Woman's Hour - The Baroness Casey Review with Dame Lynne Owens & Claire Waxman, Dance your way home, Narcissistic mother

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Baroness Louise Casey has today published the final report on her review into the Metropolitan Police. Joining Nuala McGovern to discuss the findings are a female metropolitan police officer, Deputy Commissioner of the Met Police Dame Lynne Owens and London Victim's Commissioner, Claire Waxman, who works alongside the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that victim's voices are heard and discriminatory barriers are tackled.The music journalist Emma Warren has written Dance Your Way Home - part-cultural history, part-memoir – which looks at the ordinary dancing we might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on and speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move. She joins Nuala to discuss why dance is a language that connects and resonates across time and space.In the first of a new series 'Narcissistic Mothers' Ena Miller meets 'Charlotte' who had a revelation in therapy - she now believes her late mother was a narcissist. How did that shape her life? Presented by Nuala McGovern Producer: Louise Corley

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. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. The Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic. That's according to a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey. It was commissioned in the wake of police officer Wayne Cousins' murder of Sarah Everard. And on Women's Hour today, we talk to Dame Lynne Owens, who is the Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police,

as we focus on what the report says about women, those working as serving officers in the force, and the women who are victims of crime. I was actually personally quite shocked about the state of, essentially, their services to women and children in London. I hadn't realised that in a process of significant restructuring, choices were made where, essentially, despite the rhetoric of everybody saying violence against women and girls, they're essentially de-specialised, de-prioritised. And in many ways, you know, it rings hollow, doesn't it, to say your top priority is violence against women and girls, when actually you've got caseloads of,

in their own admission, in their own strategies, they've got trainee detectives carrying caseloads of 20 rapes. Baroness Louise Casey speaking on the Today programme earlier today. We will also hear from a serving female police officer about her experiences in the Met. Also today, a new book by Emma Warren. Emma will take us on a journey speaking about the place of dance in our lives, in the youth club, the dance hall, the kitchen floor. And I do want to know where you dance now. What does it mean to you?

You can text the programme. The number is 844 844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate and on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour 84844 or email us through our website. We also have a new series. I see somebody commenting on this already,

starting today on Women's Hour, where we're going to be talking about what it's like to have a narcissistic mother and renting with kids. It can be fraught, according to our guest, who has just won her legal case against an estate agent who refused to rent

because of the children. So we will hear that story coming up. But first, the Baroness Casey review, which looked into the standards, behaviours and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service says the force has lost the trust and confidence of the people it is supposed to keep safe. This report was commissioned in the aftermath of the rape and murder of Sarah Everard

by PC Wayne Cousins who has been sentenced to life in prison. Since the commissioning of the report we've also had the sentencing of former police officer David Carrick, who pleaded guilty to 85 serious offences, including rapes, sexual assaults, false imprisonment, and coercive and controlling behaviour. He's now serving time in jail with a minimum of 32 years.

Baroness Casey reviewed the way serious crimes against women are dealt with, as she told the Today programme earlier today. And it all came clear to me when I was sat with a utterly fantastic murder investigation team, where one of the women officers, leaders there, said to me, Louise, the thing is, if a woman is killed, raped and killed, she gets us. And, you know, our clear-up rate is phenomenal. There are at least 20 officers on it. And that is true, Michelle. killed, she gets us. And, you know, our clear up rate is phenomenal. There are at least 20 officers on it. And that is true, Michelle, like murder is dealt with brilliantly by the Metropolitan Police. And so it should be. If a woman, she said, is left raped and in a coma,

she is dealt with on borough, which means she's dealt with by, frankly, hardworking, phenomenally hardworking, but dilapidated public protection teams. And I looked across the table at her and I thought, how on earth did we get to this situation? We want to examine what this report means for the safety of women who are victims of crime, and also the treatment of women who are serving officers in the Met Police. The culture, sadly, in the Met is all pervasive and the institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia is largely led by what their officers have said and what our own research has shown,

which is if you're a woman in the Met and an officer, you're 33 per third experience sexism on a daily basis. If you're one in 10 of those same women experience sexual harassment and sexual assault. I mean, it is off the barometer. So I'm going to talk to Dame Lynn Owens, Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, in just a moment. But first to a woman we're calling Holly, who is a serving police officer. Welcome, Holly. Your initial reaction to those findings, does that clip you were just hearing resonate with you?

Yes, it absolutely does. First thing I did this morning when I woke up was read as much as I could of the Baroness Casey report and everything she said. It was like reading my life story on a PDF, it was really sad. Reading your life story, I cannot imagine. What does that do to you? Is it validation or instead is it intense anger? You tell me. It's absolutely both of those things combined at the same time.

You know, it's been that there was a period of time so it was I actually worked it out this morning it was 1652 days in between me reporting my perpetrator and get and him being told he was no longer fit to serve in the police force and those feelings the entire time I questioned has this happened to me and am I telling the truth just because of the way that I was made to feel by those that were meant to be investigating and supporting those who are reporting wrongdoing and to then see that it isn't just me it isn't just my experience and it is the experience of women overall was extremely validating but also extremely depressing to see that it isn't just my own experience and this whole one bad apple it isn't one bad apple it's it's it's the systemic failings that I was a victim of um and it's not fair just

because I'm a woman I shouldn't be a victim of that give me that number again how long you waited 1652 days my goodness and you say that what you're reading um you know is a reflection of what you've gone through. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more what it was like or what it is like to be a woman in the force? It's almost like you're two women when you're a police officer. You have some colleagues who are absolutely fantastic. They treat you with the utmost respect. They really do push for women in the police.

