Woman's Hour - Sally Challen, with her son David: her first radio interview

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

After years of being controlled and humiliated by him in 2011 Sally Challen was jailed for 22 years for the murder of her husband, Richard. The sentence was reduced to 18 years but in June of this year she walked out of the Old Bailey a free woman. The introduction of coercive control as a crime meant her sentence was reduced to manslaughter. In her first radio interview Sally joins Jane Garvey to reflect on her marriage, her sentence and how it feels to be a ‘free woman’ and a new grandma.As part of Radio 4, Four Seasons Poetry Day the award-winning poet Fiona Benson reads from her collection to mark the autumn equinox . BBC Music Day is on Thursday – an annual celebration across the BBC of the power of music to change lives. On Woman’s Hour we’ll be hearing from women about the importance of music in their dementia care. Today - Teresa Davies. She’s from Mold in North Wales and is creating a digital book about her life so future carers can find out what particular pieces of music mean to her. Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Sally Challen Interviewed Guest: Fiona Benson Reporter: Henrietta Harrison

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. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and this is the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Monday the 23rd of September 2019. Today, Sally Challen in her own words. We mark the autumn equinox in the company of the award-winning poet Fiona Benson. And we've got just a fantastic feature with a lady called Teresa, who has dementia, and she is a self-confessed Led Zepp fan, massive rock chick. And she just really wants to share her love of the music of her life. And you will love, you will absolutely love meeting Teresa

at the end of, towards the end, I should say, of the podcast today. But we start with Sally Challen who in 2011 was jailed for 22 years for the murder of her husband Richard. She'd spent 31 years living in an abusive marriage. Her sentence was later reduced to 18 years but in the summer she was released from prison. The introduction of coercive control as a crime meant that her sentence had been reduced to manslaughter on appeal and Sally was now a free woman. But as you'll hear in the interview, it isn't quite as clear-cut as that. I asked her why she was prepared to speak out now. Because I want to try and make people understand.

I think the police, lawyers, judges, and then ultimately juries who don't understand. Juries are made up of the general public and I need to try to make them understand what coercive control, mental abuse is all about and what it can do to a person over a prolonged period of time. And I want people to look at themselves and look at other people they know and see if they can help in any way. They can often spot things going on that the person themselves isn't aware of.

They just think it's a normal life they're living. And it needs somebody to intervene to say hold on a minute things aren't right here and signpost to them to the agencies that can help them. You of course are speaking with the benefit of some pretty diabolical hindsight actually aren't you? Yes. Looking back over the course of your relationship with Richard. You met him when you were really very young. How did you meet him? I met him first through a friend and then I worked in the local news agent on a Saturday

and I met him there and he came over for coffee and my mother recognised him immediately as a salesman who had sold her a car. And she said he had the gift of the gab. And I fell immediately in love with him. I was besotted by him. He was sophisticated, he was charming, charismatic and exciting. We used to go up to the King's Road for coffee.

He'd take me to wonderful restaurants. And it was just like a fairy tale thing that was happening to me. Your father had died when you were very little. Yes. So your mother was presumably very protective of you. How did she react to this relationship? She wasn't happy at all. And neither are my brothers. I've subsequently found out that when I'd finished school and went to a finishing school in Belgium and to live with my eldest brother, one of my brothers who lived there with his wife, I was found out recently that that was to try and get me away from Richard, to try and break the relationship but it didn't happen. We kept in

touch while I was away and as soon as I came back we embarked on our relationship as before. And how would you categorise it were you very very gullible and do you believe that he knew you to be someone who would be an ideal victim for him? I think so I was very compliant I was always trying to please him because I had this awful feeling that if I didn't do as he said when he said it and how he wanted it, that he'd leave me. And I think he therefore found very early on that I was weak and that he could mould me into what he wanted me to be. What about your contemporaries? Because you must have had school friends, friends from the finishing school even, who were having their own relationships. Did you not look at them and think, well, that's not what's happening with me and Richard? As soon as I met Richard, I didn't really see very much of the girls that I went to school with who were then my friends.

