Woman's Hour - Kim Cattrall, Sex offender treatment, At-home cervical screening, Author Sarah Pearse

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

The actress Kim Cattrall has starred in films and on stage, but is probably best known for TV series Sex And The City. She is now in a new audio drama, Central Intelligence, which tells the story of the CIA from the perspective of Eloise Page. Eloise joined on the agency’s first day in 1947 and became the highest ranking female officer. Kim joins Clare McDonnell to discuss Eloise, her passion for radio, and the enduring appeal of Samantha Jones.In sentencing Huw Edwards, the former BBC News presenter, for accessing child sexual abuse images, the magistrate said that he did not pose a risk to the public or children, and that an immediate custodial sentence was not necessary because the evidence showed he could be rehabilitated. Edwards must now attend 25 sex offender treatment sessions. We look at how these treatment programmes work and how effective they are proven to be, with Deborah Denis, CEO of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and Professor Belinda Winder, Research Director of the Centre for Crime, Offending, Prevention and Engagement at Nottingham Trent University.The number of women taking up NHS cervical screening test invitations has been declining for the last 20 years. Healthwatch England did research with women who were reluctant to accept NHS invitations for screening and found that 73% would do an at-home test instead. A trial done by King’s College London earlier this year found that if self-sample kits were available on the NHS, 400,000 more women would be screened per year. Chief Executive of Healthwatch England Louise Ansari and Dr Anita Lim, lead investigator of the King’s College London trial, join Clare to tell us more.Sarah Pearse is the best-selling author of the Detective Elin Warner trilogy. She recently released the last novel in the series, The Wilds which includes themes of coercive control and was written with advice from the charity Refuge. She talks to Clare about the role fiction can play in highlighting issues of domestic violence and coercive control.

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 Clare Macdonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, welcome to Woman's Hour with me, Clare Macdonald. The judge sentencing Hugh Edwards, the now disgraced BBC News presenter for accessing child sexual abuse images, said that he did not pose a risk to the public or children and that an immediate custodial sentence was not necessary because the evidence showed he could be rehabilitated. Edwards must now attend 25 sex offender treatment sessions.

Today on Woman's Hour we will look at how these treatment programmes work and ask how effective they have proven to be. If you could do your own smear test at home, would you be more likely to have one? Latest figures from the NHS show that last year, a third of eligible women under the age of 50 did not take up their appointments. This morning, we're going to hear from the woman who led a major at-home self-sampling programme. And she says this new approach could result in more than 400,000 extra women being screened. We want to hear about another woman, if you want to hear about another woman,

who is a majorly impactful historical figure, but whose name you haven't heard of. Well, you have come to the right place. And you can thank actress Kim Cattrall for the spotlight about to be shone on Eloise Page, one of the founding agents of the CIA back in 1947. And now the subject of a brand new radio for drama, Central Intelligence. Kim narrates the series and plays the role of Eloise. We'll hear from her shortly. Best-selling author Sarah Pearce joins me live and whilst we're on the subject of successful female novelists, the Booker Prize shortlist is out and five of the six authors are female. So

here's a question. Does the gender of a writer matter to you at all? If you were to write down your top three, would they skew one way or another? And if so, why? Love to hear from you this morning. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. Our social media is at BBC Women's Hour. And you can email us through the website as well.

Or if you'd like to, you can send us a WhatsApp message or voice note. Use this number 03700 100 444. Let's start this morning then with the disgraced BBC news presenter Hugh Edwards. He has been given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children. These included some showing a victim aged between seven and nine. During his sentencing, Edwards was also told to attend a sex offender treatment programme. The chief magistrate said Edwards did not pose a risk to the public or children and an immediate custodial sentence

was not necessary because the evidence showed he could be rehabilitated. The chief magistrate also read from a pre-sentence report which described how distributing child abuse images perpetrates a cycle of abuse and can lead to ongoing traumatisation of victims, impacting them throughout their lives and potentially making them vulnerable to further sexual abuse. This morning, we wanted to look at what this process means for victims, what community rehabilitation programmes actually involve and what evidence we have that they work. Here to discuss this with me is Deborah Dennis, CEO from the Lucy Faithful Foundation, which offers advice and support to prevent individuals from offending. And Professor Belinda Winder, Research Director at the Centre for Crime, Offending, Prevention and Engagement at Nottingham Trent University.

Good morning to both of you. Welcome to the programme. Hi, good morning. Deborah, let's start with you then. The impact that this kind of offending can have on the victims involved. Thank you. And thank you for discussing perhaps some of the wider issues that are being brought to light from this case. I think the first point I'd like to make around the impact on victim is that it varies widely. It can be severe and it can be lifelong. So for those who have been victim to this crime, they can carry feelings of guilt, of shame, self-blame. Children can feel they participated

in that abuse. And as you already said, they can become victim. It makes them vulnerable to further abuse, for example, in the future. One of the things that we hear from victims, we've heard stories from those who have been victim, who say they can be walking down the street and someone will look at them a little strangely, perhaps, or they'll feel like they're being looked at a little strangely. And then they will wonder if the person looking at them a little strangely perhaps or they'll feel like they're being looked at a little strangely and then they will wonder if the person looking at them has seen their images so this is something that perpetuates it's something that can continue um i would also like to just say about the impact of discussing cases like this um so firstly the hugh edwards case whilst shocking and high profile is not uncommon police are arresting

