Woman's Hour - School closures, Legal challenges to the CPS, Family Secrets

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

The Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson has confirmed that all schools will close in England and Wales and there’ll be no GCSE or A Level exams this summer. How are schools and pupils proposing to cope? Ruby is a 17-year old pupil in Somerset, due to take her A levels shortly. Charlie is 25 and is doing an access course to be a paramedic. It involves cramming 2 years of A-levels into 1 year. Carolyn Roberts is the Head Teacher at Thomas Tallis School in South London. A legal challenge over alleged changes to Crown Prosecution Service policy on bringing charges in rape cases was dismissed by the high court this week. The Centre for Women’s Justice brought the case on behalf of the End Violence Against Women Coalition following concerns over steep falls in rape charges and convictions in recent years - at a time when an increasing number of women have been making rape complaints to police. Human rights lawyer, Harriet Wistrich, clarifies why the case was brought and someone we are calling Olivia explains why she wanted her case to be one of the 21 cases included as evidence.The writer Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. The things we cherish aren’t always vintage, or even antique - or even expensive. The TV presenter and chef Andi Oliver talks about a one-of-a-kind blanket knitted by her mother.And in today’s family secret is that of a woman we are calling ‘H’ whose whole life has been shaped by the sense that there was something she wasn’t being told. Finding out the truth at the age of 17 at a family party and the realisation that everyone else in the family knew all along made her ill. H tells Jo Morris her story.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 19th of March. Earlier in the week, a challenge was made in the High Court to the way the Crown Prosecution Service decides on whether a claim of rape will go to court or not. The campaigners lost. Why? And where do they go now? Objects that matter, even if they have no monetary value today. Andy Oliver describes a blanket made by her mother. And the last in our series of family secrets, a woman who became ill because she suspected a secret which everyone else in the family knew. Now, there will be some children this morning who are dancing with delight at the thought of no school and no exams.

Others will be deeply anxious about having to stay at home and not being able to put all their hard work and revision to the test. Then there'll be parents worried about work, childcare and their child's future prospects. This morning, the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, confirmed that all schools will close in England and Wales and there will be no exams. I've looked through every single option and every single option is so much less good than the exam process that we would usually be going through but we are not going to be in a position where we with confidence were able to run a full exam programme. We have to make sure we do things to be as fair as possible with all pupils. We'll be

issuing guidance and details of what we're doing tomorrow to all schools, colleges and universities. But we aren't going to be able to run exams. Gavin Williamson speaking on today. Now, we're still waiting for decisions about schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And there has been quite a response, of course, on Twitter. Caroline Farrow said many children are devastated. It's very difficult to shield them from what's happening, which is unprecedented and scary.

The government needs to provide clarity. Sally Nex wrote, I was just getting ready for both kids to leave home and now I have a full house. One daughter returned from university, the other facing cancelled A-levels and six months of nothing to do.

They say grown-up kids are like boomerangs, but this is ridiculous. Charlotte said, I'd like to know about the final year university students. How will they sit their final exams? Let's not forget about them. And Nicole reminds us that it's not only school students who are facing uncertainty. No one is discussing exam cancellations in terms of apprenticeships. So how are schools, universities and pupils proposing to cope? Well, Ruby Nex is a 17-year-old pupil in Somerset due to take her A-levels shortly. Charlie Osman is 25 and is doing an access course to be a paramedic.

It involves cramming two years of A-levels into one year. And Carolyn Roberts is the headteacher at St Thomas Tally School in South London. Carolyn, let me begin with you. How prepared were you for this closure, which must have seemed on the cards? Yes, I think we were quite prepared for closure. It was the cancelling of the exams that was the unforeseen thing. Although, actually, if I'd thought about it, perhaps it was inevitable too. But the closure has been coming towards us. We've been gathering work, we've been putting stuff online, we've been handing out packs of work for young people to take home and we've been communicating with parents a lot this week.

