Woman's Hour - Stella Assange, Sexual assaults in hospitals, Comedian Zoe Lyons on her midlife crisis

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Stella Assange is the wife of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a whistle-blowing platform that publishes classified material provided by anonymous sources. He is currently being held in Belmarsh Prison pending extradition to the US, where he is wanted for 18 criminal charges related to obtaining and publishing classified information. Stella is leading a campaign to fight his extradition, which has been depicted in a new documentary, Ithaka. She tells Nuala why she thinks Julian should be released, how they first met and the impact of the campaign on their two young children. Award-winning comedian Zoe Lyons tells Nuala about her ‘monumental' midlife crisis. It involved buying a sports car, having a brief marital separation and running a 100k ultra marathon… badly. Along the way, her hair started to fall out. Thankfully, Zoe has been able to explore the funny side and create her stand-up show Bald Ambition. Nurses are set to be given body-worn cameras in a crackdown on hospital sexual assaults under new government plans. A recent report published by The Women’s Rights Network revealed that thousands of sex attacks have been reported in hospitals across England and Wales in the past 4 years. Nuala is joined by Heather Binning, Founder of The Women’s Rights Network, and Catriona Rubens, a solicitor at human rights law firm Leigh Day. Dr Lil Stevens recently found out that her grandfather, Captain Leicester Stevens, had taken part in an expedition to find a dinosaur in the rainforests of the Congo known as the Congo 'thunder lizard' (later dismissed as a hoax) following World War 1. Lil, who works at a palaeontologist, has dedicated her career to studying fossils and was amazed to discover the family connection.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Well, we have Stella Assange, the lawyer and now wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in just a moment. I found it really interesting to hear her story. Maybe you will too. Also this hour, we'll take a look at a report. Now this details reports of rape and sexual assault in hospitals in England and Wales. The Health Secretary met

with NHS leaders to discuss the findings. And one of the initiatives proposed includes nurses to wear body cameras. So we're going to talk about all of that. The comedian Zoe Lyons should be with us as well.

I want to talk to her and to you about what she calls her monumental midlife crisis. She broke up with her wife, bought a fast car, also distressingly lost her hair. But I'm wondering, did you take any drastic action when you reached what you see as midlife? Might be different for some of us. And did you have a midlife crisis? Was there a nose ring? A tattoo? Maybe colouring your hair? Moving countries? Quitting your job? I don't know but I want to hear it all. You can text

the programme. That number is 84844. On social media we're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can send a WhatsApp message or voice note. That number is 03700 100 444. And we also have the hidden histories of relatives. We're going to hear from a paleontologist whose grandfather,

yes, grandfather was a dinosaur hunter. You do the maths. But we also want to hear what it's like to work in that male-dominated field. That's all coming up. But my first guest, as I mentioned this morning, is Stella Assange, the wife of Julian Assange. Now, Mr. Assange, as you may know, is the founder of Wikileaks,

a whistleblowing platform that publishes classified material provided by anonymous sources. And you might also know that Mr. Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh Prison, pending extradition to the United States, where he's facing 18 criminal charges. Now, they relate to obtaining and publishing classified information

that includes military files from the Afghan and Iraq wars and also U.S. diplomatic cables, which are messages between U.S. diplomats and the U.S. State Department. And the U.S. Department of Justice argues that he has violated the Espionage Act. So alleging that the material released endangered lives, as some of the material was unredacted, and included the identities of locals who collaborated with coalition forces. Stella, his wife, is leading a campaign to fight his extradition to the States, which has been depicted in a new documentary called Ithaca.

It's produced, I should say, by her brother and Julian's brother. It gives us a fascinating glimpse into her life with Julian Assange. They've had two children together during the time that he was claiming political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. And I asked Stella, how did she, his lawyer, become his wife? How are they forging a family life together without him ever being a free man? And also with that prospect of extradition to the United States in the future, potentially on the cards. But I began by asking Stella why she wanted to make this documentary. It was more of a necessity that I felt we were at the centre of it.

Julian's at the centre of it. Our family is at the centre of it. And it wasn't represented anywhere. And we also thought that it was important to let people in to see what our lives are like and to experience what Julian's going through through our eyes. How is Julian doing? Well, he's suffering profoundly every single day is a struggle. You know, it's like running a marathon without knowing how long that marathon is going to be how long it's going to last last and and um we have to have faith that there is a there is end in sight and we can

achieve yes i i believe that julian will be free and he will be free um because what i see is a trajectory in which the grounds for keeping him in prison are intoler US in particular, it's a charge of espionage, quite frankly. released on WikiLeaks, should not have been released, that it put people that were working with the US government, for example, in Afghanistan or in Iraq, in danger. I know you would not agree with that explanation as the United States gives it and others. But what is at the heart of the reason that you believe he shouldn't be extradited? Well, first of all, the charges against Julian, there are 17 charges under the Espionage Act, and they are bogus, quite frankly. It's the same kind of case that Russia is bringing against Evan Gershkovich for journalistic activity using espionage legislation

in order to criminalize journalism. Julian has been awarded many fold for these very publications, which exposed war crimes and crimes against humanity and tens of thousands of civilian killings. But I do want to say five media organizations that he previously partnered with, The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde, they did condemn the publication of 250,000 unredacted

