Woman's Hour - Typewriters; Canadian residential schools; Isy Suttie; Stealthing

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

In the digital age, the humble typewriter seems rather quaint. But according to a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland, the typewriter is a technology with a key role in the story of female emancipation. The exhibition's principal curator, Alison Taubman, talks to Chloe Tilley about how typewriters provided a key opening into the world of work, propelled women into the public sphere, and played a major role in the fight for women's suffrage.More than 1000 bodies of indigenous children have been found in unmarked graves outside of former residential schools in several parts of Canada over the last few months. Assistant Professor in the History & Classics Department from the University of Alberta tells us about the history of these schools - and the impact they had on the indigenous communities in Canada. And President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Lorraine Whitman joins us to talk about the aftermath of these discoveries - and the fight for justice for the many missing and murdered indigenous women across the country.'Jane is Trying' is the first novel by comedian, writer and actor Isy Suttie. Jane is trying in three senses. She is trying to get pregnant (or she was before her life fell apart and she had to run home to mum and dad), she is trying to deal with her anxiety and she is trying in the sense of being a bit irritating and needy. Isy joins Chloe Tilley to talk about writing a relatable character and how the concept of 'home' shapes the novel.Journalist and the author of Millennial Love, Olivia Petter wrote about being stealth raped, a term used to describe the act of removing a condom without a partner’s consent. Following the article, she was contacted by women telling her they’d also been stealth raped and detailing the impact and trauma they had experienced. Olivia explains why it’s important for women to share their experiences and is joined by lawyer Harriet Johnson.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Chloe Tilley. Welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello, welcome to the programme. Good to have your company this morning. Now, a year ago might have been the first time you heard the term stealth rape. When we spoke to an actor in the award-winning BBC drama I May Destroy You. Well, we're going to be joined by the journalist and author, Olivia Petter, who has written about being stealth raped. That is the act of removing a condom during sex

without a partner's consent. Well, she's been inundated with stories from other women who've had similar experiences and themselves didn't realise it constituted rape. Well, she's going to be with us later, along with a barrister, to discuss the challenges of getting a conviction in stealth rape cases. We're also, this morning, going to be talking about the gadget that was seen as a liberation for women, the humble typewriter. Now, it opened the doors to acceptable employment for educated

middle-class women and helped in the fight for women's suffrage. But for all its benefits, the unflattering stereotype of the typewriter girl in the 1960s typing pools had its serious downsides. The side glances, women being seen as eye candy for the bosses, all which rarely reflected real life. Now, if you worked in the typing pool or as a secretary, I want to hear your stories from that time. I've heard accounts of secretaries being chased around the office by the boss in an effort to grope them. I want you to share your experiences with me this morning. You can text me on 84844 or it's at bbcwomanshour on social media

and we're going to discuss those with the curator of a new exhibition on the history of the typewriter. We're also going to be speaking to Izzy Suttey, comedian, author of a new book, where the main character Jane returns to live with her parents in the family home after a failed relationship in London. And I want to hear from you, your experiences of going back to live with your parents as an adult. Was it a good move or a huge mistake? Was it liberating having someone cooking your meals for you, maybe tidying up after you? Or did you actually regress and return to your teenage self? Was it restrictive, feeling you had to justify? Yes, I'll be in for dinner. No, I'm not going out late.

Or did it actually allow you to see what really matters in life? Or was it a backward step? You can text me now 84844. On social media, it's at BBC Women's Hour. And of course, you can always email us through our website. But let's begin by speaking about an issue that campaigners are calling for in Canada. They want the Canadian government to release all records about residential schools where indigenous children were forcibly housed, suffered abuse, and many thousands ultimately died. More than a thousand bodies of indigenous children have been found in unmarked graves outside these former residential schools in several parts of Canada since May. Residential schools, they housed

indigenous children who were forcibly taken from their homes. They were funded by the Canadian government in the 19th and 20th century, and they were run by religious organisations. They were created to force the assimilation of indigenous children. An estimated 6,000 died in these schools, often because of the squalid conditions and physical and sexual abuse was said to be rife. We can speak now to the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, Lorraine Whitman.

She's going to talk to us about the aftermath of these discoveries and also the fight for justice for the many missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country. Hi there, Lorraine. Good morning. How are you? Very well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Also with us is Crystal Fraser, assistant professor in the history of classics department from the University of Alberta, here to tell us about the history of these residential schools and of course the impact it had on the indigenous communities in Canada. And Crystal, I'll begin by speaking to you because you are a historian, but equally your mother and your grandmother attended one of these residential schools. So for people who aren't really aware of what happened in them, just explain a bit about what they were, why they were set up, how they worked.