And then you have the other side, the darker side that people don't talk about. And that's the side that's really impacting you day to day. When you make an allegation, specifically a rape allegation, everyone becomes suddenly very afraid to talk to you. People wouldn't sit in a room with me on their own anymore. I've been asked on three different occasions if I'm recording conversations and it makes you feel incredibly dirty and disgusting, like you are a malicious person for standing up against someone who has raped you and at one point I became so frustrated that I actually said you're going to be okay to sit in a room with me on your own as long as you don't rape me and to have to say that to people who are at least two ranks senior to me and to

still be treated like you are a dangerous person to be around is absolutely soul destroying. When all you've done is stand up for yourself and in my case, another victim. And that's really difficult. So you had been a victim of rape and you went to the authorities within the force to report that. And this was what you experienced. And they were people that you were working with, even people that were your, I suppose, leaders, really, as you talk about people that are too seniors.

Was there any change in the culture in the time you've been there? Unfortunately, the time that I made my allegation, it was pre-Wayne Cousins and pre-David Carrick. So it was very much a very difficult environment to report in. I do hope now in the wake of this that things will begin to change and the support structures will be in place. The thing that has always resonated with me is that the policy that's in place is incredibly good policy had had they just have followed it but they never

followed it it's like um the metropolitan police in my opinion make up their own rules um depending on how popular you are depending on how many friends that you have um and if you are standing up specifically to someone who is a rank um higher than you, and you've got less service than them, you're unlikely to have met as many people as them. And therefore you are at a natural disadvantage, which just shouldn't be the case. And so that hierarchy or length of experience trumps fairness? Absolutely. my case obviously I can't talk on behalf of every single victim but in my case and specifically cases of women who have come forward to me since and spoken to me about their own experience have told me that on

numerous occasions that rank has played a role in how they've been treated. And was it difficult to decide to stay? Yes, there's been a number of times that I've gone home at the end of my day and I'm completely broken and I haven't known whether I can actually carry on. Fortunately, there are good people around me who have supported me, who have been on the phone to me. And it's really quite depressing because these people are also treated like they're problem officers. So the person that supported me was a white male police officer. And he was taking phone calls from me, absolutely sobbing and breaking down. And in his personal time and on reflection, the impact that that would have on his mental health, his welfare, his ability to switch off.

I felt like he carried myself and the other victim throughout. And he was met with absolutely no support from senior management he was told um not to follow me down a rabbit hole as if I was absolutely mental he was faced time and time again with difficult conversations with senior management and and that's that's typical of pretty much every single person I know to come forward and you have come forward and you are speaking out I'm wondering why you're doing it now and do you worry about the consequences for you or your job by doing that and I've spoken out about this to my I've emailed I emailed the commissioner herself when it was dame crescent stick and i

have made i've been very very vocal that i'm happy to be involved in the change i want things to change i want to support the organization because they are fantastic um by and large and they have that capability of being fantastic and having people trust them. But until they listen to those of us who are willing to stand up, who have that energy left, nothing will change. Are they listening, Holly, just before I let you go? Probably not yet,

but I'm hoping that on the back of this report that they will. Holly, thanks so much for coming to speak to us on Women's Hour. To discuss the findings of the report, let us continue this conversation with Dame Lynn Owens,

Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, to respond to what has been seen. You're very welcome, Dame Lynn Owens. I was seeing Baroness Casey said the biggest barrier to change is the Met's culture of defensiveness and denial

about the scale of its problems. Are you in denial? I'm not in denial. This is an entirely sobering report. We accept all of Dame Louise Casey's findings. And of course, listening to Holly, I just thank goodness that we've got people like Holly in our ranks who are prepared to stand alongside us in trying to make this change,

although deeply distressed hearing what she's been through. Yes 1,652 days from the time she reported her allegation to actually any action being taken. How do you understand that? That's way too long isn't it? One of the things that Dame Louise Casey said in her first report and now repeated in this one is our conduct investigations take way too long to investigate. Some of that is because of resourcing and we are putting additional resources into these investigation teams, but it isn't acceptable. If you've been subject to poor behaviours by a colleague or indeed as a member of the public by an officer, you need to have confidence that we're going to move at pace. And I know that you've got Claire Waxman, the victim commissioner, who's going to speak to you next.