diplomatic cables in 2011. AP as well, you'll know that investigation in 2016 said that WikiLeaks violated the privacy rights of hundreds of people in subsequent leaks by including personal information,

including that of sick children, rape victims and mental health patients. But people might be saying, you know, why doesn't he just go for it? Why doesn't he want his day in court if he's so convinced that he's right? Well, first of all, the assumption that WikiLeaks did not redact is a wrong assumption. The extradition hearing has had a lot of testimony from people who worked alongside Wikileaks, who saw that Julian and Wikileaks took every precaution to ensure that the publications were redacted. The publication of 250,000 diplomatic cables

was published on the internet by third parties as a result of the disclosure of a password in a book by the Guardian and a third party who put a file online and it was not WikiLeaks and Julian took every step he could. For example, by alerting the State department that these third parties were about to disclose the unredacted diplomatic cables online and alerted them about a week in advance and he had no obligation to do so that was his own initiative and i know they would push back reading into that and they would say instead that the onus was on Julian, that they expected the password that was published

to have expired by the time that that was published. Let us turn to you because there's so much in the documentary that I want to ask you about as well, both on the professional and the personal. Why, you were a legal advisor, why did you decide to join his legal team in 2011? At that point, the Swedish authorities were seeking his extradition

for multiple allegations of sexual offences, as you'll know, which he has always denied. Now, in order to avoid extradition to Sweden due to a claimed fear of further extradition to the States, he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, where he stayed for seven years. Well, it was clear to me from the beginning that the Swedish preliminary investigation was highly politicized.

Did you have no reservations? Well, I did my research. I read the police reports, which by that point had been leaked onto the internet, about 110 pages of interviews. And I also was following the news around it, including in Sweden, because I speak Swedish. From any perspective, this was an interesting case and one that was really important. I should also say, just when we're talking about allegations in Sweden, that the investigations of those offences have been dropped.

I just want to be really clear about that for our listeners as we continue to chat. So you're a legal advisor, a lawyer for Julian Assange. You're going to the Ecuadorian embassy quite regularly, I would imagine. But people might say, then you fell in love with him. And is there not a conflict there, being his lawyer and he's your client? Well, you see, I joined in 2011 and we became romantically involved in 2015. And being in the embassy was kind of a world in itself. What was it like?

I mean, I saw some on the video and you're kind of around a dining table, say you had Christmas dinner. He's skateboarding at one point through a little room. The embassy was a tiny space. You know, I think it has about eight rooms altogether and he could use three of the rooms and it had a tiny kitchen. I mean, I think that the audience can probably get a very good idea of what the embassy was like through the film Ithaca or

even on newspapers and so on. But I want to get back to both of you in the Ecuadorian embassy, how you fall in love in that situation. Also, when you're meant to be giving legal advice, because at this point you're married and have two children. I think for my listeners, that's a part that they'll really want to know more about. Yeah, I mean, OK, it's 2023 and we met in 2011 and we got together in 2015. We're talking about, what is it, 12 years. But not that he's been a free man. No, no. When I met him, he was under house arrest. So I have seen him, I have known him outside of confined spaces, let's put it that way., within the embassy, uh, it kind of, it's like a spaceship more or less.

Um, it's Julian's, um, friends, family, uh, you know, acquaintances, meetings, everything took place in that embassy. Um, and a lot of things happened during that time and extremely difficult periods as well. And you get to know a person. I got to know Julian extremely well. It took some time and we, as part of that process, also realized that we liked each other a lot. Personally, I find Julian to be

an amazing person, amazing human being, funny and compassionate and brilliant and interested in people in the world. And someone who I wanted to spend all my time with. I have to tell our listeners, because it's radio, that your face lights up as you speak about him. But did you not have any nagging doubts, you know, and let's talk about him being a father in a moment, but about the fact that, you know, the relationship might break up, for example. Ethically, did you have a responsibility to him to not get romantically involved well these things are complicated and obviously at some point you have to be true to yourself and what you want in in your life if you meet

the person that you want to form a family with that fills you with joy and with a feeling of being alive. I didn't really have the liberty to just say, well, I'm going to stop working on his case because by then I have so much information in my head that I can't just walk away. That would be negligent. So you felt you were the person that could, in time, you know, aid his release. But you must have had in your mind, because it seems you were quite clear about falling in love

or having a relationship. You must have, maybe you didn't, about how this was going to work. If you're, I can see how many hours you put in on his case. You have not one but two children, and he's not around. I didn't plan to be a single mother. When we talked about having children, I was 32 by then. And Julian was not charged in the United States as far as we could tell.

