Woman's Hour - Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Emetophobia, a Perfect Winter Salad

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, famous for Fleabag and Killing Eve, is on the programme.We hear why the fear of being sick or hearing others be sick affects more women than men. It's called emetophobia and someone who suffers from it explains what it's like. Professor David Veale, a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, joins us too. Islamic faith marriages aren’t valid under English law according to a recent Court of Appeal ruling. Now campaigners are worried that thousands of Muslim women have no rights if they divorce. We hear from Somiya who had to persuade her husband to marry her officially and Pragna Patel from Southall Black Sisters. An all-female team of investigative journalists from the 50-50 team at Open Democracy carried out an investigation into crisis pregnancy centres in 18 countries. Nandini Archer, the assistant editor, tells what they found out. We cook the perfect winter salad of red leaves, mackeral and orange with the food writer Catherine Phipps.And Tilda Offen, Harriet Adams and Ellie Welling, friends of 17 year old Ellie Gould who was murdered last year, tell us why they want self-defence classes to be part of the national curriculum. Presented by: Jane Garvey Produced by: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Siobhann Tighe

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, good afternoon and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. This week you can hear from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, that's coming up next, but also on the programme, faith marriages are not valid under English law and that recent decision could affect thousands of Muslim women in the event of a breakup. We'll also explore what it's like to live with emetophobia, or the fear of vomit and vomiting. I wouldn't go out and eat at restaurants.

I would avoid going on the tube. If I had to, I'd be bathing myself in hand sanitiser. My hands would be red raw from hand washing. And if I saw vomit or if I felt sick myself, I would have horrific panic attacks. More about emetophobia a little later. You'll also hear from three very impressive young women, friends of the murdered sixth former Ellie Gould. They'll explain why they're calling for self-defence classes to be part of the national curriculum. We'll also discuss the findings of a team of

investigative journalists about crisis pregnancy centres in 18 different countries. They find out they were not the neutral places they purported to be. In Spain, for instance, a reporter was given material that said if she was to have an abortion she could be 144% more likely to abuse her future children for instance. More about that issue on Weekend Woman's Hour this week and there's also some cooking as well. A really nice description of a perfect winter salad coming up on this programme. First to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a name you'll definitely know, of course. Fleabag, Killing Eve, huge television hits. She's also writing, as you might know, the new James Bond film. And she's got three Emmys, two Golden Globes to her name. And now a book of Fleabag scripts is out. It's called

The Scriptures. She talked to Jenny this week about the exploration of friendship in Fleabag and her relationship with her friend, Vicky Jones. I think friendships are the greatest romances of our lives. I think, and Vicky and I always would joke that our boyfriends were our mistresses to our marriage and our love story, which doesn't go down so well with the boyfriends, I've got to say.

But they are, I think they're so profound and complex that actually just seeing kind of like giggly girl gang kind of portrayals is something we've become used to, that girls are sort of cliquey or they're just sort of like that gossipy thing. But what runs deeper, I think female relationships have such depth because they begin from a place. I think women, I don't want to generalise, but we learn to talk to each other from such an early time in our lives. And we can skip the bullshit. I don't know if I could say bullshit.

You just did. Yeah, I just did. But I find there's a quick way to sort of skip it. And that was the thing when I met Vicky. And we can say that we love each other. And it's an easier thing for us to say. And I just, I mean, within a week, I was like, I think I love you. And then Jenny, who is working with me now and has been developing the series of,

the second series of Fleabag and then with Killing Eve as well, it's the same thing. I picked up the phone to her to start working together and I heard her voice and it was love at first voice again. I fell in love again. There is an encounter in series two with Christine Scott Thomas' character where Fleabag says, well, she's not strictly a lesbian and then she moves to kiss her. Villanelle in Killing Eve pursues sexual relationships equally, it seems to

me, with men and women. Why are you never keen to really define a character's sexuality? Because I think people, I think the most interesting characters have an element of surprise about them and whether that's that they're surprising themselves or they're surprising the audience or they're surprising somebody else in the room. And I think that's really how I like to approach my life. And I think the moment you define yourself or define somebody else, you're limiting yourself. People are all we've got. So grab the night by its nipples and go and flirt with someone. No, that's not what I meant.

Oh, I wish you were my type. You know, take this tart back to my party and go and find someone to actually do that with. I want to do it with you. No. Why not? Honestly? Yeah. Can't to do it with you. No. Why not? Honestly?

Yeah. Can't be arsed, darling. And I think the characters that I've been writing that have that, they are open to, they're actually desperate to be surprised by themselves and by the world and by other things, and they are open. And also I just think now we're living in a time where, you know, it's starting to be part of the conversation where people are saying that, you know, you can be fluid and I don't want to define myself.