I know you have vulnerable children in the school. How are you proposing to care for them? Well, we are a very inclusive school, so we've got about 105 children with education, health and care plans, and we've got about 50 children who have social workers, so that was one of the categories announced yesterday, and more vulnerable children on top of that, of course, which is a slightly different issue. So we'll be staying open to look after those children and also to look after the children of key workers, however that's defined when we get the list later on today. And so what we'll try to do is to run some kind of a timetable that covers all the bases, that matches the work that we're putting online for children to do at home,

but also we'll be able to do some things that we don't normally do, I think, and perhaps have a slightly experimental time with some of them. What sort of things? Well, we've been thinking about what we could do in art, for example, and what we could do if we had a bit more time for the children that we have in school. We won't have many children in school. This is a huge school built for 2,000.

So if we've got about 300 children in school, we'll be able to spread out a bit and do some interesting things. We are just at the sinking stage, Jenny, I have to say on this now. I know you're going to be talking to Year 13 later. Actually, I have done. Oh, you've done it. So what have you said to these older children about their exams? Well, the thing that they're a bit upset about and discombobulated about, really, is what do they do now?

So Year 13s would expect now to get themselves working really hard to take the exams those are over at the end of June and then there's a gap before the results and then university or the world of work after that so what we've said to them is that until we know with some clarity what the form of assessment collection is going to be for young people, well then they should actually carry on working with the work that we've got online for them and the work that we've sent them. So they need to do that now and then as soon as we know what the future holds for them, well then we'll tell them when they need to stop doing their work for their exams. But of course, knowledge is important for its own sake.

And if they reach a point in a few weeks' time or whenever when the assessments have been collected in, well, then they will need to think about what the opportunities of this enforced period of not being at school offers them. How are they coping with effectively being constant guinea pigs? They were the first to do SATs, they were the first to do the new GCSEs, and now they're landed in this. Yes, I mean, it's really hard for them.

And those of us looking at it from the outside, of course, can see that. The thing about children is that whatever they experience is to a certain extent normal for them. And so the SATs and the change in GCSEs and everything that they've been through, that was just what their school life has been like. This we can all see, is abnormal. And one of the things that happens in schools is that we build structures and community structures and friendly structures and structures of love around young people so that they can work their way through what we do with them

on the sort of formal and technical side of education. And the most difficult thing about this sudden announcement and i'm and i'm not and i'm not criticizing the announcement is actually this might be goodbye so this when we see them tomorrow we might not we might not see them again we don't know if schools are going to be able to have leaving ceremonies and proms and awards ceremonies and all the things that we do that mark the passage of year 11 and year 13. And that's the thing that's most sad. Now, let's bring Ruby in here.

Ruby, exams due to start on the 11th of May. Yeah. What's been your reaction to the news this morning? I think what's been sort of most disconcerting for both me and my friends is that we don't know what's happening. We've been told one thing and, you know, we've got about, you know, we were trying to research it last night to see if we could find sort of any direction or lead on what's going to happen. But there's about, you know, 20 websites with 20 different sort of ideas and, you know, perceptions of what's happening. So ultimately, we don't know what we're doing.

Do we stop revising? Do we, like, sort of, are we going to take them online? Or, you know, there's so many different options which are flying around, and we just haven't got a clue, you know, what we're meant to do. What about this morning? I mean, surely your teachers must be trying to give you some information.

My teachers are doing incredibly well at the moment um i've got um uh my english teacher at the moment is currently basically trying to set up um a group so that we can do all of the work respectively respectively sort of in one place um my classics teacher uh samantha desmond she started doing she's thinking about doing a podcast it's amazing and then we've got my two geography teachers Nicky Lewis and Nick Wilkinson

have started a YouTube channel yeah so they're definitely preparing you know Gilbert my English teacher's doing she's getting a massive support she's always at the end of an email I know you've and they've all been sort of

setting work in between so yeah i know you've i know you've got three offers for universities how would predicted grades affect you um well me personally i'd be absolutely fine all of my offers have been um either sort of unconditional or sort of definitely below my predicted. But I've got friends who have like been predicted grades, which means that they can't get into any universities at all. And that's not a reflection on the work they've, or well, I suppose it is a reflection of the work they've done, but certainly not the work they were intending to do for their actual A-level exams um I think that if I'm actually quite happy that you brought up the idea of our generation sort of being guinea pigs in a sense

um because that's another thing which has been going around which very very sick of it um with GCSEs and you know it's always our year something goes wrong it's getting a bit tedious though I think. I'm going to bring Charlie in now. Charlie you also expecting to do your A-levels shortly. Now what impact is this going to have for you if it has to work on predicted grades because you've crammed everything into one year for a job. Yeah, so basically I'm on a course where all of us are, it's an access course, so we're all over 25. Well, some of us are a bit younger, but we have all gone back to school.

