Woman's Hour - Sewing, Victim Blaming & Daisy Edgar Jones

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

We hear why the lockdown is the perfect time to give sewing and mending your clothes a try with Ros Studd a textiles teacher; Dulcie Scott a TV costume designer and Esme Young the fashion designer and judge on The Great British Sewing BeeDr Jessica Taylor, a research Pyschologist and founder of Victim Focus tells us why victim blaming is endemic.We look at the impact of death and dying during the pandemic and hear from Sarah Tully who’s dad died from Covid-19 and from Dr Rachel Clarke a specialist in Palliative Care and the clinical Psychologist Dr Frances Goodhart.The author Stephanie Scott tells us about the true story behind her debut novel What’s Left of Me is Yours.We hear how are different countries are responding to gender based violence during the pandemic, with Natalie Higgins, Senior Europe Producer for the BBC.And the actress Daisy Edgar-Jones tells us about playing the role of Marianne in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best selling novel Normal People.Presented by: Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Lucinda MontefioreGuest; Esme Young Guest; Ros Studd Guest; Dr Jessica Taylor Guest; Sarah Tully Guest; Dr Rachel Clarke Guest; Dr Frances Goodhart Guest; Stephanie Scott Guest Daisy Edgar Jones

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. Good afternoon. In today's programme, learning to talk about death. We speak to specialists in palliative care and to Sarah Tully, whose father died as a result of COVID-19. We had absolute scant information. Days and days went by and we didn't know what was happening. I go to quite a dark place if I'm not careful

about not being with my dad when he was suffering. There's been a serious rise in the incidence of domestic violence during the lockdown. How are countries across Europe responding to the problem? Why women are blamed for everything? Dr Jessica Taylor on her research on the widespread habit of blaming the victim. Daisy Edgar-Jones is the young actor who's playing Marianne in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People, with rather a lot of intimate sex scenes to be performed.

It's just refreshing to see a scene that isn't, you know, billowing curtains and a warm candlelight. It's very awkward and it's clumsy and it's everything that's, you know, realistic about what actual relationships are like. And the Japanese divorce industry. Stephanie Scott's novel What's Left of Me Is Yours is based on a true story. The front page of The Sun on Wednesday had a huge headline. Darn busters. Never in the field of human contagion has so much been sewn for so many by so few. It referred, of course, to the thousands of amateur stitchers

who've been sewing scrubs at home for the NHS. It also happened to be the day on which the great British sewing bee came back to the screen. So, here's to return to that other famous wartime activity, make, do and mend. Ros Studd teaches about textiles and is the founder of RepairWhatYouWear.com. Dulcie Scott is a costume designer and coordinator of Helping Dress Medics. And Esme Young is a fashion designer and judge on The Sewing Bee.

What would she encourage us to make new from something old? In your cupboard, you've probably got loads of clothes you don't wear that you were going to take to the charity shop. You could make children's dresses for girls or trousers for boys. You could make cushion covers, which is what I've been doing. I collect loads of embroidery, beautiful embroidery, and I've turned them all into cushion covers. The thing about me at the moment is I don't have a sewing machine with me, so I'm doing everything by hand. So I'm mending things i've got i also made a skirt out of a lot of shirts so i had the button

stand at the front i sewed a seam at the back but i didn't chop the sleeves off so the sleeves were all dangling and i made a waistband out of the bottom of the shirt. I haven't still got that, I know. It sounds complicated. Ros, not everybody knows how to use needle and thread, let alone a sewing machine. How easy is it to learn if it wasn't drummed into you at school? Because I think lots of schools don't drum it in anymore in the way they did in my day. No, I think if you're the generation where you were taught you can probably

retrieve some of the memories and that's why we set up repairwhatyouwear.com because I was working with all sorts of people and realized that core mending skills were missing in society I mean big in big numbers so I met people that surprised me when they told me they threw a shirt away for want of a button. And I'm not joking. Or when the hem went on their skirt, they got rid of it. Because they couldn't do the hem up. They couldn't do the hem. And I'm not exaggerating. In fact, having a bit of a laugh one day, I found out that the people that were most likely to know how to mend right now, people who've been in prison or in the services. And we do, some of us do have had that history,

but it's not coming down generationally. And in schools, the emphasis on curriculum is on food education, which is necessary, and on academic subjects. So hand skills are missing. And it matters financially. It really matters in families now. Dulcie, you make a living as a costume supervisor on television shows like Downton Abbey. But what started you getting people to make scrubs? Well, we were finishing off on his Dark materials series two in cardiff and we decided that we'd

keep our whatsapp group going for our department because we'd been a very close unit for pretty much two years and then when the coronavirus thing hit we said right okay let's keep the whatsapp group going and let's every time we make something or create something or do something we're proud of put it on the group because we'd normally share so much anyway and so we kept the group going and for a week that we were sort of starting to think about doing things like that but actually what most of us were doing were just kind of being at home and not doing very much and then I was invited to join a whatsapp group in London that Scrubhub had started about making scrubs and I looked at that and thought well well, that's great,

but it's all very much London-based. And the way Annabella set it up was brilliant, which meant people could walk to each other's houses pretty much with the scrubs or the fabric. And it was very localised. And I thought, that's great, but we're spread around a bit and we can't quite work like that. So I thought, I need to come at a different angle from that.