And I just think that's a really wonderful thing that's starting to happen and my characters are basking in it. There seems to me to be a degree of shame about feminism in the Fleabag stories. Why the worry that she wouldn't be such a feminist if she had bigger tit? I mean, I don't know how to describe that. That to me was just, it was a joke that has been around on my post-it wall for a really long time that just felt truthful. And without sort of unpacking it, I guess,

there was just a little bit of magic in that joke for me that just felt like, oh, there was just something honest in it and something funny and wry. And then just put that on the wall and put it away. I actually wrote that so long ago. I think it was even crashing my first series. I tried to get it into crashing, tried to get it into the first series of Fleabag. Sometimes it was in a man's mouth, sometimes it was in a woman's mouth. But it never really fit, which made me think maybe it's just not, maybe it just doesn't quite, I don't know, fit anywhere. But

with Fleabag, her relationship with feminism is so complex because she's vulnerable with it she doesn't understand the rules of it she knows in her bones that it's the thing that she wants to be and she wants to identify as a feminist but she feels like she's letting feminism down all the time and in that scene she's embarrassed by it because it's a it's a secret even she didn't know about herself. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, what am I going to say? What am I going to say? I sometimes worry that I wouldn't be such a feminist if I had bigger tits. Most of the turns to the camera is when she tells us what she really thinks.

And that one she surprised herself, and it's a dirty secret that actually she wishes she was more perfect and that feels like it was an attack on feminism itself. And what's Phoebe's relationship with feminism as opposed to Fleabag's? Well, very similar. And particularly when I wrote the play, I felt the same thing, which is that scene in the first series when somebody asked them if they would trade

five years of their life for the perfect body. I would have been the girl with the hand up. I'd have been like, hell yes. And then thinking that was honest and thinking that's empowering because it's honest and yet feeling at the same time that it's letting the side down and not really knowing what the rules were.

But then caring so deeply about women and equality and the basic principles of feminism and then being slightly frightened by the nuances and that there are traps out there. And I still feel like that. I still get, even when I start being asked by it, I still a little bit, my heart starts beating a little bit faster because I know that there are minds that you can step on. And I think I'll probably always have that. You often seem to be inviting the audience to cheer on occasions like there's that thing about women's hair and I wonder what confidence you gained from realising that the audience on the whole was coming with you. But when I realised people are responding to particular bits, like the hair speech, you mean?

Yeah. Oh my God, it's the best feeling in the world. I think because it's such a small, when things start like a small idea, like the fact that the hair speech got picked up and that people were relating to it. You know, I sometimes have these ideas and you think it's like I'll have a conversation with my sister and I'll just say why is just all why is hair so stressful why is hair why why is it so stressful and why does it feel like it's everything and then

we have such a relief talking to each other about it a sense of relief um and then that sort of goes away but then a kernel of it stays in the back of my mind and then I think oh I'll just write a little bit about that just as a nod to that conversation I had with her or just because it feels a little bit true. And those are always the ones that surprise you and blow up because they're these little truisms. And I think I think when that happens, that's when I just feel a little bit less alone in the world because I'm like, you too? Oh, thank God. That is exactly what she asked for. No, it's not. We want compensation. Claire?

I've got two important meetings and I look like a pencil. No, don't blame me for your bad choices. Hair isn't everything. Wow. What? Hair is everything. We wish it wasn't so we could actually think about something else occasionally, but it is. It's the difference between a good day and a bad day. We're meant to think that it's a

symbol of power, that it's a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your bills. Hair is everything, Antony. People have often said you have written every woman in Fleabag. She, like you, comes from a rather privileged background. And I wondered how concerned you were that audiences might look at her and think, what's she got to worry about with a millionaire sister? Yeah, I mean, it was a concern and wasn't a concern because that was her circumstances. Her circumstances, I had decided that that was going to be her life. And there a moment when she says to the therapist in the second season, she goes, I don't need help. I have a nice life. I just want, just tell me how not to do this one bad thing. And I think that's part of her anxiety is, I can't complain.

I'm not complaining. I'm fighting. I'm telling you I'm fine all the time. And then you slowly see that inside she's crumbling with her own, you know, with her own issues and her own self-loathing. It was really important to me that she didn't complain about her lifestyle and that she wasn't complaining about not having money. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, just part of that conversation with Jenny. If you want to hear the whole thing, you can hear it, of course, on BBC Sounds now. That was Friday, February the 21st edition of Woman's Hour. You can also read

highlights in our article, Nine Things We Learned from Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the Woman's Hour website. Now, do you have this, well, I was going to say obscure phobia, but it's not that obscure as we discovered. And indeed, I had it to a degree myself earlier on in my life. It is emetophobia, the fear of vomit or vomiting. It's relatively common, as I say, but it is under-researched and it mostly affects women. Lucy Burton has it. She also has two young children. They are three and a half and about 14 months old. And we also talked to Professor David Veal, who's a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital. It's predominantly a fear of vomiting of yourself. Occasionally it's about other people vomiting,

but then it's usually because they're contagious and they'll pass on the vomiting to you. Oh, I see. So it's rooted in a fear of infection. Mainly. Partly. OK. Lucy, tell me about your own experience of it. Well, as a small child, I never liked it when other people vomited. I mean, who does? But I would go and hide in another part of the house if my little brother was being ill. But I don't think that I realised that it was a problem until my early 20s when I really started to change what I was doing in my daily routine to avoid being ill or avoid seeing vomit. So I wouldn't go out and eat at restaurants. I would avoid going on

the tube. If I had to, I'd be bathing myself in hand sanitizer after, which I still think is no bad idea. You know, my hands would be red raw from hand washing. And if I saw vomit or if I felt sick myself, I would have horrific panic attacks and felt completely stupid because of this. Because who has this? It's not something that's going to kill me. And people have to deal with far worse things in their lives. So I felt very silly. And then it abated for a bit. And then I had two children.

