Woman's Hour - Katie Price, A decade of same-sex marriage, From policing to crime-writing

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Model turned TV personality Katie Price joins Clare McDonnell to talk about her views on young women getting cosmetic surgery, after having several procedures herself.Today marks ten years since the first marriages of lesbian couples in England & Wales. We speak to women impacted by this change in law, and what being able to marry in a same-sex couple - rather than have a civil partnership - meant to them, a decade ago. All week we’ve been looking at a new way of supporting young people at risk of getting into trouble. Our reporter Jo Morris has been meeting them, their parents and some of the SHiFT ‘Guides’ at a practice in Greater Manchester . Today Jo meets the youngest of them, Robyn. She’s only 27 and came to SHiFT after working in a school. She wanted to be able to do more for the children in her charge and has very personal reasons for feeling a connection with young people who need help. TM Payne, or Tina, spent the last 2 decades working in the criminal justice system, specialising in domestic abuse. She’s now turned her hand to writing and is set to publish her first crime novel on the 1st of April. She talks about her years in policing and her new-found passion for fiction.Presenter: Clare McDonnell Producer: Kirsty Starkey Studio Engineer: Emma Harth

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 Claire Macdonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour and a very happy Good Friday to all of our listeners who are celebrating this holy day. Here's a question for you. Whose advice do you wish you had listened to? I ask because my first guest this morning is a household name who's advising young women against getting certain cosmetic procedures, something she knows a whole heap about because she is Katie Price. Now, Katie says she wants to educate young women about how damaging these kinds of procedures can be on the body, starting with fillers and Botox in your

20s. She says what she's been through has put her own children off cosmetic surgery, but she doesn't rule out having more herself in the future. So let me know the advice you wished you had listened to. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Texts will be charged at your standard message rate. And on social media, we are at BBC Woman's Hour. We will also get the latest today on Russian journalist Antonia Vavoskaya. Now, she's a journalist who was filmed. She actually filmed the last video of Alexei Navalny before his death. She was initially detained after laying flowers on his grave and has now been re-arrested. We'll get the latest on that.

Today also marks 10 years since same-sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. Listener Rebecca is going to join me. She and her partner Jess had a civil partnership on the first day it was allowed, back in 2005, and then did the same in 2014 when same-sex marriage got the go-ahead. We'll also be joined by Reverend Deleth Liddell, a lesbian Methodist minister and chaplain at Cardiff University. In the final part of our Breaking the Cycle series, we're going to hear from an innovative project in Manchester supporting young people at risk of getting into trouble. And they always say,

write about what you know. And that is precisely what T.M. Payne has done, turning her two-decade career in the police service, much of it working with victims of domestic violence, into a debut crime thriller packed full of gritty realism. And the kind of dark humour, she says, is an essential tool in that line of work. So all of that on the way here on Woman's Hour this morning. Let's start with, though, my next guest. You'll be no stranger to her model turned TV personality who became well known in the 90s as Jordan.

I'm talking about Katie Price, whose rise to fame has meant her personal life and children have been in the spotlight, especially her care for her disabled son, Harvey. Well, this week, Katie has been speaking out against young women, particularly those in their early 20s, getting cosmetic procedures and the dangers associated with it. She's previously admitted and spoken openly about getting some procedures done herself. I'm delighted to say Katie joins me on the line now. Katie, welcome to Woman's Hour. Good morning and good morning listeners. It's fantastic to have you on the programme.

Thank you. Why have you decided to speak out against these procedures that a lot of young women are doing quite routinely these days? Do you know what i think it is when i started um in my career as jordan back in the 90s there was no airbrushing there was no tweaking there was no social media it was all print but nowadays it's changed it's all social media and now you have access to filters this and that and I think girls want to look like filters and stuff like that which is why I think they go and have fillers

to tweak things lips this that um and I think that in your early when I look back when I had my first food job at 18 I think it's so young I think it should be 21 because I look at princess she'll be 18 in a year and I'm like oh my god and now I can see what my mum saw when she was like no no you're too young but at the time no I'm having it when I'm 18 you know it's a general anesthetic okay I had my boobs done but what girls do now in their early 20s or even younger they're having all this filler done in their faces all their lips done they all look the same and what are they going to look like when they're 45 but i didn't start all of it till i'm older and like i'm older now okay yeah I had my boobs done in my

career and that was well documented but I didn't do anything else to my face or anything like that I tried the lips in my 30s I think it was and it looked horrific because I didn't think they knew enough about the lips but yeah I do have it now I'm not going to sit here like a hypocrite. I've had surgery. I do filler. I mean, not filler, I do my lips. But I'm 45. Do you know? Absolutely. start being responsible there are young girls they're not you know they're not even 21 yet some of these girls like that you know they're all starting to look the same like if you go on social they all start looking the same you know the big lips the fillers they look like aliens they're having all their jaws done it's like oh my god they're so young i think they're gonna get used to that what are they gonna look like like when they're 45 yeah i think that's a really interesting point because what you're saying is

the apps and all the kind of um the differences the artificial differences the augmentations you can make to your face so you see a version of yourself reflected back that isn't what you see in the mirror so they've got this kind of they've got this unrealistic ideal that they then try and replicate in their real life yes but i don't think they see the dangers like i know i've been you know i obviously i've been i've been around the world and seen different surgeons for different things um and the thing is i know about filler you might have filler but eventually when all it drops it can drop and it gives you that Georgia girl look, you know, the ghoul look. You know, it's still chemicals you're putting in your face.