Because I'm in North Cotswolds. We've got people in Plymouth, Malvern, Brighton, Kingston but the majority of our crew are still in Cardiff because it was a very Welsh production very Wales-based production so we decided that we'd try and do something as a group even though we were separated and and keep the spirit of what we've been doing on the production going by making scrubs now people have to be very careful don't they when they're making scrubs about the kind of material and the way that they're made could you just detail exactly what you need to know before you can do it yes well what we were very fortunate because we've in the work that we do we're all

freelance and you're jumping around on different jobs so you learn all sorts of information about different things and so we had a couple of people on our team who'd done a lot of stuff to do with medical dramas on tv and knew it inside out and vicky and bristol was on casualty for donkey's years one of our other team was on silent witness for years so that knowledge that they they have and don't even realize they have came into bear and we know a lot of the suppliers where the nhs buy their fabric from so we knew we were on the right fabric instantly because we absolutely using the right spec and it's very important that you use it's going to have to be boil washed every day it's got to be fit for purpose and what we're all very obsessed with particularly is not making a short

term solution that's going to end up in landfill we're trying to make them so they're going to be useful in the future as well they're not a quick fix they're going to be fit for purpose keep on going and not be once this has over been them also, if it's a hospital where the hospital does the laundry, they won't accept them if they're not of a standard. That's quite a problem. And the hospitals need to quality check them. So let's go back to when you all actually started sewing. Esme, what was the first thing you ever stitched?

Mine, I have to say, was a bag in which to carry my pumps which i suspect is what a lot of people started on obviously i learned at school and we started with embroidery but the first garment i ever made was a gathered skirt and it was made by hand so it was a rectangle gathered a waistband put on and there wasn't the placket at the side the fabric was folded back and it was done up with poppers and you hand you hand stitched it you didn't use a machine, we didn't have machines. We hand-stitched it. So I learned lots of different stitches, you know, hemming, plucking, yeah. Ros, what about you? What was the first thing you ever made? Well, I made things at school which we had to make and I didn't find them very exciting but I can remember when I was about 12 making a smock

and loving it, absolutely loving it. How difficult was it to do the smocking? Oh no, it was more that it was a trendy smock. So it had big pockets on it and gathers on the shoulders and things. I followed a pattern, which you can do if you've been taught the basics. So I suppose my basic learning at school enabled me to then to become independent, which is why I think that if you learn to manage a needle now and just even repair your clothes simply, then if it interests you, you can use that skill to become a bit more sophisticated, as they certainly are on the sewing bee and we can all admire it

dulcie what about you what was the first thing you ever stitched oh it would probably be something with my mum when i was very small um because she used to make a lot of our clothes and she also used to do there's a there's a thing to do with horse shows i grew up on a farm and we had horses and at horse shows they often have fancy dress on horseback and I remember my mum making me a fancy dress costume that I thought was phenomenal and I was a princess wearing a pointy hat sitting on a pony and I thought it was the best thing ever and I think that inspired me into the costume world and also as my mum would be making stuff for me I'd be making stuff for my dolls I'd make stuff to dress the dog up,

anything like that really. So that's the first time I ever attempted anything and my mum would show me how to use her sewing machine and then at school probably the first thing I made was a drawstring bag which is sort of funny because everyone's crazily making scrub bags right now. That's exactly the same as my pump bag, it also had a drawstring. Just one

final question Roz to you I know you've done a video for making a mask for yourself not for the NHS just briefly how did you make it? I gave it a lot of thought because obviously none of us want to use stocks that need to be used professionally but I also thought what would be in a household that doesn't normally sew? So no sewing machine, just a needle and thread and a bit of learning in there as well, because I think that's important. I use t-shirt material because you can easily make straps

with t-shirts, no elastic. And it works. The best thing about it is you can make it to the size that fits your face. So it can be made for all the family. You probably get about minimum of four out of one T-shirt. And providing you take, I work to the supermarket and I work to places where it's more respectful to wear a mask

and it changes your behaviour a bit more careful. And then I take it off the back of my head from the straps, don't touch it, put it into a pan and boil it up, dry it and wear it again. Dulcie Scott, Ross Studd and Esme Young. And if you missed Monday's item on falling back in love with the clothes you already have, the stylist Emma Slade-Edmondson has shared five tips to help you get started from de-bubbling a jumper to spending a night in with your wardrobe. That's in our latest article on the Woman's Hour website. And Marilyn said in an email, I used to enjoy sewing and it began in primary school. Even in 1960, we didn't need