And as we know, children are little germ factories. And this fear raised its ugly head again. Who had you told about your fear? No one. My mother, my father, my husband, and now you and everyone listening. So no one. But the people you did tell, did they laugh or did they understand? I think they were very understanding but perhaps slightly baffled

and would be very supportive. But you say, well, it's nothing to worry about. But for me, it was something to worry about. Because it was really impacting on how you lived your life. It was impacting on how I lived my life. I mean, I think I'm quite lucky. I probably have the milder end of it. There are people, and if you go on online forums, who have it so bad, you know, women that considered terminating pregnancies because they didn't want to deal with morning sickness or children's bugs. I was reading this morning about a lady that had stage 3 breast cancer and didn't want to have chemo because she was so worried about the nausea.

And people even say they want to kill themselves when they have this. I mean, it's so serious and no one talks about it. David, how many people have you treated with it? Well, I've certainly assessed at least a few hundred. And it's the same pattern over and over again. So it is about 90% sufferers who are women. And we don't know why, because there may be some sort of genetic component, or it may be that women are just more focused on preventing illness and contamination. And men tend to have a more jokey attitude towards vomiting.

So at the extreme end, as Lucy points out, it really is something that is ridiculously impactful on somebody's life. Definitely, because individuals may be avoiding a wide range of situations or activities, but it may also be a reason for seeking help. So, for example, when women do want to have children or get pregnant, or when they get children, as Lucy said, that's maybe the main reason or motivation for getting help because when they have had children

they may be escaping and the child vomits, they may be escaping from the situation or getting a relative to help them and so on. Sometimes it overlaps with things like obsessive compulsive disorder where there's lots of checking and need for certainty and constant hand washing and so on.

So it's still trying to understand how best to help it is the key issue. How best can it be helped? I'm going to just, from my own experience, I remember years and years ago when I was on a local radio station, I interviewed a psychologist who told me that one of the ways of treating this was to make fake vomit and actually use, I don't know, sour milk, flour, the inevitable vegetables, we all know the one I'm thinking of. And it sounds ridiculous, but you just sort of stir it

and perhaps put your hands in it and just get over the whole thing. Yes, but it's very difficult, of course, because the key issue is vomiting. Rather than the vomit itself. Rather than the vomit itself. Well, doesn't it depend on the individual? It does, but I'm just saying it's not like facing up to, say, a fear of spiders or blood or something where you can touch the spider eventually and so on. Because you can't repeatedly vomit as such. It wouldn't be ethical or helpful necessarily.

But you can certainly face up to those situations or activities that you're avoiding and without all those little checking behaviours and trying to control yourself and all the things to do, monitoring everybody all the time. And you may well be role-playing vomiting, pretending to play it, because you've got to really practise in terms of preparing yourself to vomit at some stage in the future and giving up this need for control. Is that at the heart of it then? Yes, because a lot of vomit phobics fear losing control. I see. Does that ring the heart of it then? Yes, because the main, a lot of phobic phobics fear losing control. I see. Does that ring true for you, Lucy? Certainly elements of it definitely do. I

think for me, having tried to cure myself over the last few weeks and months, I think what I've come to realise that for me, I'm not so scared of the vomit itself or vomiting, but the worry about the emotions. I'm almost scared of being scared of it, if that makes sense. It does to me. Go on, David. Yeah, no, that sounds absolutely right. But I was just saying that often it's not so much the pictures of vomit or vomit itself, it's more to do with the sound, perhaps, or the smell of vomit. And, you know, so certainly sometimes we've been experimenting with things like virtual reality,

so it sort of seems to immediately help people tolerate the distress of vomiting and be able to test out their expectations. You have two young children. Being a parent means you are going to come into contact with any number of different sorts of bodily fluids. Do you make certain that you don't deal with your kids being ill or are you now able to get through it? I think in the past my automatic reaction has been to delegate to my very calm husband who isn't phased by anything like that. But I'm by myself with them a lot during the week and you don't have a choice. You've got to just get stuck in and sort it out. And I might be a bit shaky and a little bit worried by it,

but you just have to get on. And you don't want your fear to transmit to them. That's the last thing I want. And that's why I wanted to try and get it sorted because I don't want to pass anything on or stop them enjoying themselves because of my fears. I don't want to say, oh, don't throw yourself into that soft play ball pit

because clearly there's vomit at the bottom of it because it's a softball ball pit. If they want to, they can. I've never considered there to be vomit at the bottom of a softball play kit. But this you do, but when you have this, every single scenario, you're almost kind of trying to guess. It's a threat, yeah. I see. Sorry.

Yes, you were just making it very clear. I hadn't thought of it. David, any more final thoughts? I mean, the key issue is that preoccupation, constant monitoring of people, whether they look ill or whether there's a potential vomiting come up. You know, it is treatable, but it's tough and it requires a lot of courage and perseverance to resolve it.

I'm still slightly puzzled by the gender angle and I don't really think you know either, do you? No, of course we don't. Is it because women are, I mean, this is again a generalisation, more likely to admit to these things? No, there's been lots of surveys now that that sort of fear and particularly the vomiting, the specific phobia, is definitely more common in women.

