Woman's Hour - The Freedom Project: understanding domestic abuse in relationships

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

16 years ago a woman in her twenties, who was a translator at GCHQ, leaked an official and confidential email. It instructed Katharine Gun and her colleagues to share any information they might come across concerning a clutch of nations belonging to the UN Security Council. The information could then be used to persuade them to vote for the invasion of Iraq. Her email became an Observer article and she lost her job, nearly lost her marriage and was in fear of going to prison. Now her story is told in a new film ‘Official Secrets’. She joins Jenni to remember that time in 2003 and explain what happened next. How much are we squeezing play out of our children’s days, our institutions and spaces? Michael Rosen, author of ‘Book of Play’ joins Jenni to talk about why play matters to both children and adults – and to share tips on how we can get more of it in our lives.When Sally Challen was recently interviewed on Woman’s Hour she talked about the Freedom Programme she attended, once she was in prison. She described how it helped her understand the coercive control and domestic abuse she had suffered for years from her husband Richard. We speak to Clare Walker, a group facilitator and a trainer for the programme, Pat Craven who founded it and Louise, a listener, who wrote in to say how attending for the last year had changed her life.We speak to Grammy-award nominated blues singer Beth Hart about finally feeling able to be herself with her new album, War In My Mind.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Katharine Gun Interviewed Guest: Michael Rosen Interviewed Guest: Pat Craven Interviewed Guest: Clare Walker Interviewed Guest: Beth Hart

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning. Michael Rosen, a former children's laureate, describes himself as an improviser, ad-libber, chancer and blagger and says we all share those qualities. Why does he want to encourage us all to be more playful in his new book of play? Sally Challen, newly released from prison,

told us how she'd been helped to understand coercive control and domestic abuse by the Freedom Programme. What is it and how can it change a victim's life? And a new confidence to take control in her late 40s. The blues singer Beth Hart with a new album War In My Mind and she will sing live for us.

Now a new film had its premiere last night at the London Film Festival and will go on general release next week. It's called Official Secrets and tells the story of a young woman who was a translator at GCHQ in 2003. Keira Knightley plays Catherine Gunn who saw an email on her computer at work. It asked for information she

and her fellow workers might pick up concerning a number of nations who might be persuaded to help push the United Nations Security Council to vote in support of the invasion of Iraq. Gunn smuggled the email out of GCHQ, it reached the Observer, and she lost her job and came close to a prison sentence for leaking official secrets. And the real Catherine Gunn joins us. Catherine, why did you agree to a high profile film being made about your story? Because you've kind of gone quiet since it all happened. That's right. Well, this process has actually, it did begin about eight years ago. And you never know when you start these things,

if the film ever gets made, if it's a successful film, if it will get a wide circulation. And over, you know, years of ups and downs and ups and downs, we finally, three years ago, sort of the stars aligned and this group of people came together. And both Martin and myself, Martin Bright, the journalist, felt that Gavin Hood, the director, and Jed Doherty, the producer at the time, was just really determined to tell the story in a truthful way, faithful. And it made me feel comfortable to go ahead with it. What exactly did you see on that email? It was a request from NSA, which is the equivalent to GCHQ in the US,

basically for GCHQ to access the lines of the six swing nations that were sitting on the UN Security Council at the time. So that was Angola, Chile, Cameroon, Guinea, Bulgaria, and Pakistan. And it said, you know, to use all means necessary and to gather the whole gamut of information that would give US policymakers an edge in achieving results favorable to US goals. And I thought, what are US goals? I knew they were war in Iraq. So basically, they were talking about twisting arms, blackmailing, bribing these delegates to vote for an authorization for war. Why did you make the decision to smuggle it out? By this time, I'd already done a lot of

research. I'd read a couple of books not that long before, a few weeks before perhaps, by US authors and activists Norman Solomon of the Institute of Public Accuracy and of Milan Rai. And I read both those books cover to cover. And, you know, along with what I'd already researched, I felt there was no justification for war. So the email was a red flag. It was such a shocking, it seemed so shocking to me, the contents, that I really felt the public should know. It should be exposed. MPs should be aware of it. And so it was this instinct to intervene to prevent this catastrophic war. How conscious were you of the risk you were taking?