a pan grab for the kettle. And I can only assume my mum didn't think the peg bag I made was worthy of use unless it was deemed too precious to use. My final offering was a gathered skirt as Esme described, gathered into a waistband and it even had a button and buttonhole. I can recall exactly the fabrics, colour and pattern. Since then, my main sewing has been curtains, cushions and mending. I would like to get going making clothes again, but I'm afraid of making a hash of it. And Barbara said, I've made a lovely summer dress from one side of a 1970s duvet cover. The other side will be used for another dress using a different paper pattern. I knew these patterns would come in handy one day, along with a vast collection of different coloured cottons and zips, all very retro and on trend. Now it's often said that it's extremely

difficult to convince juries to convict when cases of rape reach the criminal courts, even when the evidence appears to be compelling. It's also often said the reason is because the victim is blamed. Was her skirt too short? Had she flirted with him? Had she had too much to drink? Was it her fault? Where did these assumptions come from? And what impact do they have on the very professionals who are there to support women and girls who've suffered sexual violence? Dr Jessica Taylor is a research psychologist and the author of Why Women Are Blamed For Everything.

What convinced her that victim blaming is a pervasive problem? I worked in victim support and then I worked in courts managing these types of cases. Then I managed rape centres and in every single job that I had there was a different form of victim blaming towards women and girls. So for example when I was working in the courts, I often felt like I was just supporting women and girls to get led into a room where everything about them would be discredited. When I was running the rape centres, even though the support systems are very different, a lot of women and girls were coming in and telling us that their GPs or their mental health services or somebody had told them that it was their own fault or that their symptoms so for example if they're having flashbacks or nightmares that

they were either making them up or they were exaggerating them or that nobody was asking them about the rape or the abuse and over a period of years of working in that field I decided that I wanted to focus on the research I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was day in, day out. Why do you then believe that there is apparently much more interest in blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator? So there are a number of reasons that all come together. One of them that lots of people talk about

is rape myth acceptance. So that's like a set of myths about what a real rape is or who a real rape victim is and and a set of I guess characteristics that you have to hit so things like you have to have been attacked by a stranger it happened at night it happened in an unfamiliar location you were I don't know walking home through a strange environment and you were attacked and that that creates this myth that there's a real type of rape that happens to women and girls and if if your experience sits outside of that so for example it was your partner that did it or a family member or it happened in your own home or there was no witnesses instantly you fall outside of that that sort of criteria and then you are much more likely to be blamed so So there's rape myths. And then there's this really interesting theory called belief in a just world.

And that's a cognitive bias that millions of people hold. It's found all over the world in all different cultures and languages and communities that people tend to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And so if you are raped or sexually abused, people who hold that belief in a just world, often they hold it sort of semi-consciously um they will seek out something that you did wrong or look for the mistake you made or what you could have done differently to stop that from happening to you the reason that we hold those types of beliefs is to protect

ourselves psychologically from the reality that this could happen to us at any point so if we can believe that um oh that person was raped because this and this and this and i will never do those things and that will never happen to me it helps us to feel more psychologically safe how powerful is popular culture in reinforcing the myths we've been talking about? So the research finds that it is extremely influential. The way headlines are written, the way journalists write about sexual violence, including episodes of soaps and popular dramas,

CSI investigation type dramas, are found to be very influential. So, for example um there was a really interesting study that was done by molly magistro um who looked at all of the episodes of a csi drama and found that in a hundred percent of the episodes in the first 10 seasons there was victim blaming of women and girls who had been raped and she actually in her book she actually shows the the script extracts of where that happened so we know that we know that people who are exposed to victim blaming headlines in newspapers and on the internet are much more likely to believe that women and girls lie about being raped and they tend to overestimate that sometimes 20 or 30 times more than what is

really happening so it does have a huge impact now in your research you found no difference in the way men and women apportioned blame to rape victims why do you suppose that is yeah that's right um so i wasn't the first person to find that um it's been coming for about i would say about a decade so originally in the 60s 70s 80s the research found that men um victim blamed women and girls who had been raped and abused much more than women did and over the years women have got more and more and more sort of closer to the attitudes of men which is interesting in itself and I think that's because when you live in a society as a woman or girl and you are brought up with misogyny you take that in and you apply it to other women as well you apply misogyny to yourself which means that you'll blame

yourselves for sexist and misogynistic reasons you objectify yourself you sexualize yourself but you also do that to other women and girls so then when another woman or girl in your life or somebody that you know is raped or abused you will apply the same reasoning that men would so it now the research is finding that there is no statistically significant difference between the way men and women um blame women and girls for being raped and abused there's also um interestingly no difference between the way women and girls for being raped and abused. There's also, interestingly, no difference between the way women and girls who have actually been raped themselves and women and girls who have never experienced that. They also tend to blame women and girls at the same rate. There's no difference there either. Now, you're critical of prevention programmes and the concept of