I mean, I had it to a very mild extent. Don't have it anymore, fortunately. But I remember I met a cousin who'd grown up on the other side of the world and also had it. So it suggests some sort of genetic predisposition, at least. Gosh, okay. Right, Lucy, thank you very much. Do you feel any happier? Absolutely. I mean, it's interesting to share. I mean, I think that if other people listening have got it and they know that they're not alone. I felt very alone and you're not. As David says, lots of people come to him. We're hoping to raise more awareness and try and start a charity for sufferers.

So where do people go for help? Well, they can go in the NHS. There are lots of good services and psychological therapy services. And following the right protocol, it's the doing that counts usually rather than just the talking about it. David Veal and Lucy Burton and this is one of those items on the programme that got an unexpectedly big response so I think it's worth acknowledging some of the emails we had. This anonymous listener says

everything discussed resonated with me. I'm a lifelong sufferer and I know what triggered it as a small child. I've had NHS and private therapy, but no positive results. At 65, I accept I'll have to live with it as I don't know what else to try. I've always felt silly about my problem, but at least I now know I'm not alone, so I might have the courage to speak up one day. I really feel for you. You are not alone.

Believe me, you're not. Sarah says, as an anaesthetist we know that women are far more prone to post-operative nausea and vomiting so I would suggest that the female circulating hormones unfortunately make women more nauseous more often than men. This is also heightened in pregnancy. I would suggest that most men experience very limited nausea and vomiting in their lives compared to their female counterparts. So they are less likely to develop a serious aversion to it as they're not exposed to it as frequently. That's interesting too. We also had listeners just saying that basically women and bodily fluids

can be somewhat shamed, whereas men are allowed to do whatever they like, or we're conditioned to believe that they can do whatever they like. It's interesting, isn't it? And keep your thoughts coming on that one. Any emails welcome via our website. Islamic faith marriages are not valid under English law. This according to a court of appeal ruling at the end of last week. Campaigners are now concerned that that means thousands of Muslim women have no rights if a couple breaks up.

Friday's decision actually reversed an earlier ruling allowing a couple who'd only had an Islamic nikah to legally divorce. Now, it is complicated this. Samir had to persuade her husband to have a civil marriage. And Pragna Patel is from the organisation Southall Black Sisters. Why was that decision at the Court of Appeal so important? What it effectively does is lock out of the civil justice system a great many women, particularly Muslim women, but other minority women too, who, through deception and coercion find themselves unable to have a civil marriage and are made to forego a civil marriage in favor of just a

religious marriage only. And that is often a deliberate ploy that's used by abusive partners and families to ensure that those women have no rights in the event of a breakup of a marriage. And it is that that really is at the heart of this. So what we're trying to do and what we tried to do by intervening in this case is to say to the Court of Appeal that there is a massive injustice that is taking place against particularly Muslim women. The numbers of Muslim women who are having to go through religious marriage are on the rise. And this is causing enormous problems because often when their marriage breaks down due to abuse, they have no rights in terms of matrimonial assets. And that causes an enormous injustice.

I'll come back to you in a second, but thank you for that. Samia, briefly, what happened to you? I was married to a British man in a religious-only ceremony for 10 years. Initially, when we got married, I was promised a civil marriage and they kept on procrastinating, saying that... Who is they in this case? Pardon. That's right.

It's my ex-husband and his family. Right. They kept on saying that we'll do it later, after the honeymoon, and then kept on saying later. Eventually it didn't happen for the next ten years. During my marriage to my ex-husband, I was subjected to a lot of violence, abuse and control. I was not even allowed to go out, work or make friends. And during the marriage, I was also afraid to raise up this issue

in the fear of being subjected to further violence. I'm sorry you've been through such a tough time. When you asked to have a civil ceremony, what was actually said to you? I was told if you speak further than what you should be, we are going to back you up and send you back home. So I was threatened with deportation and also threatened of being taken my children away from me. So your ex-husband's family, did they have a tradition in their family of only having religious marriages? No, no, no, not at all. His sisters, all of them, had a civil marriage. So this was just subjected towards me in order to control me.

He made sure I had nothing to my name for the 10 years that I was married to him. So when I got out of this marriage, I had nothing to me. And a lot of women, you know, have nothing to stand on when they get out of this marriage I had nothing to me and a lot of women you know have nothing to stand on when they get out of such marriages Samia thank you very much because I know it's not easy for you to speak out and we're very grateful to you I'm really very grateful indeed actually thank you

Pragna it does seem a rather backward ruling from the Court of Appeal last week were you surprised? Yes and no. Yes, because we really look to the courts to redress these kinds of situations of injustice and inequality and discrimination, particularly where vulnerable women are involved, women who have no power, who have no say in the process of their marriage, who have no say in how marital assets should be distributed on the breakup of that marriage. So to that extent, yes, because you always look to the court and hope that in the absence of any kind of power and equality,

the courts will do the right thing, that they will remedy a wrong. No, because I think that the Court of Appeal is more and more conservative and will only uphold very traditional concepts, in this case of marriage, which is out of step with the modern world. So what is your message then to any young Muslim woman in England or Wales right now about how they approach marriage? Well, first of all, they must make sure that they obtain legal advice and do not enter into religious only marriages. Make sure that you register your marriage. That is vital because you will be left without rights of any kind.