But I just think it's, yeah, I just think there should be an age limit on it and educate girls. Why do you need to have all this filler and everything pumped in your face? Just look at when you are my age. You know, it's different when you're older than that. But, you know, they're babies still, I think. Yeah. You mentioned your daughter Princess. And I know you've said this in a previous interview,

that actually everything that you've been through, that you've done to your body, has put your daughter, your children off from even thinking about doing things uh like that um does that concern you as you said you already brought it up that they might actually now go well actually mum it's not such a bad thing well i think what people don't see is when you're online and you look at like surgery or anything like that you see before and after pictures what you don't see is the in-between bit you know after your general anesthetic you know how painful it is the bruising the stitching what it's like to have the stitches out

and you know you can't move for you have to take time you can't move you're sore you're this you don't see that you just see oh that's before that's after and I think people need to be educated any kind of surgery or you know procedure you have like even like little procedures on your face you might get bruised it might look like you've got a black eye and things like that there's always the in between it's not always what you see and I think if girls want surgery or anything like that you're on these social media pages when you see before and after from these companies my advice is don't just go abroad and stuff because it's cheaper why don't you contact some of the the people on there who've done done the before and after which is message them and say look I'm

thinking of having this done what was it really like what do you say absolutely and that's great advice but what do you say to people because I know you've also said you wouldn't rule out having surgical procedures again what do you say to people listening to this to say well it's a bit rich coming for that kind of message of be careful do your research coming from somebody who's actually done quite a lot to her own body is that the best voice to hear it from well I am 46 in May I should hope people would think that I'm an adult not a child um and I've researched I know the good places to go there's a great place in Brussels I've go i've recommended people there who are like

my age who want little bits and whatever done and don't always go for the cheaper place but i'm not a hypocrite i've been there i've done it i've i might have had the disasters and had to have things redone again but i talk about it i'm not one of these people oh no i'm natural i've not had anything done anything I have had done I'm always open about and if whether I think it works or if it hurts or if it's worth doing there's a lot of people out there who have had stuff done they're like oh no I'm natural well you know I speak about it and I'm being honest and that's why I really am, not angry about it, but just, like, I can just see these young girls who are having all of this stuff done under the age of 20, and it's sad because, you know,

they should be embracing what they've got because I just worry because they're going to get so used to looking a certain way and that, you know, for know for a fact like in 20 years time there'll be a new procedure or something something and they're just going to be addicted to that yeah what are they going to look like in their 45 you know what I mean you have been very honest recently talking about what happened to you um as a child um you were a victim of child rape when you were just seven years old and yeah then that kind of, you know, went through your life. There was a lot of abuse in the relationships you got involved in.

From the point you are standing now in your life as a woman in her mid-40s, do you look back on those deeply traumatic events and think how that informed you, how that informed how you see yourself, how you see your own body, how you present yourself to the world. Do you make a connection between the two? Do you know, I never used to, but everyone used to use the word, have I got body dysmorphia? And I'm always like, no, no.

But maybe I think I have because my mum, she it out in her book she's like whenever Kate goes through a traumatic time or something she goes to have surgery like I've never thought I was pretty I was always needed until I had therapy when I had therapy I learned self um self-worth validation and all of that I didn't really have that because remember I started my career when I was younger when I was 17 um so I suppose it's always trying to tweak something to make me feel good or this or I don't I feel ugly like till this day I still don't think I'm pretty or anything but now I'm an adult and I I look at things um I am what I am. I don't have surgery to look younger. I don't know what it is, but I definitely have a relationship with the surgery, I think, about not feeling probably good enough

or needy or not very pretty. So you recognise that? Yes, it does. And you recognise that now, but you're still not quite through it? Is that what you're saying? You can't quite leave it behind? You can't quite accept yourself for the beautiful woman that you are? Do you know, I do now, like not 100%, but nearly there.

And I think that's because I had the therapy to, you know, like I say, the self-worth, validation, realising, no, I'm actually good to be with I don't need to be I don't need a man if I want a man it's because I want them whereas before I'd be like needy that might understand it just yeah maybe it stems from abuse when I was younger remember I started this industry I was starting to be a registered nurse um and never finished that because I got straight into age three in the sun I was a baby when I look back it's a baby I'm like the baby and I'm still here so I've grown up in the media which isn't a normal way to grow up anyway not a normal life to

have anyway um but you are a survivor you've been dealt you know um a very rough hand in many areas of your life you tell me about it i don't need to tell you you've lived it and you've been an incredible carer an incredible voice um for you know autistic children severely disabled your son harvey um you've stood obviously stood by him his entire life when you know you haven't had support from his father and you mentioned recently that a lot of situations in your life you feel that if men hadn't been involved you wouldn't have ended up where you are but do you look on all of those experiences you've been through and you come out as a survivor to think you've been tested to quite a severe extent you are still standing

does that not make you incredibly proud of your own um forthrightness yeah I definitely have I don't think people understand when you're you know I've been in the media since I was 17 and the media is different these days um it used to be fun when i was younger you know give and take it was just fun you know but i think nowadays they are so brutal not just on me so brutal they just don't care they want to sell their papers they don't care that i'm a human being they don't care that i've got family and friends that read this stuff they don't care that I'm a human being they don't care that I've got family and friends that read the stuff they don't care I am just a product to them you know I've been in the priory as an inpatient twice for severe PTSD they know about it they know that the media does damage me

now because I used to just hide it do interviews and go yeah I'm fine I'm fine when inside really I was like I'm not fine help I need help I can't cope with all of this but you have to do that because if I didn't go to work who would because I'm my I am the work does that make sense and then I got help for it and it made me open my brain up to realise, look, if you do have problems or something, it's not the end of the world. You just, communication is key for any situation when you're depressed or have a breakdown. I mean, I could talk to you for hours about stuff like this.

