Woman's Hour - Marian Keyes, Women making crypto art, Self-harm in women's prisons

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Marian Keyes writes funny, clever novels about the tough stuff in life. Her books feature addiction, break-ups, poor mental health with women at the heart and lots of good men as well. Her new novel Again, Rachel revisits Rachel Walsh whose story of recovery from addiction was told in the 1997 novel Rachel's Holiday. 25 years later Rachel has come full circle and is now working at the rehab facility where she got into recovery all those years ago. Marian joins Emma to explain how her own experience of addiction and recovery shapes the stories she tells and why happy endings are so important to her.Voice messages left on a crisis hotline ignored for six weeks. More self-harm incidents than any other women's prison. Violence high and a regime that's uncaring and punitive. These are the findings of an inspectorate report out today into Foston Hall, a women's prison in Derbyshire. Four other women's prisons in England have recently been inspected too. Across the board, self-harm has increased in women's prisons during the pandemic, much more than in men's prisons. Emma is joined by Sandra Fieldhouse who leads on women's prisons for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.The crypto art marketplace has taken off over the past couple of years - with some pieces raking in millions - but surprise, surprise, it is nearly as male-dominated as traditional auction sales. For some female artists though, it has been life-changing. That is especially the case for the Scottish artist Anna Louise Simpson, a divorced mother of two, who is with us this morning. We are also joined by Micol Ap who runs VerticalCrypto Art, a media hub and studio dedicated to NFT art.For the last week, the media has been full of the aftermath of the Prime Minister's remarks to the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer - that he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile for sexual assault while Director of Public Prosecutions. A claim that is false, but was seized upon by a group of people who surrounded Starmer on Monday evening. But how has all of this affected Savile's many victims? We hear from one of them, Dee Coles, who told us how outraged she was, and how upset. Emma speaks to Maggie Oliver, a former detective who now runs the Maggie Oliver Foundation which helps victims and survivors of sexual abuse.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. You may not care, you may have been glued to it, but the Brit Awards happened last night and while many are talking about how many awards women won and also the moment that the winner Adele had this to say after the male and female categories were dispensed with.

I understand why the name of this award has changed, but I really love being a woman and being a female artist. I do. I do. I'm really proud of us. I really, really am. Thank you so much. There's also a lot of chat about a different female artist, one Anne-Marie, who fell down the stairs at the beginning of her performance

and carried on without missing a beat, like a total pro. She tweeted afterwards, didn't need my left ankle anyway. She isn't, of course, the first to have a stage mishap at the Brits. Think of Madonna who took a tumble, Jason Derulo, and it will not be the last. She's also not the first person to have a tumble or an embarrassing moment on any sort of stage or in any public forum. What about you?

What is your most embarrassing public moment? And importantly, how, if possible, did you style it out? 84844 is the number you need to text me here at Woman's Hour. Do remember, text will be charged your standard message rate. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or email me through the Woman's Hour website. My one is this and I still think about it. I think it's more than 10 years on.

I was quite a junior reporter. I was on stage at an awards do and I was coming off the stage and a woman was coming over, happened to be my husband's boss, to say congratulations and I went to hug her.

I was standing slightly above her on the steps, just coming down from the stage, and I put my whole hand in her mouth. I'm not joking. Her mouth was wide open to say congratulations. I'm still sort of dying as I think about it right now. And yes, you're going to ask, how did you get your whole hand in?

Okay, it was four fingers. It was on an angle. I mean, I remember the sensation of her teeth. It was extraordinary. I'm getting sweaty thinking about it. I didn't style it out. But the best bit was when I brought it up with her months later, thinking I've just got to confront it. I am one of life's great confronters. I try to be anyway.

She didn't remember a thing because she was incredibly drunk. So there is a silver lining. What is your moment? Already we've got messages coming in. Let me read Kim's, which says, I was boarding a full coach wearing a strapless maxi dress and no bra. Whilst climbing the last step, I stood on the front of my frock, which pinged down to my waist, and I find myself baps out in the centre aisle of a coach full of fellow cruise ship patrons. Kim, how did you style it out? Maybe you don't need to after that. What was their response? I need to know more. Text me back. Also on today's programme, let me tell you what is coming up. NFT

or crypto art. Are women maximising the opportunity? We shall find out. But also it makes for grim reading. But a new report out today about women's prisons that we've had early sight of definitely does need reading. We'll tell you all you need to know. But first, let me tell you who just walked in to the Woman's Hour studio. A woman who writes funny, clever novels about the tough stuff in life that millions want to read. Addiction, breakups, baby loss,

depression with women at the heart and lots of good men as well. And a lot of good humour, I should say, to be put in there too. I am, of course, talking about Marion Keys. Her new novel, Again, Rachel, revisits Rachel Walsh, whose story of recovery from addiction was told in the 1997 novel, Rachel's Holiday. Many of you will recall, well, 25 years later, Rachel's come full circle and is now working at the rehab facility where she got into recovery all those years ago.

Marion Keith, good morning. Good morning, Emma. And lovely to have you here in person. I am thrilled. I'm trying to remember the last time I was in a real-life studio doing a real-life interview. It's wonderful and kind of a little bit frightening. Yeah, just like walking in here, I got like a sudden thrill of terror. But no, I'm fine. No, I'm fine. You're good. No public mishaps about to happen on our stage here.

Not today, hopefully. Yeah. Well, maybe you'll share a few of yours or one of yours. Indeed, I have many, many to choose from. Well, let's come to that in a moment. I'm also rather distracted by your very fetching green jumper, which has pink letters on the saying utter nonsense. Yeah, I'm on brand today. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's go to Rachel, first of all, and about revisiting her. Did you know you were always going to go back to this character? No, I mean, I've always stood on a platform of no sequels because I just think when I'm finished a book, I've put my characters through enough. That's just for me. I mean, other writers are entirely different.