He wasn't charged anywhere. And the UN had just delivered a decision that he was arbitrarily detained. And it seemed like at this point in 2016, that his freedom was just a matter of time. You know, when you decide to start a family, it's always, I think, for most people, a kind of a leap into the unknown and it felt like well things are always going to be complicated because it's it's julian um and uh there's a lot of um you know he's he's angered a lot of people and and so on but um also we want to try to uh chart our own course here and and have a private life and have a personal life together and that part at least was clear you said when you started the family you thought it wouldn't

be that long until he were free st Stella. Do you still feel that way? I believe that Julian will be free, and I believe he will be free because I see the global concern for his freedom. I see the president of Brazil, the president of Mexico, bringing Julian's case up regularly. It's a reference point politically that is harmful to the UK and the US. And it's a burden, I think, to both these countries, because they're betraying their own values and their own standards by keeping him in prison. And they, of course, would come back to the Espionage Act. But let's talk a little bit more about this. You say with Julian, it'll always be

complicated. Is that because of this case or just his personality? And I bring that up because he has this reputation for being difficult. He's fallen out with former staff or journalists, the Ecuadorian embassy, which you mentioned. I'm not going to go through the whole list. You'll know it as well as I do. Is he a difficult person? Not at all. I mean, he's an assertive person. He's involved in controversial publications.

He's involved in partnerships with other publications that sometimes have a rivalrous position. So you think it's that, that it's kind of a jealousy envy thing that people have against him? Well, I think editors of publications tend to have big egos and Julian's not alone. And if he's going to be dealing with others, then that's not a surprising dynamic. You know, he's not, he's not someone who's concerned about pleasing people. He speaks his mind. And he likes people to speak their mind as well. And he doesn't like, he doesn't like betrayal or backstabbers. But if you challenge him in person, then he appreciates it and he likes to debate

and explore positions. He's been portrayed in a really distorted manner. So you've talked about his positive traits. As a partner, what's his most annoying one well annoying for for me is that he's really structured um and he finds me very chaotic so that's we we laugh it off quite a lot and then he's i i joke that he has a buffer zone so uh he doesn't necessarily, it's like he lines up, and this has to do with his being on the autism spectrum. He sometimes processes information at different rates

than maybe you and me here. He might be thinking about something, and I might ask him a question, and he'll answer me five minutes later as if I had just asked him the question but in the meantime I've just gone yes so um that kind of thing but these are you know these are small things and I find it quite endearing actually and of course personality is something very different to legal cases about what is right or wrong or whether somebody is innocent or guilty. When you catch up, when you go and how often are you able to chat to him now? Now it's phone calls every day. He calls several times throughout the day

at certain hours. So he can't call during the night for example and I can visit him once or twice a week. And do you are you always talking about the legal case or do you talk about the kids? All sorts of things we do talk about the legal case quite a bit but I try to keep him across current developments not just in relation to him or in relation to, you know, jail journalists or, for example, the recent Pentagon leak and so on, but also anything that I find interesting or curious to try to connect him to the world

because he is so cut off. And what about the kids? What have you told them, if it's okay to ask? Well, in the beginning, I wouldn't use the word prison. I'd say the big house, the little one would talk about, we're going to the queue, because we were constantly queuing up there. Now they talk about the prison amongst themselves. They kind of play out being in prison and breaking out of prison. I've told them, and they know, that their father is a special case. When we go to Belmarsh, there's a big placard there

with a Free Julian Assange and Julian's face. There are yellow ribbons tied around the trees for Julian, say Free Julian Assange and so on. So they understand that Julian is special and that there are people there who support him. There are also protests there sometimes every week. And I tell them that Julian hasn't done anything wrong and that he made some bad people that had done bad things very angry because he showed the world that they had done bad things

and that they hold the keys to his prison cell and that we're fighting to get the keys to free him. Stella Assange there. You can watch the documentary Ithaca at the Oxford Ultimate Picture Palace on Saturday the 29th of April or on the streaming platform Eventive. Thanks to Stella. Let me move on to my next guest, award-winning comedian Zoe Lyons.

Of course, you'll hear her on Radio 4 on the News Quiz. Also, you'll see her on TV shows like Live at the Apollo and QI, the quiz show on BBC Two, Lightning. So no doubt you've probably encountered her. But over the past couple of years, she had what she described as a monumental midlife crisis. I want to bring in Zoe. She's actually got her stand-up show, Bold Ambition,

that she's touring with at the moment around the country. Good to have you with us, Zoe. Good morning. Hi, good morning. Lovely to be with you. You know, why don't you tell our listeners of what your monumental midlife crisis consisted of looking back? Oh, rather embarrassingly, it was a little bit cliched. I mean, the whole thing, to be honest, was kicked off really by the start of the pandemic. I think that period of history that we went through recently sort of afforded us time to have a very good look at our own lives. I thought you were going to say afforded us time to have a really good midlife crisis.

Well, I will say if you are planning on having a midlife crisis, I can highly recommend doing it on the back of a global pandemic because hardly anybody notices. It's like a really distracting star curtain in the background. But I think for the first time in a very long time, I had a very empty diary, which sort of afforded me time to look at everything in my life. And lots of things happened happened so it was the pandemic I hit the menopause that's always fun as we know um turned 50 um was able you know to sort of look at myself and realize that that I was carrying behaviors and thoughts and processes that were no longer useful to me in this stage of my life. I now see it as sort of, midlife crisis sounds sort of negative, but I now see it as a huge, huge

positive. It's like being a sort of mature crab and shedding your exoskeleton and then growing something afresh. I mean, the process isn't pretty. There's a moment where you think you're going to be eaten by the seagulls. But once you come through it the other side, there's a sort of new, there's a new shell to you. So, but yeah, it was very cliched. It was, some would say sad. I bought a sports car. Of course I did. I bought two actually. Tick, tick. Yeah. I bought the first one. Tick, tick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Because I bought the first one and I went, that's not going to make you happy, so is it? I thought, no. I thought, why not? I thought, it's not the right car. I mean, really stupid. Drove around in that. My wife and I separated. We'd been together for 25 years.