vulnerability that's employed in child safeguarding risk assessments so what do you say to those who are desperate to protect girls let's say from grooming that's a really interesting question so yes i am really critical of that because a lot of the interventions and prevention campaigns at the moment they focus on looking at what the child has done wrong or is there's some sort of vulnerability in their I don't know their personality their self-esteem in their behavior their character and I do think that's wrong I don't think we should be looking at what's wrong with girls so I tend to advise people to talk to their children as early as possible even the most basic things help so naming their anatomy correctly talking

to them about abuse talking to them about misogyny talking to them about sexism and and narratives in society and then I like to advise people to always place 100% responsibility on groomers and perpetrators so if you are talking to a child about grooming on the internet don't say things like I don't know if you go on the internet and you say this then this might happen to you i would prefer us to say things like some adults on the internet use it to target children and this is how they will do it and these are the different techniques they use so i like to place all the focus on the perpetrators and educate in that way and when I do that in schools with girls that tends to work I think a lot better than going in and scaring them. I was talking to

Dr Jessica Taylor and Anne said in an email I was interested in what Jessica Taylor had to say about why women are blamed for everything. It was at the end of the interview that she hit the nail on the head when she mentioned patriarchy. It's the patriarchal system under which we all live which is the problem and until this system is overthrown by the collective action by women of supporting each other in all aspects of our lives, nothing will radically change. At the moment, all institutions are run in the interests of men by men, the courts, the police, the media. Now, I think we've all imagined what it must be like to learn that your father or mother or anyone with whom you're very close has become ill, has the coronavirus and is likely to die and you can't be with them. In a moment, we'll hear from Dr Rachel Clark, a specialist in palliative care,

and Dr Frances Goodhart, a clinical psychologist. But first, Sarah Tully sent us an email to tell us her father Bill, who was 87, had died in hospital earlier this month. She told me what had happened. About a month ago, my dad's wife phoned me and said that my dad was very poorly. I could hear that they were very distressed, both of them. And I'd tried to keep away. I live in Sheffield. I tried to keep away from them in case I took coronavirus to them because at the time my dad wasn't displaying any of the symptoms.

He was just very ill. But by the Friday, it just got too much. So I drove from Sheffield to London. And when I found him in the flat, he was in a very poor state. I went with him in the ambulance. We got kitted up. We went to the back entrance of Whips Cross. It was very bizarre. It was like an episode of The Handmaid's Tale, you know, kind of quite surreal. I said to Dad, don't worry, I'll stay with you the whole time. We were put in a queue. It got to my dad's turn to be taken into hospital and that's the last

time I saw him. Now, I know you did manage to deliver letters to your father. Yes. Do you think he got to hear what you had to say? I took the letter to Whipscross, and like a crazy woman waited for somebody who was going in, and this member of staff said, you know, if I could hug you, I would,

and I will get this letter to your dad, and I'm pretty certain that he will have got the letters from from me and his wife now your brother as you said is is a doctor and was able to see your father before he died what difference did that make to the family that at least one of you had managed to see him it made such a big difference but to be honest Jenny it was a bit late because he'd been ill for a week. By the time my brother went in he was in positive care and he was barely conscious but he woke up for a couple of seconds and said thank you to my brother and then my brother was able to strongly suggest that he had morphine to help him and so it was a comfort to us to feel like he wasn't suffering so much.

What plans are being made for the funeral? Well, you know, I've had to totally reframe my view of death and funerals because the stark reality is that I don't actually know where my dad is at the moment. He died in hospital. You're supposed to register the death within a week. It's been two weeks, and the registrar is chasing up the hospital.

We've chosen to remember my dad. He died when it was a full moon, he loved the moon so we've chosen to remember him by the moon and also every time we drive past the betting shop because he did like a flutter on the horses. But when you say you've had to change your whole view of death, what do you mean well every single system and process um just wasn't working my dad's wife mo is you know she's now grieving in isolation you know when somebody dies you you want friends and family around you all the time. I mean, luckily, I was there for two weeks. The next thing you want is information.

We had absolute scant information. You know, days and days went by and we didn't know what was happening. I go to quite a dark place if I'm not careful about not being with my dad when he was suffering. You know, I've had to let go of what I can't control my dad would have really understood that the position that we were in and you know but that's the other thing I did actually is imagine what he would say in this situation and he would have had quite a funny take on it, really. What would he have said? Well, with the letter, when we were, like, weeping over the letter, he would have said, oh, don't bother.