850 people a month for this type of offending behavior and there will be people receiving sentences like this up and down the country today tomorrow next week the week after and ongoing the impact of talking about the case today, though, has another impact on victims and survivors. And I know from a charity we work closely with, the National Association of People Abused in Childhood, they had a big spike in callers yesterday from people who had been triggered by the Hugh Edwards sentencing news. And people were calling them feeling destabilised, unsafe, like justice had not been done. So the impact can be very real for people who have suffered abuse. Let's move on to that then. A lot of anger that this wasn't a custodial sentence in many quarters. Is this a fairly

common sentence for what we're talking about here? It is. It is. It is a fairly common sentence. And I think if we revert back to the scale of the problem and the number of people committing these offences, 850 arrests a month, there is limited capacity to imprison those offenders who are being brought to justice. I will also say, though, that those 850 being arrested a month are also the tip of the iceberg of those who are offending online. There are tens of thousands more and estimates vary, but we're looking at about half a million in the UK

who might pose a sexual risk to children. So the scale is huge, which means we need different responses. We cannot rely solely on a criminal justice response. We cannot rely on everyone who's engaging in this behaviour being identified and arrested and put in prison. So we have to look for other interventions and that's where our work at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation comes in, in terms of early intervention prevention and preventing it from happening in the first place because our current response is inadequate. Right, so let's talk about survivors and society let's talk a little bit about what you do and and keep it in a sense focused on the victim how much of what the victims have gone through informs the kind of work that you do

uh with i'm assuming people who have been convicted and and don't want to go back down that path again so it's it's it's a mix So if we take the work we do with those who have been arrested, they may not have been convicted yet. We have the Stop It Now helpline that is available to those to talk through their offending behaviour, to talk through. And really the starting place for us when working with people is helping them recognise they have a problem and that they want to deal with it.

So that's really important. We need those we work with to be honest with themselves about what they've been doing, how long they've been engaging in illegal behaviour, the nature of their offending and those sorts of things. They need to come to recognise the harm done to children through their behaviour and they need to learn skills to control their behaviour going forward. In terms of how the victims and survivors feed into our work, so we work very closely with organisations like NAPAC, like the Marie Collins Foundation, organisations that work with victims, survivors day in, day out to learn from what they're hearing, to feed in thoughts into our work, but also to run things past them. So we run deterrence campaigning. We try and reach men,

and it is mostly men. We try and reach men at the earliest opportunity to say, are you on a pathway to illegal behaviour? Do you know that this behaviour is illegal? Do you know that this behaviour has consequences for victims? Do you know if you get caught caught it has consequences for yourself? And do you know there's help to change? And when we put together these messages and these campaigns, we bring in survivors to have a look at what we're doing and get their insights and get their feedback. So we take their views extremely seriously. Okay, I want to bring in Professor Belinda Winder at this point. Belinda, the magistrate was clearly of the view that these sex offender programmes are effective. Do we have evidence to support that? Well, the evidence about the programmes has been kind of undergoing some kind of upheavals in the last five to 10 years really and one of the problems I guess one of the challenges I should say with treatment programs is that people who commit sexual offenses actually are unlikely once

they've been brought to account and perhaps understood why they committed the offense are unlikely to commit a further offense now that's that's that's that's good news for everyone. But if you're trying to develop a psychological intervention to reduce kind of re-offending, it means that what you're looking at is you need to, once the programme, once someone has completed the programme, you need to leave it perhaps 10 years to assess whether someone has actually committed a further offence. So you can see there's quite a long lag period at which point we can assess whether these programmes have been effective or not. And about six or seven years ago,

there's a big change in terms of the psychological interventions which moved away from the tell us exactly what you did, how you did it, and the minutiae of the offence to really focusing on what factors, what was it about that person's life? In the case of Hugh Edwards, we looked at his problems with his relationship, his bisexuality, his not being able to be open about that, and thinking about what are these factors that we need to really, you need to think through and you need to understand about yourself. And so it's building, how do you cope with stress? How do you cope with life's problems?

How do you manage and have healthy relationships with other people? If you find you've got unhealthy sexual interests, you've started looking at perhaps extreme pornography or wondering about looking at pictures of people younger we want people to understand why they might be doing that and go and seek help from the very places like lucy faithful foundation that deborah talked about rather than as we said waiting until someone just puts their head down in the sand copes in this really unhealthy and

illegal way, and then ends up in our criminal justice system where we then need to take them through. So from your understanding that once people have been caught offending and have been convicted, the likelihood of them ending back up in that situation in court is what? What's the percentage chance okay the stats it's really difficult to tell so but ben i know you're going to want a percentage so um some of the figures i probably work to are you've got looking at maybe 12 of people will commit or be reconvicted of another sexual offense so that's high when you're looking at it in a sense that's 12% people who