Mungweensy, good morning. It's great to be here. Yeah, Indian residential schools have actually been around in Canada since 1620 when an early Christian order started them in New France. And with Canadian Confederation in 1867, we see a state-driven program of what they called assimilation to quote-unquote kill the Indian and the child. And we now know that system to be genocide. And what it was, was under the Indian Act of 1876, which was a body of coercive legislation that managed the lives of Indigenous peoples, which is actually still legislation today, you know, allowed for the creation of Indian residential schools for the institutionalization of Indigenous children. In 1894, it became law that attendance was mandatory. And so if Indigenous parents wanted to keep their children away, they could be subject to fines or imprisonment. But as you mentioned, at these Indian residential schools, they were often overcrowded. There was poor nutrition and even state-run experiments on the bodies of Indigenous children, widespread disease,

tuberculosis, smallpox. But also these institutions were not able to run without the labor of students. And so really receiving, you know, an education as subpar as it know that these deaths were caused by a number of things. I mentioned malnutrition and disease, violent criminal acts, student runaways. speaking their language or talking to their siblings, depending on how far a school was away from your home community, you could be gone for upwards of 10 to 12 years at a time. So very traumatic conditions, which, you know, the last two Indian residential schools in Canada 1996. So about 25 years ago, and although conditions had improved into the 1970s, 80s and 90s, that goal of dismantling Indigenous families continued. Will you talk about that trauma? And I wonder, Lorraine, if you can talk to us a little bit about the impact this had on Indigenous communities in Canada, not only the children who were in these schools, but the parents who had them ripped away from them. As you can appreciate, you know, carrying a child for nine months and then knowing some of these young children that were in these schools, you know, were at the age of four and then these children being torn from you, having to leave you. So, you know, with this whole process, the parenting skills of the child being taken and the disconnect of the child and the parent left a lot of trauma, you know, with the parents, with the community members, because on the First Nation community, we're also very close-knit.

So when that happens, it brings and takes the spirit and soul out of a person. So it has traumatized, you know, the community, the parents, as well as the children that were taken. And it has left mental, psychological problems in this whole being because the parents, even the fathers, if they plan to keep their children back, as Crystal had stated, they would be incarcerated. you know, four of my siblings being taken with a 60 scoop at the time. I'm from a family of 14. And if my father were incarcerated, there were another 10 other children that needed to be taken care of. It has taken so much. It has forced the, you know, to take the Indian out of the child, but it never did. It just broke down the child. And today we're finding far more consequences due to it. You know, the housing problem, addictions, suicides in communities, you know,

and the whole health being, the mental health is so important because we're trying to bring it back. And the government and the churches are responsible. They had taken us out of an area, a situation, a home, where we had values that we were able to live with and we were able to deal with it, but we were taken and forced into another area where our children were beat.

They had been raped. They had been, again, used as slave for cooking, for cleaning, for farming and their language was taken away. There was no communication that they could do so it certainly has left trauma and it's left despair with our indigenous communities from coast to coast to coast across Turtle Island. Crystal, did the wider society in Canada know what was going on in these schools? Because as you pointed out, this didn't end until 1996. That's correct. That's a great question. And I mean, I just want to emphasise that Indigenous parents and communities have known that this has been going on for a very long time.

I had mentioned the course of legislation, the Indian Act. It was literally illegal for Indigenous people to hire lawyers. And so there was really no way to work around the system. So parents knew that this was going on. I've looked at records from the late 1800s about numerous complaints and letters that were sent by parents and families to missionaries and Indian agents and bureaucrats. But really, in 1907, it was the work of Dr. Peter Bryce. He was the public health officer for the Department of Indian Affairs. And he was really the first one to sound the alarm on these schools that conditions were so awful that at some institutions, the death rate was as high as 40%. We know through archival work that at some schools, it was actually closer to 70%.

So Dr. Peter Bryce reported on this to the Department of Indian Affairs. He was ignored and then later shuffled out into retirement. He published his report, A National Crime in 1922, on his own time and dollar. But really, throughout the 1920s, 30s, 40s, Canadians knew that this was happening. It was consistently in the press, particularly because conditions were so awful. Then during the Second World War in 1946, a special joint committee decided that Indian residential schools in Canada would start to wind down. They would start to wind down they would start to wind down the system and this was in particular because Canadians but like a lot of other people in the world were were learning about the holocaust and they were wondering how it is that you know

indigenous peoples are are treated in Canada so looking looking inward, and I mean, although that decision was made in 1946, the last schools closed in 1996, so 50 years later. And really, these institutions kept on making national headlines. And although the decision was made to close the schools and integrate Indigenous children into provincial day schools, they were still opening brand new Indian residential schools throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. And as we said, it went on till 1996, didn't it? Which people will just find utterly staggering. look forward now if we can because we know that there has been an increase in excavations taking place and as we we said at the beginning of this item horrendous that more than a thousand bodies of indigenous children have been found we know that campaigners are now calling on the canadian government to release all information that they have about what went on in these schools and what

children are missing you want criminal prosecutions, don't you, your organisation? Yes, we do. We do demand, you know, for those records to be released. There has been a genocide that has taken place. It was also stated in the TRC, the Truth and Reconciliation Report, by Honourable Marie Sinclair. And he stated that these bodies of the remains of our children had been buried. And he asked the government at that time, and that was 2016, for dollars from the government. But he had been denied.

And that was $1.8 million. The Liberal government that's in now, you know, we still haven't seen any of that money being spent. So we demand it is a genocide. And there is no genocide that should go without any justice. Justice needs to be served, whether it be, you know, the nuns, the priest or the people who have you know assisted in those time periods um you know these are remains of our children um and there isn't a crime or a death or anything that's gone on where there is no justice and we have possibly up to over 6 000 of these small little children innocent souls that have been taken away and there needs to be justice and it is the government and the church that justice. And it is the government and the church that are liable for this. The government gave the churches dollars to be able to take care of our children. There were no follow-ups in between those periods to make

sure that our children were treated fairly, were given proper nutrition, were given clothing, were in room, in warm housing, and had the comfort, you know, of a true hug when you were hurt. So there is justice that needs to be given and we are seeking for justice. We approach the Minister of Crown Indigenous Relations and the Prime Minister's Office in Canada for comment. We at the moment don't have a statement from the Canadian government. We've approached them. They haven't come back to us with one. But what I can tell you is during a press conference on the 13th of July, speaking after the discovery of more unmarked graves, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his heart breaks for Indigenous communities.