I always felt that I was always slightly on the outside anyway. And I saw Richard every day. There was no opportunity to see anyone other than him. And I wanted to be with him all the time. You wanted to be with him? Yes, I did. So you didn't actually question or challenge this? No, I didn't.

Deep down, I think my mother recognised what was happening. And on the day of my wedding, she said, you don't have to marry him which was quite a cutting remark and I said you know I want to marry him because I came from you know a conservative family my mother was 44 when she had me I got my brothers of 14 16 and 18 years old than I am and I got a younger adopted brother and in her eyes my future was to finish school, go to the finishing school, do a secretarial course, work, get married and have children. She didn't see a career for me, it was never suggested and I was never pointed in that direction. What year did you marry Richard? In 1979. We met in 1969.

And you're right, things were different then. They were very different then. And you were 25 on the day you got married? Yes, I was. Had there been, apart from his control of you and his, to put it mildly, lack of enthusiasm for you having other friends and other relationships, was he behaving in any other more difficult ways at that point?

Yes, I know that he cheated on me several times with people when we were going out together before we were married. I remember confronting him once about a phone call when I was in his flat and he turned round and said, don't make me choose because I'll choose her. And I remember being hysterical and him dragging me down the stairs and throwing me out of the flat and I then took an overdose and ended up in hospital but I still wanted to be with him. That's the bit where I try to understand and I think listeners will be trying to understand.

That's the bit, if I'm really honest with you, Sally, that I don't get. I know. He was just the charismatic Richard was the charming, the generous, the loving. Well, not he wasn't loving in an outwardly fashion. I assumed that he loved me. And there was one occasion I remember later on in our life when he said in front of people that Sally and I love each other, but we're not in love. And I was quite shocked by that. But I didn't question him about it

because you don't ask him questions like that because he won't answer them. As married life goes on, I suppose people learn to compartmentalise their lives to a degree, don't they? And live day to day. And you had children. Your days were filled, presumably. You didn't have a lot of time to think about what might or might not be going wrong with your marriage. No, I think that I had my eldest in 83, James, and then David followed in 87. But the timing of the children were all based on what Richard wanted

and when he wanted a child, because he knew I wanted children. Looking back, I think he felt jealous. He didn't have my full attention all the time to jump when he said jump and do this and do that. I met people locally and there'd be an incident when we were asked over to their house for dinner and I reciprocated. And then he'd just fall asleep in a chair, which was just so embarrassing. He didn't want anyone else around. And there was somebody who I was great friends with

and he didn't like having her around. She couldn't come to the house? She couldn't come to the house. When she did, he made it obvious that she wasn't welcome. She felt uncomfortable. So I then became really sort of isolated. And in a way, we started the conversation with me asking why you wanted to do this.

Why you're doing this is to reach out to that woman or women like that woman who witnessed things or were around things that didn't add up. Yes, exactly. I think that if you know somebody really well, that you can spot things that are happening in their marriage or their behaviour. And when they're quieter, when their partner's around. I was always accused of being disloyal if I didn't back Richard up, if he said something in company and I didn't agree with him.

I was damned if I did and I was damned if I didn't. So he controlled what I thought and what I said. I was very careful around him not to say too much because it would be thrown back at me. That's in public then. That was the public facing Sally and Richard. What happened in private when it was just the four of you as a family? I think we became a dysfunctional family. We did have happy times. We had some nice holidays. And he did provide, it's an old expression, isn't it?

He was a good provider. He was a good provider. When David was born in 83, we moved to a much bigger house, which I felt bigger than we needed. And in a way, it was quite isolating because the houses were sort of screened off from each other. So I didn't really get close to any of the neighbours initially, and there was no-one really with young children,

so I used to spend my time with the children. I subsequently went back to work in 98. Before that, Richard bought a car showroom, which I helped him set up and run around, picking cars up late at night and trying to look after my elderly mother, who died in 2003 when she was 93. What had she thought about Richard after you married him? She never voiced anything directly at me, but I think she probably did to other people and I know there was somebody that she said look after Sally when I'm gone I inherited her house and she felt I think that

that was something I should keep and have as a bolt hole but it subsequently got sold and I invested the money instead did your sons well of well, of course, when we're growing up, we don't question our own home life, do we? No. We just get on with it. So presumably your sons thought that was what families were like. I think they did. And I think they became damaged as well as I was.