are going to commit another offence but if you're looking at 88% of people as I say this we have to bear in mind these you know stats that are quite difficult to measure but if you're looking at 88% of people who won't then we can say that's because not not just it's not just down to psychological interventions it's really just down to psychological interventions. It's really about people being brought to task. And Hugh Edwards now, you know, it's out there, it's public. And he now needs to get help for the issues that he started coping with in an appalling, unhealthy and illegal way. And of those people you're talking about,

would they have been on the kind of community rehabilitation programme that we're talking about in this case? Everyone will have had some kind of intervention? Almost everyone will have had some kind of psychological intervention, either in prison or in the community. And in fact, we know that the community programmes are potentially slightly more effective than the ones in prison because you're out there

in the community and you're living your normal life even while you're getting this sort of treatment is perhaps one reason for the slightly greater effectiveness. And where are those figures from? The 12% is from a study by Muse et al whiched re-offending from the original treatment programme for people with a sexual conviction. And who were they? Researchers. Right. And over what kind of timeframe were we talking about there? I think they looked at about 15 years, but I'm kind of drawing that from my memory. But the other research has looked at when people are most likely to re-offend,

which is in the first six years after release. And so the longer people stay offence-free, the longer they're likely to, if that makes sense. It's the first six years really after prison that are most difficult for people, which may lead people to start to, again, put their head in the sand and try to cope. Because not only have you been to prison, but you've now come out with a sexual conviction. And so life becomes that bit harder in terms of employment, accommodation, relationships, etc. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you say those figures, because we've tried to, here on the team this morning, drill down into these kind of programmes. Obviously, it's in the news today for obvious reasons as to their efficacy. We did contact the Ministry of Justice this morning. They sent us some guidance about the sex offender programmes, but they were

unable to provide a statement within the time available this morning as to the efficacy of the programmes that they run. Let's go back to you, Deborah. I mean, clearly this is something that you are invested in. Has there ever been a comprehensive study into whether these community rehabilitation programmes work? I think there's been various studies and Belinda's cited some of them there there are others um so I think the the problem is it's it's difficult to look at it's difficult to measure we're looking at long time frames there's one um one study around reconviction that um you're looking at a 13 year average follow-up which saw again a 12 percent rate for um reconviction of sexual offences.

So that's difficult. In terms of whether rehabilitation works, again, the factors are so broad-ranging. So the men we work with, for example, and we work with 250 men a year who have been arrested, convicted for online sexual offending, have multiple factors going on in their life. So they are in the community, as Valinta described. We do some work with them around understanding the behavioural process involved with online offending. We talk about sort of self-care and focusing on their feelings so that they can manage them better going forward, the impact of the behaviour on those closest to them, but also, of course, cruciallycially the victims. But there are other things going on in their life. So when looking at is the work we do the sole solely responsible for the changes

made, we could never sort of look at that and say that definitively. And as Belinda describes, the actual arrest itself, men will often describe to us that that was a real catalyst for a sort of wake up call of I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was in a cycle. I threw my laptop away every six months. I said I wasn't going to do it. Now I've been arrested. This is the moment of change for me. So we do see the arrest itself as being a catalyst. And that's why getting upstream with these prevention messages is so important to us, because if we can get them the messages and and and help them think about the consequences of what will happen when arrested we can get them to stop sooner and

that's what we want to do we want to stop offending or stop it from starting in the very first place yeah and of course we don't want anyone to re-offend but is there any value in sex offenders receiving these treatment programs beyond the direct effect on re-offending? It's a rewiring, it seems to me, that you're talking about needs to happen. Is that not a lifelong process? I think for some, we do have men who will continually keep in touch with our helpline.

So the Stop It Now helpline's there for them. They complete the work we do over a sort of 10 week programme. They will call back the Helpline later. We've had men call back a few years later and say, actually, I just wanted to check in. I want to revisit some of my relapse prevention work that I did. I'm struggling. Life is life is difficult and I don't want to go down that path again. So having that available to people, I think what we see from our work is important that that support is available ongoing. And what we need to do is make these kind of clinics or helplines available to everyone and encourage people, as Deborah said, so that predominantly men, but men or women come forward and it's OK to say, look, I'm really struggling. This is what I thought of doing I haven't but at the

moment we have we have a society which as Deborah said so hundreds of thousands of people are actually accessing images or committing offenses and yet we have this idea that until someone's got conviction then they become this kind of kind of character of you know become the other but actually it's normal people all around us and it's when people are uh in very stressful difficult situations perhaps they've had childhood trauma etc this is this is one of the ways in which really unhealthy and say illegal coping comes out but we want to make it uh possible for people to to to find and seek help for the sort of sexual, unhealthy sexual coping way before, way before they become a danger to other people. Thank you both so much for joining us this morning. A very valuable discussion. You heard the voices there, the last voice there, Professor Belinda Winder, Research Director at the Centre for Crime Offending Prevention

and Engagement at Nottingham Trent University and Deborah Dennis, CEO of the Lucy Faithful Foundation. It offers advice and support to help prevent individuals from offending. Any views on this, welcome. Do get in touch, 84844. And just to point out that Hugh Edwards was given a custodial sentence but it was suspended.