And I have the pleasure of speaking to some victims of rape with her. And they also were distressed about the amount of time it takes us to do these things. And we have spoken about it so many times on Woman's Hour where there has been failings by the Met. But if there is a woman who needs the Met today, and they have seen these reports, what is she supposed to do? So I would say our determination to change is real. We have many outstanding officers and staff, and Holly spoke about some of them, the male officer who was alongside her supporting her. There are officers that will support members of the public in that way but i don't deny the challenges of today where we've had two uh we've had two

police officers involved in very serious crimes and now we've got the findings of louise case's report um but but please come forward we can only rebuild consent in the Met with the public. And therefore we need victims, witnesses, community members, really good officers and staff to work with us on making the changes that this report makes absolutely clear we need to make. But I suppose as we hear from Holly, the personal sacrifice that that takes and the resilience that it takes when literally coming up against brick walls. I want to play a little more from Baroness Casey speaking earlier on the Today

programme. I am tired of black Londoners not being heard. I'm tired of their mothers worrying about their kids going out on the street. It's time for a massive change in relation to that. I think the offer to women really, honest to God,

if we were serious about serious violence, we would start with not just what happens on the street, but what happens behind closed doors. I think it's something like 20% of all homicides are domestic. And so if we want to cut serious violence, you would have not, you know, in the world of street crime, we have violence suppression units. Why don't we have rape suppression units? Why don't we have rape suppression units?

Why don't we have domestic violence suppression units? It's not just the Met, but policing overall has to wake up to the need for a women and children's protection service. A women and children's protection service, she's calling for. And why isn't there a rape suppression unit? Is this something you have thought about before, Dame Lynn? Yes. So in the turnaround plan that the commissioner published at the end of last year, we are absolutely clear that we are going to make significant investment in public protection. That's been supported by the mayor.

That's a catch-all phrase. We need to do the same with victims. We need to improve our victim services across London, both from policing and with partners. And I think your line might have just frozen for one moment there, Dame Lynn. We're just going to give it a moment to try and reconnect with that. I will give a couple of details that we are seeing. For example, the public trust has fallen from a high point of 89% in 2016 to a low of 66% in March 2022. Public confidence in the Met to do a good job locally

has fallen from high points of 70% in 2016 and 2017 to a low of 45% in March 2022. We have you back, Dame Lynn. That's great. I know the line just froze there for a moment, but I was reading out to our listeners some of the details of how trust has fallen and how would a victim of crime

trust your police force today? Sorry about that. I'm out at Charing Cross Police Station speaking to some of our officers about the reports. I'm on a bit of a dodgy signal. So the most important thing to say is victims of crime could not be more important to the Metropolitan Police Service. We know there are things that we need to get to them quickly. We need to keep them updated with information and we need to be alongside them in supporting them for all cases, particularly serious sexual offences and violence. And as we build on the findings from this report,

making sure that we are working with Claire and her teams on what that must look like in London is where we will build victims' confidence. But I suppose the question people will be asking, particularly as we detail whether it's Cousins or Carrick, how many more killers or rapists are there in the Met? That's a question the Commission has been asked a couple of times today. I sincerely hope none. And we are working very hard to look back over the recruiting, the employment, the vetting history of all of our officers so we can start to give with much more firm assertion our absolute confidence about the people we have employed. It's dreadful, isn't it, that as your Deputy Commissioner for London, I cannot sit here today and give you 100% reassurance

that's where we want to get to. But we need to do a whole load of work because we learned lots of stuff through the truly awful Carrick case about how we hadn't joined the dots of offending in history. We need to go through that work so that I can give you the assurance you want. But this is the thing that really struck me today while listening to the report,

is that Baroness Casey, the review she has done is from data from the Metropolitan Police. That's how she's put it together. So you and your teams have been sitting on all that information. It was there in plain sight, yet not acted upon or even looked into to try and build that picture? I'm not forgiving ourselves. I'm not excusing ourselves. What I am saying is in Carrick, we saw that we had not joined the docks. Baroness Casey makes explicitly clear

that's what we need to do. And that is what we are now doing. We've learnt all of the things from Carrick about how you join up crime data and intelligence about information both before people's service and after people's service. It's why we're doing this significant piece of review work. I'm

not excusing it, but we're now on it. So you are on review work, which I would imagine is you're trying to get ahead of the next story that could prevent trust being rebuilt or indeed destroy any trust that is left albeit in low figures at the moment what is the timeline for that how do you do that like you must be working against the clock yeah so i'm not trying to get ahead of the story i'm trying to get

ahead of the abuse um and that that absolutely does require us to look backwards we have committed to report into the home secretary and into the Mayor by the end of March on our historic reviews. But we need every single member of the public, we on every single concern that is raised with us and I would love to have a personal conversation with Holly. Obviously I'm new to the Met, arrived in September. If Holly wanted to be part of that plan then I'd love to speak with her. Well we will pass that on to her no doubt. We mentioned just briefly the dedicated women's protection service that needs to be set up. What will that look like? How will it be funded? When can people expect that to actually be an institution or part of the institution that they can go to? Louise Casey talks about the impressive, dedicated people

already working in public protection. So there are already some brilliant people doing this. The trouble is their workloads are too high. We haven't put sufficient people in there. So in this financial year, we're investing another 465 officers, 100 police staff. And what I would say to your listeners is please come and join us. We need people who want to be part of this change. We need women. We need girls that aspire to make a difference, to join the Metropolitan Police Service, to be part of these teams, because it's only when we come together that we will truly protect women.