I mean, I've seen the film. Keira Knightley plays terrified absolutely brilliantly. Were you as terrified as she portrayed? Well, at the time of deciding to leak it, I wasn't. Funnily enough, I saw that email on the Friday. I did go home and think about it over the weekend. But I was thinking not about whether I should or shouldn't leak it. I was thinking more in terms of how was I going to do it? Because I really, it was like I was a blinkered horse. All I could see was this impending war and what were the ways to stop it? And I thought, I felt this was one of the ways to do it. And so come Monday, you know, it was just a matter of figuring out how I was going to get this thing out of the building. When it became known that it had been smuggled out and it had gone to the

Observer, obviously they were trying to find out who had done it. And you made the decision to confess that it was you. Why? Well, actually, I confessed it was me when it was splashed on the front pages of the Observer. So it became, you know, that that moment, the kernel of information and just sort of report it in a way that said sort of sources allege and what have you. And so to have it on the front pages was an absolute terrifying experience. And I confessed because I could not see myself persisting in lying to my employers that I had nothing to do with it. Now, your husband is Turkish

and he was threatened with removal from the UK. How did you manage to keep him here? Because again, in the film, it's a kind of midnight rush to the airport to try and rescue him from being transported. Yeah, well, that really did happen. But it was a parallel process. So my husband was an asylum seeker at the time in the UK and his asylum claim had been denied. And we'd been aware when we got married that our marriage status wasn't actually

going to prevent him from being deported. So it was only a matter of time. And when my case, when I was charged, they took my passport away from me. And it was by virtue of that being the case that he wasn't deported. Had I not made the leak, had I still been working at GCHQ, I would have come home to my house and found him gone. Because there was there would have been no legitimate reason to argue for him to stay. Now you did eventually come to trial with some very good lawyers, Liberty. Why do you suppose the charges against you were just dropped? Well that's a very good question and it's a question that we still don't really have a you know I would say reasonable answer for. Quite recently in in fact, Lord Ken MacDonald,

who previously was the Crown Prosecution, claims that it had nothing to do with the Attorney General's legal advice that we had specifically requested, the advice that had as yet not come out, that he initially had said it would have been illegal to invade Iraq. Lord Ken MacDonald states in his recent article that it was down to national security reasons. And, you know, what could be a national security reason 16 years later that they still have to you know not reveal the reason for dropping the case but your sense of relief when they said the case had been dropped and you could

just go home what did that feel like of course it was an immense sense of relief i mean i really one of the my biggest fears before my name had come out was actually having my name come out. That was, you know, I really feared losing my anonymity. But so when the case was dropped, I thought, you know, wow, this is tremendous. I don't have to go through this extremely high profile political trial. But on the other hand, there was a sense of anti-climax because I had geared up for it. You know, we'd prepared for four months, this defense of necessity, me pleading not guilty, and literally putting the war on trial. We were convinced that we had at least, you know, a fairly good chance of moving forward with that.

And so to have the rug pulled from under our feet was a bit disconcerting. And now you and your husband and your daughter live in Turkey. Yes, we lived in Cheltenham for a good number of years before we decided to move to Turkey. And it was for various reasons. Principally, I couldn't face sending my daughter to school at the age of four because she seemed so small. And also I was, you know, my husband was tired of the British weather.

So, yeah, those were the main, some of the main reasons we went to Turkey for. Catherine Gunn, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning and as I said the film goes on general release next week. Thank you. Now Michael Rosen's voice is not an unfamiliar

one to Radio 4 listeners. He's the presenter of Word of Mouth. He's a former children's laureate and I'm sure lots of you will have read his stories and his poems to your children. Well his new book is called Michael Rosen's Book of Play. Why play really matters and 101 ways to get more of it in your life. Michael you

describe yourself in this book as an ad-libber, a chancer and a blagger and you say we all have those qualities. Do we really? Yes. Everything I've ever known about people is that they have these moments when they improvise, think on their feet, blurt something out, try something out at a party, at a wedding, at a funeral. Yes, I think there's something pretty well in all of us that is like that. But why are there useful qualities when it comes to play? Because play is about trial and error without any fear of failure. That's how I see play. A lot of things that we do, we either don't have much trial and error about it,

or if we do something that is a bit gamey, I would say, in the gaming area, we do have a fear of failure. It's not bad. It's not bad to have a fear of failure in a sort of gaming situation because that's part of the fun of it. But the important thing about play is that it's open ended. And if there are rules, then you're the one who makes them. So the idea of improvising and blagging and chancing it are really important in play because you have the sense that anything can count in here. I could just work this out on my feet. So what kind of things do you include yourself under the term play?