But there are five sisters in the Walsh family. I'd written about all of them and I missed them. And I was thinking about which one I might kind of like, kind of identify with the most. And I suppose like Rachel is an addict in recovery.

And so am I. So we have that thing in common. But I was very worried. I had actually previously tried to write another sequel and it had like crashed and burned terribly. And I thought sequels just aren't for me. But I started it at the start of lockdown and something about kind of that enforced isolation meant I had nowhere to go but like kind of into my head so and I was always prepared to for to fail and then to let it go but kind of as time went on I thought you know I like this I believe in it and I had a story that I was interested in um that I hadn't written about previously and uh and it was just just luck I think, really, that the idea came.

At the heart of it is recovery, which, as you say, you've been through. And perhaps we still don't know enough about addicts, but certainly recovery is also something we don't hear a lot about in detail. Yeah, I think, I mean, addiction is far more widespread than people realise. But there's so little education about it. And there's so much kind of fear about it that if somebody goes to rehab, their loved ones think it's kind of like, you know, a broken German car going back to Munich to be fixed or Frankfurt or wherever. You know, and then when it kind of goes away, something mysterious happens and then it returns and you can kind of carry on as if nothing had ever gone wrong. Whereas, I mean, recovery is just about everyone in the family learning that something has changed forever.

It doesn't have to be terrifying and the, you know, the adjustment doesn't have to be exhausting, but it has to be done. It's like, you know, it's like a diabetic taking their insulin every day. It's as simple, it's as kind of as mundane as that. And I feel really sorry for the people who love addicts because they can't alter or kind of influence the behavior of the addict,

no matter how much they love them. And then they're given like no education on how to handle them when they're in recovery. And it's really quite simple. You know, that would be my message, really, that it's really nothing to be scared of. And anyone who was trying to live a clean or sober life should be should be you know celebrated for it celebrated in a mundane kind of way and uh and that there really is it is far more widespread than than any of us kind of acknowledge i think we've always othered addicts kind of like because we've regarded addiction as a moral failing or a choice rather than a condition

you know it's a way of kind of self-medicating pain that and the person the addict really doesn't have an intellectual choice in it do you were you worried about writing about recovery and addiction from your perspective how that might make you feel having gone through it? No I'm so riddled with shame you know it is my kind of base core emotion but I never felt shame about being an alcoholic like which was incredibly healthy. I thought I didn't ask for this I don't want it I want to live in a different way and by the time I came to write Rachel's Holiday, I had enough perspective on the condition to be able to write from, you know, a dispassionate point of view, you know, so I wasn't writing and thinking, oh, you know, this is awful. How, you know, poor me haven't gone through it. I just thought this is part of me and I am doing

my best to stay sober on a daily basis. So no, it didn't affect me the first time and it didn't affect me writing the sequel either. I mean, it's very rare for me to have a kind of a mature relationship with something in me. But yeah, I never felt shame. And I really, you know, I stand on a message of don't be ashamed, a platform of don't be ashamed because nobody wants to be that way. I mean, there's a lot of detail in here, though, about the 12 steps, about there's this humour too, but also about how you actually come through it.

I mean, do you still feel like you have to fight it every single day or do you get beyond that point? Yeah, I don't have to fight it at all. I mean, I live a very easy life with my alcoholism, but I do the right thing. It's like taking the insulin. You know, I have lots of other friends who are in recovery. I, you know, I don't overexpose myself to, you know, drinking situations. And that's fine. Like I can go to parties, like I can do anything I want so long as I don't drink. So, you know, I will go to parties. I'll have a great time. And then when I've been told the same story for the fourth time by a very excited person, I think

maybe it's time. Maybe it's time to just disappear quietly. And I mean, the funny thing is, I used to feel kind of embarrassed about sloping away early now you know people don't notice everyone on a night out they are you know they are the star in their own narrative you know people are only really focused on themselves it's a bit like you never say goodbye at a wedding I used to always go up and say thank you and I've had a wonderful time but then you've put it in their mind that you're leaving yes and. And also, isn't it exhausting if you say thank you to one person, you have to find 20 others. And by the time you want to leave, you're already used up. You're exhausted. All you're good for is the bed.

And then you have to kind of, oh, it's horrendous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a kind of a mysterious flit. Just, yeah, I'm gone. I'm a shadow. I am no more. You are very open and have been throughout and you use social media also very interestingly, very positively to lift up lots of women and also talk about the way that you kind of get through things and try and give some people some hope who are perhaps not on a very good day. You were also very open about your experience of depression and a major episode that happened to you in your life. Why did you choose to do that? I mean, I never had any boundaries. I mean, as a child, I just never knew what you were supposed to say and not supposed to say. And then when I got sober, I was so delighted.

I mean, I was so thrilled. And very shortly after I got sober, I got published. And, and I was so clueless, you know, I hadn't had media training, like nobody said, no, never mentioned that. And I was, you know, that combination. And also that thing that I said already, like, there's nothing to be ashamed of. And, and I've always found it easier to not hide things, you know, to kind of cover something up or to keep parts of myself off limits. Makes me feel afraid.

You know, it makes me feel like sooner or later somebody is going to out me. I would rather do it first. And again, with the depression, which, you know, was something I hadn't anticipated or wanted, I still thought I didn't do anything wrong here. And I thought if I share how I feel, you know, I don't share really to make people feel better. I'm kind of looking to make myself feel better. I want other people to say, actually, I'm having a horrendous day as well.