Oh, we'd love to talk to you for hours. With the Harvey stuff as well, I just want to say, like on the news, what was what was that what was the school the photo thing where they um they had a choice to not have the complex needs people in the picture oh yes we just heard that in the 10 o'clock news yeah see even things like that because I do stand up for Harvey and disability things like that upset me because at the end of the day we're all different just because you've got a disability doesn't mean to say you should be treated different and it goes back to when I did a program about um I think it was the Frankie Boyle he was taking the mickey out of Harvey on stage but I always say to people

just remember you might think your life's perfect but one day any member of your family could have an accident or something and become disabled or something. And you have to become their full time carer. So always remember, never judge anything because it can happen to you. And then we'll see if you take the mickey or let's see if you exclude them out of photo or something. I just feel really strong. I just think we should all be treated the same you've been a great person for sort of shining light on that area of our lives and and giving great voice to people like your son and all the people who work with him i just wanted a

final question to you about personal responsibility you say you're taking it now you have had two bankruptcies and recently lost your license again for you know for where you were caught driving when you shouldn't have been allowed to how much of that does that how much of that do you sort of say okay well I will criticize the press when I feel they've been intrusive but there's a certain amount of this I have to take on the chin as well there's a certain amount of this I have to still take responsibility for right so the bankruptcy thing second one, I didn't even know about that. So I'm still looking into that. And I think the bankruptcy thing,

yeah, loads of people go into a bankruptcy, loads of companies do for all different reasons. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It is what it is. And you just have to deal with it. And there's lots of ways you can deal with it if you communicate. I think if you ignore things it gets worse but I just think the media at the moment are so fixated on the word bankruptcy like when I was going through all of that time it was with

when I had a breakdown I didn't know how to communicate with people or anything. I would shut off. And that's how I sort of got into that situation. So you deal with it. Everyone can deal with it. Yes, some people might be humiliated or their pride or anything. And I'm like, look, just stand up for yourself. It is what it is. So many people go through it for whatever reasons. But just communicate it.

Take it on the chin and you just move on as for what was the other question oh it was it was losing you're driving when you shouldn't have been but we haven't got much time so a quick answer on that is a different story because i had my license okay i should have got my license back back in april but unfortunately if there is anyone from dvla on here please contact me because the reason why i haven't got my license is my doctors have filled up for fit to drive things i've done my blood tests last summer for alcohol past it all but there's somebody who keeps emailing dvla okay saying i'm not fit to drive all I can't contact anyone for DVLA because it takes four to six weeks to process

that and I'm like, but you've had my doctors four times say I can drive. We will have to leave that there. Let's hope that might have helped. In some way, obviously they're not here to put their side of the argument on that, but listen, we thank you so much. It's been great having you on the program.

Katie Price. Guys. Thank you so much for joining us on woman's hour if you would like to comment on anything you've heard uh katie say there the number is you can text us it's 84844 thank you for katie to katie for joining us now let's go to russia where a female journalist who filmed the last video of alexei naval before his death, has been detained by the authorities. She's Antonia Favoskaya. She covered Navalny's court trials and, according to Reporters Without Borders, is one of six journalists detained this month in a crackdown by Russian authorities following the opposition leader's death.

To tell us more about Antonia and another four female journalists held, I'm joined by Dr Jenny Mathers, Senior Lect lecturer in international politics at Aberystwyth University. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Good morning. Tell us a little bit more about who Antonia is. So she's a photojournalist and she has been covering Navalny and his work and his trials and imprisonment for quite some time. So she has a bit of a track record there. She famously took the video of the last one that was ever made of him when he was shown on the screen when he was in detention the day before he died. And she was arrested initially about two weeks after his funeral for having laid flowers on his grave. And this is interesting because it shows that although there wasn't an immediate wave of arrests at the funeral and at the grave site,

that the authorities were taking note of who was there and they were making their decisions about who they would follow up with and how they would deal out retribution. So she was arrested about two weeks after the funeral. She was detained for 10 days for disobedience to the police, was the charge, and she should have been released on Wednesday. But instead, she was retained into pre-trial detention. And she's been accused of another crime, a much more serious crime, of working for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. And because Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation was judged by the government back in 2021 to be an extremist organization. Any association with an extremist organization in Russia brings with it the opportunity for arrest,

imprisonment, you know, years of prison, perhaps paying fines, whatever. So it's very, very serious, far more serious than disobeying the police. Yes. And we have Navalny's spokesperson for the organisation saying she hasn't published anything on the Foundation's platform. Will that make any difference whatsoever to her fate? No, it won't. I think the way that the Russian court system works now, evidence is sort of meaningless.