The report calls for disbanding the Parliamentary Protection Diplomatic Command. Wayne Cousins and David Carrick were part of that department. Are you on board with disbanding that? We are on board with radical reform today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. But is that disbanding? We have to be able to protect Parliament. If I were to say today, I'm going to disband a unit, who is it that's going to protect Parliament? I am completely up for a conversation about how we reform it. We've put in new leaders. We need to change how the teams are supervised. We need to make sure that people don't stay on those teams for too long. But all the while, we have people who use lethal force against parliamentarians and others. We have to be in a position where we can protect them. So London needs an armed policing service, but it must be an armed policing service that is anti-racist,

anti-misogynistic, anti-homophobic, that represents the best of us. So you need to change the culture, but why do you think the culture is particularly dark in those firearms departments that were outlined specifically? The toys that they want, they can get any toy that they want, I think was the term that you used. Well, the big question for us actually is broader than firearms. It's why are our frontline services not resourced in the same way as some of our specialist services are? And that absolutely is the correct challenge. That is true. Yes, that you're getting to the point. Forgive me, I was stepping on you. Why does it attract a certain sort of person is a very good

question. Alongside Cousins and Carrick, there are good hard-working female and male officers who bear firearms on a daily basis and only before i came on this call i was shared a story of one of those who'd save someone's life a letter of thanks from a paramedic so the hard thing about this report is how do we address the really negative and damaging and distressing behaviors whilst recognizing there are good, hardworking people that need our support. But we are determined to do both, to support the hardworking majority

and be absolutely focused on those who should not serve. Dame Lynn Owens, Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, thank you for spending part of your morning with us. I do hope you'll come back on as some of those structures begin to be put in place, particularly what we're focusing in on, on women and children which have been failed,

as Baroness Casey has said. I've also got on the line London's Victims Commissioner, Clare Waxman. Clare, good to have you with us. Would you like to pick up on what you've heard? Yeah, I mean, firstly,

just to Holly, really, for sharing that story in my role over the last six years, I hear daily and repeatedly from her and works with all the victims that we have worked with. I know Lynn recently met with a number of victims through a roundtable that we set up. And so she's heard directly from those lived experiences of just how bad it's been when people have tried to report and access justice. And I think for victims that I've worked with over the years who've tried to get justice, this report isn't shocking, sadly. It really validates their experiences, experiences that for too long have been belittled and dismissed.

And so I think it's really important that from today, it's a line in the sand that we move forward and recognise that these experiences have happened and that we need to work together to radically reform the Met. But there have been, of course, so many reports beforehand. You know, even if we go back to Dame Linnell's, actually, it's a quarter of a century that we're talking about. Some of the bigger, which were meant to be the game changer reports. I was asking Holly, the serving police officer, are they listening now? She says she hopes so. Dame Lin insists that they are.

What do you think? I think they have to. I think from today onwards, they absolutely have to listen. I would say, and I always speak very openly and honestly with both the public and with the Met, I think over the last six years in my role, I haven't been listened to enough. And the experiences that I share through big reviews that we did, we did a review of the Victims Code of Practice in London. A lot of what's come out and been unearthed today, we shone a light on back in 2019 in that review. We then did subsequent London rape reviews. So all the victim blaming, the gaslighting,

the misogyny came out in those rape reviews. And they listened to a point, but not enough. And I think today, and I'm more confident that the leadership within the Met will really listen and take the right action forward. They have to if they want to save the Met and reform it. I want to go to one specific aspect you've been calling for. That's the independent victim care hub. I was also interested to hear Baroness Casey talk about rape suppression units, also units specifically looking at domestic violence. Do you feel that any of those particular initiatives will come into being in short order? I hope so. I mean, as the Deputy Commissioner's just said, they're going to look at those units. I mean, this huge amount of resource is now being put into the public protection units. It wasn't there before. That's why so many victims of rape, domestic abuse, coercive control,

stalking have been failed by the police response. So there is significant resource going in and a lot of work underway to try and change that. That's already started before this review came today. With regards to victims specifically, we had the announcement just a couple of weeks ago at my Victim Summit, the Met Commissioner announced a new helpline for victims, which I hugely welcome. I think it's a good start. I've said all along it won't go far enough. We have victims in London who have no trust and confidence within the Met and they need to come to a place that they feel secure and safe, that will guide them through a very complex justice process. And so I will continue to champion and push for an independent victim care hub. But it does go beyond the Met. That's where government come in and we need leadership. So that's interesting. You would direct them there before going to the Met directly, for example. One more I'd like to get your response to, Claire.

More than half of women in London now say they no longer trust the Met. You know that to keep women and girls safe. But one serving officer, this was in the review, that rape detection rates are so low that you may as well say that rape is now legal in London. Yeah, I mean, that's been the stark reality the last few years and what came out of both my London rape reviews and what led to the huge amount of work that we call Operation Soteria. The Met has undergone a very big change in this area. And I have to say something positive about the Met in the sense that they are doing this work to try and improve their response to rape victims. So I am confident that that work is now underway and on track.