We did come back together and we've come back together afresh and happier because of that separation, I think. We spent a year apart and I lived in what I cheekily refer to as my divorced dad flat because it felt very much like that. It sort of had a can of lager and a chair it was quite depressing but um uh yeah i think if you you know a year is a is a long time to be apart from somebody and it does give you that time to sort of reflect and go you know are we meant to be together and can we find a way and thankfully we did and we are much better for it so it's like a great reckoning i think is the way i'm hearing it from you zoe as some of our listeners got in touch, 844. I was asking them at the top of the programme whether they had one.

Hi, my name is Sue, says Sue. My midlife crisis began with me taking up belly dancing in my 40s and performing at semi-professional venues while working full time as a civil servant, then getting a tattoo. And now I'm moving countries. I'm not sure when my midlife crisis will stop. Here's another one. I'm about to go through that midlife period now

and have been training to run a 10k as a midlife fitness achievement. My husband, on the other hand, started learning to ride a motorbike, was wishing to feel the wind through his now receding hairline. Oh yeah, I hear you with the receding hairline because I lost mine as well.

I had a comb over during my midlife crisis. Let's talk about that though Hairline. Oh, yeah. I hear you with the receding hairline because I lost mine as well. I had a comb over during my midlife crisis. Let's talk about that, though, because you had alopecia as a child, right, when you were 11. And then it returned. Stress-related, do you think? Oh, absolutely. Completely, yes. I mean, I'd had it on and off in my 20s.

I had little patches. I have alopecia areata, so it's losing patches of hair. But this particular period of my life was obviously extremely stressful with everything that was going on. And my hair started to fall out again, and it just didn't stop this time. It really went for it. And I had that awful moment when I thought, oh God, I think it might all go. I lost about 85% of my hair at the worst, at its worst. Yeah. It's very distressing for people that haven't gone through it, I think. It was hugely distressing. Yeah, it was really, I mean, to, you know, to stand in the shower with handfuls of your own hair in your hand is alarming. And then, of course, you know, what I do for a living is slightly odd.

You know, I'm a stand-up comedian. Put yourself out there. You put yourself out there. You know, you do feel vulnerable, for want of a better word. At times, you are, you know. You are literally exposing yourself and your thoughts and your being on stage. And to not look and feel like yourself was challenging, really, really challenging.

But I found an amazing wig maker. I had a wig made and it meant I could carry on doing television work and keep going. And now, I mean, I'm nearing the end of my tour and my hair is sprouting back. It's like spring has sprung. This is like the full circle, Zoe, I'm hearing. But, you know, you do have a wonderful photograph for your Bald Ambition Tour. It's on our social media and yours.

And you show off your hair loss, I think is an incredibly powerful image. Do you want to try and describe it to our listeners? Yes. So I have an amazing friend, amazing photographer friend called Mark Vesey. And I said to him, I want to capture this. I want to capture this difficult part of my life

in a very positive way. And my hair fell out in quite a peculiar way in that it left me with one grey streak down the middle of my head. A little Cruella. A little Cruella. And I thought, you know, I want to make this look strong. I want to, I thought, actually, it looks quite punk. It looks, if I'm honest, I thought, actually, I think it looks quite cool at the stage. It does.

Yeah. And I thought, you know, we're so used to seeing bouncy hair adverts on television. You know, we're used to seeing, you know, a woman is a hair and there she is under a waterfall somewhere in the rainforest with, you know, parakeets going off around. And I thought, not every woman's experience is that. I think people are much better at sort of showing a diversity of skin types and skin conditions that people have within the beauty realm but not so much hair and I thought actually you know I still want to feel I've only got a tuft but I still want to feel cool and you know present a strong image so that's what we went for. And I'm really proud of that picture. I'm really proud of it. It looks great. Do you

want some more stories from our listeners? Please. Tell them I'm not the only one. Here we go. Here's Jane. Hello. You might be interested in my story about my midlife crisis. After a six month sabbatical traveling in South America, I left my job, my home and my friends to go and live with a man in Venezuela whom I hardly knew and I'd met on my journey. I was 55. It was a big change and many people thought

I was mad. I stayed there for six years until the relationship and the political situation became difficult and returned to the UK in 2019. Here's another one.

Oh, please let me have Zoe as my lifestyle guru. So far, I've simply left my husband, stopped dyeing my hair and taken up DIY. I feel Zoe might give me some more fun ideas. And that's Michelle. Well, I also got into running in a really big way during my crisis. It was my way of sort of, you know, I find exercise has helped me enormously. And I ended up signing up running to do a run from London to Brighton. Why? I don't know. Because a normal person would have

gone, let's try a marathon. So let's go for a marathon. I've done a half marathon. And I think the next step normally would have been let's try a marathon, you know. But for me, I was like, nah, that's no, let's go further. How did it go? It was, well, there was a story on the show about it. Shall we say there were issues? Okay. Here's another woman getting in touch. Let me see. I'm 64. Four years ago, I bought a RIB with 145 horsepower engine. And then I did a powerboat level two course. That's fantastic.