What if you are not actually born in Britain and you find yourself marrying a British citizen? Abroad. Or here. I think the main thing to do is get legal advice if you're not sure of what your rights are in the course of your marriage there are remedies they're very inadequate remedies available if you have not had a valid marriage in this country how many women actually marriage is not recognized in this country how many women are we talking about there are we don't know for sure there's been very little research in this area anecdotally I would say that we're aware that there are hundreds, if not a few thousand women. There was a Channel 4 documentary in 2017 that suggested that the problem of particularly Muslim women entering into religious

only marriages was rising. And I know for a fact, having worked in this field for 40 years, 40 years ago, Muslim women almost always had a civil marriage. Why? Because in their communities, civil marriages were accepted as legitimate. The fact that we are now seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslim women being forced to opt out of a civil marriage is largely because of very fundamentalist norms that are being embedded in minority communities. You believe that is the change? I think that is the change that fundamentalist norms have come to dominate minority communities, Muslim communities and women are told that secular laws are illegitimate. And your belief then, presumably, would be that the Court of Appeal has actually made that more likely.

Absolutely. It's created, it's contributed to a culture of impunity as far as abuses are concerned. That cannot have been the court's intention, though, surely? It may not have been their intention, but that is the outcome. What we're saying is we're not asking for recognition of religious marriages, we're asking for an injustice to be remedied. So now that the Court of Appeal has made this decision, we've got to look to Parliament, we've got to look to the Law Commission that I understand is carrying out a review on marriage at this moment. It really needs to tackle this problem and bring marriage laws up to date so they're in step with the kind, you know, and reflect the diverse relationships that modern society has. Right. So that's going to be your emphasis will be on getting politicians on side.

But in the meantime, your concern would be that some young Muslim women are going to be potentially risking destitution in the event of their relationship breaking up. Absolutely. They're going to be locked out of the civil justice system. The Court of Appeals made it clear that that is not the place to go to for justice. That is incredibly alarming and worrying, and we need to basically campaign to try and change that situation. That's the voice of Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters and you also heard the experience of Samir.

Rita pointed out that in Germany, a couple have to have a civil marriage ceremony before any kind of religious service. They have got to have the documentation from the former to be able to have the latter. So that's how things happen in Germany. Thank you very much for that. I'm not much good at salad, eating it or making it. So it's handy that in this week's edition of Weekend Woman's Hour, we will learn a bit more

about how to make a really good, tasty winter salad. That's in the company of the cookery writer Catherine Phipps. First of all, an American organisation, Heartbeat International, is behind a network of so-called pregnancy crisis centres all over the world. Now, they claim to be neutral spaces offering unbiased advice. But now a team of investigative journalists, all women, from the website Open Democracy, known as 5050, has spent nine months working undercover to find out just how neutral these places really are. They've looked at 33 of them in 18 countries across the world and have now published a report. Nandini Archer is the assistant editor. We've been working on this series for a couple of years now called Tracking the Backlash, where we've basically been investigating the backlash to women's and lgbt rights around the world and so that looks

at how organized and coordinated opposition to women's and lgbt rights um are looking to roll back or block um these rights and so as part of that we came across um various u.s christian right groups and one of them was Heartbeat International and what they've done in the US along with a couple of other groups is really pioneer these crisis pregnancy centers on their website it says that they have these centers on or they have affiliates on every inhabited continent around the world so what we wanted to do really was see what they were doing in Italy and what they were doing in Ukraine and what they were doing in all these different countries because

they have really hit the headlines in the US for often hiding their anti-abortion stances. How did the centres appear to the women who were using them? In the US, for instance, you can find billboards saying things like, are you pregnant, are you scared, come here for help. And so they often appear like neutral medical facilities and you would be totally forgiven for thinking that you could go there to get genuine abortion advice, contraception advice if you were facing a crisis pregnancy. And so what we found when we looked at centres around the world

was very much the same. Now the Secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights has expressed some concerns that women as was said are encountering disinformation, emotional manipulation and outright deceit. What were your undercover reporters told? A really big range of things. So we sent reporters into 18 different countries. In some cases, there were a lot of mentions of abortion, increasing risks of cancer, increasing mental illness and this kind of stuff. The thing that I found really shocking in particular were a lot of our reporters went undercover

saying that they had experienced rape or incest or domestic violence. And so they were told things like in Argentina, a woman who said she was in a domestic violence relationship was told by centre staff, well, now you're a victim. But if you have an abortion, you will become part of that violence. And the same thing happened in Israel, where a reporter said that she had gone out with her cousin, She didn't know him that well. She suspected her drink was spiked. She was now pregnant. And she was told by centre staff, well, maybe you should marry your cousin.

You are now 30. Maybe it's your time. And so, yeah. I know that some similar things were said in South Africa as well. But the 1996 Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act there stipulates that cancelling of pregnant women must be non-directive. So how is this kind of advice continuing, which contravenes such an act? It's pretty incredible.

And I think a lot of it is it's part of this kind of global machinery, this very coordinated attack on on abortion rights that's coming from this incredibly influential uh u.s christian right group that is linked to power and influence i think a lot of the time people or the way these centers appear but also um anti-abortion views in general people might think that you know i'm sure there are plenty of ordinary religious and ordinary people that have views on abortion and for and against it. But what this investigation shows is that these centres are not some kind of nice local counselling things. This is, you know, a coordinated strategy.