He would have said, don't bother. Yeah. Sarah Tully, still in the midst of grief and uncertainty. How are people coping with death on such a scale when it touches them so personally? Well, Rachel Clarke stays with us and we're joined by Frances Goodhart, who's a consultant clinical psychologist

in oncology and palliative care. Frances, how typical is Sarah's experience at the moment? I think every case is deeply moving, but I think she describes the experience so vividly and I think many people will will share that that sense that the shock the isolation I think that sense of having to completely rethink grief bereavement funerals contact she's extraordinary and how she's been able to to describe it. Rachel Sarah mentioned that her father had palliative care towards the end how easy would it have been to deliver it to him

in such an emergency? Well I think I mean so many things that we heard there were the exact opposite of what in an ideal world good palliative care would be there'd be a huge amount of communication and none of those experiences would have happened in in isolation with families separated from each other but we've had to learn very very quickly One of the things we're trying very hard to do is find ways of enabling loving relatives up just in the last few weeks who are calling relatives every day proactively to update them. We've gone through a very, very steep learning curve. I wish we'd been on top of our game straight away, but I feel as though in hospitals now we definitely are and we're reaching out to those patients. Frances when Sarah said you know she went to the hospital with her letter she stopped this member of staff who said I wish I could have given you a hug but I can't but I'll make sure your dad gets the letter. How sensitive are staff generally able

to be with relatives in these kind of circumstances? Well I think the staff are working incredibly hard at doing that. I think Rachel has described the ways in which the staff are working to provide some form of family contact even when the family member can't be with them the staff are working so so hard to give the messages to get the messages i'm hearing from people all the time about how they are sitting with patients they are as r as Rachel said, reading poems, reading letters from families, looking at photographs for them, of them. They are really, in very short periods of time, finding ways to make those connections. And I think one of the things that's been said in the media a lot is that people are dying on their own.

And my sense is that the staff in the hospitals are working so incredibly hard to ensure that patients die with someone with them. I was talking to Frances Goodhart, Rachel Clark and Sarah Tully. Still to come in today's programme is the rate of domestic violence has risen during lockdown. What's happening across Europe? And Daisy Edgar-Jones, the young actor who's playing the role of Marianne in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney's novel Normal People.

It was not uncommon in the days before no-fault divorce for a husband or wife to persuade a mate to join them in a hotel room and be caught in flagrante to provide evidence of infidelity. There's a not dissimilar system in Japan where a spouse looking for divorce has to prove fault. And there's a system of what are known as wakarisasaya, or marriage breakup agents, paid to lure a husband or wife into an affair and again provide evidence. It's a system which is at the heart of a debut novel by Stephanie Scott,

What's Left of Me is Yours. Rina is married to Osamu, who wants a divorce. He hires Kai to seduce his wife. Here they meet for the first time in the market. Rina brows beneath the heat of the lamps. It was warm for spring and muggy. The stench of stagnant water from the pavement rose into the air along with the bittersweet scents of char-grilled squid and corn on the cob.

She'd stopped in front of a display of gnashy pears, their golden skins shining bright beneath the lamps when he approached her. Excuse me, do you know where I could find a good cheesecake? Rina looked up. He was tall, taller than the usual salaryman, and slender, and there were crinkles around his eyes, perhaps from laughter. She gestured to a stall behind her. Try over there, she said.

But are they any good? Rina considered this. I'm not sure. She was aware that she was frowning, as though this were a grave matter. The cream looks too light. Oh no! Hmm, Rina nodded, biting back a smile. Can I buy you a coffee, he asked, smiling with her.

I'm married. I know, he said. You do? Your wedding ring. A true story inspired the novel, as Stephanie explained. I know, he said. You do? Your wedding ring. A true story inspired the novel, as Stephanie explained. In the true story, the Waka Sesea agent fell in love with his target and they were going to live happily ever after. But when she found out the role he played in the breakdown of her marriage, she tried to leave him and he strangled her.

And in the real case, he turned himself into the police and confessed very quickly. And as he was doing so, he said, but I loved her and I couldn't live without her. And I love her still. And this made me sort of feel compelled to explore what love means to each of us, you know, how we love, what we're capable of doing to each other for love. And that is where the novel began. Now, you describe what I understand is known as the Japanese divorce industry, which is growing. How does it work? Well, it's normally attached to private detective agencies. And their bread and butter work would be assessing if a partner is having an affair. But you can also hire someone to seduce your partner. You can shame employees. Companies can hire people to shame employees so that they have to resign or they feel compelled to resign.