I was quite surprised to find that you try to see how much of the dishwasher you can empty without actually breathing. That's right, because we have these things around us, dishwashers, washing machines, front doors and all the rest of it, and these are all very rule-bound. They've all been created by the wonderful world of science. But for them, and you can treat these things in a very passive way,

as if somehow or other they're there and permanent and you have to do how you've been instructed to do it. But actually, all around us, there are things that you can play with. So I know it sounds weird. You know, kiddies will remember in the old days of very loud flushing toilets and chains. You know, could you get from the loo to the kitchen holding your breath before the loo stopped flushing? Things like that. Well, why do kiddies do that? Why do I go on doing it? Because it's

to make the world more of your own. So you're not a passive receiver, but somehow or other, you make it part of yourself. So you treat the world as something that you can be active in, instead of it's something that you receive. What do we know about the idea of play, its origins, as a concept? I think we can say that when we look at ancient artefacts of one sort or another, when we look at some of the great scientific discoveries, that at the core of them is an idea that somebody had to play with possibilities, had to play with what was there. So, you know, there's an ancient flute that has been found,

30,000 years old, possibly more, and it's been made out of the wingbone of a vulture. So this is one of the oldest artefacts we have, and it's been made out of the wing bone of a vulture. So this is one of the oldest artefacts we have, and it's a flute. So just if we think, how would you arrive at the possibility of making what must be one of the world's first flutes if you weren't playing with the materials around you to find what could make noises that enabled you to make that kind of cawly sound that a flute does.

And it's got holes, so you can stop the notes on it. I mean, I just think this is incredible. It's thousands, tens of thousands of years old, and it could only have come about with play. If you think again to the double helix and DNA, and you think, well, they had to play with things like pipe cleaners to figure out how it was that you could replicate from that from one human being to the next they had to work out and we know Rosalind Franklin

Crick and Watson and so on they worked out how it was but it can only come with the mind being able to think of something in a playful way in order to arrive at what's the truth. How easily do children play naturally? And I'm not talking about, you know, having lots and lots of toys to play with, but pretending things, dressing up and being different people. Does it come absolutely naturally to them? I think it flourishes, put it that way, with our encouragement. And it can be easily discouraged if we tell children that they're being silly. So I think we can create an environment that encourages it.

In other words, if you have an old clothes box, and if you have things, and you're not too bothered immediately as to whether the clothes go back in the box, and so they can spread them out on the floor and create a mess in the room that my mother used to call a mission de manque, that you can pick it up and pick up a hat and drop it. then in that situation then i'd say between the ages of three and nine children will do a lot of dramatic play they'll also do it of course with whatever they've got little a combination of dolls or playmobil or whatever it is any of these little people that they can

play with and role play through it. And listening through the keyhole of my children's doors sometimes, you could hear them. Quite handy if grown-ups aren't actually in the room. They'll start playing out, being the people in these little scenarios and these plays that they create. And it's thought, we know, that this is incredibly important. You're basically re-enacting the world as you've seen it and trying out what would it be like to be an ambulance person what would it be like to be

uh you know a person in a traffic control or something like that you're trying out these things but also trying out those important things about your close personal relationships and of course that again that's what play enables you to do. Try it out, see what it feels like. And also with children, to try out omnipotence, to try out what would it be like if you're bigger than yourself, what would it be like if you could run everything and fly through the air. Why do we tend to lose it as we grow up?

That's a tricky one, isn't it? I think it's because we're invited to be serious and productive. So we connect this word play with childish, childishness. We've got these words that are pejorative about children. Why? We like children. Why do we have this word childish? And so we connect that idea. And then there's this sort of bit where you prepare to be productive, let's say, at secondary school onwards. And then you've got 18 to 60 where you're being productive.

And then you're this sort of not very useful person post 60. So there's this idea that that's what's important. So on either side of it, and also, of course, in leisure time, that's unimportant. Now, if you've got that hanging about, then play can seem like unnecessary, unimportant, an add-on, rather than if we treat human beings in a holistic way and say, well, it's all of you, your ability to play, to work, to be ill, it's all of you. You're a big fan of what my mother used to call, rather pejoratively, Dolly Daydreaming. Why?