So if you are charged with a crime, particularly if it's a crime that has a political significance to it, and this definitely does, then the lack of evidence is no impediment to a prosecution. OK, she is one of six journalists detained this month, another four a female. And what's going on here? Do you think they're more willing to stick their heads above the parapet or are they being specifically targeted by the authorities? I think it's hard to say. It's hard to say whether women are journalists are more likely to cover these kinds of stories than men, or whether the Russian authorities are sending a bit of a signal that it's not safe to be a woman. Just because you're a woman doing something the state doesn't like you to do, you're not protected in any way, that they're just as likely to be arrested, they're just as likely to face the full penalty of the law, whatever that might be.

We know the conditions that Alexei Navalny was held in before his death in Siberia. What do we know of the conditions that she's being held in? They're not as severe as those that Navalny suffered, certainly. I mean, Navalny was taken to the most extreme, most brutal prison that was available in Russia, and that's saying quite a bit. So, I mean, she won't be in comfortable conditions, but it will be at least relatively, you know, civilized that she's being held in at the moment in Moscow. What happens after any trial and any conviction, you know, that's another question. Certainly, Navalny was a special case in many ways. The regime wanted to get him out of the

picture. They wanted to punish him. I think the issue with these journalists is the regime wants to kill the story. It wants to erase Navalny from public view and it wants to punish those who are still willing to be associated with him. And does that mean any kind of, as we've seen, she laid flowers at his grave as she was operating inside Russia, that we will see more and more dissent outside of Russia now, less inside Russia? That's a difficult question to answer. I think this is what we're watching for as we're watching Russian society respond to the increasing repression, which is all associated with the war in Ukraine, effectively, to see, you know, how will journalists respond? Will they self censor? Will they pull back from these kinds of stories? Will they be

emboldened? Will they decide that, you know, this is part of their mission? So, you know, this is one of the key points that we need to watch for in the future to see exactly how Russian society will respond to these challenges. Thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Jenny Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, talking about Antonina Favoskaya, who has been detained in Russia. Now, today marks 10 years since same-sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. It was a landmark moment for many couples personally as well as the LGBT plus community. The Marriage Same-Sex Couples Act came into force in 2014 allowing gay couples to marry in March and those in civil partnerships to convert them to marriages in December. It also gave religious organisations the choice to opt in to marrying same-sex couples. It was passed by

Parliament in July 2013 during David Cameron and Nick Clegg's coalition government, despite objections from some within the Conservative Party and many religious organisations. But what did this change in law really mean for lesbian women? In the Women's Hour studio, delighted to say I'm joined by Rebecca Davies, a listener who wrote into the programme this week. Rebecca and her wife Jess had their civil partnership on the first date it was permitted. That's the 21st of December 2005 and followed suit by turning that into a marriage on the first date it was permitted, 10th of December 2014.

Hello, Rebecca. Hi. Lovely to see you. And down the line from Cardiff, I'm joined by Reverend Dilyth Liddell, a lesbian Methodist minister and chaplain at Cardiff University. Welcome. Thank you. Hi. Fabulous to have you both on the programme on such an important milestone.

Rebecca, let's start with you. What was your reaction? Let's go back to the civil partnership when that was a reality. How did that feel? That was amazing. I mean, growing up at a time when being gay was quite difficult and something you felt you had to keep quiet and couldn't stand up and be proud of. The day that we were told we were going to be able to have this legitimacy and respect given to our relationships felt absolutely incredible. And you, as I say, you converted, you went there and you said, let's do this on the first day you could. And the same with marriage. Yeah, well, the civil partnership gave us all the important rights, for example, being able to be next of kin and also the financial security that married couples have. But it still was other. It was keeping the margin in place. And we didn't really want to be marginalised.

We wanted to be part of the whole society. So when they brought in same-sex marriage, that gave us an opportunity to be recognised in the same way as everybody else. And I felt that that also helped with a greater acceptance and tolerance in society as a whole, because we weren't a separate group. We were all part of the same. And there's much more about us that's the same than that's different. And the marriage was pretty low key, wasn't it? Yeah, well, we weren't allowed to actually marry because we'd already had a civil partnership. We had to wait a few frustrating months till they worked out what

they were going to allow civil partnerships to do. And we had what was called an upgrade to marriage, which was a matter of meeting with a registrar and just doing an administrative process and being given a different certificate, but no witnesses, no nothing. I know you did the speech marks with your hand there. Yeah, upgrade. Yeah. How does that feel? Because as you say, it's all about not feeling othered, not feeling like a second class citizen, even though that must have been, you know, must have felt like a good thing to do. Did you still feel like, well, this is more of the same in a way? A little bit. I mean, I accept that there are much more important things for governments to be doing

than scrapping legislation and letting, you know and reinstating new legislation to sort of fit all of us. But in a way, I'm sure we would have rather just to have been able to get married in the first place and not to have had to go through civil partnership, then wait for an upgrade. It sort of did feel a little bit. And when you talked about your partner, Jess, when she was your civil partner, compared to being able to say your wife. Yeah. How did that feel? Well, in a way, I mean, obviously be able to say my wife I do feel a little bit apprehensive and not sure how it's going to be received because essentially you're

