what those eyes mean and we know they don't just come around once

and we know they always come back. What was it like for you watching Dan and your friend in that situation? Really horrible to watch. I was so scared they would get married or that she would have his child and there would be no way out. Did you know what to say? It's very hard in those situations, isn't it?

In that you're worried if you say something, you might scare her off. Yeah, I didn't know what to say, if I'm honest. I was figuring it out as I went along. I was really aware that I didn't want her to stop talking to me, so I tried to leave my judgment at the door. But the thing is, I have no judgment. I've seen my mum in it. Any of us are susceptible to this at any time in our lives. Like, I never understand people who are like, I'm not going to talk to you until we break up with him. She's the one going through a hard time. She's clearly not choosing to be in a horrible time in her life.

Doing everything to retain her talking to me was the objective. And sometimes she wouldn't for a while, and then it would all spill out, and then she'd change her mind, and then it would all spill out and then she'd change her mind and you'd be like okay cool that's what we're doing today we're gonna like him okay and today we're gonna hate him okay and you have to kind of be along for the ride for all of it because you're not gonna live their life for them are you and it's not like I'm not gonna be her friend because she's having a hard time do you think she was honest with you about how she was feeling sometimes not always sometimes when you're in a relationship like that you feel

probably a lot of shame you feel embarrassed that you're letting yourself be treated that way but also along with that you feel protective over this person who has his grip inside you you're in survival mode and survival means protecting him I didn't want to sit around drinking wine slating my boyfriend I just needed the acknowledgement that things went okay and the trust in me to make the right choice eventually I think she's the only person that told me it could take a while it's going to take you a while to see what I can see. So I'm just going to wait out until you're ready. And then when you're ready to, I'll be here. And that was really, really helpful. She just texted me saying, Dan, I found the person I want to spend my life with, which

I get a text like that every now and then. She's talking about her current partner. It's like, I've convinced him to marry me. Like, we're going to do it. It's just like, she's such a romantic. I love it. She's so open and always has been. She's always worn a heart on her sleeve. So you like her partner at the moment? Yeah, love him. Yeah. He's great for her.

Really great for her. It took me so many years to understand how she loves me because she is closed. But it's taken me a really long years to understand how she loves me because she is closed but it's taken me a really long time to understand how she shows it and how she gives love. It's not the way I do but it's so loyal. I feel like we can be like quite proud of having got through all of the bits of friendship that are really hard to get through and I don't think everyone would have. God aren't we lucky aren't we lucky that we had each other. Jo Morris there in conversation with Daniela and Natalia. The White Review was published in June

of this year and it's been described as a damning report on British gymnastics. The 306 page report accused British gymnastics of enabling a toxic culture that prioritised profit over the well-being of young athletes and encouraged an era in which they were subjected to shocking levels of emotional and physical abuse. The investigation began two years ago after a number of British gymnasts spoke out with accusations of bullying, abuse and discrimination. It just made me feel worthless. It just turned me into a shell of who I used to be.

It's affected me now, really. Like, I'm really worried about making friends. I ended up getting left on the bars and another group came to join in on the session that I was doing on the bars. Mae'n fwysig iawn i mi wneud ffrindiau. Fe wnes i ddod i ffwrdd ar y barau ac fe ddodd grwp arall i ymuno ar y sesiwn rwyf yn ei wneud ar y barau. Ac fe ddodd y gymnas i siarad â'i hyfforddiant a dweud nad gallaf ddefnyddio'r bar hwn oherwydd bod yna ddwy o blwyd Abbey arno oherwydd roedd hi'n rhy ddwy.

Fe wnes i ddod i'r bar ac fe wnes i glywed clic ar fy mhobl. Roeddwn i wedi cael fy nôl i ddod i fynd fel os nad oedd rhywbeth wedi digwydd. Roeddwn i ddim yn gallu cyfnod. Roedd yn bwysig i mi ysgrifennu fy mab i ddod i fy nôl i fyny ac i fynd i'r osbytol on my foot. I was told to carry on as if nothing happened. I couldn't carry on. It was up to me to ring my dad to come pick me up and take me to the hospital where they told me I'd broke my foot in four places. My mum, she's been heartbroken. She's actually cried to me and says that she feels like she failed as a parent but our parents were probably just as manipulated as we were as gymnasts. Those interviews were given to BBC Sport who spoke to the gymnasts back in August 2020. In response to the White Review, British Gymnastics have just

published Reform 25. The plan will address recommendations made across four key areas of safeguarding, complaints handling, standards and education and governance and oversight. I'm joined by Sarah Powell, the CEO of British Gymnastics and also by Claire Hefford, co-founder and campaign director of Gymnasts for Change, a global network of current and former gymnasts, coaches, parents, fans and more who have come together to campaign for change. Thank you to both of you for joining us here on the programme. Sarah, let me start with you listening to that clip. Some horrific accounts there.