They don't know what a proper loving family relationship is. They both are in loving relationships now. And I think they can see what life should be, which wasn't the same as I had. Was he faithful to you at any time during the marriage, as far as you know? I don't think so, looking back back I think there were probably signs I never knew what he was doing he'd come home say I need my supper now why isn't it on the table when I'd been picking up both boys from school going over to my mother's taking her her dinner then coming back and trying to go to the supermarket and I think that a lot of the time he'd say I've got to go back and show someone a car but I don't think he he did and it's only subsequently through a friend of his that I

realized that he'd been seeing prostitutes for years and years. There was also some hideous sexual violence as well, wasn't there? There was. We'd gone to stay with friends in America in 98 and we were there around the time of David's birthday. We'd all been out in the evening. During the day we'd been shopping and he was buying himself lots of clothes, as he always did. I didn't buy anything. And he was trying on the clothes, and while he was trying on clothes, this friend grabbed me and kissed me and Richard walked round the corner. Nothing was said.

He just marched me into the bedroom and he raped me. Was that an isolated incident? That was the first. First time. That was the first time, but there were other incidences during our marriage. Why in the end did you split up, bearing in mind everything you've told us? From 2004 I was questioning a lot about what he was doing. And when I questioned him, he would say I was mad, I'm not doing anything, you know, you're making it up, etc.

I found tickets to the London Eye in his coat pocket and he said I'd put them there. And I thought, well, I didn't put them there, you know, I must be going mad. And then I was monitoring his phone calls and I googled this number and it came up with a brothel in Surbiton. And I thought, no, he wouldn't. He couldn't. And I went there a couple of times, and one time I saw him walking across the car park in the November. Even though I knew it was him, I questioned myself as to whether it really was him.

And I waited while he went in, and I confronted him after an hour when he came out. He looked shocked and ran off and he got home before me. And when I came in saying, what was he doing at a brothel and how could he? He said, you're mad. I just went to sell someone a car. I didn't know it was a brothel. So he denied it and he wouldn't admit it. My boys, a few days later, confronted him and he finally admitted it. But I think that he glossed over how many times he'd been there and I think he still continued to do so.

He was given the cold shoulder in the house. I think the boys felt that I should have left him then and he turned round and said, you know, unless everyone treats me normally, etc, I'm leaving. And I begged him to stay. That was in 2006. Why did you beg him to stay? Because I couldn't see a life without him, because I still loved him. will have done this people stay together for the sake of the children we hear that a lot and often it is possibly arguably the right thing to do by then your children were a little older weren't they they were so you were staying for yourself I was staying also for the children so as not to break up the family in hindsight I should have taken them and gone because I think it was not a normal family experience that they were getting

and I think it's affected each of them in different ways I should have left I did leave in the end and when I told Richard I wanted a divorce you know he didn't seem to be what you would expect. Please don't leave me. I beg you, none of that. I bought a house locally and I was euphoric. I thought this is going to be a new life for me and, you know, I'll be happy. But I quickly found that I couldn't cope on my own. I'd never lived on my own in my life. And, you know, I was 55 then. And I asked Richard if I could come back. Did you think

about that for long? Was that was it simply a growing feeling that you could not live without this man? Yes no it was a growing feeling I couldn't cope I couldn't live without him I loved him. But he had made you that way hadn't he? had, but when you're in that sort of situation, you don't realise it. And over a period of time, Richard agreed that he would take me back on certain conditions. He drew up a post-nuptial agreement, which said I could have £200,000. I had to stop smoking. I had not to talk to other people while we were out. We had to buy things for the home together. So if anything, that the rules were getting stricter. Yes, they were. And it was at this point that you killed him as you were attempting a reconciliation.

Yes, it was. He'd joined a dating agency. So he wasn't serious about the reconciliation? I don't think deep down he was. I think deep down I really didn't want to believe that was the truth. Otherwise, why would he say he wanted me to come back? We had what he would have classed as a probationary period. I was allowed to see him once a week for three months. And then if I'd changed, I could come back.