So what we've seen over the last few years, yes, rape, many have said, have been decriminalised in London. Of course, if you look at the conviction rates, prosecution rates, that's absolutely the state of affairs. But I will say there's a huge amount of work. I work really closely with the Met. I'm so sorry. I think it must be something with the internet this morning in London being a little bit glitchy. Claire Wapp-Waxman, the London's Victims Commissioner, I think she was just saying there that she does work with the Met, but of course trying to change what is happening with

rape detection rates that we were talking about there. Thanks so much to my guest. Claire, I think you've just come back. You were just finishing your sentence, if you'd like to. You do work with the Met? Yes, and just saying there's huge positive work underway, but obviously still a long way to go. Clare Waxman, thank you so much.

London's Victims Commissioner. Lots of you getting in touch, particularly about Holly. This is from Rose in Bristol. She says, what a glorious explanation and dissection of the tiered bullying in the police that she has experienced. So glad she hung in there. Many women will benefit from her tenacity. Immense respect for the woman officer

on BBC Women's Hour. That's from Bruce. It's Holly is what we're calling her. And also, I know this is my own experience, it's very, very similar to this female officer story. I was in a police force in Yorkshire saying it isn't specific to the Met.

I was a young probationer assaulted by a male officer who was older than my father and had decades in the force and no action was taken. I had no support and I was punished to prevent reporting the incident. Keep your stories coming. 84844. Thanks to all our guests chiming in on this topic, which we will continue to cover. One more comment that came in.

Dance is an amazing way of feeling free and letting go of emotion. I trained as a classical ballet dancer for years and still attend classes now. I will always appreciate the joy it gives me. And that leads me in to our next part of the programme, because Dance Your Way Home, a journey through the dance floor, is by music journalist Emma Warren, who is here. And it's about the kind of ordinary dancing I consider my own extraordinary but ordinary dancing

you or I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on or speaks to the heart of what makes us move some call it a form of medicine

or a way of communicating is it a source of strength or solidarity maybe for you maybe protest Emma you're so welcome Thank you for having me I loved your

book. It just brought back so many memories. If I'm honest, I'm a big fan of dance. I'm not very good, but I make up for it in enthusiasm, what I lack in skill. Let's talk about that because we always kind of, I think, need to qualify how good a dancer we are. Well, this is a funny thing, isn't it? And I think what I'm saying is that we need to decouple dancing from the idea of being good at dancing. And I started my book with a line, I think it's, if you dance, you're a dancer. This is where we begin.

I'm a dancer. There you go. There you go. And there are reasons why we have these two things combined, the idea of being a dancer being something that has to involve skill or technique. But I'm saying that it's just really ordinary to dance really normal to dance really human to dance and actually perhaps a very humane thing to do as well. And when I thought about it and you bring us through a journey you know whether it's various aspects you know things that my parents would have been

doing the 1940s dance halls in the Midlands of Ireland, for example, or where I was at the school disco or the youth club. But, you know, I remember loving it and been pestering my parents probably at the age of 12 or 13 to get to the school disco. And once I did, there was a great feeling of freedom. you talk about young girls and we often talk about it here on Woman's Hour and dealing with anxiety particularly post-pandemic when they didn't get to you know go out and shake it all out that anxiety which we were able to do and how helpful dance can be to young girls that are trying to figure out their emotions and their bodies. Yeah, absolutely. Because when we move our bodies, we become slightly more aware of who we are. We're able to, I kind of have this phrase,

we can update our reality somehow. We can dance our way into the body we have. And that's really useful when you're going from being a child to being a young woman. And it's actually useful, I think, at any point in life, but it's particularly useful for dealing with symptoms of anxiety and in the book I have spoken to some experts in here some people in Sweden who run a program called Dance for Health where they take young girls who experience

anxiety get them to improvise dances make up dances together and find their symptoms of anxiety really decrease and part of that is to do with warm and friendly environments where you're dancing with your friends, when no one's kind of marking you or deciding whether or not you're going to pass an exam. It's just about moving together and the bonding that happens when we dance together. Yes, and I suppose so many young people, teenagers were, you know, shut out of that whole world for a number of years as well as COVID took hold. When you talk about dance as well, let's talk about the different locations. Does it matter where you dance? I started, you know, kind of going back through my dance history and that sounds like I've had some sort of training. I'm talking about sweaty clubs or kitchens or I don't know, kind of bouncy floored

youth clubs. Well, the body doesn't know the difference. The body doesn't know if you're in a kind of dark basement in a nightclub or if you're in a kitchen. And actually, I think there's a lot of nightclubs in my book because I've used the dance floors that I've been on as a route through the material. But actually, all of these things are dance floors. Dancing doesn't just happen in nightclubs, because that immediately sends people towards, you know, things that are illegal. I'm saying the dance floor is the village green, it's the kitchen, it's the crossroads, it's the school disco. It's all of those places, and all of them are important. And we need these places. Now, I know you have installed a dance floor in your flat, is that correct?