I mean, I'm presuming she doesn't live in a landlocked part of the UK. That tearing down the M1. That's amazing. Yeah. She's broken that cliche. She's gone sports car no no

sports boat sports boat a power boat oh that's well done so you have another couple of dates I believe

until you finish your bald ambition tour just very briefly Zoe I mean how different is it

now for female comics out there compared to when you started? Oh, very different. Really different. I mean, I'm on stage talking about my alopecia and menopause in this show. There's no way I'd have got away with that 20 years ago. Absolutely not.

And I'm finding audiences are so receptive. I'm having such a good time talking about this particular crisis point in my life because it seems to resonate with a lot of people. And, you know, it was very tricky at the time, but I'm glad to say I've made it very funny. I'm so glad you came to join us, Zoe. Best of luck with the rest of the tour. So nice to have you on. I'll leave you with one more. This is from Sophie. Hello, Woman's Hour. 62 now and not feeling midlife as yet. But when I do and if something exciting happens, I'll let you know.

Please do. Thanks, Sarah. 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. Now on Woman's Hour, we're going to change

to something that's completely different. Maybe you were reading a little bit about this over the past week or so. The headline you might have seen is that nurses are set to be given body-worn cameras. This is in a crackdown on hospital sexual assaults

under government plans. It follows this meeting that took place last Friday between the Health Secretary Steve Barclay and NHS leaders. But it comes also on the tails of a report published by the Women's Rights Network which revealed that thousands of sex attacks have been reported in hospitals

across England and Wales over the past four years. Now Freedom of Information requests to police forces in England and Wales over the past four years. Now, Freedom of Information requests to police forces in England and Wales showed they've received 6,539 reports of rape and sexual assault in hospital settings since 2019. And of those, just 4.1% have led to a suspect being charged. I do need to say that the data does not detail whether the attacks were

carried out at an NHS or private facility but we do know that one in seven took place on hospital wards. My guests today are Heather Binning, a spokesperson for the Women's Rights Network who did the report and also Katrina Rubins, a solicitor at the human rights law firm Lee Day which specialising in abuse in health care cases, and so is with us today. First, Heather, this is the report of the Women's Rights Network. What did you think when you saw some of the information coming in? And welcome. Oh, thank you for having me this morning.

I was utterly, utterly astonished at the numbers. With the Women's Rights Network, we have 65 local groups across the country, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. And one of our groups started having a look at what was happening in their area. And the numbers there were alarming. And we thought, this is odd. Is this representative across the whole country? And so we rolled out the project, did freedom of information requests of all police forces. Forty three, as you say, eight police forces were not able to provide us with the information for a number of reasons and that included Scotland and Northern Ireland. So these figures, six and a half thousand, is only representative of what's happened in England

and Wales. There's a lot of issues about the data collection and data reporting and whether one police force, for instance, has subsequently contacted us to say, actually, we've had a relook at the figures and they're not as bad as we reported to you. So did they take the Freedom of Information quest seriously? You know, how are these instances, incidents occurring? And how are the police recording them and the hospitals themselves? It is private and NHS.

So, you know, we can't slam one and not the other. I understand. What did you think, Katrina? Were you surprised by the figures in the report? I mean, how often are you dealing with something like a case of an attack in a hospital setting? Sure. Or I should say, yes, a hospital setting could be NHS or private. Definitely. Well, we deal with a range of cases for patients across NHS and private settings. And we receive inquiries every single week. This is an issue that I think has been going on for a long time. And we really welcome the Women's Rights Network's report

which is kind of finally casting a light on the huge numbers of sexual assaults that are taking place across England and Wales. I mean, as Heather mentioned, there are some real issues with the data because at the moment, the NHS is not centrally recording data on sexual assaults and it's not standardising the way that it does so.

It could be for a variety of reasons. I mean, in NHS trusts, they do have a recording reporting system. But in my view, it is inadequate in terms of disaggregating the data into the types of assaults that occur and also the profile of the perpetrators. So a lot of the women that we represent are people who've actually been sexually assaulted by members of staff, So nurses, doctors, healthcare assistants, people who generally are in a position of power over the patient when they're in the hospital. I mean, the Women's Rights Network report really highlights the vulnerability of

patients when they go into hospital settings. You know, they're reliant on doctors and they're reliant on the staff around them to give them care. And that makes it more difficult for them to speak up if there are issues concerning kind of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Because I suppose the question is what has been monitored and what safeguards are in place. Would that be right, Heather? I mean, we can talk about nurses and body cams in just a moment, but you're talking it's more about the patients. Is that your focus also, Heather? Is it about the people that are patients in hospitals?

Because we also hear about assaults on the staff that work there. Oh, we do. We have no way of knowing from this data, apart from around about 1,000 have been reported as taking place on hospital wards. But we've got really no understanding of where the others are taking place, who the alleged perpetrators are, who the victims are, the sex of the victims, the age of the victims.