Well, I think Dolly Daydreaming, or whatever you want to call it reverie we've got lots of words for it haven't we this is when we if you like chew over who we've been what happened what we would have preferred to have happened and what we would like to happen so this is powerful stuff this is all stuff to do with how we really feel about ourselves. And that is a form of play because you can sit there and say, well, why wasn't he there? Why wasn't she there? And then you can say, what would have happened if he, she was, right? And then, when I work with children,

I work with the idea that you can harvest your daydreams. And that's a nice thing to do because you can harvest them by drawing, by painting, by by photography by writing poems by all sorts of things when you harvest your daydream then you in a sense you'll go one step further because you put the play thing out in front of you and then you can then speculate even more about it just briefly just two things that you would like to see a family doing when they've heard the words oh oh mum, I'm bored? Well, I would go towards word games because I'm a wordy

person, but some people do other things. So with wordy games, it's ever so it's good fun to make up tongue twisters, because all you've got to do is find two sounds that are a bit alike each other, you know, sh and s, and then you think of all the sh and s words that you know and then you see if you can repeat it.

So that's one nice thing. Some people who've got the limerick form in their heads, they can do that. But doodling is just a lovely thing to do. What way do you doodle? And then to colour in your doodles and then to swap round. Do your doodle, pass it to someone else. Pass it to someone else.

Michael Rosen, lovely idea. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. You are a bit of a wordsmith. We have to acknowledge that. Sometimes. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. And you are a bit of a wordsmith, we have to acknowledge that. Sometimes. Thank you. Now still to come in today's programme, the Grammy Award nominated blues singer Beth Hart and a new album, War In My Mind. And the final episode of the serial The Citadel. Now, if you've never listened to the Woman's Hour podcast, and can that really be possible? We've got a special new episode for you to listen to, which is only available on BBC Sounds.

Jane was joined by the You, Me and the Big C podcaster, Deborah James, as well as the writer and activist, Scarlett Curtis, to listen to five frank Woman's Hour interviews. It's a mixture of highlights ranging from the 91-year-old sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer to our programme about the risks suffered by black women when they give birth. The baker Nadia Hussain is in the mix as is Gina Martin talking about her experience of upskirting. All you need to do is

download the BBC Sounds app you'll find the Women's Hour podcast on what's known as the Hot Podcast Rail, or by searching, of course, for Woman's Hour. Now, earlier this year, Sally Challen was released from prison. She had served nine years for killing her husband, but her conviction for murder was reduced to manslaughter. She told Woman's Hour that she had been helped by something called the Freedom Programme, which had showed her how to understand the coercive control

and domestic abuse she had suffered for years from him. Well, a number of you got in touch with us, expressing agreement with what Sally had said. So what is the Freedom Programme and how does it help? Well, Pat Craven is the founder of the project. She joins us from the Shropshire Hills. Claire Walker is a survivor of such abuse, who's now a trainer for the programme and is in our studio in Leicester. And Louise Heard, Sally Challen, wrote to us and joins us from somewhere on the South Coast. Louise, I know you've been attending the programme for a year now. Why did you seek it out originally? Well, I'd been single for over 10 years. And at the start of that, I'd tried some face to face counselling, but it hadn't been very successful. And it almost felt like I was being

re-victimised. And I can't remember exactly where I heard about the Freedom Programme, but I went along not knowing what to expect. And up until that point, I just thought that nobody could possibly understand what I'd been through and how it had affected me and going to the freedom program I found myself sitting with 12 15 other women who were talking about the same problems that they'd had with their relationships and how it had affected them. And it was a revelation because I finally felt that I wasn't alone, I wasn't imagining things, and I wasn't being melodramatic.

You know, something bad had happened to me and it had happened to these other people too and we were all there for the same reason. So what difference has it made to the way you live your life now? What it's taken away from me is the confusion about what happened. You don't realise when you're being manipulated what is happening to you and the freedom program was not like one-to-one counseling where it's all about you immediately I realized it wasn't about me it was about abuse this thing abuse it was about the tactics that abusers use to manipulate their victims.

It was the psychological stuff, because people think so often about the physical side of domestic abuse. But the psychological side of it, which may or may not lead to physical abuse, is the difficult thing to get your head around and hearing people talk about very specific scenarios the ways that abusers use to intimidate you make you feel unsettled it goes on constantly and over a period of time it has a very wearing effect on somebody.