And they also have most recently started a matchmaking service. And of course, matchmaking in Japan is very traditional and socially acceptable. So in a way, it makes sense that there is this matching industry, except that the divorce industry is much more covert and less acceptable. Now, you highlight the fact that the custody of children is only awarded to one parent. What impact does that have on a character like Rino or the woman in the real story? Well, it can be quite devastating. And, you know, as often happens in divorce,

what you love most, what you value, can become a pressure point, a point for manipulation from your partner. And there is only sole custody in Japanese law. The Civil Code of Japan expressly provides only for this. And it has caused widespread, I think, devastation, both internationally for foreigners who marry Japanese spouses and then cannot see their children, and also for Japanese spouses, because one parent will take the child and their family will raise them. And more often than not, the spouse that is abandoned will have no further contact with their children. And actually, as recently as the end of last year,

the Japanese Ministry of Justice has said that they will start an investigation into whether they could, in fact, consider joint custody. They're currently being sued by 12 parents who've been separated from their children who say that this system violates their constitutional right to raise their kids. So it is a very hot topic at the moment. Now, the book is told from the perspective of Rina's daughter who grew up believing her mother had died in a car accident and I think she was inspired by an idea which you call forgotten parties. What's that all about? When I first started researching the novel and I was living in Tokyo and I spent a lot of time with Japanese defense attorneys then and they they mentioned to me that victims of crime

their families could be called could be known as forgotten parties and back when Rena dies in the 1990s the treatment of forgotten parties was very different to how it is now I think the concern then was to protect the rights of the accused, to not disclose their identity. And that was very much where attention was focused. And so the victim's family would effectively be shut out of the case. You know, they wouldn't be notified of the trial, they wouldn't necessarily be allowed to attend it. And whereas now the situation is very different for forgotten parties. You can actually hire someone, a lawyer, to represent you and be in court, you know, with the perpetrator and you can access the files. Of course, this isn't possible for Simicoe because her mother died back in the 90s and far too long ago. And there would simply be no way, even though she is a lawyer,

there would be no way that through the public prosecutor's office at least that she could access her mother's case file. So I was told quite categorically this would never happen by Japanese lawyers. So I had to find another way around that in the book. She has had to build up her own version of her mother and it seems to me you're absolutely fascinated by the way children view their mothers. Why is that so fascinating for you? I think it's because it's something that has always fascinated me. My mother is the most important person in my life and she's always been there me. And I think everything I am is due to her.

But I'm very aware of her role, not just as my mother, but as a woman. And I'm fascinated by her life before me. You know, I think we can often fall into the assumption that with children, they normally think that, well, life begins with them, you know, they are year zero. But of course, this isn't the case. And there are so many different sides to a person, so many different lives that can be lived. So that's what has always interested me. In this story, in particular, I wanted to explore female voices that have been silenced. Of course, victims of murder are silenced. And so I wanted to explore a notion of reclaiming, perhaps even rewriting personal history. And to some extent, we all do this with our parents because we cannot know everything

about them. I was talking to Stephanie Scott. If you've been listening regularly to Woman's Hour in the weeks we've been asked to stay home. You know we've discussed the heightened risk of domestic abuse in the UK during lockdown. How much is the rise being replicated across Europe and how are different countries responding to gender-based violence during the pandemic? Natalie Higgins, the senior Europe producer for the BBC, spoke to me from Brussels. She told me about the murder of a young Italian doctor, Lorena Caranta. Lorena's case was widely reported in Italy and beyond. She was a 27-year-old woman from Sicily, and she was on the brink of qualifying as a doctor when she died at the end of March.

Now, we think more than 100 doctors have died during the pandemic in Italy, but Lorena's case was different. It wasn't the virus that killed her. Her boyfriend, who's a nurse, told the police that he killed her. And it may partly have been that contrast that led to her story cutting through so much in the Italian media, but it served to highlight the issue of domestic abuse during the lockdown, which women's groups had already been trying to raise awareness of. Just like in normal times,

some cases of femicide get a lot more attention and others get less, even though they're no less shocking. And we do know of other cases too. Just on Saturday night near Milan, a woman called Alessandra was reportedly killed by her partner. And in Spain, we can actually be quite precise because of the way that gender-based violence is monitored there. A woman was killed in a town called Almasora near Valencia. Her name was Karina. Her husband confessed to killing her and turned himself in. And a 78-year-old woman in Gran Canaria was also confirmed to be a gender violence death. So the 17th and 18th deaths of women at the hands of a current or former partner in Spain this year

and these are of course just the death that we know about already and just the most extreme iteration of domestic abuse which takes many forms. So how much of a widespread spike in domestic abuse is showing up in the statistics? I mean, you said those ones in Spain are known about, but there may well be many others. Well, as ever with statistics, it depends a little bit on what you look at. So it's now been about five weeks since large parts of Europe came to a standstill, which isn't very long to gather, verify and publish statistical data.

And on top of that, we're talking about a lot of different countries. But among the numbers that we do have access to already, there are strong indications of a rise in domestic abuse. In France, the government said reports to police had gone up by a third and by more than that in Paris. This morning, the Ministry of the Interior in France told me that police call-outs to what they call domestic disputes have doubled compared to the same period last year. In Spain, calls to the National Helpline went up 18% in the first fortnight of the state of alarm there compared to the same period in the previous month.