coming out in every situation you're in and while society has come on a long way there are still some circumstances where you can feel that you're well it's not very comfortable. You still have to check yourself? I do I do I mean I'm really pleased that I think younger people don't. I think they've grown up in a much more tolerant time, but we still feel that we do, yeah. And, of course, when we were civil partners, we couldn't say wife, we had to say partner, and then you're not necessarily coming out if you're separate

and you happen to just be talking about your domestic circumstances. Delatha, you were nodding your head then during that. There's still a feeling of concern about saying that word. Is that how you feel as well? Yeah, absolutely. I think Rebecca's hit the nail on the head. And perhaps it is for people of my generation. I'm in my 50s now and there is a sense in which you just got to be careful in the environment you're in. And I'm a Christian minister and especially in the environments that I mix in, saying my wife is more dangerous often than just referring to my partner. Yeah, because you married your wife in 2022.

So how did that feel as somebody, obviously, as a woman of the cloth in your profession? What difference did that make to you? Oh, that was totally amazing. To actually be able to have a church wedding to my wonderful wife was just incredible. And we married in a URC church. I'm a Methodist minister and she's a URC minister. And, um, and we had lots of overlap between the, the things that I wanted from my tradition and the things that she wanted from her tradition. And we had, it was a small wedding,

just 30 or so of us. Um, but it was beautiful and the children were involved and and and it felt like we were being recognized absolutely I'd had um a previous uh civil partnership which had then um uh then I'd also converted uh to marriage like Rebecca had done and then we sadly divorced, as often sometimes happens. And the difference between my wedding to Lee and my civil partnership was huge because the civil partnership just, you know, people who were coming, they didn't really understand what it was. They didn't know whether it was a wedding or not a wedding. And of course, it wasn't a wedding. We couldn't call it a wedding. So they didn't know whether they were bringing presents or whether they weren't you know it was just a confusion um and and actually to be able to stand next to my wife and in in in a church in presence of god and go yes we are marrying each other we love each other was just incredible i know you're

you are officiating in August this year a same-sex marriage in a religious setting. I just want to put this to you. Research by BBC Newsbeat found fewer than 3% of all religious buildings registered to marry people in England and Wales will officiate ceremonies for same-sex couples. So you may be legally able to do it, but where you can do it or who will say yes come in we're happy to do it that there is still a big hole there isn't there

there is a massive hole there is a massive hole i'm a i'm a methodist minister and it was back in 2019 where we had the um the uh the report before methodist Conference saying that we were wanting to offer same-sex marriage. And then from there, it was 2021 before the church actually allowed buildings to be registered for same-sex marriage and for ministers to marry same-sex couples. And so we're only really talking in the Methodist Church since 2021, which isn't that long. And churches now are beginning to have those, well, they should be already having those conversations.

Will they register their buildings for marriage and will they offer it so where you've got where you've got churches where they've got quite a big lgbt community or where they've got gay people within their gay couples within their um within their fellowships you're finding that churches are pretty quick to to register their buildings. Unfortunately, for those who, for the LGBT community are, you know, they don't see them, even though we are here, that it can take a bit longer. So we're still waiting on churches to make that decision. Rebecca, final word to you then. I don't know whether you're religious or whether that would have mattered to you,

but we've come a long way in the last 10 years. Do you still think there's quite a way to go? I think there's still some way to go. I would like to think that any sort of discomfort that we still feel in saying wife or husband in same-sex relationships would be gone. I'd like to, I mean, I'm sure it will be. We've come so far, certainly since civil partnerships, in feeling more accepted in society as a whole. Fantastic note to end on.

Thank you so much for dropping by the Woman's Hour studios. That is Rebecca Davis, a Woman's Hour listener, who wrote into the programme. And Reverend Deleth Liddell, Lesbian Methodist Minister and Chaplain at Cardiff University. Great to talk to both of you. Thank you so much for joining us on this Good Friday. Now, all week we've been looking at a new way of supporting young people

at risk of getting into trouble. Jo has been visiting the latest shift practice, and this one is in Greater Manchester. There are three others around the country and four more on the way. Well, today, Jo meets the youngest of the shift guides, Robin. She's only 27. She came to shift after working in school. She wanted to be able to do more for the children in her charge. And as you'll hear, she has very personal reasons for feeling empathy for young people in trouble. My name is Robin and I work for Shift in partnership with Teamside. So I work with

young people. Mine are aged between 14 and 16 at the moment. So how many young people are you working with? I have six. Have you managed to engage all the young people you've been assigned? So I'm so far on five out of six and my sixth one is a work in progress I'm getting there with them I've just kind of had a little bit of a brainwave literally yesterday actually it's not always about engaging the young person sometimes your first barrier is actually trying to get the engagement of the parent. With this last one, I'd had a lot of contact over the phone and text messaging, a lot of cancelled or rearranged appointments. Yesterday, I probably got about five minutes, but it was a start and it was kind of the breaking of the ice.