The whole thing sounds right. I know. You know that I know that that sounds ridiculous. I know. I know. You weren't allowed. And I didn't tell the boys. There was someone who said, don't go back to him.

He'll make your life a misery, who was a good friend of his. But I didn't want to listen. I didn't want to believe he could do that to me. You obviously denied murder when you appeared in court, but you did admit and you do admit killing Richard. Yes. Why do you think your plea of diminished responsibility was not accepted? I think the legal team that I had, my divorce lawyer, with whom I'd stopped and started the divorce five times, when he heard about the post-nuptial agreement, he said, I don't want to have anything to do with this, Sally. And he had joined this firm of solicitors. Looking back, they were totally the wrong solicitors. They're more white-collar crime solicitors. While in prison, quite early on, on remand, I did what was called

the Freedom Programme. And for the first time, this opened my eyes as to what a controller was. Well, can I interrupt you? It's's important we emphasize this is a program designed for victims of coercive control and domestic abuse so the prison system at that point recognized you as being one of those people. Somebody recognized that this was a course that would help me it opened my eyes I started to understand what kind of person Richard was, the Jekyll and Hyde, the charismatic, loving person outwardly, who on the other hand was a complete controller behind closed doors. And I tried to talk to my lawyers about this, but they didn't seem to want to listen. I was told categorically by them, juries don't like it if you speak ill of

the dead. So they weren't going to talk about that. And both James and David felt that when they were on the stand, my barrister didn't ask them the questions which would have opened their mouths to be able to say what they saw. And I think my whole family were just appalled at all the proceedings followed. And you were still in a kind of mind fog, presumably barely aware of anything. I'd given up. I gave up early on when no one listened to me in the firm solicitors. There was a, I think she was a paralegal, somebody who'd come from the solicitors to go through papers with me, emails. She understood, but my lawyer just didn't, and they just didn't want to know. So by the time I got to my trial, I didn't care about anything anymore. For the benefit of listeners who will be

sympathetic, but you know this, Sally, conflicted as well. You are someone who killed your husband, you acknowledge that, but you are also a victim. Yes. What comes first? What comes first in your mind? I still feel I'm a victim second. I still feel that I know what I did was wrong and I'm very sorry for that. I have paid a price and I thought I would die in prison. I didn't care.

And it was only through my niece, Dalla, who found Harriet Wisterich from Justice for Women, who, when I was put in touch with her, I was unable to write the letter that I needed to write for her to represent me. I had to get one of my brothers to dictate it to me on the phone. I just didn't have the confidence or the ability to do that. How did other women in the prison system regard you? Initially, I had a job in what they call induction, which is where the new ladies come in and do their English and maths tests. So I used to see a lot of comings and goings and the same people coming in again and again. I had a few problems with certain women, but there are so many people, I think, who are serving sentences for murder rather than manslaughter. You're talking about women that you met? Women that I met and when I embarked on this appeal initially I didn't feel

that it would come to anything. I wasn't really engaging initially but I think as David's participation got stronger and stronger I thought perhaps I had a chance but my way of coping was to think that I have no chance so anything is a bonus. During the course of nine years could you pick a moment that was you at your lowest ebb? It's a long, long period of time. There were several several several moments i think that i used to have certain times i had manic episodes not that i realized myself i was like that it was

other people would recognize it i can remember speaking to a senior officer and saying to her please don't let me drop again please don't let me drop again, please don't let me drop. I would make an effort for when my family came to see me so they didn't outwardly see how I was feeling. People say you've never thought of killing yourself, have you? Because if you have, obviously I have to report that. And obviously you answer, of course I haven't, but yes, I did. Because I didn't see any way out. People say you become conditioned, you know, to living in prison. I don't think that that happened to me. But I didn't see how I was going to be able to survive physically and mentally until my sentence had ended, as if I would be alive anyway then. I think without the therapy that I had both in HMP Bronzefield for several years

and for some time in SEND, I don't think I would be here today. People believed in me. Even if you didn't believe in yourself. Exactly. You are now free, I use the term loosely, because I wonder quite how free you actually feel. I don't dwell on the past. I try to look to the future.