But, you know, we've been here before. We'll get there again. Like, I know I have a lot of Twitter followers, but like for me, it's a personal account. Like, I'm only there to have fun and feel good about life. I mean, a lot of people feel the party's changed because I also have been on there a long time. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I mean, definitely. It is so easy to kind of stir the hornet's nest. You know, if you say, you know, you will always offend somebody, you know, no matter how kind of pure, you know, a statement is, you know, no matter how loving or whatever, somebody will always take offence. I mean, you know, more than one person. And like, that's just the way it is, I think. But that's interesting hearing you, you know, use it for selfish purposes still, as well as, you know, communicating with people and connecting. I mean, you also in this book broach the subject of not having children. And you've also spoken yourself about choosing not to have IVF. And I found this, if you don't mind me bringing it up, I found this really interesting because of the way that you rationalised it, that you talked about being afraid, that you wanted too much, that there was a lot of good in your life at that point.

You're being published. You had your partner. You were in love. You didn't want to push it too much. Yeah, I mean, that might be the Catholic guilt. And I really want to say just because it wasn't for me doesn't mean that I don't support other people who want to do it differently. Yeah, I mean, my life changed very quickly. You know, I was able to stop drinking. I started writing. I got published. I met a lovely man. You know, I had good relationships. I was starting to have a decent opinion of myself. And I was always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And sure enough, it did. And I just always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And sure enough, it did.

And I just, yeah. What do you mean it did? Well, would not been able to have children. Right. You know, and like, you know, I did various interventions. And it just, it was kind of almost a comfortable realisation that, aha, this is where it stops. I don't mean it, I mean, it was expected. It wasn't comfortable.

I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't happy about it. But there was, there's a strong, you know, you can't, you can take the girl out of Catholic Ireland, but like really and truly that conditioning of like you are worthless and you deserve nothing. It goes so deep. And as soon as I didn't get this thing that I wanted, I thought, oh, yeah, OK, this is what I've always been told. And there's a difference, isn't there? If you don't mind me saying of trying and not getting what you want in this instance, children, and then not trying at all. And how you feel about that later because you didn't think you should. Yeah, I still feel OK about it. You know, I still feel very grateful for what I have.

And I mean, I had to grieve like me and my husband. We had like we'd wanted six. I know that's ridiculous. Like I do know that's ridiculous. And that as soon as you have one, like you're ready to be hospitalised from exhaustion. And like, you know, the idea of other children is just like you know unthinkable for a while um we grieved it and and we changed our expectations you know and that took that took a long time you know and um and it's fine now in that like I have other children in my life I have nieces and nephews that I am, you know, borderline obsessed with, like it's a worry. But I have so much fun and I'm still grateful for what I have.

And it really doesn't hurt that. It doesn't really hurt at all, really, anymore. Now and again, now and again. I think you don't realise how many people you could be helping by just even saying how you feel about it all these years on and the fact you had to grieve. Oh, God, you have to. I mean, there's no such thing as making an intellectual decision and then your feelings changing overnight. Like, your feelings take much, much, much longer and it's different for everyone.

And the feelings have to be worked on. You know, it's a question of, like, every morning thinking, OK, this isn't part of my life. But look at what's good. And if I feel like crying when I, or not even, I don't feel like crying when I see babies. I want to run over and steal them. Oh, no, I shouldn't have said that. That makes me sound like a lunatic. No, I just want to give them a squeeze.

I knew exactly what you meant. Yeah, a perfectly rational response, you know. Indeed. Well, you talk about working on those relationships and thinking about them. I think this is also a really interesting one, whether you can change relationships with some of the oldest bonds that you have. And in a recent interview, you talked about having fallen in love with your mother after years of a robust relationship. A lot of people probably have, I don't know, tried to do that or maybe tried to see that relationship anew. What do you mean? Okay. I love my mother. I always did. And she loves me, but we are diametrically opposed. I mean, she is a really devout Catholic and I,

I abhor it. I see all the bad it does. And that's, that's just me. And for anyone else who's a Catholic, work away, you know, I'm happy for you. But during the lockdown, she lives on her own because my dad died three years ago. This is going to sound very first world. She has no Wi-Fi. I mean, actually, she does now. But for a while, she couldn't even read because she had a cataract on one of her eyes. So everything was blurred. And she stayed so upbeat, so positive. Now, she couldn't see anyone. You know, like we used to come and stand at her gate, you know, and kind of yell in, you know, conversations with her. And like she loves her grandchildren, like she loves the affection.

Like nobody touched her for about six months. She didn't have the touch of another human being, no hugs, no kisses, no hand squeezes. And she just stayed really positive, really entertaining, upbeat, buoyant. And I just was so awed by her courage, her resilience. And oh, yeah, right. The one thing, the Irish national station started running mass every morning at half ten. And that saved her life, I think. That kept her going. You know, and it was the kind of thing that I would have been quite sneery about, you know, in the past. But I saw what it meant to her and I saw the impact it had on her. And I just felt, and I still feel, so much admiration for her. You know, she survived something incredibly uncomfortable

with grace and good humour. That's amazing, though, to be able to find a new vantage point on an old bond. Yes, on a very old relationship. I mean, a global pandemic. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, a global pandemic. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was far from fun.

No, and what you described also will resonate with so many people thinking about their parents and how they did get through it. I should say, because, you know, we're all one BBC here, you do have a series on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking with your friend Tara Flynn. And I feel like what I've asked our listeners today might be something you get questioned about.