What is your response when you hear accounts like that? Well, firstly, it's painful, isn't it? It's emotional. When I first read the White Review and the report, it was heartbreaking. And when you speak to the gymnasts and you see firsthand how they've been affected by it, you can't help be affected yourself. It's not the sport I know.

I've been brought up in sport and it's been a really positive experience for myself. And when I became involved with British Gymnastics just a year ago now, then I knew that I needed to take forward the changes nobody should experience that in sport and that's why we've launched reform 25 which is our response to the white review but it goes beyond that the 17 recommendations it goes further to make sure that we look at a deep-seated change in culture within gymnastics to make sure that it provides a much more positive, safe and fair experience for all involved. You could see it's not just the gymnasts that are affected, it's the

parents affected, it's all involved and we need to look very deep and very hard within our sport and we've already started taking actions within the organisation and we're looking much wider, as you say, around coach coach education safe sport and some of the work that we need to do well let's get into some of the finer details then because it is it it is an extensive report um over 300 pages uh long or rather sorry that was the white review but an extensive report with a 40 point plan what is it that you are going to prioritize at the top there what what features high on the top of that list? I think there are three main areas for us. The first is to look at coach education. This

gymnast-coach relationship is so important. The empowerment of the gymnast so that they have a voice and they have a say in their own training and their development. So we really need to make sure we get the culture right there, that it is open and that it is safe for the gymnasts and the parents and the coaches to work together so a huge focus has been on the technical side of coach education the skill development now we need to look very much at how to coach and how to build those relationships alongside that we need to look at the safeguarding element and make sure that all our investigations are dealt with in a timely manner and we make sure that we we deal with those fairly and robustly okay at the heart of sorry let's get into both of them because excuse me um the coaching aspect

uh you you have talked about um the names of band coaches being made available via the governing bodies official website. I mean, has that been put into process so far? How many have been listed on there? How easy is it to ban a coach? Yes, so that is the first step that we've taken as part of Reform 25. It will now be enacted. It hasn't been done previously. So any coaches that are found through our independent complaints process to be of a position that they should be banned,

we will publish that and we will inform all our members. But the heart of this is that that's the punitive. That's the end result. What we want to get to is that we don't get to this position, really focusing on what good coaching behaviour looks like, reforming coaching, bringing through a new set of coaches that have different practices in place yes that is the now but there are still a lot of gymnasts some who who are not in the sector anymore who have been let's put it bluntly very damaged by what has happened to them so we talk about punitive impacts there and punitive results rather um can i can i ask um how many coaches have been banned since that White Review came out?

No coaches have been banned since the White Review report has come out. We're still waiting for a number of those investigations to come to an end. Once they do, then it'll depend on the outcome, which is set out by Chris Quinlan, who's an independent KC who oversees these investigations. And then once those come out, if any coaches are deemed to be banned, we will then publish them immediately, which wasn't in place previously so what i'm hearing is that it is a long thorough process but that length also might be testing for those who have been impacted you said that you are listening that you want to be transparent but let's keep in mind that

many of these people who have been in by who have been impacted by what has gone on were children, were very, very young, who may not have the ability, the resources, the confidence to speak up as yet. So how are you listening? That's really important, isn't it? That if we need to make sure that we can create this open, safe environment, we've already made sure at board level we now have a gym mask representative, we've set up a gymnast group, a coaches group and a club group so that we're, Anne White identified we're very insular, that we're making sure that we are listening and involving. We obviously want to work with Gymnasts for Change and those that are involved and have that lived experience so they can help shape the actions that we take. We've made it really clear Reform 25 is only the start, we need to listen and involve and continue to shape those actions as we understand more of what we need to do.

But we will be providing support that those have been affected and Claire and those again to help us to decide what that looks like. What is the right action that we need to take? Reform 25 also talks about not prioritising medals. And I want to understand better what that means, because given that funding for a sport is often based on the number of medals won, how are you going to balance that pressure? I don't see it as either or. You know, we know these gymnasts work extremely hard.