And, you know, some people are saying, well, they could be people that have dementia or other mental health issues. That for sure is the case. But regardless, there should be safeguarding when we go into hospital patients, outpatients or if staff members working there, they should be safe in that environment. So sorry to interrupt you, Heather, but I'm just wondering, how do you see that happening? Is there something that you're calling for? Is it more data? Is that the next step? Well, we think in order to decide what the best solutions are for this, the data needs to be interrogated a lot more. We only ask for simple questions of the police.

So there's a lot more that could be found out that I'm sure they have on the records that will cost the police force to go through all the reports and really get a grip on where these statistics come from. Without knowing that, we can only make assumptions about what might make people in hospitals safer. Sorry to interrupt. There's just so many questions, I guess, with it. But do you know which hospitals or trusts had the attacks in them with the police forces? Are you able to decipher which hospitals? No, we don't. As I say, it was four simple questions that we asked of them that didn't break down the detail.

Gotcha. A great number. So and with that, eight of them refused and a lot of them refused declined a lot of them did decline because of the cost of um interrogating their information they're allowed to um refuse an freedom of information request i think katrina wants to come in and yeah i just really want to you know thanks heather and for explaining further about your report and i totally agree with you about the paucity of data. And, you know, the NHS can only start to tackle this problem if it has the full information and evidence about how widespread sexual assaults are in hospitals and what are the factors that are leading to such high numbers.

But the other point I really want to make is that what the data can't show is the human impact of this on the victims and the survivors. So I often represent women who have developed anxiety, depression, PTSD, post-traumatic symptoms following sexual assaults in health care settings. And this can have a knock-on effect on women's ability to then access health care going forwards. I mean, unlike assaults in other settings, if you are a patient, you are very likely in the future to need healthcare again. And that can then become such a re-traumatising event, even just the impact of having to book a doctor's appointment, walk past the hospital where it happens. And whilst the reporting processes have to be better and the safeguarding processes have to be better, there also has to be better aftercare for victims. And we have to be better and the safeguarding processes have to be better. There also has to be better aftercare for victims

and we have to listen to their voices throughout this. It must be horrendous, people in such a vulnerable position having to go through that. Heather? Yes, I just want to add to that. We've had a lot of women

coming forward and the attacks, the victims are not just women, of course, but they're predominantly women. That's what we do know in terms of the victims of sex. Do you know that

from the Freedom of Information requests or do you know that anecdotally? We know that anecdotally from looking at what happens in wider society and victims of sexual assaults and rapes are predominantly women. That's up in the 90 plus percentages.

But we've had a lot of women coming forward who have said they have not reported a sexual assault that they've experienced in hospital. Why? If they're telling you, if you know. They don't know how or they're embarrassed or did that really happen?

Is a response from people, you know, this happened to me but I'm not entirely sure. Was it? I think Katrina wants to jump in there too. Just to add to that, you know, this happened to me, but I'm not entirely sure. Was it? I think Katrina wants to jump in there too. Just to add to that, you know, I would totally agree. And there's also an issue in terms of patients understanding what they should expect when they're in hospitals. So patients, you know, going in there, they're very vulnerable.

You're probably anxious. You're worried about your medical treatment. And in some of the cases that we have acted in, patients have been sexually assaulted under the guise of legitimate medical examinations. So they haven't been aware that the intimate procedure, the gynecological examination, for example, or breast examination that occurs, they haven't been aware really of what they should have expected, whether they had a right to have a chaperone with them. And then it can only be months or even sometimes years later that they come to realise that what happened to them was in fact a sexual assault.

Very, very distressing. We know that Steve Barclay met with NHS leaders on Friday, the health secretary. The headline that came out of it, as I mentioned, was a potential plan to give nurses body worn cameras. This would be, I would imagine, to protect the nurses, the staff that also have been subject to attacks. What do you think about that, Heather, at first blush? Well, first off, I'm very pleased that they've got together and they're getting their heads right. You know, they're thinking about how they can best tackle this. Body work cameras, it's been interesting to see what results the police have had.

They've been using them for some years now and what their experience is. But immediately it strikes me that often in the clinical setting, it's one on one. And if you're having an intimate exam, do you want a camera out there? Well, actually, to interrupt you, Heather, for a moment. Somebody did get in touch with me saying her name is Susan, a proposal for nurses to wear body cams. What about my right to privacy and data protection? Yes, well, absolutely. And that's the big stumbling block. However, it may make nurses, it may make hospital staff more,

feel more safe or be more safe or worn off against false accusations, perhaps. I'm sure there's a lot of staff members that would be worried about maybe false accusations being made about them. So I'm not sure that body cams are the right way forward. That said, we all assume that hospitals are covered in CCTV footage. And are they? I don't know the answer. I'll throw it over to Katrina. A lot of hospital trusts definitely do have CCTV.

You know, they have bodyguards and perhaps body worn cameras might be part of the solutions on the table. But I would agree with Heather's concerns about, you know, patient privacy and dignity. I mean, what there really needs to be in response to this report is a whole scale review by NHS England, by the Secretary of State for Health, about investment in robust safeguarding procedures and changing the cultures within hospitals so that it is a zero tolerance culture. And, you know, there's a whole range of policies and procedures that need to be implemented to get there. There's a strange aspect or unusual aspect, perhaps is a better word, that these figures that we're talking about, they include the period of the coronavirus lockdown, when there were so few visitors allowed into a hospital, as we all remember.