Now, Heartbeats International have said this. Abortion ends the life of a developing human baby the fact remains that abortion carries risk to the woman how do you respond to that i mean so we had one reporter who went um attended two heartbeat international trainings for example um to see what they were telling um what how they were training their staff and what they were telling them. And in these trainings, she was kind of bombarded with like a barrage of like statistics and supposed studies like this saying, you know, abortion can increase cancer risks and abortion. There were all these risks associated with it.

You know, we then like contacted various, you know, global health bodies and doctors and experts in these fields and a lot of you know well all of this has been debunked by global health bodies you know the other thing they told us is that you infer they're a franchise model of pregnancy centers which they deny they also say they're not for profit, they are faith-based, offering alternatives to abortion but ensure non-discrimination. The centres, they say, are autonomous. How do you respond to that? Well, I'm not sure what they're trying to say there in the sense we didn't say that they were a franchise.

I think there are two things really on their website they say quite clearly that in order to be an international affiliate in order to be affiliated with heartbeat international their affiliates need to follow certain guidelines and these guidelines include providing women with accurate information and what we found by going undercover was that women were not being provided with accurate information. In Spain, for instance, our reporter was given material that said if she was to have an abortion, she could be 144% more likely to abuse her future children, for instance. And the second thing is, is that this whole project was born out of a very intense data journalism and we kind of tracked Heartbeat's money around the world and what they were spending. And part of this

process, we found the names of specific grantees that they were funding. So it's not just that, you know, these organisations have this affiliate status, it's also that they are directly receiving funding from them. Now, politicians in a number of countries, and I mentioned the European Union there, have expressed concern about what you've uncovered. What action do you expect to be taken? Our role was to investigate and expose this. And I think that, you know, we've had lawmakers all over the world now and 30 different European legislators call this a threat to democracy, that this is an ethical violation. And we'll be checking in to see how it's followed up. The voice of Nandini Archer. Now to the cookery writer Catherine Phipps, whose new book is called Leaf.

It's got recipes featuring nettles. She also cooks with other weeds, herbs, lettuces and greens. And on Thursday she served something up for Jenny, a winter salad of red leaves, mackerel, do like a bit of mackerel, oily fish we know is good for us, and orange as well. And she also came in with a pear and rosemary upside down cake. I like tackling large subjects with ingredients that I use a lot. And I've always had a fascination with different leaves. I grew up on a small holding where we grew a lot of our own fruit and vegetables. We foraged a lot for various things, including nettles, of course. And I was a child who was obsessed with food

and obsessed with books. And I was always fascinated by the story of Rapunzel. And not many people remember that the reason Rapunzel ends up in the situation she's in is because her mother had a craving for greens. She's seeing these greens in the witch's garden over a high wall and I just loved the whole image of a walled garden, the greens growing within it and that craving really fired my imagination. Now as I said nettles do appear in your book. You have to be a bit careful with nettles don't you? Well yes well yes only take the very fresh young green ones from the top yes it's it's best to forage before they flower they get a bit strong and um yes as you say the tips wear gloves obviously because they do have a sting and yes in spring

sometimes there's a second growth later in the year, which always happens in my rather overgrown garden. But yeah, be careful. As far as the winter salad is concerned, what leaves have you been putting in there? So, so far I've got some shredded red cabbage and some celery leaves that just came from the centre of a big stem of celery. And this time of year is an amazing time of year for leaves. People don't usually think of winter as being the best time for leaves. But we have all these really beautiful, colourful, slightly bitter leaves coming in from Italy.

Endives, chicories, that kind of thing. And I think they're really, really good this time of year for kind of waking up your palate a little bit. Well, that's a whole lot of red cabbage, a very small red cabbage, actually. This is actually an endive. Oh. So it will taste slightly bitter. It looks like a red cabbage.

It does. It looks like a very miniature red cabbage. And this is completely other end of the colour spectrum, a really pale, delicate rose pink. And what is that? And that is another kind of chicory that's, again, from Italy. And the reason I pair it with the blood oranges, because the blood oranges are coming in from Sicily and Spain at the moment,

and they just work absolutely beautifully together how easy is it to find some of the leaves you include in the book i mean baby beetroot i suppose that's not difficult but fig and something japanese called mitsuna they're actually you can actually find those quite a lot in the supermarkets now mitsuna is one of the leaves that will appear in those bagged salads of kind of mustard leaves because it's a mustardy leaf there's so many different ways of finding leaves a good green grocer in a farmer's market is really good for the kind of leaves we that we associate with other plants so for example just now talking about celery you can buy celery with the leaves attached you can buy beetroot and turnips and radishes with the leaves attached which are all really

really good in salads and they're all also very very good for wilting down as an alternative to regular greens that you have to buy separately so it's a cost thing as well they're very economic because a lot of people throw those leaves away yes you just chop them off the top and throw them away i shan't do that in future the orange is going in now is it the orange is going in i'm just going to segment it oh really dark one i love the drama of these you never know what you're going to get because it never really coincides with exactly what color this the um i've never seen such a dark one yeah i must admit i'm quite surprised you never know so i'm just i've topped