People come to you with all sorts of questions. How did you style out an embarrassing moment? And I wanted to know, have you got one that came to mind? I do, unfortunately. I mean, I had several. Okay, I'm still, my bowels are freezing here, even as I think of it. I said a swear on It Takes Two with the beloved Claudia I didn't realize

it was a swear it was a four-letter word beginning with c not the very bad one beginning with c but another one and I genuinely thought it was okay to say it and poor Claudia's stricken face and the way kind of everything screeched to a halt. And it was like, suddenly it was like being awake in a nightmare. And I thought, that's it. I am ruined. I am ruined forever. The BBC will never have me back on anything ever. And yeah, that was particularly dreadful. I mean, it was live telly. And did you do anything afterwards or what was the moment afterwards like? There had to be, lovely Claudia had to say, we apologise

for the appalling language from that. Marion Keyes wouldn't. She didn't. I mean, she was absolutely gorgeous. This is the soundtrack you've come up with afterwards. Completely. Yeah, I mean, but she did have to apologise. I mean, and there was an apology at the end of the show, like, you know, the stern-voiced man had to say

it. And yeah, I'm still, I've got goosebumps all over me just even thinking about it. I'm sorry I'm making you read it. No, no, no, it's fine. But look at you, you're on the BBC. Yes, you had me back. And all is well. I am so grateful.

We'll always have you back on Woman's Hour. Thank you very much. Thank you, Emma. Marion Keyes, lovely to have you on. And so much that we talked about there, I'm sure we'll be getting messages till the end of next week. Never mind. The new novel is called Again, Rachel.

All the best. Some of your messages about those moments and how you styled them out. On the morning of going to Buckingham Palace to receive an OBE, reads the message, I realised my shoes were much too big. With no time to buy another pair and my other shoes, a pair of hiking boots,

I just had to make do. Everything was fine until protocol meant I had to walk backwards from Prince Charles after receiving the award, and I simply couldn't because of my two big shoes. I somehow managed to turn my feet sideways and shun the weight the best I could. I felt so very embarrassed. However, my friends love to watch the recording of the event

as it reduces them to tears, especially the look on Prince Charles' face. Says Kate in Cumbria. Beat that. I mean, we've had baps out in two big shoes. Thank you so much. Keep those messages coming in on 84844. Thank you. And there's many more. I have to say, not just on such big stages as well. I see one that's

come in about teaching in primary school. But let me tell you about the latest report that we said we wanted to bring to your attention. Just out it's with regarding the prison service. Voice messages left on a crisis hotline ignored for six weeks. More self-harm incidents than any other women's prison. Violence high and a regime that's uncaring and punitive.

These are the findings of an inspectorate report just out and that we've seen first into Foston Hall, a women's prison in Derbyshire. Four other women's prisons in England have been inspected too. And across the board, self-harm has increased in women's prisons during the pandemic much more than in men's. Well, Sandra Fieldhouse leads on women's prisons for Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons.

And just before I talk to Sandra, I should say that we did invite the Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, onto the programme and the Prisons Minister, Victoria Atkins. They did not take up the offer. Sandra, good morning. Morning, Emma. Thank you for joining us. Your report uses the word poor to describe Foster Hall.

It's the worst description you have on your scale, also described as a rare and unexpected finding. What's happened? Well, just to explain the judgment of poor, Emma, we have a four-point scale, poor being at the bottom and good being at the top. This is the first time in my experience of being at the prison's inspectorate that we've actually given a judgment of poor at a woman's prison and poor around the health and prison test of safety, which is extremely unusual. As I say, it's the first time I've actually known it happen, Emma. And what was the reason for it?

In terms of the safety test, we cover a lot of areas from arrival into custody through to violence, self-harm, security, use of force, segregation. And if I just talk you through some of the headlines around the Fosden Hall inspection, it'll give you a sense of why there was overwhelming evidence that the judgment had to be poor. So in terms of women arriving at Fosden Hall, there was a real lack of attention given to assessing their vulnerabilities, the lack of attention to actually identifying some very clear risk factors that women were arriving with. This was despite the prison being told by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman following a stealth-inflicted death in 2019 that they needed to improve. So one of our inspectors saw an example of a woman coming into prison

who had clear risk factors and the prison just simply didn't address them. There's also, in our survey, which we do the week before our inspection week, a third of women said they currently felt unsafe, which is high in my experience of the women's prisons. The women's prison I was in last week, it was about 16% of women who felt unsafe. Unsafe to themselves? Unsafe from a number of things. It could be to themselves, but it could be from other prisoners or it could be from drug use or it could be from um mental health problems so a whole range of safety issues there

emma you mentioned foston hall had the highest rate of violence it also had the highest rate of use of force by staff against women the highest rate of all the 12 women's prisons in England and the use of segregation for quite unwell women had almost become the norm. But it was actually in terms of self-harm that really worried us the most. And I'll just go through some examples of the evidence we found in this respect. What we do know, and you said at the beginning, self-harm for women in prisons is much higher than for men in prison. And in fact, last year, in some months, it was seven times higher than men in prison. So the number of women resorting to self-harm, particularly during the pandemic, when they were locked in cells for maybe 22, 23 hours a day, the number of women resorting to self-harm was huge. Foster Hall actually had 1,750 incidents of self-harm over a year

for a population of just under 300 women. So there was a lot of women contributing self-harm incidents. And a small number of women actually contributed 66% of those. So you've got a lot of women self-harming, but about 10 women who were contributing 66%. Some women self-harming on a daily basis, Emma. And in our survey... Yes, no, no, go on, finish that point.

I then wanted to ask about something else. Carry on. Yeah, in our survey, almost two-thirds of women at Fuston Hall said they'd thought about harming themselves, but only a third felt well cared for. something else carry on yeah in our survey uh almost two-thirds of women at fuston hall said they'd thought about harming themselves but only a third felt well cared for so that's the context of the self-harm findings and i could go on and i'll go on and give you six or seven different examples well i was just going to say what i don't understand i mean i did ask and we have asked the you know number 10 we've asked directly the department of justice to put up a minister to talk about this but i'm looking at the statement that's been provided in lieu of actually having someone to talk to.