Kind of, yeah. I mean, I have a wooden floor in my flat and I bought it in pieces off eBay as blocks but it came from a dance floor in Scarborough. How wonderful. It is really lovely so I didn't do that intentionally. I think because I've spent so much time on the dance floor I was of course attracted to that particular job lot of of wooden blocks which is great so when

you're dancing you've kind of got all that history below your feet but we have that everywhere because we have so many dance floors which have been used often offices in the 1930s had dance floors so the workers could just go and like have a little bit of a dance hang on we need to reintroduce that I could see the studio being fantastic you know what and it's so good because you because, you know, in schools, for example, there's so little dance. You know, One Dance UK have talked about this significant decline in dance on the curriculum since 2010. There's hardly any dance in schools, along with many other art subjects. And yet dance decreases anxiety, improves divergent thinking. So, you know, those who are in charge of the education of our young should be more interested in dance,

even on that kind of most basic of reason of that making schools work better. But of course, it's much more important than that. This is really fundamental, profoundly tender way for us to get to know each other, because when we dance with each other, we like each other more. But the slow dance, which is something I grew up with, maybe some of my listeners did as well, and many a match that was made. They were talking a lot about romance this week on Woman's Hour. Is that a thing of the bygone era now? Yeah, the slow dance.

I mean, I caught the end of the slow dance as well, and I'm glad I did. But this was the kind of very tail end of partner dancing on UK dance floors as it kind of disappeared. But I don't know if it's completely gone. And of course, in some communities, you know, anyone that's lucky enough to go to any South American related dance floors, you know, any milongas or any of that will find partner dancing is alive and well. It's just that particular moment of school children dancing together in the dinner hall on a Friday night ended.

Although you have proms now, so that's just a... The dance floor evolves. It always changes in response to who we are and where we're at and what we need. We just need to make sure that we have the dance floor. The dance floor does evolve. But I would say that I think one of the great tragedies of getting older is how the dancing reduces and that you have to look for the opportunity. So now you're delighted to go to a wedding or wherever there might be some dancing.

It's not as ubiquitous as it is in maybe your younger years, teenage, 20s, 30s. I kind of pushed it as much as I could. And I'm wondering why you think that happens? And is there a way to reclaim it? Well, because I think some of those things are just simple patriarchal systems telling women, particularly middle aged or older women not to take up space and not to move. And when we do, it's beautiful. On the advice of my friend, a poet, Caitlin, I took up a contemporary dance class. And because she said to me, middle aged women are not encouraged to take up space. And it's good when middle aged women

take up space. And I thought, Oh, you know what, she's right. I took the class and absolutely loved it. It gave me a whole new layer of appreciation of dancing and the dance floor. And I think we all need it. And I don't like it when when things are shut down. It happens quite often to women, doesn't it? Like, oh, don't take up space or don't embarrass me. And that is something for a younger person. I mean, it is happening with nightclubs as well. There was the Nighttime Industries Association research,

a demise in clubbing. In 2006, there were around 3,000 nightclubs in the UK. Now estimated at just over 1,000. And what is that? People, like that it's just evolving and the interests are different or other forces? It's a mixture of things. There's definitely a way in which communal space has been removed from us wholesale. That's community centres, that's youth clubs, that's nightclubs, all the places where we gather to freely associate with each other. And that's youth clubs, that's nightclubs, all the places where we gather to freely associate with each other.

And that's a really fundamental part of democracy. And we need those places to be reinstated. We need them back. And I think on a very local level, we can be trying to open up spaces and we can be encouraging those who have structural power to make sure that we have the spaces we need. In the city of Leuven in Belgium, for for example the city are opening a new nightclub in in collaboration with the community they're saying what nightclub does the community need and they're working with the community to build a dancing it seems so it just seems radical doesn't it but it's it's such a normal and human and useful thing to do

but it's interesting you know just to just to briefly go back to the the big story of the day with the police I wasn't expecting to write a book that had so much police in it. And the police appear in almost every chapter, because where there is a dance because it's so powerful because this is a place where we can get to know each other across demographics and get to like each other get to know each other make bonds so interesting that you bring that up i know i'm going back to the irish chapter again but also that they very much were make what was it that this music and laughter and pounding of feet and whatnot, the noise that it was making in the villages or whatever, and then that the local enforcement would be called. A couple of messages as well before I move on. I dance for 45 minutes three times a week on waking. Makes me smile for the whole day and helps my physical and mental health. That's

Gillian from Liverpool. Since my 50s, ballet dancing has become my passion and my fitness. It lifts my soul. It's a great retirement project. That's Ghislaine. And going to school in the 70s and 80s, Ireland, I did this. We did Irish dancing for one of our weekly PE lessons. Great fun for boys and girls. And that's Maggie. You have, in just our last minute, a chapter on searching for the perfect nightclub. Have you found it? I think, yes, the perfect nightclub is wherever you find it, wherever you choose to dance with your friends.

A journey through the dance floor. Music journalist Emma Warren, thank you so much for giving us some food for thought. I like that one. Wake up first thing in the morning and dance for 45 minutes. Thank you. Keep on dancing. Now, it was Mothering Sunday, right?

Last Sunday. What do you do? Flowers, pub lunch. It can be wonderful. It can be very sad if you've lost your mother, of course, or maybe if you wanted to become a mother. But we're also talking about when your relationship with your mum is not so good and you can't figure out what is wrong.