You won't give up? No. I think that it's those people parents children it's when somebody is quite persistent in not wanting that support that sometimes they might need it most so you're working with one young woman who we're going to be seeing later yeah how many girls are on your program so I think in total we have two. I have one and Eva has one. Boys are more known because they tend to get caught more and they tend to take part in low-level antisocial behaviour

or they congregate in large groups and so their names become more known, like more stuff in searches, whereas with girls, they don't, I mean mean they can go in big groups and stuff but I think they present in just in very different ways most of the issues and concerns we have for girls tend to come about within school rather than in the community I would say getting excluded from mainstream going into a pro how much is there a sense that girls can be perpetrators as well as victims? Girls tend to get labelled more being vulnerable,

whereas I think boys are labelled as naughty. Part of our work and part of what we're about is also kind of challenging that boys are also victims, and sometimes just because they have been arrested for this offence or they've done this or they've done that they can be just as much as a victim as a female can. Tell me about the young woman you're going to go and see this afternoon. We're going to pick her up from school today they've just moved into a temporary home so I've seen her quite a bit this week already. Initially when I first met her,

one of the things that she wanted was she wanted somewhere to live. It was such a basic thing, but that was one of the biggest things. She didn't have anywhere to live. They were sofa surfing at the time. That's a really basic need, isn't it, wanting a home? Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of picking up and dropping off with young people at shift. The child Robin and I are collecting has been swimming today.

Robin says to stay in the car. She thinks the girl might be embarrassed by my microphone in front of her schoolmates at the pupil referral unit. Apparently she's freezing. Hiya. Hiya, how you doing? You all right?'m Jo, good to meet you Just saying, hi Do you need something to eat? Have you eaten? No, but I'm fine

Do you want to get something to eat or drink first and then we'll take it back with us? Alright Yeah? What does your mum think when she first met Robin? She thought she was going to leave like the rest of them. She just didn't want to put me through it again. The stress and everyone, because I had a lot of people who came and then left.

Wrapped in a towel like a security blanket with long wet hair, she's initially shy. Robin says it's taking time to gain her trust. Small steps. We pick up some food for her, mozzarella dippers, chicken and a fruity drink. Then back at the office we all sit down for a chat. We're not going to use your real name in the interview, what would you like to be called? Me. You'd like to be called me? You're basically saying I don't want to be someone else, I want to be me.

So good for you actually. Yeah, it's good, you're clever. I don't want to be someone else, I want to be me. So good for you, actually. Yeah, it's good, you're clever. I didn't think of it like that, I just thought the word me. When Robin came to see you and said she was going to help you, did you believe her? Not at first, no. Cos every time I had, like, a counsellor or something, they would all, like, just say, oh, I'm here to help you, and then just leave and then don't come back.

And Robin actually came back, didn't you? I'm not going anywhere, I've told you that. And now you can't get rid of her? Yeah. That's a good thing, though. Good. So we talk every day, don't we? And I do check on her all the time.

Just make sure that she's OK when she's going out and stuff like that. Make sure I'm safe. Make sure you're safe. Robin is on the end of the phone for her young people, checking in and checking up. Me seems to like it, finds it reassuring whilst slurping on her drink. I rang her on the Friday evening and she was out with a friend and their boyfriend drove a car and stuff

and I kind of gave her a bit of a talking to, didn't I, and said, you know, listen, you need to go somewhere safe. You said that you weren't going to meet them and then you went somewhere safe then, didn't you? I don't think she actually believed me, that I was going to ring her back later on that night to make sure. Did you? No. I didn't believe her.

Why? I didn't think she would have actually rang me back. And then when she did ring you, what did that feel like? Good. I just didn't trust when she said she was going to stay for ages. I just didn't think it was true. I wanted to ask Robin how she goes about building relationships for children who feel so let down and to hear more of me story turns out that like one of the other guides either Robin has personal reasons

for doing this kind of work for Robin and me there was also a totally random connection when I first met with her I met her through school I spoke to mum the night before just to give her a bit of a heads up met Met her at school and the in there was literally just came down to the fact that we both had the same middle name. That was convenient. Yeah we both had the same middle name and our birthdays were like two days apart so we just had a little bit of a joke about that saying you know what else did we have in common with each other. I mean that just broke the ice straight away. So the young woman that you're seeing, why has she been brought to your attention?

There's a lot of trauma there. She was kicked out of, well, kicked out, she was excluded from mainstream school when she was in Year 7, which was right before Covid as well. She was working with Youth Justice as well. As I've got to know her, got to know the family and the situation, I do believe that she was right for shift. I think it's very easy to not recognise that you need help sometimes

or feel like you have to do it on your own and sometimes it can feel like weakness. What drew you to this kind of work, Robin? My own lived experiences as a child. So being very vulnerable, having a lot of difficulty at home that then echoed into school but then also being privileged enough with where i grew up to have a good school and a good support network around me i went in to do psychology wasn't really sure what i wanted to do then i knew that i I liked helping people, which sounds a bit cliche,

but it doesn't feel like work if it's something that you enjoy doing. When you were a teenager, would you have liked someone like yourself? Yeah, definitely. I think I was lucky enough. I did have somebody from the council. It does make a massive difference, just having that person believing in you and just checking up on you and that genuine kind of, oh, they do care. What sort of teenager were you, Robin? I think it depends who you ask, I'm joking.

That's the point, isn't it? Yeah, I was very bright, I wasn't very confident. I had good friends, I had lots of friends, but I was just very lost, I think, and just didn't really see a way out. I was very caring, I know that, so I've got siblings and always very caring. Just a complete kind of breakdown in relationships at home. There was a lot of emotional abuse, there was physical abuse. My mum was a single parent, so she was struggling, she was doing her best.