And for those who are talented, they may go on and deliver international success, but that is the driving force the driving force has to be the well-being and the mental health and physical health of the gymnast and if they are in a good mental physical position then they can go on and succeed and I don't see them at one or the other but we within British Gymnastic has to put much greater focus on the well-being of our gymnasts, shifting from that medal focus to actually the experience of the gymnasts being central to what we do. Do stay with us, Sarah. I do want to bring in Claire Hefford,

co-founder and campaign director of Gymnasts for Change, who's spoken out publicly about the abuse that she suffered as a top-level gymnast. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Claire. How do you respond to this Reform 25 document? Broadly speaking, I think it's a really positive step forward for the gymnastics community. And as you can hear, Sarah Powell is clearly a very different proposition

to the former CEO, Jane Allen. There are green shoots of change, which is great, but BG have always been pretty good at saying what UK sport want to hear. And so far, it's looking like it may still be performative rather than substantive. I think that BG now know what they need to say, but don't necessarily always know what they need to do. Confidence within the community is still low and we've yet to see hard evidence that is going to reinstate people's confidence that change is coming. So you're saying more words, not enough action. What do you recommend? What do you see specifically that needs acting on now and can be acted on now? I mean, I think that...

..we're seeing really great signs of positive organisational change, which include things like there are... I am hearing that there have been improvements within the atmosphere at the British Gymnastics squad training. There have been key personnel changes and British Gymnastics have brought in Kath Bishop as part of the oversight panel, which is fantastic. But we still are looking at backlogged investigations. British Gymnastics have brought in, I think,

eight new safeguarding officers, but there remain 300 cases on the books that haven't been looked at. And I'm aware of one case in particular, which was reported to the White Review earlier this year, and eight months later, there still hasn't been a gym inspection. And that represents a catastrophic safeguarding failing. I think in terms of what Sarah was discussing with the oversight, the advisory boards, their functionality so far has been fairly poor. And I think that what we've got to remember is that the White Review is really about the experiences of gymnasts, past, present and future. And what we're looking at at the moment is that it's vital that the legal claims that we put forward are actually settled, because the White Review only looked at a period of 2008 to the present day, whereas the gymnasts cases and our legal claim look at the experiences of gymnasts over a 40year period from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.

And without settling those legal claims, British gymnastics really won't have a full picture of exactly what was going on in the gyms and therefore exactly what needs to change. We've had this message coming to us. Gymnastics is not the only sport that suffers from this. My daughter used to represent Great Britain internationally and holds many records after years of abuse and seeing other women being treated inappropriately. She made a complaint which was handled inappropriately and in frustration, she left the team,

moved to another country where she represents them and holds national records. She powered through this disgusting behaviour of others to compete in her sport. And that leads me, I mean, her daughter is already at the top of her game in many ways. But talking about the next generation, Claire, I know that your daughter is only three years old

and you've said that you would not send her to a gymnastics club even now. Explain that to us. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't send her to a gymnastics club at the moment, particularly an elite club. As you asked directly to Sarah, how many coaches that were named to the White Review have been banned since the White Review came out? And the answer is none. And the discussion in the media headlines around the production of this register of banned coaches, that just doesn't go far enough. As parents, what we want to see is a register of banned,

sanctioned and suspended coaches. It can take up to 12 years for a coach to actually be banned, to go through as a complainant the process of investigations and then appeals it takes so long that a register of banned coaches is actually meaningless and because so many coaches remain in the sport who have been reported to the white review as parents what we want is informed choice if you're going to be placing your child with a coach for up to 30 hours a week you want to know how many times has that coach had a complaint made against them? How many suspensions or sanctions has that coach already served?

You want that knowledge. So until there is a list of sanctions, suspended and banned coaches and those coaches are removed, parents just cannot be confident that their child is going to be safe in sport. Claire Hefford, thank you so much. Let me briefly bring in Sarah back into this conversation. Some specific concerns there. A long list of legal claims outstanding. The register for banned coaches useless at this stage in time. And generally a vast gap between words and action.

Briefly, Sarah, what is your response? Number one, we've got to hold ourselves accountable. We've published this action plan to be accountable. Clare and Gymnasts for Change, I know, will hold us to account and the media as they rightly should. But number one, I will be accountable as the leader of the organisation to see this through with the support of Clare and others. We won't do this alone. It has to go right into the community. The second one around cases, we need to act quickly. We won't do this alone. It has to go right into the community. The second one around cases, we need to act quickly. We need to move forward. We want to do this to be able for the sport to move forward. And I'm here today to give confidence to Claire and the others that we will take Reform 25 forward. We will enact those changes and we

will make sure that gymnastics is safe for the future. I have a three year old daughter as well, the same as Claire, and she goes to gymnastics and she enjoys it. But as a parent, I speak to the coach. I see the environment. We all need to take responsibility to make sure that gymnastics can give that great experience that we know it can for so many. Thank you so much, Sarah Powell there and Claire Heffern. I do want to squeeze in this message from Ian in Norwich who writes, can you give a shout out for the World Gymnastics Championships that start in Liverpool on Saturday? I've just had a training weekend as a volunteer for the event and the work going on behind the scenes, as well as the gymnasts themselves deserve the widest recognition. Thank you, Ian, for bringing a bit of positivity to this important conversation.