We've given up our jobs to go into the healthcare profession. We're on an access to nursing, midwifery and medical science i'm um to become a paramedic and um so we've scrummed two years of a levels into one year so our first couple of assignments were a lot weaker than we are now and what we would have been next month when we're handing in our other assignments to bring our grade average up because we had to fit these two years into one year. And a lot of us haven't been, I mean, I haven't been at school. I haven't done any science in like 10 years. A lot of them, anywhere from 10 years to like 20 years, we haven't been at school. So it's not like we could refer back to remembering.

So it's taken time to get back into the swing of things. And we're all going to university to do medical work with hopes of getting the job in an NHS. But we might not be able to get those places because our predicted grades, they were a bit lower at the beginning of the year than obviously what we have been gaining towards. And we're all expected to still hand in our assignments on time, even though the stuff that we are going to be handing in, because we don't have exams, we have coursework, but the coursework that we're meant to be handing in next month and the month after,

we haven't been taught any of it at all. Charlie, Charlie, Osman, Rubinex and Carolyn Roberts, who has to control all of this, the very best of luck to all of you. And Ruby and Charlie, I really hope everything works out for both of you and for all of you kids who are stuck in this position. Thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. Now, I suspect we all have something that we own, which doesn't have much financial value, but would make us very sad were we to lose it. Sally Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. For the TV presenter and chef, Andy Oliver, it's a blanket knitted by her mother. It's lots of different squares, so it took her quite a long time.

It took her a good couple of years to make it, and I didn't know she was making it. So, I mean, for a start, the notion that my mum was patiently knitting these little squares and putting them away out of sight for me, there's just something so tender about that. Taking that time and it being such a kind of personal investment from her means that for me it means everything when I hold it I can feel her in it I don't hold I've moved around quite a lot so I don't hold on to a lot of physical I chuck stuff out all the

time it drives my daughter crazy she's like mum you don't value anything I'm like oh it's old buy a new one um but there's something like this means the world to me because it's about human connection and longevity and family and love and motherhood and being a daughter and foreverness. It's a kind of foreverness present, that. And do you know what prompted her to think of making it at that time? She said, because I'm a real on-the-sofa gal. You're a lounger.

I'm a lounger. My niece said to me once, I love it at your house, Andy, because everything's a bed. Literally everything is a bed. So I'm always on the sofa under something. It's usually a giant duvet or something. She said this would be a nicer thing for me to lie around under and I think she just knew how much I would love it she just she knows me so well my mum you know obviously and uh I think when she gave it to me I started crying and I could see

her little face like beam with pride that she pushed me to tears you know what I mean in of happiness and uh I just something somebody taking that much time to do something for me just moves me beyond belief I just think it's a lovely gift and there are hundreds of little stripy and plain squares that make up this blanket it must have taken us such a long time do you know how long how much work went I think I think it took her a couple of years it took about two years to do it you know my grandmother did us one ages ago that got it died because all the kids peed on it and chewed it and pulled it apart and did everything to it so that one died but my grandmother used to do quite a bit of patchwork in quilting and stuff actually so i think it's a little bit of a hand-on skill familial pass down the line thing as well so um she's very

patient my mother she's some yeah I don't think I could do something that took two years I'd have had to tell the person already or just be like so brimming with it I'd give it to him half finished or something so I just I love the idea as well that she took all that time like just knitting patiently putting it away and then doing a little bit more putting it away and never saying anything to me so and you say my mother knows me so well obviously but that's not obvious to lots of people lots of women and men don't have that relationship with their mother what does your relationship with yours mean it kind of means everything to me my mum my dad wasn't a very nice man so and, although I was quite close to him, oddly, when I was younger, and then I became a girl and started growing boobs

and he freaked out and didn't know how to deal with a young woman. So, and he was just a bit of a nightmare. But my mother is just, she's a real constant energy, my mum. She was a teacher and she's very good at kind of holding space in that way that really good teachers are do you know what I mean by that and she has just been the great leveler in my life she is always there she's always able to help me talk something through to its natural conclusion where I can make a proper decision for myself she supported me so much just practically throughout my life.