Well, there's a new series here on Woman's Hour. We're going to be talking about narcissistic mothers and the damage they can do. Narcissist, it's a term that gets thrown around a lot, but it is a real diagnosis. And as we're going to hear, being raised by a woman she believes was a narcissist had long-term consequences for a Woman's Hour listener in her mid-50s that we're calling Charlotte. Charlotte recently went into therapy to address her low self-esteem and take charge of her own happiness. In therapy, she had what she calls a revelation. She explained to our reporter, Enna Miller, why last year's Christmas special of the BBC programme Motherland really chimed with her. There's a scene where Joanna Lumley plays a narcissistic mother.

And she puts her daughter down in front of the daughter's ex-husband and his new partner. Always with her darling. Constantly saying, are you having trouble with this is difficult for you darling implying that it should be knowing that it's going to be difficult but feeling no empathy for that just making her look ridiculous and there was a wonderful scene where the daughter comes back to the house and she says let's face it mother you don't like me I don't really like you so for the foreseeable future we'll be seeing a lot less of each other and that will make both of us much happier and I thought yes go for it yes I wish I'd said that describe your mother to me I don't even know where to start she She was a redhead. She was very beautiful. But she was very concerned

with how things would look. So she would, a relative told me that she had an appointment at the doctor's and she simply couldn't go unless she bought herself a new pair of leather gloves. She was a big woman. She was quite tall. She was intelligent. She was very charming. My friends all thought she was great. It's very difficult to sort of describe her, really, because my main memories of her are her behaviour, her attitudes, her judgements, her snide comments. I've got a photograph, a phone photograph,

that my dad took when they were first dating and she looks like a sort of auburn-haired Sophia Loren. She looks absolutely amazing in it. But I kind of don't like it because it's a beautiful picture but that's not the person that she was. We're here because i had a revelation about my relationship with my mother and i was so influenced by it and blown away by it

i wrote an email and i've got that actually so let's see let's see do you want to remind yourself? I recently found out that my mother was a covert or vulnerable narcissist. That was during therapy, and it has completely changed my outlook on life, for the better. Although my mother died in 2009, aged 68, she has continued to be in my head, as she has throughout the whole of my adult life. Why? A lot of the reasons are what I've learned in therapy. Obviously my mother was our main caregiver. I was one of three daughters and dad was out at work most of the time. But it's more than that. It's almost that I believe

that everything that she said was the law. It never occurred to me that it was it's almost that I believe that everything that she said was the law it never occurred to me that it was just her opinions and I didn't understand that before I went into therapy and so you talk about a revelation so to me it was like a like I could just imagine all these lights going off in your head can you just take me back to that moment and tell me how that happened I decided that 2022 was going to be the year that I worked on myself and the overriding theme was low self-esteem so I thought right go into therapy and get that sorted it's the first session in therapy and she opened by just saying you know tell me about your childhood sort of typical therapy talk and she said well it sounds to me as if you've had a

narcissistic mother and I went okay what does that mean and she child did you think this this and this and this this yes yes and do you still think that yes I'm tingling about it now it sends goosebumps over me because it was as you say a million light bulbs going on it just made me realise why I've taken the decisions I've taken, for good or for bad, why I'm in the place I'm in mentally, and why I've had cripplingly low self-esteem nearly all my life. Can we blame our mums for everything? Can we blame our mums for the decisions that we make as adults? No, and this isn't a thing about blaming my mum you know I never went into

therapy thinking I want to gripe about my mother for hours and hours that wasn't the point at all I wanted to talk about me. I'm interested in the effect that that upbringing had on me and how I can now be aware of that and make changes going forward. So when you had that sort of revelation in that moment what next? Well that's exactly what I said to my therapist and she said to me you've literally got to talk and talk and talk about it until you get it out of your system and it will bring up emotions as you're talking. And that's what therapy is all about. So what did you talk about? What was this, this, this and that?

She would say things like, your friend's mother agrees with me that you are whatever it might be. Selfish, lazy, vain. If we take the health side of things she was constantly ill and it was it was always a question of she had the worst cartilage problem in her knee or the worst slip disc and then when my older sister got ill and she had an autoimmune disease you know her illness was the worst case in Europe so that my mum could sort of brag about the consultants that they went to speak to and my mum used to talk about all the consultants using their

first names as if they were friends she made me feel that I was selfish if I had fun and one of the most significant things was I was the only one of the three daughters to keep in touch with my father after my parents separated. And she made me feel really bad about that. Every time I went home for Christmas, sometimes I'd arrive on Christmas Eve and she'd say, where have you been? Why aren't you here? The others are here. Well, I was working, mum. But she would think that I was with Dad. And even if I was with Dad, I thought,

why should I be made to feel guilty about that? You know, it wasn't my divorce, it was yours. But we had to take a side. And I know that she made both of my other sisters take her side. I use the word accuse because we can never speak to your mother, right? But some of the words that you said to me was that you accuse your mum of, like, enjoying bad health, having no empathy, didn't do anything fun, as you've just said, vying for her approval, always had to be the centre of attention.