There were so many people who, when they heard that I'd won my appeal congratulating me and telling me how I'm helping them as well because it'll open the doors for them to be able to get an appeal. The future I don't know at the moment. I'm still living with my eldest son and his partner and I've just become a grandmother. Which gives you hope for the future. It gives me hope for the future and it's a new chapter in my life. Well that's that is fantastic. You continue to say that you love Richard. I know. And you do don't you? I do love him but looking at it I think I love the person who I wanted him to be,

the person that he could occasionally be. I don't like to think that it was all a front on his part. I hope that he did love me. Not as much, I think, as I loved him, but perhaps as much as he was capable of. I don't know. I find that hard to stomach but life without him is still difficult.

And it's difficult for your sons? It is difficult, very difficult for them, yeah. Because obviously I'm a constant reminder of what happened. Sally Challen. Now, to your thoughts on that interview which have been coming in obviously as it went out on the radio. Jackie says it's extremely difficult to leave this kind of relationship. I look back now five years after I did find the strength to leave and wonder why I stayed so long.

Do not condemn people who can't leave. These perpetrators whittle away at your self-confidence. From Rebecca, I'm a Relate counsellor. One of the problems with a controlling relationship, who can't leave. These perpetrators whittle away at your self-confidence. From Rebecca, I'm a Relate counsellor. One of the problems with a controlling relationship is that the victim is kept under the line of normal. The perpetrator will occasionally behave kindly, normally, and this makes the victim feel wonderful, as their barometer of emotions isn't like a person in a normal relationship where they can recognise an imbalance.

This makes the victim more and more isolated. And this is a fantastic email from an anonymous listener who says they are now 69. Their marriage did go on for 37 years. There are some similarities between this listener's experience and Sally's but she says today what really hits me is that Sally risks more condemnation by those out there who do not have a clue about any of this and will in their ignorance decide to judge her again I admire this woman from the bottom of my heart detractors may say how can Sally say she loved Richard still even after she'd ended his life well my answer would be this. Even after the trust destroyed you, then the tears and the terror have done their worst,

and a partner is reduced, as I was, to a skinny, gibbering heap, so utterly confused by the gaslighting, day in, day out, the mental cruelty, the fact is that the inner you cannot believe that this person who you've loved for so long can be so cruel and almost destroy you. I salute you, Sally Challen. May you heal and find peace and enjoy every minute of your life ahead. My message to the world is this. If someone you know appears to be suffering, even if all on the outside looks like it should be fine, to that anonymous listener, I wish you all the very best for your future as well. Thank you for writing such a compassionate email to the programme. Of course, you can contact us whenever you like, however you like, via social media at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and Instagram, or email the programme via the website. Tomorrow on the

programme, we'll have a live guest, a leading Labour politician who will be very busy, no doubt, at the Labour Party conference in Brighton. That's tomorrow. And we'd also like to hear from you. Do email us if you have cut ties with a parent. And if you have, did you reconcile and how did you do it? Your email is welcome, please, via our website on that issue. Now, you might know, I'm sure you're celebrating, you could be, it's the start of the autumn equinox today. So Radio 4 is celebrating with poetry throughout the day. And our guest this morning is the award-winning Devon poet, Fiona Benson. Fiona, welcome to the programme. Good morning. Lovely to talk to you. Now do you, it's an easy question I

guess, but living in a beautiful place like Devon do you seek inspiration or take inspiration from your surroundings? Yes definitely I go for walks and swim in the river and it's a beautiful place to live and I find yeah, that is endlessly inspiring. Nature isn't always, well, it's not always particularly kind, is it? No. There are very cruel elements to this. That's right. And I think that comes across in my work. But it is somewhere where I find peace and reconciliation sometimes as well.