When I was 20 and I had a baby on my own with no money, she was just there, like unequivocally, just bang, just there. There was no question that she wouldn't be. And she's just always been like that for me, you know. And I value it so much. Like you say, I see people with so many checkered relationships with their mothers their fathers so my relationship with her is something really precious and I I'm really grateful for it Andy Oliver spoke to Sally Hughes

and we'd love to see your special objects. You can send us a picture through Twitter or, of course, Instagram. Still to come in today's programme, the last in our series of family secrets. A woman who was made ill by her suspicions that everyone in the family knew a secret she didn't, and the serial episode four of Your Blue-Eyed Boy. As you may have read in the newspapers, there was an attempt earlier this week by the End Violence Against Women Coalition to make

a legal challenge to the policy of the Ground Prosecution Service on bringing charges in rape. It's been alleged that the policy changed in recent years, which has led to fewer cases going to court, even though there have been an increasing number of complaints of rape made to the police. Well, the legal challenge was dismissed by the High Court. What's the background to these efforts and where do campaigners go from here?

Olivia, whose complaint was not taken to court, wanted her case included as evidence. Harriet Wistrich is a human rights lawyer who took on the legal challenge. Harriet, why did you take it on? Well, it's an absolutely fundamental uh case affecting so many rape victims we from the center for women's justice work with women's organizations across the country and rape crisis organizations and we are approached by scores and scores of women who have had their rape allegations not charged or refused charge by the CPS. And we wanted to challenge this because it was clear that there seemed to be a change in approach by the CPS. And we then received evidence from a whistleblower, which backed up our suspicions

that there had been an attempt to avoid bringing strong cases, that they were taking a more risk-averse approach. And this seemed something that was absolutely fundamental to try to challenge legally. Now, the CPS tell us they welcome the court's decision that there hasn't been a change in their approach to prosecuting rape cases. And of course, they had held a review of their working. So genuinely, how surprised are you at the outcome?

Well, we're very disappointed. I should say that this was not a full hearing. This was a permission hearing. And the court were considering whether or not to allow our case to continue. Ultimately, the court were not prepared to grapple with the conflict of evidence that came from all our sources, which included a whistleblower, which included the statistical evidence, which included a whole range of different material, including all scores and scores of accounts of women whose cases have been refused, which pointed to this change in policy. And first and foremost,

it was not disputed that the CPS had removed the specific guidance called the merits-based approach from their website. On the other side, the CPS simply said, no, there hasn't been a change in policy. And there was an inspection, which was conducted primarily by former CPS employees who looked only at a number of cases. They didn't look at wider circumstances. It was a quick rushed inspection the court um did not really want to go behind the uh evidence of the uh director of legal services uh and said that you know ultimately it's up to the director of public prosecutions if he wants to remove certain guidance and it it doesn't require consultation and that's very very disappointing olivia you were there on tuesday what was your response when you heard the case was dismissed

um it was unbelievable i was i was completely and utterly appalled um because given what i've been through, I could see completely what the case that the CWJ were trying to bring. Something is going wrong significantly somewhere in the CPS system. And to not get any further with the case that CWJ and Evil were bringing was just absolutely unbelievable. It was disappointing. It was upsetting. Olivia, what had been your experience with the Crown Prosecution Service? Unfortunately, not a good one um i after i was assaulted um i had a

lot of extremely good support from police and uh sexual violence support workers um that was absolutely amazing and then through the process, I then encountered the CPS. And all the reassurances that what had happened wasn't my fault, that I hadn't done anything wrong, was just changed. It was implied that I was at fault. The myths that I was told weren't used when looking at a case, it would be looked at on its merits seem to all get used in my case.

And it's just, it really affects you. It compounds an already horrific experience. And it can just you lose even more confidence and you question everything you're made to feel as though you're actually the perpetrator rather than the victim

and I didn't understand why why I was being put through that Harriet, why as you allege, might the CPS have changed their approach to rape cases? The evidence that we've seen is that at one stage they decided that they needed to improve their conviction rate.