and tailed it and i'm just following the contour of the orange round to get rid of all the pith because i'm not a lover of the pith i was always one of those fussy children that always used to have to peel every little bit off when i was eating a satsuma or something. Well it can be a bit bitter can't it? It can and then I'm going to hold this over the salad so none of the juice escapes and I'm just going to segment it in like that. It's a really nice thing to eat this time of year when you want to come out start come out of the comfort food and you want something i mean i just find february so gloomy and dark but you know i'm coming away from wanting to eat nothing but carbs and the fish that goes in next of it yeah so pre-cooked yeah so really i mean it's quite it's a salad yes but it's quite a well-balanced one because

although there's not really much of a carb element just a little bit in the carrot it's got richness um and oiliness from the fish and the dressing has got a bit of creme fraiche in it and is mustardy and it should satisfy all your taste buds there's a really good sweetness and zing from this orange there's bitterness there's savoriness and i'm going to put in now all of these really fresh herbs so a few came out of my garden this morning I had a little um tramp through the mud to pick some chervil out which is often dead this time of year but we've had such a mild winter um it's it's managed to survive. In fact, some of the oriental and more tropical herbs that I usually expect to be dead this time of year

are still going strong in the garden. So there's a whole range of herbs there, and then the fish, and then you put the dressing on it. We'll try that later. I am interested in the cake. I've never been known not to be interested in cake. How have you done this? So that's made with ginger rosemary, which is a...

Ginger rosemary? So it's a hybrid rosemary, which has what I think is the best of both ginger and rosemary. Can you taste it? Oh, yes. It's subtle. I would have thought you'd put ginger in there. There's no ginger in there it's just the herb. You can make this cake using ground ginger powder and regular rosemary as well. It would be a bit more hard-hitting if you did. I think this is quite a nice warm subtleness. It doesn't have the same heat. it's it's i wouldn't i've never heard of ginger

rosemary i really haven't how easy is that to find online very easily and it grows really well in your garden so yeah the other thing we must talk about just before we finish we were talking about fermentation and making things like sauerkraut. How easy is that to do? Unbelievably easy. I was really put off from it years ago by being told in a book that you had to make really big quantities. And I guess if you live in Germany, they will eat masses. But it is simple as shredding up whatever you want to use, usually cabbage or Brussels sprouts or kale, anything works really.

Adding salt, rubbing it in and then leaving it with weight it down and liquid will cover it because the liquid comes out of the you don't have to add any water to it occasionally yes and if you do add filtered or spring water you don't want the chlorine and then pack it into sterilized jars leave it for three or four days until the fermentation starts and then you keep tasting it and when it's got to the sourness you like you then put it in the fridge and then that will slow the fermentation right down if you try that sauerkraut let us know how it goes that sounds very intriguing it could be a hobby for the whole family couldn't it, that? Checking up on the progress of it.

That was Catherine Phipps. Now, you can find the recipes on the Woman's Hour website and download our podcast, Cook the Perfect, via BBC Sounds. Now, to three young women I was very fortunate to meet this week. Really, really impressive. They are friends of

Ellie Gould, who was just 17 when she was killed by Thomas Griffiths. He was also 17 and he pleaded guilty to her murder. He is currently serving a 12 and a half year prison sentence. Three of Ellie's friends from her sixth form in Wiltshire, one also called Ellie, want self-defence classes to be made part of the Tilda, Harriet and Ellie told me what kind of girl their friend was. And here's Ellie first. She was just the most lovely person I've ever met. I struggled coming into sixth form with sort of friendship group problems at the beginning. And Ellie was in all of my lessons and we just got friendlier and friendlier.

And then one day she was just like, join my friendship group, you know, that sort of thing. She could tell I was struggling. And I just don't I don't think she likes seeing people sort of struggle with friendship and like not having a good time. So I think she just she likes seeing people sort of struggle with friendship and, like, not having a good time. So I think she just... She was really welcoming. She just straightaway was just, come into my friendship group, that sort of thing, and it was really lovely.

I think, Tilda, you'd known her the longest. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I have. I'd grown up with her, so I've been through my secondary school experience with her, and she literally... She just brought out the best in me. So I used to see myself as quite a reserved person before I became friends with her and she literally she just brought the best in me so I just I used to see myself as quite a reserved person before I became friends with her but she's almost made me the person I am today which is really lovely to have a friend like that and Harriet what about you

I think the main thing she was such a fun person she was lovely to be around. Everyone understood and appreciated how kind she was. Even straight after she died, we made a book where people could write letters and almost all of them spoke about how she would smile at them as they walked past. And she'd always ask how they were and say hi. In her typical way, she'd waddle through the sick form. What do you mean by that?

She just had this... A distinctive walk. Yeah, this goofy little walk, and she'd walk through and you knew she was coming, and she'd just be beaming ear to ear. They sound like small things, the idea that she would always make eye contact or always smile, but they're not insignificant.

They're important things, aren't they? They are. It's something you don't appreciate until it's gone. I'm going to sound a bit like your mums, but this is such a difficult time of anybody's life. To be 18, you're on the cusp of leaving behind everything you know and going out into the world. And to have something like this happen at this point in your life,

I really do feel immense sympathy for all of you. And Ellie, tell me how you've come to this idea as a way of recovering something from this this hideous episode well I mean the whole experience for all of us was completely terrifying I think one of the main motivations for this is the fact that if Ellie knew self-defense she could potentially have got away from what was about to happen to her. And before Ellie was stabbed she was strangled by Tom and I think that's one of the things we've sort of held on to with the fact that if she potentially knew self-defence she could have gotten away from his grasp

and potentially could still be here with us today. But because she didn't know, like most of us, she didn't know. She didn't know self-defence at all, to my knowledge, and I think that's why it's so important that girls and boys learn self-defence. I mean, we're all going off to uni soon. We're going to be living in halls with people we have no idea, we've never met them before in our lives. Some people are going to big cities.