Paddy, if I can bring you in here, why did you set up the Freedom Programme? Oh gosh, it's something of a story Jenny. Hello Louise, can I send you a hug? Thank you. It's alright. I was a probation officer and really around about 1998 I was working in what they call perpetrator programs and I was sitting in groups of men who you know raped and murdered women attacked us because some of them were on parole and I was listening to them I was really listening to what they said and I realized that I had not really heard this before. And most of my colleagues, in fact, most people didn't really hear what men who abuse women really thought. And then I thought, the most important people who don't know this information are the women who are with them.

And I sort of became obsessed, really, with the idea of giving information to people like Louise who were in the dark. So I wrote the Freedom Programme. I've also written a book called Living with the Dominator for the women who can't get to the Freedom Programme. And I mirrored the men's programme initially, but then as soon as I started running the programme with women, women started feeding back their experiences and I built that into the program as it went along now Claire let's bring Claire in as a survivor Claire and somebody who now runs groups as well as training other professionals how would you describe what happens in a group and how it differs from offering therapy um it's a huge growth that we have the privilege to be able to actually

see happening before our eyes as facilitators because there's the group dynamic in terms of women come into the group they assume there's going to be other people there that will judge them and then they soon realize that we're not there to judge, nobody's judging and that we're all sharing very same if not similar experiences and that is the huge growth that they have of realisation that Louise has just been explaining because when we are victims we assume that it is my fault if I hadn't done this, if I'd done that, if I'd done as I was told, whatever it was. And then we begin to realise that because the Freedom Programme gives us the tools to be able to realise that actually it didn't matter what I did or didn't do, it was going to happen anyway. Now, you have two characters. Let's talk about the first one first. He's called Mr. Dominator. Who is he? with all their own toolkit, their own belief systems and reinforcements,

there is no wonder that we are confused and trying to work it all out. And the personas within the dominator are all very separate. They have their own beliefs and their own tactics. I mean, one of them likes to sulk another one will cry a huge range of things that you class under domination and coercive control absolutely absolutely and if we we look because most people when they're talking about domestic abuse will you know go to the physical aspect of it but that's only about 20 percent of victims have physical abuse on a regular basis. When we look at the bully, we assume that's the one that's going to be physical.

But the raft of tactics that Pat has put together in terms of, you know, something intimidating could be the sulking. Or it could be humming a tune. Or it could be speaking very quietly and slowly, or it could be drinking from a specific cup. The victim will know what that means. There's also Mr Wright. Who is he? Mr Wright is a delight to bring into the group and some light relief, really,

after the toxicity we will have discussed for the previous hour and a half. So Mr Wright is the antitheses of the Dominator. There isn't a great deal to say about Mr Wright because he has no agenda. But whereas I was just talking about the bully, in Mr Wright we have the friend. Pat, how does the program work if the perpetrator of abuse is another woman? It works pretty well because we're looking at the tactics. The dominator can be anybody really, it's just what we but if you look at what they do. Now, the same-sex abuse,

well, the dominators are motivated on the whole by misogyny. That's hated of women. And women can hate women too. And in a same-sex relationship, the abuser hates the victim as much as the heterosexual abuser hates his victim. Now, you said that you started out as a probation officer working with men working with perpetrators of violent crime against women but why do you not

work with men now whether as perpetrators or as victims oh well we do we do we um we have a little charity in wigan and of course Claire also runs her freedom program in Leicester with the money we earn from the sales of the book and the training and once or twice a year we put on a freedom program for men men who want to be nicer men and we do it over two days

and the men are brought along by the partners who are giving them a last chance and everyone sits in the room in groups separate groups of the men and the women and they discuss the dominator and the women there can see across the room their their men talking in little groups learning or not learning and the women then know that it's either worked or it hasn't and they've got the information then to make a decision to get rid of him or not and not believe him again we don't charge because we don't believe it should ever charge money to deal with perpetrators because if you do then you are

asked to write reports and then courts will victimize women again and you'll help them do it do you understand where i'm coming from with this claire i know you train all sorts of professionals. I do. What's the most common misconception about coercive control? The most common misconception, I would say, is that it's impossible to prove. It's impossible to identify. And I would argue that time and again if we look at the serious crimes act of 2015 it specifies how coercive control presents the freedom program gives us

the specific details of behaviors experienced so i would i would say that's the most perplexing thing I hear because we have the information there. It's almost like there's a block to wanting to permit it, which I'm hoping, as we all are, that Sally's case is going to be a high precedence on that and that services, not just the police and the courts, but services throughout will start actually acting on this rather than just sweeping it under the carpet because he's not punching her in the face every Friday night. And Louise, just briefly, what would you say you have really gained from the Freedom Programme? Just understanding what happened to me has been empowering. It's given me back enthusiasm for life. I felt I was kind of stuck and now I feel I can move on. I understand what happened. Louise, Claire Walker and Pat Creighton, thank you all very much indeed for being with us.