But by the second fortnight, it was 48% higher. And police have carried out 25% more checks on women who are victims of violence than they normally would just a few other countries where i've spoken to people on the front line calls tripling for the french language helpline in belgium double the calls in cyprus double the calls for emergency shelters in denmark contacts to a network of 80 women's centres across Italy, up 75% compared to the average month. But in among those numbers, Jenny, there's some numbers that seem a bit incongruous or don't go along with the trend.

So in Spain, there's been suggestions of a decrease in complaints to police. In France, calls to the helpline were at one point decreasing. And people on the front line have told me, you know, it would be wrong to conclude from those exceptions that there's less domestic abuse happening but rather we should conclude that women are finding it hard to report in these circumstances. Obviously I mean we've seen in this country that the lockdown can prove to be a barrier for victims seeking help because they can't make a phone call they can't get outside to make a complaint. But what kind of support is available in different countries? I was intrigued by something in Spain called MASC-19. How does that work? Yes, so MASC-19 is a new scheme that

was launched in the Canary Islands by the Institute for Equality there. It's basically a code word. So if you go into a pharmacy and you ask for mask 19, the pharmacy staff know that they should call the police and support staff for the women and either bring those people to the pharmacy if the women can wait or send them to her home. In one case, we know that that was used in Tenerife by a woman who hadn't been able to get out of her partner's home for two weeks. And she used that code word while he was waiting for her outside the pharmacy door. So having started in the Canary Islands, that's now expanded across Spain and to lots of other countries as far afield as Colombia and Uganda. So that is one way of

matching the challenge of these new circumstances and using one of the few places that women can still freely go to as a centre for help. So in France, they've done a similar thing with drop-in centres in hypermarkets. And another trend is increasing the silent ways that you can ask for help. So in Spain, for example, we talked about calls to the National Helpline doubling if you can call, but email contact is up by 733% in the last two weeks compared to the same period last month. And they're launching new psychological support messaging services via WhatsApp, which got 730 odd inquiries in its first nine days. So there are new initiatives to match the challenges of these new circumstances. How possible is it to assess which countries, which cultures are the worst affected? It's a reasonable question, and it's one that I wanted to try to answer

when I started reporting on this subject to you know to see where the spikes were the highest but that's really difficult because the numbers that I've been talking through with you are comparing the picture in an individual country before and after the lockdown to compare countries to each other to see who's doing the worst and the best requires data that you can compare that measures the same things and at a European level that doesn't really exist. Experts in the area are saying we need better harmonisation of the data across Europe at minimum if people could be gathering, if countries could be gathering the gender of the victim, the gender of the perpetrator and the relationship between them

so that it would be easier to identify gender-based crimes and intimate partner violence. Lots of countries don't gather that way and some are very resistant to changing it. And even if they did change it, reluctance to share it sometimes because there aren't necessarily shared definitions. So what constitutes a partner? What constitutes abuse? It would be possible to change that, but it requires political will and requires some governments to get past reservations about privacy, squeamishness about being seen to poke their nose into what's going on at home

and some concern that what they perceive as their values are being challenged by that. How surprising is it that the Scandinavian countries, famous for their equality and equal relations, seem to have high numbers of abuse? Well, the numbers that you're referring to there are from 2014, and that was a survey of women. So obviously there's lots of things we can measure in terms of measuring domestic abuse, calls to helpines, reports of crimes, sadly, deaths of women.

But that survey was women being asked if they had experienced violence from a current or former partner. And the highest result was in Denmark at 32 percent, which seems confusing, right? Because you might think, well, the progressive liberal societies will be the most enlightened and they'll be the least violent. And in the same survey, you're seeing very low results for Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Austria. But that may also be because, like the governments, women themselves might define abuse differently. So reporting that you've been a victim or a survivor depends on you recognising and acknowledging that what happened to you was abuse and also overcoming the shame that remains pervasive in terms of reporting it and being able to say that that happened to you. So cultural issues play a part not just at government level but also in the minds of individual women. I was talking to Natalie Higgins. Sally Rooney's

Normal People was published in 2018 and rated as one of the best novels of the 21st century. It tells the story of Marianne and Conall who live in a small town in the west of Ireland. They're at the same school. Conall's mother cleans Marianne's mother's house and the two late teenagers couldn't be more different. Marianne is a rather intimidating loner who challenges the authority of the teachers. Connell is a studious, well-liked athletic football player. Well, the two fall in love and lust. It's now been adapted for television by BBC Three.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Marianne, and Paul Mescal is Conall here. They make their tentative first steps. You know, you were saying the other day that you like me. By the photocopier, you said it? Yeah. Did you mean like as a friend or what? No. Not just as a friend.