She prized your intelligence over your happiness. Now, some of those things we probably all experienced to some degree. At what point do all these things go from a difficult mum to crossing the line to where it has a massive impact on you? That was probably the biggest single incident to have affected me in childhood I was I must have been eight or nine and we were sat around the table on a Saturday early evening in the summer and she'd said something and just one or two words came out in a really Merseyside accent and I said to her you sounded really Liverpudlian then and she completely flipped instantly flipped she got up her chair fell backwards I'm not from

Liverpool I'm from Birkenhead and went stamping and screaming upstairs and I looked at my dad and I said what have I said what have I said and my dad and I got up and went to the foot of the stairs and mum was on the half landing and by this time she was just in her underwear and a bra and pants screaming and ranting and she pointed her finger down the stairs and says look what you've done to me. And I thought she was pointing at me. And the next time I saw her, she'd had electric shock therapy and she was slumped on her bed, almost dribbling out of one side of her mouth. And for 40 years, I thought that was my fault and that's what I had done to her. So that alone, just talking through that with my therapist

was amazing because I could rationalise that it wasn't my fault but I didn't understand what was going on until I knew that mum was a vulnerable narcissist and she wants to portray to the world one image and if I break through that image she will hate it. Do you think your expectations of her were too much? I don't know that I had any expectations of her at all. If I look back on my relationship with my mother certainly as a young child it wasn't of a reciprocal one at all it was of receiving instructions being told what to do being told how to feel and if I did feel something myself being told that was ridiculous so I don't think I had any expectations of her I was just waiting for her to tell me what to do next I mean I always knew that I loved my dad

and my therapist says thank god for your dad because that's the person from whom you learned empathy you learned social skills everything that's good person from whom you learnt empathy, you learnt social skills. Everything that's good about your emotional education has come from your dad. Where was your dad in all of this? At some point, he was a witness to all of this. He put it in a letter to me that he always used to be an unimportant little man,

and that's how he saw himself in our family. Did he ever say she was a narcissist? No not at all he was always extremely loyal never said a bad word about her. My father was probably an echoist to my mother. An echoist serves the needs of the narcissist so they do what the narcissist says they just allow the narcissist to, and they sort of revolve around them. Their whole world revolves around the narcissist. But when I think back to my childhood, all the nice things that we did were with my dad. There was one time I remember having a big hug from my mother, and I was just leaning against her, and I just thought, oh, this is nice.

But then it was over, like go on out and play go it's the constant drip drip drip over 40 50 years that's very difficult to turn around along this journey that you've been going through you've always had two people there with you. Do you want to tell me about that? That's quite a difficult one, because there was two years between me and my older sister and two and a half years between myself and Louise. At times, we've been really close when we were smaller, and that started to fracture a bit when I went off to university, by which time Anna was very ill.

It was then Anna and Louise at home, still subject to my mother's influence all the time. And I remember saying to Anna once, talking about my dad and the fact that I had kept in touch with him. And I said, you know, it's not our divorce. Don't you want to see him? Don't you want to have any input from him? And I said, you know, it's not our divorce. Don't you want to see him? Don't you want to have any input from him? And I remember her saying, it's just easier. It's just easier. And so when you were getting the therapy, I've spoken to Louise and she said, you started sending WhatsApps.

She got a lot of WhatsApp messages from you. Yeah, and I've stopped doing that. Were you bombarding her? Because I was really excited at the time. I just thought you'll never guess what. This is what we grew up with. This was our family dynamic and it explains everything Louise. Let's talk about it. And she was probably thinking God, what's happened to her? I think she has a different take on things than me. How does that make you feel? Sad.

Sad for Louise because I know that she could get so much more out of life if she believed in herself more, and I know why she doesn't believe in herself. It's nothing to do with her. It's to do with her upbringing. Well next time we'll be hearing from Charlotte's sister. How do two sisters who grew up with the same mother come to see things so differently? One is

convinced she was a narcissist. The other not so sure. You're getting in touch with this story. Here's one anonymous. My mother was narcissistic. I shrank into myself and left home for university to escape home life. It wasn't until I became a family lawyer

representing vulnerable and abused individuals that I started to understand that my mother was a narcissist and that what I had endured was abuse. I broke free and cut all contact when I became a mother myself in order to stop her behaviour

from affecting my children. Another seven years ago, at the age of 57, I realised I'm the daughter of a narcissistic mother. This long-awaited lightbulb moment finally happened when I was forced to seek the help of a counsellor after a bad, bad behaviour from my mother.

Too much water and hurt is under the bridge to heal all my emotional wounds, but with the help and encouragement of my family I'm finally after many, many, many years of emotional abuse learning to cope with her. Thanks so much for getting in touch. I do want to let you know that tomorrow

we'll be discussing the UK's first group messaging drama series. It unfolds through pictures, voice notes and videos between four close friends as they navigate an unexpected breast cancer diagnosis together. Could this be a new way of supporting women with cancer? I'll be speaking to two women

who inspired this series. I also want to give a shout out to somebody who got in touch who's dancing on their Royal Mail post route all the way around County Durham. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello. My Radio 4 podcast series, Amal Rajan Interviews, features global game changers,

pioneers and maverick thinkers. It includes Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg and Sir Ian McKellen, as well as Novak Djokovic, Billie Jean King and Nile Rodgers. Nothing is off the table and all give an insight into their remarkable worlds. You can subscribe and listen on BBC Sounds. Thank you. out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.