Now, what that means is if you say, let's have 60% or 70% convictions, you're going to take the weaker cases out of the system. So I think that may be partly behind it. And it may be because of pressures on resources that they just felt that they couldn't take so many rape prosecutions through to trial. I think those are possible motivations as to why there would have been a shift. Obviously, the police, the CPS deny it. But the evidence we've got from women's organizations and also the police who have been blamed by the CPS for the problem, a lot of police officers saying that the CPS are no

longer charging the sorts of cases they were charging a few years ago and uh or else they're telling us and this evidence was confirmed with a recent report that was leaked that that we've got to go and investigate a whole load of more stuff they're giving us uh hints and messages that we shouldn't uh be investigating difficult case and there's very strong evidence of of a reliance on on myths uh which shouldn't take place in in rape cases that's the whole point into the merits-based approach is to try and filter out those myths and stereotypes now olivia olivia's harriet was was one of the 21 cases you put forward to the high court of evidence of cases that have been dropped what kind of things that

happened in the other cases well there's a whole range of different sorts of myths um that we think have come through so you you've had cases where for example um the the the alleged perpetrator has confessed uh which which uh still the cps have decided not to charge. We've seen a lot of cases where women have made a previous allegation of rape or sexual assault. They've been sexually abused as a child. That's seen as undermining their evidence. We've seen cases where somebody has been incapacitated

and can't remember what happened, and that's seen as undermining of their evidence. You know, we should remember that the War Boys case, all the victims in that case couldn't remember what had happened. And we've seen a whole range of other concerning cases where women, for example, have had a relationship previously where they've liked a particular sort of practice or had a kind of loving relationship and then things have changed, they've been motivated to lie, but without looking at the actual concrete evidence in the individual case. So what will happen now the case has been dismissed by the High Court?

Well, we're certainly not giving up and End Violence Against Women are very involved in something called, there's a government review ongoing. We think actually that although we've lost this particular legal challenge, we want to put out the message that actually we've achieved a great deal. We've put this out in the public domain. I think the CPS know that the spotlight is on them. And we're hoping that the pressure from public opinion will change the practice. We believe that all the evidence we've gathered can now, some of it can be considered by the government review that's uh supposed to be taking place uh and um ultimately the work of uh i would say all the women's organizations all the survivors uh and uh other many other stakeholders are absolutely united in wanting to to to keep the

pressure up and to campaign uh and to to bring individual legal challenges where we can to keep the pressure up. And we will bring individual challenges where there's a clear evidence of a wrong decision. Harriet Wistreich and Olivia, thank you both very much for being with us this morning. Now, in the last of this series of Family Secrets, we're talking to a woman we're calling H. She's 35 years old now, and there was always a lot of sadness in her family. She told Jo Morris why.

It's myself, my mum and my dad. My parents had two sons who sadly died at a very young age. So it was then just three of us. I remember when my second brother died but I wasn't born when my first brother passed away so my memories of my second brother was very faint because I was so young when he died I was only three and it's one of those things that we do talk about but we're almost too shy to show our emotion or get emotive about it how would you describe the atmosphere growing up in the house it was definitely tense. My parents from a working class background, migrants, settling in the UK, having to lose two sons, working hard and not being able to mourn or grieve the loss because someone has always got to be stronger for the other person. But I remember the themes were based on secrecy. There wasn't a lot of transparency. When I say secrecy, I'd noticed that my parents would often speak in a different language to something I couldn't understand. So they would speak in

Swahili. And, you know, they were multilingual. I could speak Punjabi and English, but because they were East African Asians, I could always sense that if it's something that I'm not supposed to know about, it would be switched to another language. Did you wonder what was being said? Yeah, I remember feeling quite frustrated, but I was a very obedient child to the point where I was inquisitive but I never dared to question. Looking back now, Age, do you think there were signs

that there was a secret being held? Yes, there were certain things. So for example, I once checked my passport. We were flying out to Kenya and I was looking for my passport and I'd be really excited to do that because that was a sign of travelling. So I think I was 11 and I opened my passport and it said birthplace was Kenya. And I paused because I always thought I was born in England. And I did wonder why my parents would never talk about that time. You know, my mum would often talk about the experience of her first and second born in England, but there was no conversations around me. There were no conversations around sharing those photographs that she had of her sons but there were no photographs of me

being born in her arms so what did you think when you saw born in Nairobi not where you grew up I was confused I was really intrigued and I knew that there was something not right I just thought oh this just isn't my place to question anything. I remember, you might laugh, but where it says sex and there's an F. I was like, what does that mean? I didn't think it was about gender, you know. I was like, I have failure in sex already. Like, what?