Thank you. My next guest is a former primary school teacher who switched her career to art and wildlife. Sophie Green has since gone on to highlight some of the planet's most endangered animals. And next month, her work will be showcased in a new exhibition called Impermanence at the Oxo Tower Gallery in London,

30% of proceeds from sales will go to conservation projects. And many of Sophie's paintings, which are hyper-realistic animal portraits, are so impressive that they were also on show to the world's leaders at last year's COP26. Welcome to the programme, Sophie. Very good to have you with us. You're an artist. I'm going to ask you to paint a picture in words of what your work is like. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I think my artwork is, first of all, it's very, very realistic. I think that kind of ties in with my personality as very scientifically accurate rather than more sort of expressive or impressionistic uh I try

through my artwork I try to sort of provide a window into another ecosystem and allow the people that are looking at my art to kind of feel like they're actually face to face with the animal that they're looking at um because I feel like there is kind of a little bit of a disconnect nowadays with with nature and wildlife and I think we're sort of inundated with information nowadays, what with social media and, you know, pictures and videos of wildlife on the news. And, yeah, I think we can kind of become a little bit desensitized to everything. And so I try to, I aim through my art to sort of reconnect people with nature and with wildlife and hope to inspire people. And reconnecting them is one thing, but equally highlighting the dangers that these animals face. I mean, do you think that's achievable through art?

There is a beauty about your work. But when you put in the danger, may that be the blood on a rhino or whatever it might be does that take away from the artwork is it still as appealing to buyers yeah so there's a different kind of strand of art which is artivism um which is sort of art mixed with activism and there's several ways of doing this. So you can do it in quite an evocative, almost gruesome way. And artwork can be quite shocking and emotional. Or you can just aim to sort of draw people's attention to the beauty of the species or the vulnerability. I personally prefer to do it in the latter way, sort of slightly um subtle and kind of inspiring people in terms of how important the

animals are and how beautiful they are rather than showing sort of really shocking imagery which can sometimes i think turn people off to to conservation issues i mean i personally uh i'm not a huge fan of the super super shocking shocking, almost apathetic style of getting people to make a difference. I find that people act from a place of sort of like guilt and fear rather than inspiration and hope, which I think is possibly more sustainable. I want to bring in your personal experience in the last couple of minutes of the programme, because when you were a child, you had selective mutism. That was up until the age of seven and I wonder whether you think there's a link to your experience of not speaking as to how you represent these animals who are essentially voiceless. Yeah absolutely it's been mentioned to me a few times and I have to admit it's only in

in the last sort of few months that I've actually started to to put the two together I think there is definitely a drive within me to represent wildlife and represent animals because they can't speak for themselves. And that was essentially me when I was a child. I had a very, very severe sort of anxiety disorder called selective mutism. And yeah, I sort of sought refuge

in the natural world and in animals. And I guess I'm sort of giving that back now through my artwork and trying to make a difference if I can. And you've got this wonderful exhibition tell us about it. Yeah so it's called Impermanence it's running from the 2nd to the 13th of November and it's essentially a collection of 14 hyper-realistic animal portraits and 30% of the money from sales will be going into a project fund that I've set up, the Impermanence Project Fund,

and it will be helping to fund vital conservation projects from all over the world. That's quite the achievement. Is there a specific piece that stands out to you, your favourite piece of work there? I've got a few favourites.

I think one of my favourites is a piece called Stealth. It's a snow leopard, mostly because I painted it because one of the projects that we're going to be funding is a snow leopard conservation project where we're sort of monitoring and safeguarding snow leopards and sort of tracking the effects of climate change on them and their habitats. So I think that one sort of has a slightly more meaning for me because I can actually see directly where the money is going through that sale specifically. Well, keep up the good work.

Thank you so much there, Sophie Green, the artist behind the new exhibition called Impermanence at the Oxford Tower Gallery in London from November 2nd to the 13th. Entry is free and it's open 11 till 6 o'clock. Thank you for joining us, Sophie. And thank you to all of you for being in touch with the Woman's Hour team, with all your messages and indeed for your company.

Thanks for listening. There's plenty more from Woman's Hour over at BBC Sounds. 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 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.