He said, I recognise these findings only deepen the pain that families, survivors and all indigenous peoples and communities are already feeling as they reaffirm truth that they have long known. Addressing members of the tribe, he said, we are here for you. We cannot bring back those who are lost, but we will continue to tell the truth. Thank you both for joining us this morning and explaining a little bit more about what is an incredibly harrowing and complicated story. Lorraine Whitman, you heard there, President of the Native Women's Association of Canada, and also from Crystal Fraser, Assistant Professor in the History and Classics Department from the University of Alberta. I was asking you for your experiences if you were in the typing pool in the 1960s, if you worked as a secretary, we're going to be talking to somebody who is the head of an exhibition, which has just opened.

Judith says, I worked as a temp for a branch of a well-known company. As I was a graduate with a secretarial qualification, I was put with a sales director. On one occasion when he was with the MD, they repeatedly referred to the size of my breath as if it was fair game. After a short while, I took a deep breath. I pointed out that if I referred to the size of their genitals, they might feel uncomfortable. It never happened again. But I didn't report it.

I should have. Judith, thank you for getting in touch with us. And Lynn says, I never went to, I never wanted to be a secretary, but my mum insisted that I learnt to touch type in senior school. She said that I would never be out of work. And she was right. I've used my skills in all of my jobs, including as a manager.

It pains me to watch people hunt and peck on computer keyboards now. It's a great skill. I particularly love the IBM Selectric typewriter and was so excited to graduate to one from a manual when I worked in a bank in the late 70s. Lynne, thank you for that story. Do share yours with us this morning.

You can text us on 84844 or at BBC Woman's Hour on social media. Now, let's talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing on the programme tomorrow, because it is 10 years since the death of the singer Amy Winehouse at the age of just 27 from alcohol poisoning. Well, tomorrow, you can hear from her mum Janice and her close friend Catriona Gourlay, reflecting on her life. Whilst lots of people know that Amy's incredibly talented, I think her life seems to be punctuated by certain things. You know, people think about either drinking or whatever else, the other stuff, or, you know, the most obvious relationship in her life.

And that perhaps they don't know that she was really loved by her friends and she had a lot of other things going on um that perhaps she would have felt more comfortable talking about if we were you know if we were amy in 2021 i think you know that would be something she'd probably be a lot more open about because it has changed a lot, hasn't it? In a decade, society's attitudes towards mental health and well-being. Do you do think she'd be judged in a different way by the media, by society? Absolutely. I just think that, you know, the language and the verbiage that was used about her at the time, I just don't think people would get away with it. You know, especially when it came to her mental health and the sort of stuff that the Amy DeKlein house and things like that you know I know it played a significant part in you know

her issues with her mental health and how she saw herself. Well that was close friend of Amy Winehouse Catriona Gawley reflecting on her life you can hear the extended interview with her and Amy Winehouse's mum Janice tomorrow on the, as it is 10 years since the death of that incredibly talented young woman. Now, which innovations have had the biggest effect on women's lives? Well, you might think of the contraceptive pill or many inventions that freed our mothers and grandmothers from spending every minute of their day on household chores. But what about the typewriter as a key to women's freedom? Well, that's the subject of a new exhibition starting at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh this weekend. And the exhibition's principal curator, Alison Taubman, is here to tell us all about it.

And Alison, many people will just see this cliché, if you like, of the female typist, the secretary. But in a lot of ways, it was a very liberating opportunity for employment for women. Hello, good morning. Yes, I think it was. And I was interested to hear your listener comment on the shift between the manual typewriter and the selectric, the IBM golf ball typewriter. And that's the journey that this exhibition goes on from the earliest days of prototype typewriters. So in the 1850s, right through to the end of typewriters with electrics and then electronic typewriters. So the exhibition finishes really in the 1980s.

So it spans all that, all those decades. But I think there's an interesting context to start with there, going back to the second half of the 19th century and two elements that combine. So there's the huge increase in industrialisation, which brings big increase in offices, in the bureaucracy, in information technologies, the same with government departments, everything from the civil service to the post office increase hugely. Running alongside that was a big social question, the woman question, very much a middle class concern about what to do with educated, unmarried, crucially, middle class women. And there were lots of debate about that, and it was to do with a shift beginning to happen of middle class women whose whole sphere had been

very much the domestic, the private, wanting to move into more of a public sphere, beginning to be involved more in politics and in the world of work. And into this comes the typewriter and these new opportunities, and I think that's crucial, of clerical work. So they weren't taking jobs from men. These were new jobs that were coming into offices. And the typewriter came into this. So it wasn't an immediate, obvious leap from the typewriter into office work. It was the combination of several different elements. So tell us about some of the early women who were using typewriters. Well, I think really from the 1880s, if you think the first typewriters were imported

from the States to the UK in 1875, 1876, and they were looking for a market. And it's important to know that these were expensive bits of kit. We're talking more a family car than a laptop. So the average person was not going to be buying one of these. And so they were aimed at wealthy individuals. But then retailers were very quick to catch on at the opportunities for marketing these to business. And one of the quotes we have early on in the exhibition is for an advertisement for a Scottish retailer in the early 1880s that makes that link between women's employment and the typewriters by saying, you know, what profession can we teach our girls? Thousands of

young ladies are practically independent through the use of the typewriter and are earning large salaries from its work. So very early on, you could see that link. But large salaries, I don't think so. One of the big points of contention over this was that women were paid maybe half as much as the male clerks that had always worked in businesses that you can imagine the Dickensian figure sitting writing in a ledger. Those sorts of jobs went on but the more that typewriters came into the office the more those jobs might be threatened. So women were paid far less than the clerks. Also, they had to leave on marriage. And that was a practice that carried on right through, really into the 1960s or 70s.