It's a failure. It all stems from naivety. So how old are you now? 35 35 so we're talking about the 1990s yeah and what was your relationship like with your mum i would say it was strained i was always conscious of not displeasing my parents i had a great relationship with my dad but my mum was going through a series of issues. There's a bereavement to deal with, there's trauma. Equally I was too young to understand mental health. She needed to escape and release and the person she was releasing it on happened to be me because I was with her. I was scared. I was so scared. I was scared of

being left alone with her when my dad would go to work because I just didn't know how she would react to, you know, my bedroom being a mess again or just not being able to predict the behaviour, it was toxic. You discovered a secret about yourself and then you kept that secret for a while. I was 17 years old and it was my mum's birthday and an aunt had come over from Kenya to visit us and she was staying with us. I remember, you know, being quite busy, trying to arrange the party shenanigans. And my aunt, she just took me into a room and she said, oh, I just need to speak to you really quickly. And I said, sure, what's the matter? She said, it's something you need to know and you need to sit down and let me explain it through. It's as though she'd rehearsed these lines. She spoke in Punjabi, which is the mother tongue. And I can't do it justice by translating it. But she basically told me a story where she said that my mum had a lot of problems

trying for a child. And when she finally had a child sadly you know they had disabilities she lost both children but in that sort of period she said that what they really wanted was a healthy child and she said that you were born but I gave birth to you. It wasn't your mum, it was me, your aunt. So I'm talking to you as a mother to say that you are my real daughter and I've had to hand you over to your mum to bring about some stability for them, to bring about some love and to make them happy. And it's something that your grandma really wanted. And it's something that I wanted to honour for the sake of your grandma. This is just moments before we're about to throw a party for my mum.

And I'm like, great, OK, so this is awkward. How many times have you met this auntie? Pretty much every year when we'd go to Africa. But I don't really remember doing much with her, talking to her. She had so many children, so I'd be so busy playing with her kids, who were my siblings. But the hard part was that she swore me to secrecy and she said please don't ever tell anyone that you know this and I remember walking out feeling exasperated but also

there wasn't an adrenaline of excitement because I think when you're an only child to know that you actually have real brothers and sisters. It's a really amazing feeling because you feel lonely. What was running through your mind? In terms of my feelings, I literally brushed it off very fast because I had a party to attend to and that's why my trauma probably kicked in so much later. And so you just went back into the party? Yeah, just mingled and just got on with it.

And she told you not to tell anyone yeah what did she say she just said look i'm not supposed to tell you this there'll be a really big issue if you tell anyone it was slightly threatening not not in a bad way there was just this undertone of if they were to know she would have really let my family down but it burdened me with so much carrying this heavy secret that I couldn't talk to anyone about going back to school I thought maybe I could escape from it and that's when my relationship with my mum was becoming quite strained even more so I wasn't feeling very well. I was constantly vomiting. I was losing a lot of weight. And I think my body was just

stressed and I didn't have a way to escape from it. What stopped you from saying something to your mum and dad as that 17-year-old? The fact that I was sworn to secrecy, I held on to that because I was protecting her. So who knew about this secret? Oh, everyone knew other than me. So what was that like, realising that everyone around you knew a secret about you? There was a massive sense of betrayal because I just felt like I was owed an explanation

and I deserved to know about the truth about my life. And I felt like everything was a living lie at the time. And people were kind of just promoting that lie by staying quiet. They were staying quiet out of respect of my parents who wanted to break the news to me at some point, but it would have been their responsibility to do that, not my real mother's responsibility. I was shocked and it took probably a year for it to sink in. It led on the following year to my 18th birthday. I thought actually she might call me. I remember waiting all day for a phone call. There was no call, there was no card, there was no present and then I felt sick I was admitted in the hospital on a few