It just wasn't a good situation. Ended up on child protection at 16, which isn't very common at all. Usually, you know, people are coming off at 16 and then ended up moving out into semi-independent accommodation, you know, just leaving year 11. I managed to get through that, but there were days all the time when I didn't think I would. And that's why in this kind of role,

with these young people, it's those times when they don't think they're going to get out of it and those times when they think this is it you know or no one cares and I'm on my own and this sometimes you can be a lifeline and you know and sometimes you are that you know that everyday contact all that reassurance my support network was a professional support network it wasn't parental it wasn't family it was very much bounded by when these professionals were able to see me or contact me so Christmas was always hard it still is hard sometimes now even as an adult because it just brings back memories of what being by yourself or wondering where you yeah wondering where you would be spending that Christmas yeah and do you see yourself in some of the young people then I do kind of relate even with the

anxiety with professionals having that kind of if you speak to this professional you're going to end up in care and and some of that that is still very much a narrative and a belief in a lot of young people and even their parents that if they accept support from these professionals they feel like their parenting is under scrutiny their behavior is under scrutiny and it's not a case of that but sometimes you just need a little bit of help a little bit of help people who show up not being judged as a parent or a young person it seems simple back to robin and me talking together and robin boosting me's confidence. I met you at school, didn't I, first?

I thought, she doesn't belong here. And that's just the impression that I got. She's very polite. I can't say enough positives, really. Very bright. A little bit shy sometimes, but we'll work on that. Funny and caring. Very caring of your friends and your family. I don't think she sees her potential. I don't think she sees her potential, I don't think she believes fully in herself, but we'll get there.

There's been a lot of changes, haven't there, in the past couple of months. So obviously from living at Nana's to the bed and breakfast, not a very nice bed and breakfast, was it? Just moving now, He needs some stability. When they were first moved into temporary accommodation, this showed her dedication to school. She was travelling two hours by bus from another part of Manchester to get to school.

Do you mind me asking a little bit about what took you out of mainstream school? Behaviour. Fighting. What led you to get involved with fighting? People would just start for no reason, so I'd just get angry. I'd get told a rumour or something saying someone said they're going to batter me and then I'd get told and then I believe it's true and when it might not be I don't know. I remember that at my own school the kids goaded to fight

the ones who just couldn't regulate their emotions we all need some help sometimes Mia's doing well with Robin's support what's it like for you Robin when you begin to see a change in a young person there's nothing more rewarding than seeing that change you also have to understand like young people and children and teenagers and people in general

are never perfect and they're always going to make mistakes. I'll be there to pick up the pieces with them and like yeah okay we've made a mistake here, how do we put it right? Do some of them keep you up at night? Yes. What are you up to now? So we're going to drop me off at home and catch mum, if mum's still there actually. Sorry. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, go and get warm. I will. You take care. See you later. Yeah, thank you there. See you later. Yeah. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Such an uplifting series Jo Morris reporting there and you can hear all five episodes

in the series Breaking the Cycle in Women's Hour every day this week, if you've been listening all week, it's all on BBC Sounds our thanks to the staff at Shift, the young people and parents who told us their stories. We are very, very grateful indeed. Now, where do crime authors get their inspiration from? The news, reading Agatha Christie, the classics, or how about real life policing experience? Well, for my next guest, it's most

definitely the latter. T.M. Payne, or Tina, as she's more commonly known, worked for just under two decades in the criminal justice system, eventually specialising in domestic violence as a police case investigator. She's now turned her hand to writing. Her debut novel, Long Time Dead, tells the story of Detective Inspector Sheridan Holler. She's tasked with solving the murder of a drug dealer who's been missing for the last seven years and with a key witness who's physically unable to speak. It's up to her to work out who done it. Delighted to say Tina joins me now in the Woman's Hour studio.

Hello. Hello. God, what an intro. Well, there you go. I thought I was going to have to say all that. You've done it for me. I've done it all, but we've got time to fill in the gaps, and there's a lot of gaps.

This is your debut novel. Yeah. What made you want to write it? I have always said by the time I was 40, I wanted to write a novel, and it was always going to be crime fiction. I'm 57, so I'm a little bit late, but I've always had an overactive imagination,

and I've always had loads of stories in my head. It was just having the time to get them down on paper. I had an idea for Long Time Dead about seven or eight years ago. And it was literally one line come into my head. And I can't tell you. What was it? Can I tell you afterwards? Tell me afterwards because we don't want to give away any spoilers we don't but there was one line and I can't say what it is because it will give a big part of the story away and I thought you know what I can I can make a story out of this literally one line so I started writing

it but I was working full-time in the police and life gets in the way we've all busy so I kind of dipped in and out of it and then when I moved up to the Wirral in 2019 I'd left the police moved up to the Wirral to live with my partner and the plan was to apply to Merseyside Police Domestic Abuse Unit then Covid hit so all I could do was sit and write and I got the book finished. It must have been so incredibly difficult to have this kind of inspiration always wanting to write inside you but doing a job that you loved that must have been, before you made that move, incredibly demanding. You worked with victims of domestic violence. A job that you loved and a job that obviously has influenced a lot in your debut novel.