And some of your listeners may remember this. It was a social custom and certainly the case in government departments as well. The civil service continued that until well after the Second World War. And I mean, typewriters helped women into the world of work, but they also, in some ways, helped them get the vote. They did, indeed. And as well as becoming typ typists and the term typist was very much a title associated with women and work or typewriters they were called in the very early days but some entrepreneurial women then set up their own typing businesses where you could go

and have your letters typed or that would teach a whole new generation of typists. And a lot of those women were interested in the women's suffrage movement and then later became actively involved in that. So we, as an example in the exhibition, we use the story of Flora Drummond, who was one of the huge organising forces behind the Women's Social and Political Union and was arrested multiple times but she trained as a shorthand typist in Glasgow in the 1880s. Her aim was to run a post office but at five foot one she didn't meet the height restriction at five foot two. So she became the manager of the typewriting office in Manchester, where she met the Pankhursts and from there became involved in

the suffrage movement. And there are lots of fascinating glimpses of this in their own newspaper, Votes for Women, where you see an advert, for example, that says the soulless little typewriter has done as much towards gaining women's rights as all the arguments and agitations of centuries. And this was because you could use the typewriter along with other office technologies coming in at the same time, crucially carbon paper, stencils and duplicating machines so you had women with a lot of skills who could mass produce leaflets that they could then distribute now as we're talking i'm just looking at our text console which is coming in and so many messages which i'll read out in the next few minutes of women being sexually harassed essentially um during the 60s and 70s working

as secretaries and i just wonder how much of that is reflected in your exhibition because some women did have a really tough time, didn't they? Yes, they did. And again, you see that from the earliest days when you get cartoons representing typists because there was a big backlash, resistance to these women coming into the public sphere, coming into the world of work.

And so you get right from the beginning these hyper-sexualised images of young women with male bosses. You also get the opposite of that so women typists made to look very unattractive very deliberately because only an unattractive woman would be in the public sphere of work any other woman would be at home where she belongs that's the message behind that. It was interesting while developing the exhibition, we have film footage. We were trying to find advertisements from the 60s, 70s, 80s we could incorporate. And it was actually very difficult to find footage in the adverts we felt comfortable using just because of the way that the women were being portrayed in the adverts.

I just wonder, would it have been good to include that so people could see what women were having to put up with? Yes, it's always a tricky decision, especially when you're doing an exhibition, because you would have to be able to critique and comment on that. And for a lot of visitors coming in, what they see are the visual images and the visual images of course are very powerful and so the message you get it's very difficult to undermine that and and reframe that for an audience when it's up on a big screen so there's always a difficult balance so what we did in the end was not use the overtly sexualised images. We tried to find other footage, more documentary footage that we could use that does show the world of typing pools, which were hugely important as work for women.

Let me read you some of these messages which are coming in. And thank you so much for sharing your stories this morning. I worked as a temp secretary, mostly in London from 1961 throughout the 60s on and off. I must have worked in 20 or 30 different offices. I can say that everyone I worked for was polite and behaved perfectly. I was always addressed as miss and their name not included which is absolutely fair enough and never experienced any kind of sexual harassment. Joe, on the other hand, has texted us on 84844 saying, my boss called me in for dictation. When I entered his office, he had no trousers on. He asked me to sit on his lap.

I locked him in his office. This happened on several occasions. Lynn has also got in touch saying, in the 70s, I worked as a medical secretary to a particularly famous surgeon. He was extremely inappropriate and in those days nobody would have believed us and we would have lost our jobs. So we never went into dictation without wearing a long white medical coat buttoned up to the neck.

We also had to warn all our temps to do the same. Over a 43 year career I have fought off more doctors than I care to remember. And another message here, which has come in an anonymous message saying, After I left uni in 1990, I got a temp job in a fund management company in the West End of London. My mum had made me do a typing course in my gap year and it proved useful. I earned money during the holidays, but this job was something else. The men who were married in their 40s and 50s would consider making me embarrassed a sport. Looking back, it was a litany of daily abuse. Now in my 50s, I hear of my daughter getting her bum pinched

and the sexist remarks she has to put up with at her temp pub job, and I sigh. Have we, have men, has society not moved on at all? Thank you so much for writing in and sharing those experiences with us. Do please keep them coming in. I'll read as many as I can over the course of the next half an hour. And thank you ever so much, Alison Taubman, for speaking to us this morning. She is from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have got a new exhibition on the history of typewriting, which is starting this

weekend. Now, it's a term that many people aren't familiar with, stealth rape. It describes the act of removing a condom during sex without a partner's consent. The journalist and author of Millennial Love, Olivia Petter, has written about being stealth raped. Following the article, she was inundated by messages from women telling her they'd also been stealth raped and detailing the impact and the trauma that they had experienced. Well, in the year to March 2020, just 1.4% of cases recorded by police