And by the way, there are details of the Freedom Programme I suspect that's somebody phoning up to try and get in touch with you, Claire I think it was your phone and you can find out more about the Freedom Programme if you go to the Woman's Hour website because of course there are details there. Now Beth

Hart has been singing the blues for more than 30 years, she's been nominated for a Grammy and her latest album War In My Mind has been singing the blues for more than 30 years. She's been nominated for a Grammy, and her latest album, War In My Mind, has just reached the number one spot in the Billboard Blues Chart in the United States. War in my mind There's a war in my mind Seeking each a fight That is howling all the time

There's a war in my mind Beth, you have such an amazing voice. But why War in My Mind? What's the significance of the lyrics of that song? So that song is specifically about bipolar 1 disorder, which I have. And this wonderful pastor at a church I joined five years ago, she really helped me to get my second time at sobriety. And I was out on the road and I came home and she announced she was being moved to another church.

And so I just thought, well, that's it. I'm going to go back to drinking. And if I do, my medicine doesn't work at all. So I thought, well, then the illness is just going to come back full swing. And it was just really being terrified. So I just ran home and I wrote that song that day about that. And has it helped you deal with the problem or did you go back? I have remained sober.

Thank God. Coming January 3rd will be five years. Yeah. Now, why after 30 years at the age of now 47, have you become more open about all this? I've always been ridiculously open to a fault. I just can't keep my big mouth shut. And it's not because I don't care what people think. I do care what people think. I just can't keep my mouth shut. I've always been that way since I was a kid. And it's probably due to starting in therapy at six.

So I got used to meeting strangers and talking about all my personal stuff really young. Yeah. But there have been changes in recent years like deciding not to wear makeup for photographs or allowing airbrushing of your pictures where's this confidence about your appearance come from I don't know if it's so much confidence as it's just the jig is up like I'm wearing makeup right now but just for this record that day it wasn't even premeditated I was on my way to the shoot I knew it was going to be a photo session and I knew it was going to be a video and I just thought why do it today just let's just try it without you know so I mean I still look like me just in color you know so it's you know it is what did you make of the pictures then

I think that they were okay I will I saw no airbrushing. Well, I saw the pictures and I just thought, well, I said no airbrushing before I even saw the pictures. So I just think I can tell when like a friend and I take a picture and then they send it to me that they've airbrushed it. And I just think I look funny, you know. But I'm still vain. I mean, I still get Botox and all that kind of crap. But I just thought how cool it would be to not, you know, do that that day. How did you begin? Because you were ever so young, you were only 15 when you started your musical career. Well, when I started playing out in front

of audiences as a singer, I was 15. But as a performer, I started at four with the piano and then with cello for many years. So I've been used to performing in front of people, yeah, since I was really little. And the professional side of it, how did that get started? I was very ambitious at a young age. And so I was trying like heck to get my career going, but I was having a tough time. And I guess, I mean, my first manager, I was 14. He was Seymour Heller. He was Liberace's manager. And then I got away from him and got with this guy named Jeff Tozer until I was 18. And then I met David Wolfe, who's been my manager for 26 years now, since I was in my early 20s. So

yeah. Now, you're going to perform a song from the album, which is very personal, I think. It's called Sister Dear. Yeah. What's the background to this? So a lot of people think, because, you know, I always write a lot about my family, my husband, my friends, God, just about those kind of things that really move me and that terrify me at the same time.

But people think that this song is about my sister who died, and it's not. It's about my oldest sister, Susan. And we recently did therapy. About four years ago, we started. And that very first session, I realized something. I realized that it's been unfair of me to hold her to such a high bar. Just because she's my oldest sister, I think I expected her to do everything and protect me all the time.

And it's impossible. She's only human. And it just took me forever to kind of start to get that. So it's really an apology to her for being so hard on her and expecting her to do so much. And then in the song, I list the things that I had forgotten that she'd done that were so beautiful growing up. So we hear it. Yeah. I hope to God I don't cry.