The issues, this is what they say in their statement, the Ministry of Justice, the issues highlighted by the inspection at HMP Foster Hall are not acceptable. We've put more in place, more senior staff and created a new safety team to address them rapidly. Across the wider women's prison estate, our staff have worked hard to ensure women receive extra support to deal with mental health issues during the pandemic. And we're starting to see a decrease in the number of self-harm incidents. Does that tally with what you've seen? Self-harm incidents are reducing as the prisoners come out of the pandemic.

So as women are able to get out of their cells for more than for more than an hour a day where where they're able to take part in education skills and work where they're able to get support from their peers or even just get staff to deal with some basic requests so there is a downward trend in self-harm incidents but we're talking about a level of self-harm that's seven times out of men so there's a lot of downward trending needs needing to happen before we can actually say it's been successful and and about hmp foston hall putting place more senior staff created a new safety team to address them rapidly you were already saying as an inspectorate that stuff wasn't how it should be there and then you've gone back in and it's worse so what's your reading of of what needs to change there or how it can change?

Just to correct that slightly, the inspection that we undertook in 2019, overall outcomes were reasonably good at Fosden Hall. So there's been a downward trend from 2019 to the autumn of 2021. That's what I mean. I mean, you know, things can always improve and there were areas to improve, but it's got worse. So, you know, with the government saying here, you know, we've put in place more senior staff and created a new safety team to address them rapidly. Is that going to solve what you've seen?

We'll have to see that when we go back in, Emma, and it might be one of the places that we visit sooner rather than later. But it's not for me to comment on what the ministers decided to do. But what we do know at Fosden Hall was that staff shortages were really acute. There was not enough staff to deliver a regime on a weekend, for example. So a lot of the women experienced a weekend of not getting out of their cell at all. So that has to improve. That you would think so, yes. And of course, just to mention, two women have taken their own lives in two years in Foston Hall.

You've mentioned about self-harm being at an all time high. There's also voice messages left on this crisis hotline. And, you know, our listeners will be aware of the echoes this has of the woman whose baby died in a cell in HMP Bronzeville. She also called for help. This idea of you being in a cell and calling for help and no help coming, you know, regardless of situation is something we're hearing about. Is it staff shortages? What do you put this down to? Because what was very striking when we've spoken about that particular story before is no heads seem to roll, you know, in terms of, yes, people can be disciplined, but there might not be enough staff. But we're

also seeing the same staff carry on. It's certainly unacceptable if a woman rings a cell bell that she doesn't get an immediate response. And one of the things we did include in our report at Foston Hall were delays in staff responding to cell bells and so when you talk about the echoes to the to the death of the baby at Bronzefield I can certainly say that the answering of cell bells definitely needs to improve and I don't know whether that's staff shortages or staff just not being effective and taking seriously when somebody rings a cell bell. It's the only way that when a woman is locked in her cell, it's the only way that she can alert somebody to a crisis or to ill health.

What do you think needs to change? Increased staff? What else? It's not necessarily increasing the staff, Emma. It's about making sure that the staff are actually implementing what they need to do to look after women. So, for example, at Foston Hall, we know, as I said, that a small number of women contributed a lot of the self-harm incidents and were self-harming almost on a daily basis. What we found is that staff hadn't developed care plans for those women, so they didn't even have a framework

within which to try and assess what was causing her self-harm or then take steps to address it why not why why not is that not included as part of what you have to ensure there is a governor for instance it's certainly part of the um process for managing women who are at risk of self-harm and it's certainly something that we always look for. But why has it not been done? The care plans just weren't in place at that time when we inspected. What can you do as the Inspectorate of Prisons? Do you have any teeth as an organisation? We do. We report directly to the Secretary of State.

We make sure that our findings are really robust and solid. We can revisit the prison quicker than we normally would do. Can you recommend a governor or individuals are fired or any recommendations like that? That's not for the Chief Inspector Emma but that certainly is something that the Minister and others can consider but certainly that's out of the scope for the chief inspector. And then going back, I recognise your role. I'm not going to ask you to go beyond that. But in terms of what you've contributed here,

but in terms of your kind of professional experience here and your sort of personal response, you know, the two will be interlinked. What was your feeling? What was your response having seen Foster hall what you saw there we made um a key concern and recommendation to hmpps to make sure that foster hall has enough operational staff on the ground to deliver exactly what they should be doing to keep women safe some of the other things that they'd let lapse during uh during the, Emma, there'd be no active listeners imposed for two years. Those are women who are trained by Samaritans to actually care for women who are in crisis.

So they had not been active for almost two years. And what we do know is that women at Foster Hall were making over 1,000 calls a month to Samaritans Helpline. Now, that's them crying out for help and using the Samaritans Helpline. Now that's them crying out for help and using the Samaritan's Helpline as their only way of talking to somebody when they're locked in cell for most of the day. You mentioned the crisis hotline. I'll just expand on that a little bit for you. So the crisis hotline is meant to be a telephone number that as a family member, I can phone

and I can talk to somebody about the concerns I have about a woman in prison. It might be my daughter, my sister, could be anybody that I'm in contact with. And what we found with the crisis hotline is that they have a voice recording system. So when a staff member is not available to answer the call, it will go through to a voice recording system one of our inspectors actually formed the um the hotline and left a message uh asking somebody to get back to him isn't inspector can somebody get back to him yeah waited a day and nobody got back to him he then found where the telephone was and they asked the staff to download uh the voicemail messages that are on there and what they actually what he actually found was that the staff on duty that day

didn't know how to access the voicemail messages to download them. It took them about a day to provide us with maybe seven or eight voicemail messages that had not been listened to. And in fact, one of those voicemail messages was somebody asking the prison to call them back. Do you think we should have prisons that are of this standard in this country? Outcomes for women and men in prison need to be of a good standard. They need to be safe. They need to be respectful.