It's such a life skill that everyone needs to know it. It baffles me that it's not been taught in schools already. So Harriet, what have you been able to do so far? So far, we've had contact with James Gray, our local MP, and we've proposed a few ideas, obviously, about self-defence becoming a mandatory part of the national curriculum, as well as spoken about education on coercive relationships, because a lot of campaigning. TILDA actually made a petition and we reached 10,000 signatures a few days ago.

So we're hoping that it can be discussed in Parliament. How many signatures do you need for that? We need 100,000 signatures for that, but we are still pushing. Is doing all this, TILDA, making what happened any easier to bear at all? I wouldn't, for me personally, I wouldn't say it makes it easier, but it gives me a purpose, because before I felt a bit lost. I just thought, Ellie's gone, what's the point? If someone could be taken that quickly, what's the point in trying?

But from doing something like this, it's almost sparked this sort of fire inside me almost to sort of help prevent it from happening to other people because it would break my heart to think that something that could be prevented could happen again to someone, and it's just devastating. It makes my heart break to think that other people could go through this. What has it done to the atmosphere in the sixth form at your school? It's actually, it's improved our relationship with each other.

Like, we're now almost like one big family. It's really lovely because we just look out for each other at this point. There's no divides between people anymore. And there were in the past. Inevitably, there were. Yeah, like, people would sort of bicker and things like that but now it's almost we have this this feeling of just love for each other really it's really nice what is true obviously is that you are on the point of thinking about leaving and as you say going to uni and different experiences and many more people to what degree has it taken away your optimism and adventure Ellie, all this?

I think for me it's the loss of trust in people, that's the one thing I'm really struggling with at the moment, to think that someone so close to you, you know I grew up with Tom, I went to primary school with him and secondary school with him, I completely, you would never think anyone so close to you could do something so devastating and so horrible and horrific. But we were so close. We used to go to parties together. We had a great time together. And no one would ever suspect it. And I think someone so close to you to do something so horrific, it just completely throws you.

And it's thrown a lot of people. And it shocked everyone, to be honest with you. It's really, it's horrific. And how much help have you had, Harriet? And indeed, what kind of help can be given to people going through what you're going through? Our school has been really great with offering us support. Right from the get-go, we had psychologists and therapists and counsellors there to talk to us if we needed. At the beginning, our group was quite divided

because obviously we were the closest to what happened. We were closest to Ellie and Tom. We were involved in the actual police investigation about it and would have had to go to trial if... Well, we would have had to go to court if it went to trial. Duly guilty, you should say. Thankfully, yeah. So at first, we were quite...

We were just the group that needed the counselling the most. So we had a separate counsellor to speak to us because of the confidential information that we knew. And now it's more on a when you need it basis. So if you're having a bit of a wobble one day or if you're just struggling, if it's a significant day, like it reaches the third of every month. And I know I suddenly think, oh, at this time, this would have been happening or it would have been how many hours before it would have happened. And obviously we've just had her birthday a few weeks ago and it reaches these milestones and it does shake you again. It brings you back to square one. I mean, a lot of it is learning that everything we're feeling is normal and that we should be feeling it and just it's learning how to deal with it because it's not the sort of thing

you want to just sit on and then feel later down the line oh absolutely but I wonder you think Tildre it might get tougher when you're not together anymore because you are not that far away from leaving school yeah I'm going to be honest it's one of my i don't want to say fears but i am scared because the two girls who like have been through so much with me they're going off to uni and i'm taking a gap year so it's the idea that everybody that's been through this situation with me is now starting their own lives and i'm stuck just i am apprehensive about how i'm going to deal with that so when something as terrible as this happens, the ripple effect, it goes across all sorts of different sorts of people and communities,

and lots of people will feel devastated, won't they? I know you know that. Ellie's family, do they admire what you're doing? Do they support it? Yeah, we're in contact with Ellie's mum, Carol, at the moment quite frequently. A lot of the stuff we do, we take her along with us for support, and she's so lovely. We love meeting up with Carol. How is she doing?

It's difficult to talk on her behalf. I mean, you can see her from the outside, and she looks so strong, and you just sort of admire her but it's just so difficult to talk on her because you just don't know what she's thinking at all. But she's right behind you. She's right behind us and she's so proud of us and it's so amazing and lovely to have that support from Ellie's mum.

Ellie Welling, Tilda Offen and Harriet Adams, some really, really impressive contributors to Women's Hour this week. I hope you can be with us two minutes past 10 Monday morning. Amongst other things, I'm going to be talking to Michelle Gallen, who is the author of one of the best books I've read for a long, long time. It's a cracking tale about a girl who works in a chip shop in Northern Ireland. It's called Big Girl, Small Town. And Michelle is our guest on Monday morning.

I'm Sarah Treleaven. small town and Michelle is our guest on Monday morning. 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.