Now did you go to your last cervical screening appointment? We all know they can be pretty uncomfortable, a bit embarrassing and sometimes difficult to arrange around other things in our lives. Women between the ages of 25 and 64 in the UK are eligible for cervical screening tests and the NHS sends out invitations to appointments every three or five years. However the latest figures from the NHS show that last year a third of eligible women under the age of 50 did not take up their appointments in a trial conducted earlier this year. King's College London found that providing at home self-sampling kits for cervical screening could result in more than 400,000 extra women being screened. And Healthwatch England have just released research showing that of the women who were reluctant to go to a cervical screening appointment, 73% would be happy to do it

themselves at home. Let's get into this further with Dr Anita Lim, lead investigator on the U-Screen trial led by King's College London and Louise Ansari, chief executive of Healthwatch England. Welcome, both of you. Morning. Louise, let's start with you. Why did you think it was important to do this research? So, as you've said Claire,

you know cervical screening has had quite low uptake recently amongst eligible women. So as you said around a third of eligible women haven't been coming forward and NHS England have set a goal to eliminate cervical cancer totally by 2040. So we wanted to really dig into the reasons why people are hesitant to go for that screening. So we did a really comprehensive piece of research. We did a poll of around two and a half thousand women who were hesitant about screening. And we did with local health watch did some really good in-depth interviews with some younger women some ethnic minority women and some disabled women to find out the real reasons why and what did they tell you so some of the things that you've just mentioned actually about physical discomfort and embarrassment um i mean i don't know about you

but of all the times i've had a smear test in my life, you know, sometimes it's been really kind and sensitiveness. And sometimes they've been a bit dismissive about the amount of discomfort and pain. And it's not a nice thing. Generally, it's not a nice procedure to do. But there were some cultural elements actually for some women as well where they wanted obviously as guests as i say obviously to see a a woman they want to see a nurse female nurse um or a female health care professional there was some you know the myth of of the test affecting the virginity was there in some of the discussion that came back to us and we really need to kind of bust that myth but also really disturbingly around one in seven people didn't attend they told us because of a past trauma

like sexual assault so actually that really underlines the need for trauma-informed care as well as cultural sensitivity the other reason a bit prosaically it was the fact that you know the the tests need to be offered in a really flexible way and in a way that's really accessible for women. And it was just often hard to find appointments. Yes, yes. That's ringing bells with me as well. Anita, let's move on, actually, to Dr. Anita Lim. I'm guessing what you're hearing Louise saying there, very familiar to you and the U-screen trial you conducted tell us a little bit more about that it's very familiar with everything that Louise has just said and this is the premise of the

U-screen trial so the reason why we started this trial is because of these long-standing falling screening rates and cervical screening that we've seen in the UK over the last 20 years. And we saw self-sampling as a really novel way of approaching this to really see a boost in our screening uptake. So the U-screen trial was the largest self-sampling trial in the UK that's been conducted to date, so that's been quite important. It's also the first time that self-sampling was integrated into the NHS programme. So what we did is we offered self-sampling kits to over 27,000 women in North Central and North East London and we did this in two different ways. So we offered kits at their GP practices when women who were overdue for their

screening and who have or who haven't been screened at all came and consulted for any reason. They were offered kits when they turned up and we also mailed kits directly to women's homes and what we found is that if you offer kits to women at the GP practice that 56% of women who haven't been coming for screening did actually return a self-sample and for the mail out we had 13% of women who returned their kits and what this meant altogether, what this resulted in is ultimately the pickup rate was an additional 400,000 women in England could be screened each year and up to a million of them were screening round. That's a huge number, isn't it? And for all the reasons just discussed, there's a reluctance to go and it can be incredibly uncomfortable. I mean, I guess just talk us through how it works then, how you would actually do this to yourself and how effective it is. The self-sampling test is really easy to do and you can do it in just a few minutes and most women find it painless.

So women would receive a self-sampling kit that would contain everything they needed in order to take that sample and return it to the laboratory. So in the U-screen trial, we used a very simple cotton swab. So it's like a long cotton bud. And you can also, there's also things that you can have for other self-sampling, like a small brush, but we used this cotton swab and U-screen. And all women would need to do is get themselves in a comfortable position. They can do it in the privacy of their own homes. And they would gently insert the swab into the vagina, turn it around a few times, take it out and then put it into its casing. It's got a tube casing, pop it into an envelope and just drop it into any Royal Mail post box and then they'll get their result in the post. So really, really easy easy to do and one of the key things here is that you're removing that intimate examination that you would have

if you had the test done at your GP or by your practice nurse. Okay so the question is do you need to go right up to the cervix how does how does it work? No you don't because what we're looking for is the DNA of the virus that causes cervical cancer so the human papillomavirus because we're just looking for DNA, you can just take what would be known as a high vaginal swab. You don't need to touch your cervix. You don't need to insert a speculum or anything like that. It really is just a simple swab test.