They need to include prisoners in some meaningful education skills and work. And importantly, they need to provide really effective resettlement what we do know um in some of the women's prisons is that the proportion of women going out homeless or going out to accommodation that's not sustainable i.e short-term temporary in the prison i was in last 65% of sentenced women went out of prison without sustainable accommodation to go to. And that's not going to be successful resettlement. Sandra Fieldhouse, thank you for sharing your findings with us. Leeds on Women's Prisons for Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons.

I sincerely hope we can bring you an interview with the Justice Secretary and or the Prisons Minister, Victoria Atkins, as we continue to follow what's going on in women's prisons and across the prison estate. Let me ask you a completely different question. And of course, I mean, art is a part of what some prisoners do get access to in regular times when they're also on the road to trying to rebuild lives. Are you an art enthusiast? Maybe you create your own paintings or fill your home with artworks you've picked up on your travels. But have you thought about buying crypto or NFT art? NFTs are essentially one of a kind assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of

property, but have no tangible form of their own. Well, the crypto art marketplace has taken off over the past couple of years with some pieces raking in millions. But it is nearly as male dominated as traditional auction sales. For some female artists, though, it has been life changing. And that's especially the case for the Scottish artist, Anna Louise Simpson, who's joining me this morning. And I'm also going to be talking to Mikol App, who runs Vertical Crypto Art, a media hub and studio dedicated to NFT art. Mikol, I'll come to you shortly. But first, Anna Louise, good morning. Good morning, Emma.

Thank you so much for joining us. You were a traditional artist and then something changed when you sold your first piece of crypto art. Tell us more. Yeah, so I was making traditional collage art, analogue art, and like a lot of artists, kind of struggling to sell, selling online and in galleries and then i started to find out about this amazing technology called the blockchain and so when i discovered

that i could upload my um collages and and digital art onto the blockchain and eventually i made my first sale um which was the the huge amount of 41 dollars um But I still was very, very excited at that first sale. I remember jumping around the room and telling the children because I knew that if you could get one sale, you could get 100 sales and so on. So that one sale was everything. Has it gone up a bit since then? Have you done more?

It's gone up a little. It's gone up a little. But in the early days, i had a young family to support so i tokenized which is a phrase for when you put the artwork up on the blockchain i tokenize a lot of artworks because you know i i didn't have the the ability to wait for you know a very big sale and and selling one a month i i had to sell quite a lot of artwork just to get by in the early days. And that's interesting as well, perhaps, to pause on about women's lives and what they're doing alongside sometimes their art and how this could be beneficial if they haven't thought about it.

Absolutely. So, you know, I work from home still and I'm able to put it around my children's schooling. I'm there a full time mum still for them, you know, making art in the wee hours of the morning at the computer. So I'm now making a good living from it and, you know, saving up for my children's future. And I think the financial independence is an amazing thing that a lot of women and mothers should be looking at if they're creative. Definitely. From the consumer's point of view, why would you want to spend, you know, hundreds, thousands, whatever it is on one of your collages when you can't hang it up to show it off in quite the same way?

Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. I think it's quite a big shift from, you know, having an oil painting on the wall and having people come round. And if you've invested in that and have a look at it, to actually having it in your wallet and being able to kind of say, I own that piece. But, you know, it's quite a paradigm shift. And apart from the return on investment, you know, all the artworks are doing well and going up in value. A lot of collectors really like to kind of show off that they own this piece or that piece. You know, they sometimes put it as an avatar on their Twitter and so on. So it's a kind of shift, I think, in the way that we view art. It definitely is.

Mikko, what would you say to those who aren't perhaps convinced because they're not quite living their lives online in that way? What do I say about NFTs? How to convince them? Well, no, but for those who perhaps don't think this is the way they would like to buy art. Well, obviously, there is a new form of buying, which is digital ownership. And that's what NFTs are about. So it's not only about showing off what you have in the physical realm and space, but it's actually showing off what you have in a digital wallet. And we have to also consider that a lot of these, let's say, also new collectors come from younger generations and younger

generations are all about digital. We're all online. That's how we live our lives primarily. So this is something that's actually very native to the younger generation. And it feels much more native than actually having a painting on a wall. How many women or what percentage of women are you seeing be involved in the crypto arts sphere? Actually, it's funny because when I get asked this question, there's so many women that are involved in the crypto art space. Actually, the pioneers of this very movement back as Missile and many others back in 2017, when most people didn't even know what NFTs were or blockchain was, are women. And so it's only a matter of narrative, really, rather than actually women not being in the space because they are.

It's just how the story gets told sometimes. Well, it's also because it's a concern in, if you like, the analogue world of art, if I can call it that, that women are underrepresented, especially at traditional things like auctions. Definitely. I mean, for sure, there's something to say. And this is kind of a discussion that, let's say, in this space, we've had quite a lot, which is the difference of sales coming from women artists and the male counterparts. And that's, you know, we can see that.

It is true. There is a difference. And it's something that a lot of different collectives, such as Women of Crypto Arts and many others, try to, let's say, start a discourse around and make sure that this is talked about at least. And is there anything you wanted to say to convince those women artists who might not be convinced of doing this yet? I think it's a unique opportunity for anyone really, especially in the creative field, to become self-sovereign of the content that you produce and own the content that you create.