Now, have you lived there all your life? Are you born there? No, no, I've been very peripatetic, actually uh but my husband is from the area so i moved down when we got married and you live in a particularly beautiful spot i think i do yeah i'm in the middle of the country it's very rural i live among a farming community basically right um hay bales go past my window on big tractors that get stuck. Yeah, people honk their horns. It's not all peace and tranquillity, is it? No, no, stand tractors. I was saying to you earlier that the mood on the Tube this morning,

obviously in London, was a little gloomy. There was a real sense of the season most definitely had turned. Opaque tights were back and there was a general feeling of, is it time to go out and sort out chipolata sausages? There was that awful, you know, hanging over you. So let's just mark the change in the season with your first poem we're going to hear. We're going to hear two, and the first one

is from your collection, Bright Travellers. Now, I just want you to set this up for us. It's called Rose Bay Willow Herb. That's right. It's written about one of the valley parks in Exeter. So we used to live in Exeter, and they have these beautiful valley parks. And it's really a poem about gratitude, I think,

and an attempt to celebrate the maternal body by reaching into the environment and finding this image of Rose Bay willow herb, which is in seed at this time of year. And also to celebrate the autumn season as well. Well, let's hear it. Rose Bay Willow Herb. September. The chirp of crickets rises from the harvested hayfield like a question, like a small self-doubt. I'm stumbling into a bad pause. Help me find the words, something of happiness for once, of my daughter pretending to snore in my lap after stories at night so I won't put her down

in her cot, or holding on to my leg to steady herself as she pinches off berries and pushes them into her mouth. Or something of these fields themselves, the middle ditch lush with brambles and slows. I too may be taking root, lit like this willow herb steeple, disrobing itself in the sun, its long, unravelling hank of down, wadded like cotton wool, its candelabred arms, spent and beautiful. The breeze lifts, and the meadow is flying with seed threads. My fledgling daughter is hanging round my knees.

Her hair is the same white gold as the white gold seeds. And here is the quick of the thing. All my heart stitches for this new bright being. That was Rose Bay Willow Herb by Fiona Benson and finally we're going to hear from your collection Vertigo and Ghost. This is Fly. So can we have Fly and then we'll talk about it at the end if you don't mind. Fly. Spring broke out, but my soul did not. It kept to sleet and inwards fog. Forget-me-nots around the path, a speckled thrush. I spoke rarely and had a sour mouth. I couldn't make love. My husband lay beside me in the dark. I listened till he slept. I picked out all the bad parts of my day like sore jewels and polished them till they hurt. I wanted to take myself off like a misshapen jumper, a badly fitting frock. I wanted to take myself off like a misshapen jumper, a badly fitting frock.

I wanted to peel it off and burn it in the garden with the rubbish, pushing it deep into the fire with a fork. And what sliver of my stripped and pelted soul there still remained, I'd have it gone, smoked out, shunned, fled not into the milky way, that shining path of souls, but the in-between, the nothing. But this overshoots the mark, this gnashing sorrow so Wagnerian. It was more a vague grey element I moved in, that kept me remote and slow, like a bound and stifled fly, half paralysed, drugged dumb its soft and intermittent buzz its torpid struggle in the spider's sick cocoon

what now if I call on the sublime what bright angels of the pharmacon will come now if I call and rip this sticky gauze and tear me out and just very briefly Fiona that that is a poem

about depression or recovery from depression? Well I think it's both I think it is a poem that enacts a kind of breaking out from depression you know using these images of being stifled and trying to break through that into a clearer clearer world. You're absolutely brilliant thank you very much indeed for reading that those poems to us this morning. Appreciate it. That is the award-winning poet Fiona Benson. Now, you might well know that Thursday of this week is BBC Music Day. It's the annual celebration across the organisation

of the power of music to enhance and change lives. Now, on Woman's Hour this week, we're going to be hearing from women about the importance of music in their dementia care. Today, meet Teresa Davis. She is from Mould in North Wales, and she's creating a digital book about her life so that future carers will know about what music she likes. Woman's Hour first spoke to her at a Dementia Diaries event in Birmingham. The group write about living with dementia and then post their writing on dementiadiaries.org. Henrietta Harrison met Teresa and her dog Fudge. I don't know what I was expecting them to tell me but it certainly wasn't dementia because that hadn't come into my head at all so it was a shock. So your diagnosis was six or so years ago.

How has the dementia impacted on your life? I have hallucinations. They can be quite frightening. But I've learned to think, no, it's not real. That is not happening, you know, and sort of do some breathing or I'll put some nice music on and it just calms me.