resulted in a suspect being charged and the numbers much lower for conditional consent cases. Well, Olivia is here with us. I'm pleased to say to talk to us about why it's important for women to share their experiences. And also with us is Harriet Johnson, a criminal barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, who is here to explain how cases of stealth rape are prosecuted. Thank you both for joining us. the articles that you've written and incredibly eloquent and really harrowing to read it was what four years ago that you were sexually assaulted but I was interested that it kind of only really registered with you recently that it was rape can you just explain that to us yeah um so I think I have to look back at the time, you know, I was 23. I was very sexually inexperienced. And when it happened, my immediate thought was, oh, it's my fault. And, you know, I was embarrassed because he had told me that he had removed the condom

and that I should probably go and get the morning after pill. And he said it so glibly that I just didn't even question it. And so I didn't even tell any of my friends about it. Everyone just sort of, I think, presumed it was a normal thing that men did because they found condoms uncomfortable. just didn't even question it and so I didn't even tell any of my friends about it um everyone just sort of I think presumed it was a normal thing that men did because they found condoms uncomfortable and I kind of just put it down to some sort of sexual mishap uh that was due to my own lack of experience and that was kind of humiliating for me so I really didn't talk to anyone about it until a few weeks later when I actually found out I was pregnant and then even when I did tell people the explanation as to how I became pregnant it was sort of just an explanation it

wasn't recognized as assault and it was only when I watched I May Destroy You and I saw what happened on screen to Michaela Cole's character and you know the character calls it out as rape that I realized that that was what happened to me and I think even though I knew what stealthing was when it happened and I'd written about it and I'd spoken about it I just thought that if it happened to me it would be obvious but it wasn't because I had consented to having sex with this man I just hadn't consented to having unprotected sex and I think because the power dynamic was kind of off between us from the get-go you know he was a bit older than me and a bit more experienced I think looking back I suppose I didn't really feel like

I had the agency to challenge him on anything at all. So, yeah, it's only really been in the last year or so that I've kind of processed it. And when you talk about processing it, to go through that experience and to question yourself when clearly it's not your fault, but then to find out you're pregnant as well. I mean, how on earth did you cope with that? I mean, I think to be honest with you, like I said, it's only really the sexual assault that I started to process recently. At the time,

I think, you know, the abortion that I ended up having was very psychologically and physically traumatizing. So that was kind of my main focus. And, you know, even when I wrote those articles about what happened to me, I kind of dissociated from it. But I think now having been contacted by so many women who have told me that this has happened to them, and they actually didn't have a word for it before. And they didn't realize that it kind of qualified a sexual assault, which I think is a very important thing to talk about as well, has, you know, it's been it's been really wonderful to hear from them and hear that my story has resonated with them. But I think at the same time, it's like this sort of collective validation of our trauma. And I think I'm feeling

the weight of what has happened to me more viscerally now than I ever have. Were you shocked at the number of women who had been through this and almost felt like it wasn't worthy of talking about where clearly it is? Yeah, I think the thing that actually shocked me more was that the piece seemed to trigger a sort of debate on social media. You know, so many people were arguing whether or not my experience qualified as rape, which perfectly illustrates the point that I was trying to make, which is that we shouldn't talk about sexual violence as if it's on a spectrum. Because of course, some assaults might be more physically violent than others. But the truth is that every rape is an act of violence. And talking about it in a way that implies that some are worse than others, invalidates survivors at the so called lesser end of the scale, because then women like me, and the women who contacted me might feel like because their assault didn't fit a certain mould

or societal expectation, then it doesn't count. And not only does that then disempower women like me to share their story, but it makes us feel like we don't even have a story to tell. Stay with us, Olivia. I want to bring in Harriet to talk about the legal aspect of this, because Harriet, stealthing is recognised in law as rape, isn't it? It is, yeah. There's a case law as recent as 2013. that was deciding whether or not he ought to be extradited to face charges of rape in Sweden, considered as part of their ruling whether that amounted to a crime in the UK. And the allegation in that case was that the woman he'd had sex with had consented to sex with a condom. He'd removed the condom or I think not used one. And the allegation was of rape. So the courts revisited this question recently and found that removal of a condom or failing to use a condom where consent was predicated on the use of a condom is rape.

Let me read you a statement we had from the CPS. It says deception regarding the nature or purpose of sexual intercourse can invalidate consent. This means that lying about wearing a condom or the removal of a condom during sex without consent is considered a form of rape. While each incident has to be considered on its own facts, whenever a case passes our legal test, we will not hesitate to prosecute. At the CPS, we are determined to drive up the number of rape cases going to court. Too few victims are seeing justice and we're working hard to change that. And I guess I'm sure, Olivia, you've got thoughts on this as well as Harriet, but this is the challenge, isn't it? Time and time again, when we have these discussions about rape,

it's about proving that consent was or wasn't given. And I'm guessing, Harriet, that's even more complicated when you're talking about stealth rape cases. Well, in some ways it can be, but I think there is a bit of a myth around how difficult it is to prosecute sexual offences. It's absolutely true that it is trickier than prosecuting, say, an armed robbery that happens in full sight of CCTV, because very often in cases of sexual offences, it's two people involved. And what is in the minds of those two people is what determines whether what happens is legal and wonderful or illegal and awful. But the notion that, and I think this is a common misunderstanding that's out there, that if it's your word against his, nothing will happen or you can't get a