The question is, so many women listening to this will have not gone because they might have had a painful one or embarrassment or cultural reasons. If this is available, why can't this be done by a nurse or a practitioner? Why aren't we being offered this already? So to introduce any new test in the NHS, obviously we want the evidence. And this is what the U-screen trial, part of what we were trying to do here, is to produce the evidence, first of all, that you can increase uptake in women who haven't been coming for the screening, because we know that women who haven't been coming are at the highest

risk of developing cervical cancer. But it's what we're looking for is the evidence to show that actually to offer it that women are going to come, and then the screening programs need to look at all the changes that they need to make to the program in order to offer such a test and making sure that it is a worthwhile test at work. Yeah, and I guess if there were abnormal cells, those women were required, weren't they, to go to a follow-up appointment? They were, and I think the good news about this is that the vast majority of women are going to be testing HPV negative, meaning that there's no virus found on their sample, and that is the reassurance of saying, OK, you don't have HPV infection at the moment

and that you're very unlikely to develop cervical cancer because cervical cancer is so preventable and cervical screening is all about prevention. Louise, do you think, final question, do you think women who are reluctant to go to the screening in the first place would do the follow-up appointment? Because even with this test, this new way of doing it, that is crucial appointment isn't it if something is found yes that's absolutely right and actually three quarters of all the women we polled said they would use a self-test at home there were you know all the benefits about privacy avoiding discomfort no need to book really chimes with the study and actually in australia for example

they've already rolled that out so one of our key recommendations is that nhs england does roll this out nationally great to have you both on really really interesting new research there that is dr anita limb lead investigator uh on you screen trial led by king's college london and louise ansari chief executive of health watch we did did approach the NHS for a statement on this and an NHS spokesperson said these findings add to growing evidence suggesting that self-testing could have a really positive impact in supporting more women to take part in cervical screening from their homes. And the NHS is working with the UK National Screening Committee to consider the feasibility of rolling this out more widely across England. In the meantime, if you are invited, of course, for cervical screening by the NHS,

it is vital you come forward. It could save your life and remains vital towards our ambition of eradicating cervical cancer in England within the next two decades. Thank you so much to our guests for joining me on that. You can text us 85058 on the program. Plenty of you are. We'll get to those in a few moments. But keep your texts coming in 84844. I'm Sarah Treleaven. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I 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. Let's bring in the voice of actress Kim Cattrall now, describing herself as a Liverpool-born, Canadian-bred woman and New Yorker. She starred in films and on stage, but is probably best known for the US TV series Sex and the City, in which she played Samantha Jones, the character who became iconic for her sexual empowerment and is still so well loved by many women, winning Kim a Golden Globe. Kim is now starring in new audio drama Central Intelligence on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. The 10-part series tells the true story of the CIA

from the perspective of Eloise Page. She joined on the agency's first day in 1947, became the first female deputy director of the intelligence community staff and retired receiving the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. Kim narrates the series and play. She also plays the role of Eloise Page. Here she is with Ed Harris as Alan Dulles and Johnny Flynn as Richard Helms

who are discussing ways to gather intelligence. Honeypot. Well, we couldn't use an American girl. That would be far too obvious. So use a German girl. Who's our chief of station there now? At the Berlin desk? Tom Polgar. Well, tell Tom he has to find one free-spirited Fraulein

who's happy to target a Russian officer, unzip her dress, and get him talking. There's your answer. On the train back to Washington, Richard wondered if it really was the answer, given our urgent time frame. Honeypots had been around as long as blockades, but they still have to be trained. And only a certain type of woman can embrace that task with the right level of relish. Well, I spoke to Kim earlier from her home in Vancouver and I asked what attracted her to the role of Eloise

and how much she knew about her before taking it on. I knew nothing about her, which is the sad part of this story, really. I knew of the CIA. I knew of the events surrounding the Cold War and espionage. But I didn't know that there was a woman who was called the Iron Butterfly behind all of this from the very inception. Yeah. And tell us a little bit about her then. How did she find herself in this situation? Because she was embedded in the CIA at the beginning of this organization, wasn't she? Yes, she did something quite miraculous.

She had the patience to just go from leader to leader to administration to administration. She was married to her job. She was the first female staff, station staff, and probably worked as hard, if not harder, than anyone else in power. And she slowly, but consistently built up. And you have to remember when this was. I mean, this all began and our story is encapsulated from the Pearl Harbor to 9-11, which we just had an anniversary of. So that's a substantial amount of time. What drove her then? What was her motivation to stay in that world and marry her job, essentially? I think that it was fascinating for her.

All of these characters and the world events at that time, they were writ so large. I mean, this is a big story told in a very intimate way through this woman. And you see how much it meant to her. And the trials and the tribulations, I mean, all of them learning on the job at the same time. And the results were not always admirable, sadly. They were sometimes funny, hilarious, and sometimes quite tragic.

But in this story, all true. I mean, it's so interesting. This is a woman who didn't marry, decided not to have children, and she was in this environment. And you've said that she was treated in the agency either as a mother or a secretary. What did you mean by that to the men around her? Well, that was the most power that women had in those days was to be the secretary and then become indispensable and become the secretary slash wife slash mother,

making sure that they had restaurants to eat in, that they had clothes to wear, everything and anything. She was the scheduling master. And then not just she, but the people, the powers that be, we started to realize how and what this agency was and how it could facilitate the government and how it's brought us to where we are today. I mean, all of the links that you see that Eloise goes through, this is the world we now live in and result of those decisions. You know, it wasn't about what she achieved. I think that's why she was always under the radar. And so many people, especially women, had no idea who she was or what she did. Everything was so top secret.