And so I think as women, sometimes we tend to shy away from aspects of investment, cryptocurrency. There's almost like a scare that you can't approach it. But actually, the first steps are not that hard. So I would encourage people to educate themselves, for sure, about what cryptocurrency is and how to approach the NFT space, first and foremost, and then take the leap

because the innovation, the technological innovation is definitely not going away. So it's good to be on there and get educated about what's happening. Mikolaj, thank you very much. He runs Vertical Crypto Art. And Anna Louise Simpson there, who did take the leap some time ago and doesn't sound like she's looked back. Talking about taking a leap and some of your more embarrassing moments, which are still coming in. Thank you so much for these. After Anne-Marie at the Brit Awards last night

stacked it, fell over on a step in her first bars of her song and then got straight back up without missing a beat. Have you styled out an embarrassing moment? A message here. I went to hear David Miliband speak at a rally during the Labour leadership election in 2010. I had my six-month-old baby girl with me and as he walked into the hall,

he leaned in to kiss the baby in a classic politician pose. Remember those days when you could do that? Pre-pandemic, of course, and also a slightly different life as well in a different age. However, I thought no idea why he was going to kiss me. We'd never met and lunged, which ended with me kissing his ear. I can feel it now. Another one here. There's so many. I've been to a gig with a group of friends. We caught the train home. Outside the station, we had to go over a bridge to get to the road.

And I tripped up on the steps. I was so embarrassed in front of this boy I really fancied. So I pretended I'd fainted. And as I lay on the steps, supposedly in a faint, I could hear him say, oh, no, is she OK? And he picked me up in his arms. And I was so and he was so concerned. And I nearly swooned again. It was wonderful. I then had to pretend to come round. And he still had his arms and I was so, and he was so concerned and I nearly swooned again. It was wonderful. I then had to pretend to come round and he still had his arms around me. It was lovely,

says Pauline in words to Bob. I mean, you definitely styled that out. It's now a lovely memory for you. Jacqueline, good morning to you. Hello, Emma. Many years ago, one rush hour morning, I was standing behind a very wriggly woman on a crowded escalator at Tower Hill Station, London. She seemed to be struggling with something. And as we reached the top, I noticed her knickers dropped to the floor. She elegantly stepped out of them in her stilettos, kicked them to one side and into a corner. I guess the elastic had gone and I doubt that anyone else saw.

I wanted to congratulate her on such a brilliant manoeuvre, but she was gone in the crowd. That is slick. Well done her. And one more, if I can fit this in. Hello, my name is Jane. I was working as an agency staff nurse on a maternity unit on night duty with no one I had ever met before. It was a good shift, but I had a painful tummy, painful stomach all night as I was nervous. In the morning, I went into the office to give my report to the matron and the maternity unit day staff in the cramped office. I was so anxious but relieved, which led me to squeezing through to a chair, falling off it and letting out the most enormous fart. It was horrendous. Not one person laughed or helped or opened the window, written in capital letters.

I then had to give my report. I still blush when thinking of it and never went back or was not asked. That was 30 years ago. I hope the sisterhood would be more understanding now. Think of this admission now as my therapy. You are absolved, Jane. Thank you so much for sharing it on Women's Hour. I say all life is here and I'm open to all messages. And I think that proves the point. I would have laughed. I would have made a comment. I would have made you feel better. I hope we can do that this morning. Keep your messages coming in about those moments that you still relive. And perhaps you might be able to put them to bed with us here on Woman's Hour. Now, we are coming up to 11 o'clock, just an hour shy of Prime Minister's questions.

At noon, the Prime Minister will make his first House of Commons appearance since Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, was confronted by a mob near Parliament. In that mob, of course, people were hearing him being called a pedo defender because in last week's Prime Minister's Questions, Boris Johnson claimed that the Labour leader, while Director of Public Prosecutions, failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile for sexual assault, a claim that is false but was seized upon those who surrounded

the Labour leader on Monday evening. Boris Johnson has been urged to withdraw his comments when he's at the dispatch box. But we reached out to one of Jimmy Saville's victims who's been on Woman's Hour before. Her name is Dee Coles. She told us how outraged she was, how upsetting this is, how triggering this is for this to be in the news like this and how upset she is. And she gave us permission to read out the email that she sent to us, which I wanted to share with you. So this is from Dee Coles, one of Jimmy Savile's victims. She says, it's like having survived a terrible car crash only to have the prime minister and some renter mob drive straight at you in a car that appears to have no brakes. PTSD is so often what we survivors of violent sexual abuse live with. I've no doubt that others like myself will be

struggling with painful flashbacks caused by a cheap throwaway line. In my opinion, an apology at this stage would hold no merit. Boris Johnson needs to hang his head in shame and walk away. With me now, Maggie Oliver, who was a detective with the Greater Manchester Police. You may remember she worked with the girls who had been abused in Rochdale and she now runs the Maggie Oliver Foundation, which helps victims and survivors of sexual abuse, both children and adults. Maggie, first of all, good morning. I wanted to start by asking you to respond actually to what you've just heard from Dee Coles. Good morning, Emma. I think what Dee says there has absolutely hit the nail on the head.

But what it really shows, Emma, is the lifelong consequences of sexual abuse. You know, Jimmy Savile has been dead many years now. The abuse happened many years before that. And yet just one throw away line has such a monumental effect on Dee. And that is really typical of the lifelong consequences of sexual abuse on all survivors of rape and child abuse. You know, it never goes away. And the very smallest comment can actually take somebody, a victim or a survivor, right back into the worst time of their lives. I think with Dee, this will be exacerbated by the fact that she will never get closure

in relation to her abuse by Jimmy Savile. I don't know whether she reported her abuse to the police at the time, but there will be a real sense of injustice really ingrained deep in her soul, really. She'll feel helpless, she'll feel hopeless, and she can open the paper or turn the news on any day of the week and be reminded of what happened to her and you know what I find what we find in the in the foundation is that there is very very little help out there for survivors of this most horrific abuse. You know, Dee says that she still suffers from complex PTSD and that is a very common consequence of abuse. But to access the really specialised therapeutic help that a victim needs in order to begin to move forward is virtually impossible, Emma.