That sounds like a very, very tough job to do though, day in, day out. It was. I did it for, I actually joined the unit on a six month attachment. My sergeant, I was a detention officer working in the police cells before I joined the domestic violence unit. And my sergeant came to me one day and said, do you fancy six months on the domestic violence unit? I said, yeah, I'll give that a go. And I was given my first case a couple of months later. And I remember it took me nine months to actually gather all the evidence. And I got the case to court and we got a conviction. And I remember walking out of the court with the victim,

who I'd spent so much time with. And she literally just wrapped her arms around me and she just said, thank you so, so much. And I I thought this is what I want to do we don't win every case obviously but I just felt there was something about protecting people protecting victims men and women children from domestic abuse um yeah we had a I had a passion about it and the unit I worked when we're passionate about it and proving that you could get the result that was the right result. I mean, there is this report by the Charity End Violence Against Women that shows that on average it takes 893 days

from a victim's first report to the police and its conclusion in court. And we know that lots of people don't come forward, men and women, in these cases. What is it like working on and trying to convince people to come and talk to you, to open up their lives? It must be an incredibly sensitive line to walk. Absolutely, because you have to be honest with the victim. And I've obviously met, I was in the unit for 14 years, thousands of victims. And you're always honest with them because what they'll say is, if I give you a statement, will he be arrested?

Let's say it's a female victim I'm dealing with. he be arrested will um i have to go to court will i you know will he be convicted and the answer is i i can't answer that and i will never say to a victim yes of course but there are lots of safety measures in in place there's lots of support for victims of domestic abuse but you talk about the length of time it takes from from the incident to getting the case to court, and that's where a lot of victims will back away and say, I can't go through this anymore, because it takes too long. And they start to think, actually, maybe I shouldn't do this,

and they worry, they panic, they might have had to move into a refuge, their lives change. And I wanted to reflect a little bit of domestic abuse in Long Time Dead in my debut novel. Yes, well, I was going to ask you about that. Because one of the domestic abuse victims you feature is your lead character, D.I. Sheridan, her sidekick, Anna, who is a police officer herself. So why did you decide to make her character the victim of this? Because I think I wanted to show that anyone can be a victim.

And when I was in the job, I dealt with a couple of police officers who were victims, and I remember them saying, how did I not see this coming? Because most police officers, whether they're uniform or CID or they're specialists, will have dealt with domestic abuse victims. And they're like, how did I not see this coming? I deal with this.

Because they're so involved in their own personal relationship, they don't see it coming. And I wanted to show with Anna Markinson that she can be a victim like anybody can. I mean, you've done so much of this now, but do you see the pattern? Do you see that control that is exerted over people? If someone's listening to this now and thinks, that's me, I'm in that cycle. What would you say to them? There is help out there. There is help out there.

Even if you walked into a police station, obviously I worked in Norfolk Police and I know that if a victim walked into a police station and said I need help my unit would be contacted and someone would come and speak to you and we would talk through everything with you, you know, whether you want to make a statement, whether it's, it might

not be violence, it might be controlling coercive behaviour and most forces, I say I can only speakive behavior um and most forces i say i can only speak speak for norfolk but most forces have got a dedicated domestic abuse unit and it might not be a police officer you want to speak to so there are there will be support out there for victims and i i would encourage every every victim man or male or female to come forward um and report i had a chat when i was in Norfolk who rang the unit and said, I really want to report my wife for domestic abuse. And I said, OK. And he said, the problem is, he

said, I'm six foot five and I'm a builder. He said, and my wife is five foot one and she is tiny. He said, if I make a statement about her being violent towards me, how is anyone going to ever believe me if I stood up in a court i spent a lot of time talking to him he never came forward and made a complaint but there's just one barrier do you know what i mean and we don't have much time left but some of those cases still keep you awake at night they don't keep me awake i don't i but i don't forget them i've never i don't forget the the women and men that i dealt with. They'll always be there. Yeah, so it gets to you and it stays with you.

But anyway, yes. But listen, you've done it so brilliantly. You've depicted the intricacies and the nuances and the dark humour. There's a lot of that in this book that gets police officers through. So we thank you so much for coming in through the Woman's Hour studio. And I know you've already written two more books. I have, it's a series and yeah, Long Time Dead's out on Monday. Excellent stuff. T.M. Payne, Tina

Payne there, as you said, Long Time Dead debut novel, Detective Inspector, Sheridan Holler is the main protagonist there. Thank you so much for dropping by. Thank you for having me. Just to let you know, Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow, an opportunity to catch up with some of the stellar items that have been on this week.

And on Easter Monday, special edition of Women's Hour, all about women in country music. We'll look at the female icons of the genre and why Beyonce's new album is making waves. And national star Carly Pearce will perform live, Women's Hour, on Monday. That's all from today's Women's Hour. Join us again next time.

I'm Natalie Cassidy. And I'm Joanna Page. Now you might know me as Sonia from EastEnders. And Stacey from Gavin and Stacey. And while sometimes we are on the telly, mostly we just love watching it. So that's what we're talking about in our podcast, Off the Telly.

We're chatting about shows we just can't miss and the ones that aren't quite doing it for us. That comfort telly we can't get enough of. And things we know we shouldn't watch but we just can't help ourselves. And we'll be hearing about all the telly you think we should be watching and talking about too. No judgment here. Well, a bit. Join us for Off the Telly. Listen on 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.

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