What do you see? You don't see nice things. Crane flies with the wings of the width of the room. Spiders all hanging on webs. Hundreds of them. Or sometimes you see people. You think somebody's at the side of you. Enter the wild with care, my love

And speak the things you see You said that when you get the hallucinations you put some calming music on. What sort of music do you put on? One of my favourites, I had it on when you arrived, is the Lost Words spell songs and it's about nature because that's very important to me.

After being a landscape gardener, to be outside. The Lost Words was done by Robert McFarlane. He did the wording of it and Jackie Morris did all the illustrations. Oh, fudge, what's going on here? Eh? Ooh, I'll give you a bit of chicken. You like chicken.

So what's this that you have here on your iPad? It's called The Book of You It's a digital book that you can build up yourself If I come to go into a care home, I can have this And instead of carers and that trying to guess your memories How do they know they're evoking nice memories? So have you put some music in there? I have. My favourite song is Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

It's got to be by Eva Cassidy. Somewhere over the rainbow Cyn i mi ddod i'r fferm, roeddwn i'n gwrando ar y fferm. Roeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n gobeithio y gallaf i ffwrddio o'r sefyllfa hon. Roeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl,

oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, oeddwn i'n meddwl, to it and I always used to think I wish I could fly out of this situation. When would you listen to Eva Cassidy? When I was doing my ironing, when he was out, which wasn't very often, but when he was at

work I used to get the ironing out and I'd play Eva Cassidy, I'd play Barbara Streisand and memories. From Cass? Yeah. I was very quiet. I'm still quiet but I think dementia's given me sort of more of a voice now. It's sort of, I feel, it's given me permission to not be treated like I always was, you know, put down. So you've got music there that will remind you of your children. Yeah. And what music will you put in there then that reminds you of your youth?

You need cool air Baby baby I'm not fooling I'm gonna say it's yeah, back to schooling Led Zeppelin. I like the song Whole Lab of Love. Honey you need it You're a rock chick. I was a rock chick. I'm gonna give you my love I was a rock chick. It was a good life then, yeah.

Living at home? Living at home with my mum and dad in mould. And I'd come home and go in my bedroom and then play, you know, Led Zeppelin. I painted my ceiling red and in black letters wrote Red Zeppelin across it. My dad went mad. Roeddwn i'n peintio'r llen ffynhau i fyny yn rhed ac yn llythyr gwbl yn ysgrifennu'r llen ffynhau rydw i'n ei ddysgu. Roedd fy mab yn mynd yn fad. Roedd yn cymryd amser i'w gofyn pan wnes i symud allan. Roedd gennym y llen ffynhau yma yn y gartn, a allwn fynd i lawr i fyny o fy mhobl ystafell ystafell.

Roeddwn i'n arfer bod yn parhau i'w lleio yno yn y mlynedd a chwarae Fleetwood Mac neu Led Zeppelin. Mae'n gwneud i chi symud. because you're moving. You feel you can really let go with it, you know. I think it's now understood that music really can be part of dementia care, but often sort of the old wartime classics are rolled out, Vera Lynn. Is that a little bit frustrating? Yeah. And in memory cafes they play, you know, we'll meet again. There'll be white birds over the blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover.

And you're too young. And that's another thing. The people who would remember the war are probably dead now. You know, I was born after the war. So you're imagining that the book of me will be an integral part of your care in the future? Yeah, yeah. And then, and also when I'm dead, it's there, still there for my family. And they'll have all my memories, which will be their memories too. That was the absolutely fantastic Teresa in conversation with our equally, well, almost equally brilliant reporter, Henrietta Harrison. Loads of you really enjoyed hearing that.

I thought it was fantastic. Maria tweeted to say, this was brilliant. Teresa reminds us that she was and still is a rock chick and would be more comforted to hear Fleetwood Mac and Led Zepp than Vera Lynn when she can no longer choose the music. Hashtag dementia diaries. We have a series of these features running throughout the week and I do urge you to listen to them all because there are just some fantastic contributions

which I guarantee you will enjoy. Now, to the rest of the day's programme and I should say that most of you wanted to talk about Sally Challen. So Janie says I found this difficult to listen to. The legal system failed her but good to hear that she's had counselling in prison and after. I hope she now allows herself to embrace the joy of being free and a grandmother. Anonymous listener, I am listening to a description of my father. The story began in the 1940s. My mother didn't leave him. He destroyed the whole family.