I mean, it's just an incredible trajectory, isn't it? How do you think she managed that dual role, understanding that she was, as you just said, the scheduler, the mother, the secretary? Do you think she always had her eyes on the top prize or is it just something that emerged as she went along in that role? She thought thought I can do this I think so yes the latter definitely I think her confidence built as the organization did and the men running it were not doing as she could see it the best possible job in certain areas so she would have to support them so she had experience when she became the iron butterfly is was what her nickname was which i think is quite apt uh looks delicate but has a heart and will it steal how you've just described her and what she did lots of women listening to

this on woman's hour will say yep women still have to do that they have to be the enablers in the room they can't just walk in and say yeah i'm that's the job you have to kind that they have to be the enablers in the room they can't just walk in and say yeah I'm that's the job you have to kind of make it easy and ease not only your path but everybody else's you think much has changed no it's about preparation talent meets preparation meets hard work and dedication that's that's been uh the recipe Has that been your recipe? Yes, it has. It has. And there were times where you want to give up,

and there are times you think, you know, I'm married to this job too in a different way. But I think there's something inherent about a lot of women and most women is that nurturing side of it. Because you can see from Eloise that she's hopeful that it's going to get better, that we're going to win the war, whatever war it is. So there's these trailblazers that now are coming to the fore. Their stories need to be told.

Tell us why you love telling stories on the radio in the way that you do. I think because, especially as a young person, I felt more active listening to radio dramas than I did watching television shows or going to the movies where everything is done for you. So I think that really made my imagination reach for, you know, my Eloise Page as opposed to someone else's idea of it. And also, I used to listen to it at night. I had a little studio apartment. I didn't have a TV at the time. And I would switch on to the radio dramas. This was in New York in the early 70s. And I was transported. I'd listen to them, go to sleep to them sometimes. I mean, it was like the lantern and, you know, cops and robbers and all kinds of different scenarios. But it wasn't all noteworthy, but it was certainly entertaining. And I was connected in a way that I hadn't been with television.

Let's move on just to talk a little bit about what you're most famous for, I guess, for Samantha Jones, Sex and the City. This is a character that became iconic for sexual empowerment, of course, and still so loved by so many women and still talked about to this day. I mean, how do you feel about what she

did for women? Do women still talk to you about what she represented to them? I think what she represented was herself, uniquely herself, no apologies. She was a one-off in that way, especially at that time. You know, we look on it back now with, I think, with remembrance and as someone that you cherish because they were saying what you were thinking. I guess certain politicians might now call her a single cat lady. What would she say to that? Bring it on. bring it on bring it on come and get it i see you've got your single cat lady uh shirt on there yes i have uh they they're all wearing

uh masks these little kitties to make them look like they're from a rock band. That is, yes, it's the kiss look on a cat. It is the kiss look. Kiss look cats, yes. There you go. But it is interesting. Catch field special. The role of, the way women are kind of being used in this, the run up to the election in the States at the moment.

What are your thoughts on all of that? Because there are so many different factors to this. You have a potential female president waiting in the wings there. But again, you know, the female body is up for debate about who does what with it. I mean, what are your thoughts? Shame, shameful, immoral.

That's my thought on it. and re-educating and marching and preaching about what this means to women, this freedom that should always have been there. And to lose that, in 1973, that's when I moved to New York. And I remember a girlfriend saying to me, I think I might be pregnant and going to an abortion clinic with her at 16. And the first thing that I was greeted with was, read this, which is educate yourself about your body. And I thought, wow, what is this? What is this? A clinic? I mean, where I grew up, there was only one hospital that did anything close to a DNC, never mind an abortion. And this is where so many women of my generation, the world changed, also with contraception. And then suddenly, it's gone. It's extraordinary times. Extraordinary. You know, it's a confusing time as well, I think, for a lot of people that maybe don't have the history that you and I have

to understand how it came to be. And that's why stories are so important for us now and always will be because we need guidance. We need education. We need people who have been there before, like in the Eloise page, that did give up so much of her life. I mean, she retired at 67. She lived till 1982.

So, yes, it's a time for people to unite, especially women. That's why I'm still so engaged to live in America for such a long time and not be a citizen and not be able to vote was choking me and I became a citizen and

I voted and it felt damn good really felt good I felt that my voice however small however insignificant it might seem to me, it means something. It's my right. And I'm going to take that right. A personal view there on overturning of Roe v. Wade from Kim. Abortion, of course, a very contentious issue in the current US election, with passionate campaigners on both sides hoping to influence the outcome. Working now in the industry, how is it for a woman of your age? We talk a lot about diminishing roles for women as they age. Do you think we're still on that page well I think there's a there's always changes in a career there's always ups there's always downs there's always times where you think oh that could

have gone better it might have gone worse I mean it's uh it has you can only plan so much. So for me, I'm so lucky. I'm in this enviable position of being able to say yes to a project like this. And no to a project that I just think doesn't speak to me in any way. Doesn't speak to me or the women that I'm representing. I'm much more aware of characters that I say yes to based on how I want to feel about seeing women my age portrayed. And so it's always a challenge to be a working actor. The percentages of actors that are working constantly has always been famously slim. And especially after a strike and a pandemic,