conviction, that's absolutely not true. I've seen successful rape convictions where it is one woman giving evidence that the man in the in the dock raped her he gives his evidence that he didn't and a jury finds on the basis of her evidence alone that they're sure that it happened so a woman's evidence can be compelling just as I think we've all heard listening to Olivia this morning and reading her piece I don't think anybody would doubt for a moment the truth of that without any supporting evidence or any CCTV or anything independent to show that I think the challenge comes with the well as you said at the top of the top of this piece the figures for prosecutions are so low. I actually had it at 1.6%, which is marginally better than the 1.4% you had it at,

but whichever of us is right. It's terrible. That is appalling. And I think for the CPS to say that they will always try to prosecute these cases is a little tricky to hear in line with that number, especially when one of the key cases which established that Stell's rape is still rape arose not following a prosecution for it but when a woman who goes by F, she's anonymous like all rape complainants are, actually brought the CPS to the

High Court and asked for a judicial review of their decision not to prosecute her rapist. So in that case, it wasn't the CPS bringing a charge and the Court of Appeal or any other higher court determining that this was in fact the law. It was the CPS refusing to do so and the woman who had been wronged by her rapist and then by the CPS taking it to the High Court and saying this is and ought to be a crime. Olivia, would you now consider going and reporting this to the police? No, I wouldn't. And I think that's something else that we need to talk about, because yes, we know that prosecution rates are really low. But we also know that the number of women who actually come forward and report instances of assault are also incredibly low. And I think there are so many reasons for that. You know, a lot of the women I interviewed in my

book who had been sexually assaulted when they were in their teens or their 20s, they hadn't really allowed themselves to feel violated at the time like I did. And I think the reason for that is because, you know, while there's obviously nothing ambiguous about consent, it's either given or it isn't. I think the way that we've been conditioned to think about sexual violence at a society level can create some ambiguity, particularly in certain circumstances, like when, you know, like the woman in my book, someone who previously slept with the person who assaulted them, or perhaps they flirted with them earlier on in the night, or they'd had a lot to drink. And I think because we live in a world where, you know, these rates of conviction

are so low, victim blaming is rife. And when assault happens to us, I think we tend to default to victim blaming ourselves, because we've been conditioned to think that sexual assault survivors are somehow always at fault. And you know, that narrative is everywhere. I think back to Harvey Weinstein's lawyer, Donna Rotano, she was asked by a New York Times journalist if she'd ever been assaulted. And she said no, because she'd never put herself in that position. And that just perfectly illustrates, I think, why so many women don't feel validated in coming forward or talking about what happened to them. And Harriet, we do know that there has been one successful conviction, hasn't there,

for stealth rape? Well, there's one that's been reported widely in the press. The CPS don't have statistics on how many convictions for specific stealth rape there are. The case that I think you're talking about was the Bournemouth case of a man called Lee Hogben. That was when he was having sex with a sex worker who had expressly stated in a written contract that she provided to all of her clients that a condom would be worn at all times he removed that condom halfway through and she noticed and told him to stop um despite that he continued and that i think is a slightly um because we know that um that even if consent is given at the beginning of the act if consent is withdrawn and a person continues um then that still constitutes rape. I think in that instance, it was maybe slightly clearer cut than it would be had she not noticed. But I mean, it's really interesting how how few of these examples we have in the actual case law compared to how many examples we see in real life of women coming forward and telling their stories but for whatever reason either not wanting to tell them to the police which I completely understand especially hearing those statistics or telling them to the police and being told that there's no realistic prospect

of a conviction. For you Olivia do you think that education around consent is improving with this next generation that is coming through. I mean, I know my 12 year old, I listened in during online learning when she was doing sex education, they were talking about consent and not even just surrounding sex, just generally consent, whether you touch somebody if they want to, whether you hug a friend if they're upset. Do you think that that is improving, Olivia, with younger people? Yeah, I absolutely do. I think, you know, the sex education syllabus has recently been updated for the first time in 20 years. And I think if consent was being taught to my friends and I when we were at school, there would have been a lot fewer instances of sexual assault that happened to us when we were all teenagers.

And I think that is a huge part of it, you know, educating people really early on. But I also think popular culture actually plays a really big role in educating society when it comes to sexual assault, because it has the opportunity to show these these incidents in a really nuanced and complicated way that not only, you know, shows how it can impact someone, but also really gets to the bottom of how it has a long term psychological effect on someone. You know, we saw with I May Destroy You You the seismic impact that show had on people and you know that did prompt a lot of people including myself to talk about stealthing and I just think if we get more women writing these stories and putting them out into the mainstream it will make a big difference and get just get people talking about it more. Thank you ever so much for sharing your story Olivia today because I can imagine it's really difficult for you to talk about but I'm sure it's helping many people so

I am very grateful to you. That is Olivia there who is Olivia Petter who is journalist and author of Millennial Love talking about her experiences about being stealth raped and we were also joined by Harriet Johnson, criminal bouncer at Doughty Street Chambers in London. Lots of you getting in touch with us this morning on Woman's Hour about your experiences of moving back home as an adult. Ruby in Glasgow says, I moved back with my parents after university and living overseas. Been back three years now. And the only worry is that I like it too much.

It's been great to have their company and support each other over the past 18 months especially. I've just turned 30 and the only problem I now have is the worry over other people's judgment. But the three of us are as happy as we can be and I try to ignore those voices. Ruby, thank you for getting in touch. This is an anonymous text and you'll realise why in a moment. I've just graduated and moved home after three years at university on the other side of the country. It's been a massive adjustment. After a grace period of about three days, we have both had petty and explosive arguments. There is a mutual feeling that our personal space and routines are being invaded by the other party.