You must continue talking about this subject. There must still be people of my age, I'm 68, who are both relieved and frustrated that this is now talked about. From Helen, who I know I've interviewed, hello Helen, hope you're all right, Helen says, I'm shaking because the pattern is so similar to what I went through. Sally has so much courage to speak up about coercive control. It is wicked, it is evil, and it destroys people. Another anonymous contributor, I identify with Sally Challen. I married a boyfriend who turned out to be a psychopath. He was the life and soul of the

party but behind closed doors he was abusive to the point he became physically violent. I managed to escape after four years and I've got my mental health back and I'm now living in a wonderful neighbourhood. Nobody understands this unless they've been in it. From Sabina, Sally's story will and has made most of us search our own life. It's a fine line and sometimes control can masquerade as intense love and it silences you. You're expected to be grateful for it rather than to question it. I think Sabina makes a really interesting point there. Langley says, I can absolutely identify with aspects of this. Controlling partners are difficult to escape. I've often thought it's a form of Stockholm syndrome.

However, I couldn't imagine taking it to the same lengths in order to be free. Another listener on Twitter, I am not the least conflicted about what Sally did. Men snap all the time and unleash violence on anyone they think has wronged them, including the system. We judge women who kill due to abuse rather differently. Loving an abuser is complex. I don't understand it.

Only psychologists can explain. And a listener called Lou takes me to task and says, please tell Jane to try to understand coercive control rather than challenge Sally, who's describing her experiences so clearly and bravely. Well, Lou, I'm sorry if you thought I was wrong in my approach. Obviously, it isn't necessarily easy to strike the right tone with contributors like Sally. And obviously, what they've got to say is so important. I suppose it's my job to put myself in the position of the listener and to try to ask the questions I think people want asked in these pretty difficult circumstances. But absolutely, I'll take the criticism. Vernon says that Sally Challen went to prison is a disgrace.

Anybody criticising her for going back to a monster of a partner has clearly never lived with such a controlling person, male or female. From Amanda, Sally is astoundingly moving and powerful. Her bravery is incredible. What a terrible life she's had. Wishing her all luck now with her future. And from Rachel, Sally, you were wonderful and brave and erudite.

You spoke for so many and we love you for it. Thank you. Thanks to everybody, actually, who just wanted to add their voice to the many, many people who just want to send appreciation and affection, actually, to Sally and to thank her for speaking up and speaking out. Tomorrow, we're talking about something which I think is a really important subject. This is the idea that the maternal mortality rate for black women is now five times that of white women.

And we're talking about Britain here. I do think that is an astounding figure. So tomorrow on the programme, we're talking to Jenny Joseph, who is a UK-trained midwife. Her work has reduced maternal and perinatal mortality in some of the most vulnerable groups of women in the States. So tomorrow, we're going to be asking what we could learn from her here. That's tomorrow on Woman's Hour, the programme and the podcast. I find quantum mechanics confusing today. Well, we hope you've enjoyed that podcast.

I don't know why, actually. I don't even know what the podcast was. This whole thing has been recorded in the 1940s. But anyway, if you didn't enjoy that podcast, another podcast you can also not enjoy is the one that I do with Professor Brian Cox, The Infinite Monkey Cage. There are well over 100 of them now.

We cover all scientific subjects, from dreams to dinosaurs to the end of the universe. We even did quantum gravity and the end of the universe at the Glastonbury Festival. And ravens. We did one on ravens. And there was a raven. We actually had a live raven that outstared you. And I think even the radio listeners, or the podcast

listeners, you have to say now, watch radio! Watch radio! Look, it's on BBC Sounds as well and that's enough, isn't it? Just say that. It's on BBC Sounds. Download them on BBC Sounds, all of them. They're fantastic, and I mean, everything's brilliant, isn't it? Is it really? Not everything.

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's 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.