Yeah. I thought that might be implied. I just wasn't sure. See, I'm just a little confused about what I feel. I think it would be awkward in school if something happened with us. No one would have to know. Daisy, what did you make of the book when you read it? I fell in love with it straight away.

I think a lot of people did. I mean, I read it in about an hour. I kind of ate it up, really. I think Sally Rooney's kind of touched on a really unique thing, telling a really raw and honest story of love and of growing up, and I think she just captures it up really. I think Sally Rooney's kind of touched on a really unique thing, telling a really raw and honest story of love and of growing up and I think she just captures it so well. And what did you make of Marianne when you first encountered her in the book? I really loved Marianne. I really loved how kind of odd she was, particularly at school and how she kind of had this very deep inner life and, you know, her observations of the social ladder

and what that meant for her. And, you know, as she grows up, her kind of battle with her self-identity is something I think we all kind of can relate to as a young person growing up. So there's a lot about Marianne that I really kind of fell in love with. Now, there are some very intimate sex scenes

and I know you had an intimacy coach to help you do it. How easy was it, though, to be so graphic? It's the first big role, really big, big role you've had. And suddenly you have to do all that. Yes. I mean, nothing will prepare you to what that feels like. I mean, I was incredibly sort of nervous, as you can imagine, to sort of take on that aspect of the filming. But, you know, it's such an important part of the story. And, you know, it's so beautifully written in the book, it was really important to do it justice. And we were very lucky, Paul and I, that we felt so safe, you know, when we filmed those scenes, because we had this wonderful intimacy coordinator who coordinator who I mean I can't imagine doing anything like that without one and I think it should be the kind of gold standard to have someone on set just to make sure that everything is being well looked after and handled properly and she just created an environment that always felt that we could kind of question things and we never felt you know as a young actor you're eager to please and

you know it is both Paul and I's first sort of big role and we obviously don't want to you know mess up so I think she kind of created a a place and space where we could always feel that we you know were 100% consensual with everything we were being asked to do and and also we've had an immense amount of love behind the camera because the crew and and the set was such a friendly place which meant that we could kind of relax and just concentrate on the acting part of it what are you hoping young people who watch this will take from these scenes because i have to say what impressed me was there's great care to make sure it's clear it's consensual you know connell says you can tell me to stop if you really want me to stop and and and they make sure it's protected sex so what do you hope young people will take away from it i mean i'm i'm immensely proud of that aspect of the series

because how refreshing to have a scene that is still incredibly tender and sexy and you know everything you want from a kind of sex scene but yet it has this element of consent and it has this element of using protection which isn't something I've often sort of seen and I think I really hope that people watch it and especially as a young person I think I'd have really learned from you know that that should be how it should always be when you're you know intimate with someone that there should always be a an element of care and you should always feel that you you know you are consenting 100% and I just think that's a really refreshing sort of depiction of of the sex scenes and even you know

throughout the whole series there is 50-50 nudity, which, you know, is something that I don't often see. And the characters are never kind of sexualized when they're nude. It's always kind of incidental. And I think it's just refreshing to see a scene that isn't, you know, billowing curtains and a warm candlelight. It's very awkward and it's clumsy and it's everything that's, you know, realistic about what actual relationships are like. Now, the story is set in Sligo and then in Dublin. How easy was it to master the right Irish accent, which you seem to do perfectly? Oh, thank you. I mean, that was incredibly important because, you know,

I mean, the accents across Ireland are so nuanced and specific to each region and I didn't want to you know ever feel like I was kind of just doing a generalized accent because that wouldn't be truthful but yeah I mean my mum's from Northern Ireland so I always had kind of the Irish accent in my house and my granddad lived with me for a long time so we'd always kind of speak in accents so you know I had the kind of sounds in my head from an early age. But I guess it was just I worked with a brilliant accent coach who kind of helped me refine particular sounds. And I listened to Sally Rooney speak a lot as well because she's from Mayo. And she, you know, she is a very she's very intelligent and she has a very kind of measured way of speaking, which I thought might be quite helpful for Marianne. I know your father was an executive producer on Big Brother and I thought what advice is he giving her about handling fame which is going to come? Yes well you know he's

brilliant really because I mean you know he obviously when Big Brother was you know at the top of its sort of game I mean the kind of fame that came from it was huge and you know I guess he had a really good perspective on it that you know that even if people treat you differently you aren't different as a person and you just have to accept that you know people may feel that they know you but they don't and to never kind of you know get swept up in something. Daisy Edgar-Jones and you can see Normal People on BBC3 through the iPlayer from Sunday or on BBC1 on Monday night at nine o'clock and there are 12 episodes. That's all from me for this week. Do join Jane on Monday morning at two minutes past 10. Stay safe. Bye-bye.

I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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.