Please, you guys say a prayer. I keep crying every time I do this song. Please, Jesus, don't let me cry. Okay. Sister, dear, you there, you there they are, you, they are Oh, I want to talk to you On the phone, in the house, on the hill Wherever you want to

I was hot, I was hot, I was hot To you To To It's a miracle I didn't cry. You didn't cry. Well done. It's a beautiful song. Thank you. What does your sister make of it? So as soon as that first session was over,

I ran downstairs with the intention of writing her a song where I was really mad at her. And the song wrote me, like they usually do, right? And so as soon as I was done, I immediately called her and I played it for her on the phone. And she cried, and I think I even cried harder because it was such a release. It was like everything I wanted from her, all I had to do was give it to her and then it came

right back into my heart and it literally was like the healing of the beginning you know of bringing us back to where we were as kids but when you say a song writes itself yeah what do you mean well I can always tell when I'm writing it and then when something else is writing it. When I'm writing it, it usually turns out like crap. And it takes forever. But I can tell it just seems like I get a visit. And I like to think that it's God or the angels just coming to guide me, help me to feel better, help me to see things that I cannot see, feel things I wish I could feel but I don't have the courage to feel.

But then sometimes I just think it's my own ego and my own head trying to prove myself that I'm right, I'm right. And then it gets nowhere. But I really felt like that one was a visit. Yeah. And that was Beth Hart. Lots of response from you about Michael Rosen and play. Nancy Clements said,

So true and so much more kind and productive to encourage people of all ages to play. Catherinements said, so true and so much more kind and productive to encourage people of all ages to play. Catherine Fry said, I always thought I was the only one who did things like this. I always have little games going on when emptying the washing machine, washing up, even when feeding the dog. Glad to know I'm not crazy. Mary Musker said, Michael Rosen is so right. Play is very important, but it doesn't really emphasise how important it is for adults. Mary Musker said, we have all week. The room is full of laughter and it's the perfect antidote to work and commuting. And Rachel Ward said, nice to catch Michael Rosen just talking about play. Even though I'm serious

about them, I try to keep a playful attitude to writing and arty stuff, trying things, seeing what happens, not worrying too much about the outcome, at least to start with. Also, husband and I litter our lives with silliness, making up songs, inventing counting games on the commute to work, rhyming nonsense, etc. I think if you lose your childishness, life becomes desperately grim. And then on the freedom programme, someone who doesn't want us to mention his name. I know it's Women's Hour and I'm a man. I've just read Living with the Dominator and tried to map it to a female abuser. I found the book very helpful.

In my situation, I know that an eyebrow or a shoulder position can mean that the sky is about to come in. Is there anything groups out there for men? Local groups are mostly not interested in men. Funding has been cut. I'm a big boy, etc, etc. But get this, a local NHS depression service refuses to take you if you're in a domestic abuse situation. Imagine that. It really is all about getting people off the books and hitting the targets. Luckily, one local charity, SAFE, has relented and I get counselling there. And then Jules said the Freedom Programme is a lifesaver. It should be taught in secondary schools to raise awareness. Domestic Harpy said coercive control is insidiously damaging. Sad that this project

is not available in Edinburgh, but we'll be looking at their online resources. And Jean said, I found the Freedom Programme really helpful in moving on after years of psychological abuse. I didn't realise it was abuse because it was never physical. Such a relief to find I wasn't mad or imagining it all. And then on Beth, who sang for us. Jimmy O'Donnell said, Wow, what a voice and song. Instant fan. JP said, Me too. Astonishing. Trying hard not to cry myself. Mary Spillane, in tears, listening to Beth Hart, sending sister dear to my sister now. And George Allen said, Beautiful song about sisters by Beth Hart played this morning.

There's something so special about hearing a song that's broadcast a hundred miles away, and like magic, it lands in your kitchen through the radio waves. Now do join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour when you can hear Chanel Miller who was sexually assaulted while she lay unconscious on the ground at Stanford University. She talked to me about her memoir which is called Know My Name and Sunita Alain is the first ever black leader of an Oxbridge college and the first woman to lead Jesus College, Cambridge. She talks to us about her new role. Join me tomorrow if you can, four o'clock in the afternoon. Bye bye. Hello, I just wanted to tell you about my new podcast.

It's called Classical Fix and it's basically me, Clemmie Burton-Hill, each week talking to a massive music fan. I mix them a classical playlist. They have a listen, they come in, and we just see where the conversation goes. If you like to give classical music a go, but you haven't got a clue where to start, this is where you start.

To subscribe, go to BBC Sounds and search for Classical Fix. Now then, as you were. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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