But there were more patients in the ICU, for example. Also, it was difficult at times to recognise the care provider, obviously, because of PPE. Does this play into it, do you think, Katrina? So it's not something that's come up yet in my casework, although by the time cases come to us, people have often already been through criminal proceedings or regulatory proceedings, long drawn out trust investigations. I mean, even during the pandemic, hospitals remained places with, you know, closed off areas. They remain places where patients were vulnerable. And I don't see necessarily why the number should have gone down just because we were in the COVID situation.

But I'm wondering, and I imagine my listeners are as well, perhaps they have somebody, you know, a family member or a friend that's in hospital or they're in hospital or they need to go into hospital themselves or into a hospital setting. One in seven, I believe, is in a hospital ward, but can be private or NHS facilities with some of these other figures. I mean, how are they supposed to protect themselves preemptively? Do either of you have any thoughts about that? I feel a huge sympathy for people that are in that situation. I know I myself would feel very vulnerable where I've been in hospital before and I'm, you know, five nights in there you can't lock a door you can't protect yourself you trust that others are looking out for you and um and and that you are safe um and what this is showing is that we that that's

a false trust um and I I I have I have no advice I really don't know what to say. It's just good luck, take care, have somebody with you if you can, is what I'd advise. Katrina? I mean, the vast majority of clinicians, nurses, people who work in hospitals are there to keep patients safe. And this is about the NHS reviewing its structures and policies so that the culture and the institutional environment in hospitals changes. I don't think there's need for a moral panic around this, but we do need to be

realistic about the risk factors that mean that sexual assaults are occurring in hospitals. And the NHS needs to look at this at a central level, monitor and scrutinise the data properly, and then take steps, robust steps to make sure that patients really are safe. Because ultimately, the responsibility isn't on you as a patient to keep yourself safe in hospital, it's on the trust that owes you a duty of care and legal obligations to make sure that you don't come to further harm when you're actually seeking alleviation of your symptoms. Heather, briefly. Very briefly, it's the responsibility of the NHS and private providers

to make sure that their patients and visitors are safe. But it's the responsibility of police to be looking into these crimes and get further statistics. And I would welcome news that the Home Office are doing something about this also, as Steve Barclay has done last week. We'll keep following us. That's Heather Binning, spokesperson for the Women's Rights Network, which did the report, and Katrina Rubin, solicitor at the human rights law firm Lide. Thanks to both of you. I do want to read the NHS England statement that we received from Kate Davies, NHS Director of Sexual Assault Services Commissioning.

And it says the findings in this report are upsetting, completely unacceptable. The NHS must be a safe space for all staff and patients and local services must not tolerate misconduct, violence, harassment or abuse. They go on to say the trusts and organisations have robust measures in place to ensure immediate action is taken in cases reported to them. Anyone who's experienced any misconduct or violence

must come forward, report it and seek help. And they talk then about trying to prevent those attacks from happening in the first place. Thanks to both of you for speaking to Women's Hour. I do see another comment. This is Anne. More staff are needed for chaperoning. I would not feel comfortable with intimate examinations being recorded.

Yeah, kind of echoing what somebody else was saying as well. All right, I want to move on now. Actually, one more. One more midlife crisis before I move on. I shaved my head and went to India for three months. I came back and I did a four-year degree. Then I went to Central Europe and taught English. A great midlife crisis, says Jill.

Thanks for getting in touch, Jill. All right, how many of us can call one of our relatives a dinosaur hunter? Well, my next guest can. It's Dr Lil Stevens. She's a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum. So you might think, oh, well, it runs in the family. But the expedition and the hunt for a thunder lizard

that her grandfather, Captain Lester Stevens, undertook to the Congo, if you don't mind, in 1919, was all news to Lil and her family when a historian contacted her. Let's hear more about it. Welcome, Lil. Hi, thanks for having me. So what did you find out and how? So a historian called Paul Brown got in touch with us last year with me and my dad.

And he had been researching another story and had come across these press clippings in the archives about this man, Lester Stevens, who'd responded to a call and gone to the Congo to search for a dinosaur. But let's put a few million years too late. A few? Yeah, nearly 150.

Yeah, 150. Yeah absolutely but it well so I guess it was it was interesting times. He had been he'd been fighting in the First World War. He had had a really dreadful time as many people had and he had come back and around the time that he came back, there were all these reports of sightings of dinosaurs in the deepest, darkest jungle, you know, as it was known to the Europeans. And, you know, and multiple reports over time. And the newspapers picked up on it and they whipped it up into a big frenzy. I think somebody had actually said they'd seen something that looked like a rhinoceros. And it came out in the paper as definitely a brontosaurus. I love this story. Yeah.

It kind of got smacks of Yetis and Loch Ness monsters. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, maybe just what was required at the time, kind of desperately seeking a good news story. And something exciting and different. And you didn't know this about your grandfather at all? No. We knew that he had fought in the war, obviously, and then he'd gone to Africa.