a lot of the studios are hurting, so there isn't the product. So for me, I can wait it out. I'm lucky. A lot of them can't. A lot of these wonderful actors can't. And that's the way careers ebb and flow, because you're part of the time. But when you do get an opportunity like this,

in Central Intelligence, to not just play a wonderful character, but inform an audience that she existed and what she accomplished is very gratifying it's absolutely fantastic it's a wonderful listen will we see you over here in london again soon kim any plans for any kind of life theater working on it i'm working on it the wonderful kim catt it. The wonderful Kim Cattrall there. And if that's what Childless Cat Lady looks and sounds like, then sign me up. You can hear the brilliant audio drama Central Intelligence on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. It's up there right now, the entire series. Everybody, thank you so much for getting in touch on all manner of topics we've been

discussing this morning. We were talking about smear tests. If you could do a smear test at home, there's been a trial that's been rolled out. Would you do it? This texter, I am in my 50s and I've not had a smear test for many years. The test was always uncomfortable and sometimes painful. My cervix is apparently at an odd angle the last test was abandoned by the nurse as she felt it was too painful self-testing should be universally available thank you for that um this texter this is mel in north somerset thanks for getting in touch mel um i've been on a personal crusade regarding attendance at smear test since such a procedure diagnosed my cervical cancer 15 years ago

it was caught early if self-administered tests are the way forward for increased processing bring them on says mel and we're also talking we're about to talk to a hugely successful female author the booker prize shortlist has been published five of the six finalists are women. Does gender factor into your reading choices? Ruth's been in touch. My reading is definitely skewed towards female authors. And the older I get, the more pronounced the bias becomes. All but one of the books I've read in the last three months are by women. Anne Patchett, Maggie O'Farrell, Willa Cather, Sheila Robetham,

Aminata Forna, Pat Barker. The the list goes on thank you for that ruth interesting question says this texter i read all genders happily but as a woman i only purchase new books by women if i want to read a book by a man i buy it second hand or borrow it from the library just trying to do my bit for womankind. Go you. And Tamara says this. For non-fiction, gender can matter. Not for everything, though, but social issues, certainly. For fiction, the gender of the author doesn't matter. Although if I'm clandestinely enjoying a naughty book on my Kindle, it's usually from a woman.

Keep your text coming in. 84844. We'll get the views on that from our next guest now. Sarah Pierce is the number one Sunday Times and New York Times author of the Detective Ellen Warner trilogy. Her first book

The Sanatorium became Reese Witherspoon's book club pick with over one million copies sold worldwide. Sarah has now released the last novel in the series. It's called The Wilds and it includes themes of coercive control. And Sarah took advice from the domestic violence charity Refuge in the writing of the book. Sarah, welcome to Woman's Hour.

Well, thank you very much for having me. Well, look at that wonderful array of books you have behind you. And we'll get on to, you know, how you choose authors that you read in a moment. But for people who haven't heard the trilogy, give us an overview. Yeah, so the Detective Ellen Warner trilogy started with the sanatorium. I suppose I'd describe them all as mystery thrillers in a way, all set in sort of very remote landscapes, very wild landscapes, where I suppose the landscape very much becomes a character in its own right. But I'd say Detective Ellen Warner is really the key feature of the trilogy. She's a detective who very much doesn't have it all together. She's very real, very human, very flawed. And I really wanted to write a female detective character in a way that I hadn't sort of

read before. So yeah, I'd say she's the key part of the trilogy. Yeah, she's the heroine because she's kind of the anti-heroine, isn't she? She's a normal woman trying to do a very tricky job. It's honest, isn't it? Yeah, it's honest. She really does have the same fears, anxiety, self-doubts that a lot of people do. And I think one of the things I wanted to sort of pull into the books is the idea that you can be carrying quite a lot of emotional baggage with you and still go into a role kind of put that face to the world and challenge I suppose the stereotype that we have to sort of be seen as

emotionally strong in every situation to sort of progress with our career. I think people are battling lots of things in their sort of everyday lives and I wanted sort of the reader to see that with Ellen. Coercive control is one of the central themes. What made you want to write about that and put it in your fiction? It was actually lots of feedback I had from the first book in the series so in the sanatorium. In the sanatorium we meet Ellen at a really sort of interesting sort of point in her life both personally and professionally. She's at quite a low ebb and she's suffering from anxiety, from panic attacks and her partner Will they have quite an interesting dynamic and I had lots of feedback of saying why is she with him I do feel there's sort of elements of gaslighting and

control within that relationship and I hadn't actually written that relationship deliberately in that way and it really got me thinking why I'd chosen to write Will in that way. Why had he exhibited those behaviours? And I was kind of thinking it's actually probably what I've subconsciously absorbed and experienced over the years. And I think as women, we are conditioned to sort of people please. And I think when we see that relationship with Will, there's elements of that and elements of him wanting to shut down her natural emotions um so yeah i really thought sort of kind of digging taking a deep dive into that in book three the wilds would be really interesting yeah it certainly is and i know you um got in touch with refuge when you were writing

uh obviously the domestic abuse charity and commercial control is very much a topic that people are so much more aware of nowadays why did you think it was important to talk to the experts who deal with this day in, day out? Why was it important to shore your book up in that way? Yeah, I think it's a topic that we do know a lot more about, but I really wanted to make sure the scenes in the book were not gratuitously done that feature the sort of coercive control and emotional abuse elements.