In short, while I love my parents endlessly, I cannot wait to move out again. Share your experiences with us. You can text me on 84844 or we're at BBC Women's Hour on social media. And we're going to talk now with Izzy Sutte, who has written, she's a comedian, actor. She's written her first novel, which is called Jane is Trying. And 38-year-old Jane is trying. She's trying to get pregnant,

or she was doing before her life fell apart and she had to run home to mum and dad. And she's trying to cope with her anxiety. But she's trying because she's well I don't know Izzy is this a bit harsh she's a bit irritating and needy isn't she I really I really wanted to write a flawed central character because previously whenever I've written anything I've written it with a view to me perhaps playing the main part um if it's a telepilot or something. And for the first time I thought, right, I'm just going to write someone else and I'm going to make her flawed because I'm not going to be vain

and think, could I play it? So, yeah, I think she has. It was really satisfying to make her a bit needy, actually. I wanted her to be someone who thought that she didn't lean on people but actually did. And it is interesting because she doesn't have that much self-awareness at times, does she? No, and I think she's got this job in advertising in London. She's used to blagging things.

And when she moves back with her parents and gets this job in the bookshop and the only book that she's reading is Sharon Osbourne's autobiography, which she hasn't actually finished, has she? She's trying to finish it throughout the book. She just thinks, it's OK, it's only a tiny bookshop in my silly old hometown and then she kind of gets a few rude awakenings really but it was it was really fun to write um someone who is quite disillusioned and unaware I hadn't really done that before and it's interesting because you talk about that and the reason we're getting people to share their going home stories today is because

Jane's dad come and comes to London and kind of scoops her up and rescues her and brings her home to the family home. But at the beginning, she's a bit sneery. And I don't know, maybe you can read a bit for us from the beginning of the book to give us a sense of how she's feeling about Foley, as you tell us. Yes, sure. It wasn't a long way to my parents from the pub but it was enough to remind me that I wasn't in London. Everything was shut apart from the chippy and a late night convenience store I passed before crossing the road into the park. In South London I could leave my house at 9pm and get a flat white if I so desired it. Here they'd think I was talking about a breed of dog.

I crossed the tennis courts, wended my way around the rusty old bandstand where I'd once watched Ali Kane and Lee Taylor snog for two hours non-stop while we all threw pens and compasses at them. What were Ali Kane and Lee Taylor doing right now? Probably having a cheeky drink, having put their respective kids to bed. They would definitely have stayed in Foley, be going to the same pubs in the same order on

Saturday nights, still be guffawing about the time in GCSE biology when I fainted at the sight of a dissected frog. Who was I to judge though? They probably weren't sleeping back in their childhood bedrooms at their parents. I mean, that is just a great introduction to the sneery nature that Jane has when she returns home. And I guess it is that tricky thing, isn't it, for people when they feel, you know, she's gone to London, she's successful, she's buying all of her coffees throughout the day. She's got this great career and she suddenly goes home and she can't find a coffee shop and it's all her old school friends people can sometimes feel that that's almost a backward step yeah definitely I mean I feel like the place I'm from Matlock which Foley is kind of slightly based on but not really it's kind of an amalgamation of Matlock and a village down the road and then my imagination I used to sometimes go back and I

would have put it on a real pedestal and it's such a beautiful place, which Foley is too. And then I would sometimes go, everything closed, it's 10pm, you know, or bump into people from school and think, oh no, I don't want to talk to Kevin from school. And it is sometimes that it can be both, I think. It can be very beautiful and peaceful and nostalgic and kind of reassuring and safe. And it can also be frustrating and boring. And that's how I felt growing up in a small town. And I think everyone finds fault with the place they grew up in, especially as a teenager. But for me, coming from such a picturesque, touristy place as Matlock,

which Foley is too, it's quite interesting when people are like, oh, wow, you're from there. And you think, yeah, but it hasn't got a cinema um it's interesting as we talk um so many messages coming in from people explaining about them going home and one person here saying I regressed into a petulant child my reason for returning home was to save money for a house but instead I blew it all on going out with my friends to get away from my parents who are wonderful by the way I don't know how they put up with me. And there is a sense sometimes, isn't there?

And I think it's probably fair to say in the book, Jane is a bit like this. She's kind of, she's rebelling. Her parents are into charades and bell ringing. It's all a bit embarrassing, isn't it? Yeah, it feels a bit suffocating, I think, for her that she's come back. And also she's grieving for her relationship. And so she's in a real state when she gets back as well. it's not like she's come back kind of for a little holiday or something she's very emotionally raw and I think that that makes everything a bit worse seeing everyone kind

of cozy and playing charades and you know we must be at the church for seven o'clock for bell ringing yeah I think she finds it all a bit a bit kind of suffocating but also she likes it and I think she finds it all a bit kind of suffocating, but also she likes it. And I think she's got a complicated relationship with her mum, whereby her mum annoys her a lot and they row, but also they're quite similar and they do have fun. And that's reasonably similar to my relationship with my mum, you know. And I really wanted to write about how complex relationships are and how people can change because I hope and think that Jane does change and become more self-aware and um