But we didn't know anything about this at all. How did that fall out of family lore? I mean, we've lots of stories which aren't true in a lot of families, but this one, which was amazing, him going on this quest was forgotten. Yeah. Well, I think he didn't say. I mean, I think I sort of wonder whether it was kind of wrapped up in his experiences during the war. As I said, he had had a really terrible time and had been shell-shocked and then had come back and gone out in 1919. So just after the end of the war and clearly needed a different kind of quest and possibly one that wasn't going to be successful because

real life was probably all a bit much around then. And I wonder whether he didn't speak about it partly because of that, but also because within a couple of years, the main reports about the brontosaurus in the jungle were proved to be a hoax. And maybe there was a bit of embarrassment, maybe a bit of disappointment, maybe a bit of kind of, right, we've done that, we've put that aside and move on to the next thing. He was quite a private person.

You didn't know him? I didn't know him, no. He died when my dad was 18, so quite young. So my dad has his childhood with him, and they did, so he was very interested in nature. They spent a lot of time looking at nature together, and that's something that my dad passed on to me. So were you destined to become a paleontologist do you think? Maybe even more so now knowing your grandfather.

Yeah, absolutely. Well I think definitely the interest in nature so we've spent a lot of time down on our knees looking at small things and making walks take a really long time and that was passed on, that's the bit that i like but also there is something about i mean field work is just the best thing it's so exciting why and because because that excitement well being out in nature is lovely and the excitement of of what you might find and i think you know there's something extra in paleontology because you really don't know what you might find. And I think, you know, there's something extra in paleontology

because you really don't know what you might find. You know, you might have an idea of what might be contained within those rocks. But, you know, if you're talking about dinosaurs, you can't go looking for a particular dinosaur. It doesn't really happen. You kind of got to see what you're given, what you uncover. So it is, you know, it's a treasure hunt. It's pretty exciting. Treasure hunt. That's a really good way of describing it. Do you feel closer to your grandfather now? I do, yeah. I mean, it's really painted the picture. And there was the nice thing about the dog as well.

Oh, yes. Tell our listeners about that. So towards the end of the war he was in the trenches um and he found a uh what we now know to be a german shepherd call them that at the time um but it was um a german dog had been used to carry messages along the front line laddie and laddie he called it laddie he made friends with it and he brought it back with him when he came home and he took the dog out with him. So the newspaper reports of the time, you know, have a picture of him and Laddie going off on the train to Southampton, you know, to catch the boat. There were cartoons of him and the dog because he took, you know, several guns and his butterfly net. The butterfly net.

He was much more into catching butterflies. So evocative though isn't it? Exactly yeah yeah almost a pith helmet but not quite and yeah just a lovely that image of kind of you know the man and the dog and his nets. And the mythical dinosaur. Yeah. When I was looking at figures the rough figures I was looking at there's only about 18% of the paleontologist field are female. Why is that? I think there's a few reasons. I think it's very difficult to be a researcher, to be a professional paleontologists sometimes um it's it's a tradition so um geology has kind of historically been um sort of dominated by men and often people come in from geology into paleontology

but then we get a big drop off at the time when people kind of so we have lots of women doing phds and then we get a drop off going into doing postdocs. So those short contracts before you might get your tenure as a researcher, because it's very difficult to do if you if you want to settle down and you have and have children or you have other caring responsibilities. You know, if you really want to be a researcher, then you have to travel around to do that. And that's that's a big ask. But I did read that you can see part of researching or curation as a caring profession. And caring professions are often assigned to women in society. It is. So, I mean, at the Natural History Museum,

there are a lot of female curators and a lot of male researchers. You know, it's just the way it is. It's the history. It's changing. I was about to say, is it? It is changing, yeah. And, you know, we're making big steps

to kind of make it into an easier thing to do. But it is still hard. But the curation is a really nice solution because it does give you the opportunity to do some research, you know. But also I nice solution because it does give you the opportunity to do some research. You know, but also I love it because it has that brilliant kind of practical aspect of it. Just coming up to our last minute, Dr. Lil Stevens, did you love dinosaurs when you were a kid? I have to say I didn't, but I do now.

I was more into the plants and the fossil plants. And that's what you're looking at now. I should also tell our listeners, we got so caught up in the story of your grandfather, but it is fossils you go out and research and for leaf fossils as well. Exactly, yeah, fossil plants, yeah, yeah. Or dinosaur food, as some people call them.

Dinosaur food. Well, see, there you are. You're wrapping it all up with a bow. Exactly. Her grandfather went searching for dinosaurs and she instead, Dr. Lil Stevens, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, are you wrapping it all up with a bow. Exactly. Her grandfather went searching for dinosaurs and she instead, Dr. Lil Stevens, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum

goes looking for dinosaur food. Thanks so much for joining us on Woman's Hour. What a lovely story. Tomorrow, the first broadcast interview with Jo Hansford MBE who has styled Queen Camilla's hair for more than 35 years and she will be doing it for the coronation. The story is Rags to Riches.

I'm really looking forward to meeting her. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hi, I'm Helen Lewis and I want to tell you about a podcast I've made for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. It's called The New Gurus and it's about how everywhere you look on the internet, people are giving advice. Advice they claim will transform your life. Advice that gets them thousands, no, millions of devoted followers. These online prophets are telling us how to eat, how to think, how to get rich,

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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.