I wanted to make sure they were sensitively portrayed as well as sort of fact checking. But it's sort of actually from those initial conversations with Refuge, it turned into more. So I was really pleased they sort of did that initial stage that really influenced the direction the book took. It is fascinating because there were scenes where you completely get under the skin of the push and pull factors that someone overtly might behave in a violent way, literally a suffocating way, but then flips back the other way. And to see it from the point of view of the woman involved, how she can be drawn back in. Was that important to you, to kind of give the 360 view

of why people from the outside say quite simply, well, it's a simple move, isn't it? You just move away to actually colour it in like that. How important was it for you? Yeah, really, really important. I think particularly in the, that's where I think you have the advantage within a novel in a long form narrative to do that to really show that 360 degree view I think I wanted the character with Kia the character is Kia her partner is Zeph I wanted to show how she'd got into that relationship what she loved about him I don't think there are is anybody that gets into a relationship with a completely awful person from the bat there's elements of love forming in these relationships There's elements where she loves him absolutely. He loves her. You'll hear her saying, I don't think anyone

would love me like he does. And those are all really common things an abuser will use with a survivor to sort of pull them in. One of the statistics I'd heard when chatting with Refuge, we were talking about how many times it takes someone to leave a relationship, why they might be pulled back in. So yeah, I really wanted to show that 360 degree view of that relationship and exactly what makes that relationship whole as well as flawed. I want to ask you about, because there has been some criticism, and I'm sure you're well aware of it, that the plethora of novels that centre on violence against women and therefore the number of dramas that are commissioned and the number of films that are made. Crime novelist Jane Casey,

who's written the award-winning Detective Maeve Kerrigan novels, recently posted on X, and this is following the killing of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Chiptagay and the ongoing mass rape trial in France. Of course, both stories we reported on here on Woman's Hour.

She tweeted, the news this week from around the world has been hard to take. I've been on panels at festivals where other authors talked about how crime writers write too much about violence against women. And I think we don't write enough. Where are you on that? I have to say, I very much agree with Jane there. I think we have to kind of open these conversations.

I think it's really, really important we put those stories out there. As you said in your previous interview, the power of storytelling, these things are happening. We need to shine a light on them and raise awareness. So I'm very much of the case, we should talk about it. As long as something isn't gratuitously done, I think it's so, so important. Doesn't it not depend on who's doing the telling and how they tell it I think it's how it's told absolutely I think if it's done in an overtly gratuitous way I think it can come off in a particularly bad way but I think if it is done sensitively and as I come back to the idea of a novel throughout a long-form story a narrative you are able to tell that story and do it sensitively

then I think it's fine and is it the job of a fiction writer like yourself? I mean, all of those issues that you've touched upon, are you leading the reader to form a particular view if they are somebody who's in a particularly problematic relationship? Is it your job to point the way out of that? I don't know, so to say, whether it's a job to point the way out of that? I don't know, so you say, whether it's a job to point the way out of it, but I think fiction is so important, as I mentioned, in terms of raising awareness. If someone does read the novel, if it can get to that wider audience and recognise

something in their relationship or a friend's relationship, and it's helpful, I think that is really key. But I don't think necessarily it's the job of the novelist. I think the novelist is able to sort of put those stories out there, as it were, and then people glean what they can from them. If this book does raise awareness, that's great. I'd love your views before we let you go on Booker Prize. Five of the six shortlisted are women. When it comes to your personal reading choices, does gender factor in at all? It doesn't factor in at all. But when you were talking about it, I was realising a lot of my nonfictionfiction is very skewed towards male authors actually I'm reading one at the moment so I'd say probably my fiction skews towards female but I don't particularly make that choice I suppose it's

not a direct choice but yeah definitely skews. What's the non-fiction if you don't mind me asking you're reading? It's an amazing book which is actually influencing my next novel Could Human Eyes by Thomas Hetherick it's all about how sort of architecture can really influence our wellbeing and our sort of mental health. Really, really fascinating book. Excellent. Well, listen, it's been fantastic having you on.

Thank you so much for joining us here on Woman's Hour. The Wilds is, is it out now? It's out now, yes. It's out now. It's a great read. It's a real page turn. Sarah Pearce, thank you so much for joining us and many of you getting in touch

with your author choices this from Diana thank you Diana I like to read anything from classic novels to modern ones it's probably 50-50 male female reducing great fiction to gender is tragic limiting and misses the point in my opinion and

this my reading has been all female authors, mostly Japanese writers, since my teens. I simply found a much, much wider, deeper, subtle variety of life reflected. I'm male myself,

but I still find male writers don't represent much about being male other than mainstream cliches. Thank you to everybody who's got in touch with Woman's Hour this morning. Tomorrow, I will be talking to four-time Oscar nominee,

Saoirse Ronan. She is now starring in The Outrun, playing the character of Rona, who after a decade away in London, returns to her home in the Orkney Islands, sober but lowly. Join me tomorrow on Woman's Hour. That's all from today's Woman's Hour.

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