I think what's something to pause upon, and we're not the first to say it, but it's still quite a rare focus on this particular story, is a lot is focused on whether what he said was true or not. The resignations that followed of some of his key aides, one of whom in particular, Munira Mirza, one of the strategists that's been with Boris Johnson for years and years and years, wouldn't and couldn't tolerate this, said it went beyond the cut and thrust of politics. But it's focused on what was said, but not who may hear it and how it may impact them. And, you know, there are victims and survivors at the heart of this particular story. And I wondered if you thought, especially, you know, since Rotherham, if we've got any more nuance as a society in remembering that.

I find it really depressing that such an important factor of abuse is squashed into insignificance by the mainstream, mostly coverage of this particular comment, focuses on the inappropriateness of the comment of the Prime Minister. Until I came on your programme today, I haven't heard anybody highlight the effect that that has on all the victims of Jimmy Savile. It's a bit like, you know, the grooming gangs, which I'm known for. We don't talk about the consequences for each individual victim, but they are the ones that are suffering every single day.

And I think that we should be focusing on the victims. We should be focusing on how we can help them. And, you know, in a week when we've had a lot of focus on the NHS and the long waiting lists, and I can tell you from the foundation that help for victims of sexual abuse is virtually non-existent. We provide support on our,

we provide long-term support through our phone service. But we have victims that are trying to get medical help from an experienced psychotherapist who is trained in complex PTSD on how to help victims overcome their abuse but to access that kind of help is virtually impossible. Often victims can't even get an appointment for basic CBT. We intervene when we can and actually in every single case where we have got involved,

we've managed to get a victim further help. But really that shouldn't be necessary. I would go so far as to say, Emma, that victims and survivors like Dee will never recover without professional help. You know, they will be triggered by comments like this. They'll have flashbacks. They will be reminded of the worst times of their life. And yet they are expected to just get on with it and, you know, carry on regardless. And that just doesn't happen. Do you see an influx of people getting in touch when there is a moment like this in public life or in the media?

Yeah, we do. I mean, in the past year alone now, we've helped over 2,796 victims. And when there is a case like this, we do get an influx of people who they feel safe coming to the foundation because we don't judge we listen you know all our ambassadors um 60 of them i think it's over 60 now are survivors themselves so they understand the importance of listening of being supportive of not judging um and allowing a survivor a safe place to talk about what has happened to them. That is really very lacking in our country. And there is some brilliant charities out there that help. But I think we're different in that we offer continuing support with the same volunteer who will hold their hand as they begin to recover.

And we then have put some of our survivors through long-term group therapy. What would you say? Sorry, I was just going to say, Maggie, I think the line slightly dropped, so we missed a tiny part of that, but definitely understood the gist of what you were saying and important it is too. Here's a head of prime minister's questions. What would you say to the prime minister if he could hear your experience of trying to help these individuals? I would like to see not only the prime minister, but politicians and police officers and the CPS become more trauma informed to try and understand what a

victim goes through, how they need justice, how they need to be heard, how they need to not be judged, that we need a system that protects the vulnerable but also prosecutes the offenders. And sadly, Jimmy Savile escaped prosecution for many, many years when it was widely known that he was abusing children. I would say that is still going on today and we need a radical overhaul of many of our public services. Maggie Oliver, former detective with the Greater Manchester Police, now in charge of the Maggie Oliver Foundation,

which helps victims and survivors of sexual abuse. Thank you. So many messages have come in today. As always, you don't disappoint. of the Maggie Oliver Foundation, which helps victims and survivors of sexual abuse. Thank you. So many messages have come in today. As always, you don't disappoint. One in particular in response to my interview with Sandra Fieldhouse from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, talking about the state of women's prisons.

A message here says, thank you for that strong interview about the shameful state of women's prisons. Good to hear the clear care and concern in the voice of your interviewee. She definitely made me feel she would not be letting this drop. All strength and support to her.

Please can you and Women's Hour follow up. Many thanks. And this is signed from CK as a grateful listener. Yes, we will follow up on it. We will continue with that story. I also very much hope to speak to governors and of course to the minister, Dominic Raab, who has said before that he would very much welcome coming on to Women's Hour.

But I have yet personally in my time here to make that happen while he's certainly been in that position. So, yes, we will keep going with it, CK. Thank you. Talking about keeping going with it, so many messages about your moments. I'm reliving them with you and for you of when you have been embarrassed publicly or somewhere with other people. And what you've done afterwards afterwards maybe to style it out. Bex says I was going for my second ever bikini wax and having been very tense the first time around I was determined to be more relaxed. The lady left me in the room to get ready so I took a deep breath and I started getting undressed as you do. I was trying not to think too much about it and just zoned out. A few minutes later,

the woman came back in and her mouth dropped open. She looked horrified. She said, I'm not being funny, babe, but why have you taken your bra off? I suddenly realised I was standing there stark naked. I'd actually left my socks on, which is worse somehow, for a bikini wax. I never put a t-shirt on faster in my life. Soized I never went back Bex thank you for sharing the trauma we're incredibly grateful to so many of you getting in touch this morning and doing what I did right at the start of the program with my story about putting my whole hand in someone's mouth in fact my husband's boss at the time if we share perhaps we feel a little bit better and many of you saying how you feel Marion Keys did that as well this morning. Back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your

time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, I'm Jon Ronson. And I want to tell you about a new podcast I've made for BBC Radio 4. It's called Things Fell Apart. If you've ever yelled at someone on social media about, say, cancel culture or mask wearing, then you are a soldier in the culture wars. Those everyday battles for dominance between conflicting values. I was curious to learn how things fell apart. And so I decided to go back in history and find the origin stories. There was this ping and there was a bullet flying around the house.

I had no idea, but I've uncovered some extraordinary people and the strangest, most consequential tales. Subscribe now to Things Fell Apart on BBC Sounds. 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.