doesn't sneer anymore at those people but it takes time um yeah she actually makes friendships doesn't she I mean Kelly one of the the people she's really looking down her nose at does she work in the post office is it the post office she works in and she's a bit sneery and then she works yeah she works in the post office kelly yeah and um all jane can remember about her is that she was a bit weird at school and she colored her leg in with marker pen on cross country and was a bit of a loner and she's sort of like oh kelly you know and then yes absolutely they become really close and jane um develops a real fondness for her and isn't sneer at all anymore and really respects her and it was good it was good to have a book I'm used to doing an

hour or shorter things to have a whole book to show someone's journey yeah what do you regress to or maybe don't when you go home I'm just thinking I remember my sister for years when she used to go home she lived in London she'd go home for periods and she'd just become a teenager again she'd leave pile of clothes in the middle of the floor just expecting my mum to come and scoop it up I mean do you do you feel that you regress even if you just go home for a week to your parents house well it's quite interesting because my dad passed away nearly 10 years ago and my mum lives down here now with her new partner. And I found that my behaviours become better because because Jeff's there and I can't just leave clothes.

I know that I would be. Actually, it's improved my behaviour. I think, well, you know, what would Jeff think? And also they've got a lovely house and it's really tidy, much tidier than my parents was. So it's like I've had two chapters. When I used to go home, you know, over over 10 years ago, I was very than my parents was. So it's like I've had two chapters. When I used to go home, you know, over 10 years ago, I was very similar to your sister. I'd sort of expect meals to be cooked for me. And I mean, it's awful, really. And I wouldn't really help at all. And I moved out when I was in the sixth form for about two months to my best friend's house and then moved

back. And even that was, I was like, oh, I've got to move back home. It's like, you're only 18. You shouldn't have really moved out in the first place. You were just dipping your toe in the water. Exactly. I think one of the things that's really nice about Jane in the book is that she, well, it's kind of a common experience. And I wonder if this is just coincidence because of COVID,

but lots of people will have had to move home through financial necessity or maybe just needing company or outdoor space through the pandemic. And I guess she kind of got a sense of what really matters in life. I mean, did you write it during COVID? Was it before COVID? Was there any link there? I finished the first draft just before COVID. So then I was waiting for notes from my editor. And then when I got the notes, Covid had started and we were in lockdown. And it was very hard to do those rewrites at first, partly because we were all in and everything. But then also psychologically, it was really weird to write about a time when there wasn't a pandemic. And there was like a scene in the pub and everyone was just sitting at a table.

And it seemed so alien then to think that people would ever do that again. But quite soon, I just got involved in the story again and kind of forgot. So if there are, if it does chime for people, that's probably subconscious, but it was all going on. I think a lot of it is about loneliness. You know, as you mentioned, Jane's anxiety, and I really liked what Amy Winehouse's friend was saying about how her mental health would have been discussed differently now and she may have been more able to talk honestly. And I think I couldn't have written this book even five years ago because the whole conversation about mental health has changed. And Jane is kind of honest with the reader about her anxiety. And I think she's quite a lonely person and that perhaps that will chime with people considering what we've all been through in the past year and a half. It was interesting, Sarah, who says she's aged 59, she's texted in saying, I've never had a good relationship with my parents.

In fact, I broke off all contact with them for a while in my late 20s. However, I moved back in with them for a year in my mid 30s and it felt like a time of healing. It wasn't always easy, but the break had given us all a different perspective. And I'm so pleased to have had that time with them. I guess by the end of the book Jane is a bit like that I mean it's not quite a happy ending but she's starting to take a bit more control isn't she yeah I wanted there to be a chink of hope I didn't want it to be kind of tying everything up and everything's brilliant I don't really like it when books end like that um although I know it's very satisfying um and it depends on the book of course but I I basically wanted it to be um yes slightly more

open-ended but um for there to be a sense that she's found peace within herself and that she's going to step forward yeah and I know that you had a bit of a challenging lockdown yourself didn't you because am I right that you you're in a flat and you haven't got outdoor space and you do have small children? Yeah, we're in a split level maisonette. I only know that because we're putting it on the market. So I know all the lingo. The right terms. Yeah, it's two floors, but we have no garden.

Yeah, and I know there are people in far, you know, far more limited circumstances than that. But it was tricky with a two year old and a six year old at times, especially when it was warm and we couldn't go outside. We used to stand on the step. And then also my partner's got Crohn's disease and he's immunosuppressed. So he had to be in for a long time. He used to sit on the windowsill with his feet out in the sun. It's amazing what we what we clung on to in the depths of the pandemic. Listen, I was just going to say thank you ever so much for coming on. I really enjoyed reading your book. It is a good read. It is Jane is Trying.

It's the first novel written by the comedian and actor and writer, Izzy Sutter, telling us there. Thank you for all of your comments, which have been coming in so many stories. I'm disappointed that I can't read them all out to you. But lots of people getting in touch saying they regressed to their teenage self when they returned home to be with their parents. Thank you for your company today. We're back again tomorrow, of course, at the same time at 10 o'clock and we'll be hearing from Amy Winehouse's mum and her close friend. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. I hope you can join us again next time. A five-part mystery from BBC Radio 4. Ah, Neville, it'd be better if you didn't ask questions about that.

Oh, but he's seen nothing. It was a whirlwind that took yours. It just clean sucked it up. One man's fight for answers. There must be a new Bermuda Triangle on Tory Island. The houses can just disappear like that. The House That Vanished. Available now on BBC Sounds.

I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig,

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