occasions while studying my A-levels and there was no contact then my attitude started to become a bit bitter towards it. Were there moments when you wanted to say something to your mum and dad? Yes not so much for my dad because like I said my dad fulfilled the duty of a mother and a father in my opinion in terms of love and kindness and everything else i think there were times where i really wanted to confront it with my mother so so things eventually came to a head for my a levels i was studying the handmaid's Tale. I got asked a very difficult question. Who do you feel more sorry for, the mother who gives up a child or the mother who then has to take on the child? And it was too close to heart for me to answer. I inevitably

failed my A-levels as a result of that. So when the day came of my A-level results, obviously my parents kicked off. I remember my mum was just absolutely livid at the fact that I failed. You're constantly on that phone of yours and God knows what you've been doing. And that's when I thought to myself, this is not fair. I'm suffering. I'm having to re-sit another year through no fault of my own I'm having to carry this huge burden the secrecy it's affected my health staff were worried they'd noticed this change in me became very pale very withdrawn so everybody around me could see there's a massive change but my own mother couldn't see it that's when I just opened up and I said well I failed because I didn't know I was adopted and there was just pin drop silence in the room did your parents say anything it was just all very

quiet yeah she wasn't supposed to tell you. That's kind of all I remember hearing. The interesting line was, well, what is there to discuss, you know, now? And that was it. Yeah. Then fortunately, I was able to go to uni a year later when I passed my exams. And that was the best time of my life. I had my space, I had my freedom. I was able to be who I am. Where did the unravelling of the secret take you, H? It made me travel to Africa to speak and meet with my family, but unfortunately, I didn't get the answers I was looking for. Nobody really reached out to me. they knew that I was there I was staying with my cousin I went over to visit them once eventually I just headed back to the airport I remember getting on

that plane hiding my head beneath the um blanket you get given and just cried cried the whole journey to England what's been the hardest thing for you about discovering this secret? Not being able to talk about it. And you're not supposed to talk about bad things. Bad things in the Asian community don't happen. Everything's always sugar-coated. I'm not saying that adoption is a bad thing. There are some people that come out of really

unhealthy situations where they need love and they need somebody to take care of them to pull out a child from a very happy family to a very tense environment where you just weren't accepted by your external relatives was just so unfair what impact has this secret had on your life do you think it just makes you so much more wary of people and their intentions I feel like I've just dealt with so much I can't see it getting any harder but I'm on my guard. Definitely on my guard. H was talking to Joe Morris. Now, on school closures, lots of response. And someone who didn't want us to use a name on Twitter said, spare a thought for us exam invigilators who are missing out on GCSEs, A-levels and mock exam income.

Anne, in an email, said, I'm a single parent and work as a manager in a hotel. We've had to take a 40% pay reduction for 12 weeks and though I've taken a mortgage break I'm still at a large deficit to my outgoings. My son is now home from university indefinitely and my daughter who's working at a university on an apprenticeship will soon be returning too. I've no idea how we're meant to get through this. I know there are so many of us in this situation and we're receiving no reassurance or advice as to how to cope. I feel the fire is being fueled without consideration of our financial situation and mental well-being. Anna, also in an email, said,

My children are at the bottom of the academic achievement level. In our case, getting English and maths is the most we can aim for. This year we booked a tutor for our son and entered him privately. I've no idea what this cancellation will mean for his future. I disagree that a single end-of-course exam is the best way to judge and measure our children. I think COVID-19 is another reason why we should have either bite-sized exams termly or other methods of continuous assessment. And then on the question of legal challenges to the Crown Prosecution Service, someone, again, who didn't want to be named, said on email, I spent eight years trying to get my gang rape case to court.

The first four years' investigation was abruptly ended by the CPS refusal to allow my case to go to court. I knew they were wrong, so I took the CPS to court, despite advice not to. I won my case, and the trial took place four years later. Sadly, I did not receive justice in court, which still angers me six years later. Now, do join Jane for tomorrow's programme, when she'll be discussing tantrums. Why do they happen? Will they happen more often? Now families are going to be cooped up together for months. And if you've been watching the Prime Minister's daily press conference, which I'm sure you have, you'll have noticed that he's joined by the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Officer. The image of three men has led

some to ask, where are the women? Well, tomorrow we'll be asking why it might matter. Join Jane tomorrow, two minutes past 10 if you can. Bye-bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.