Woman's Hour - Virginia Giuffre, Child Protection, Lydia Becker

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

An out-of-court settlement has been reached between Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre. She'd accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17. He's always denied it and hasn't admitted any liability. We examine what the settlement means for Virginia Giuffre with the lawyer, Georgina Calvert-Lee and Jess Phillips MP, who's Labour's Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding.There have been some desperately sad news reports recently about children who've been killed by those they loved and trusted. We talk in depth about child protection? Are vulnerable and at-risk children being removed quick enough from their families? Or do we have a system which takes too many children away without trying other ways to help first? We speak to author and journalist, Polly Curtis who's been investigating this issue as well as Alison Bavidge from the Scottish Association of Social Workers Do you know who Lydia Becker was? She was a suffragist, and one of our listeners really got into her during lock-down. Joanna Williams sat down at her kitchen table and wrote a book about her. It helped her cope with being a full-time carer to her husband.Did you know that women led Bronze Age immigration to Orkney? New research led to the finding. We speak to Dr. Maria Pala from the Archaeogenetics Research Group at the University of Huddersfield to find out more.

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, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Last night, the world learned that the Queen's second son, Prince Andrew, had settled a civil sexual assault case brought against him in America by Virginia Dufresne. Having vowed to fight it in court, the Duke settled. Virginia Dufresne also wanted her day in court, but instead accepted an undisclosed sum of money with a substantial donation going to her victim's rights charity,

which is called SOAR. She has been suing him, claiming that the Duke sexually assaulted her on three occasions when she was 17, allegations he has repeatedly denied. In this settlement, the Duke made no admission of liability, but in the statement submitted to the judge, he did accept Virginia Dufresne as an established victim of abuse and that she has suffered as a result of unfair public attacks. And that statement went on to say, for the first time, that he regrets his association with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted

paedophile who trafficked countless young girls over many years and he commended the bravery of Virginia Dufresne and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. Today much of the coverage in the UK certainly is focused on what could be the road back for Prince Andrew to a potential public role but on this programme we're going to focus on this statement and what the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in the Duke of York's position potentially tell us and examine what justice for Virginia Dufresne could look like

and looks like perhaps this morning after that settlement. Of course, if you want to share your take, the number you need, 84844, text will be charged to your standard message rate. Get in touch with me on social media via at BBC Women's Hour or email me through the Women's Hour website. Also on today's programme, I will be talking directly to one of you, one of our listeners who emailed in to tell us how she got through lockdown. And it includes her kitchen table, a visit to the local bookshop when they were open, and a Mancunian suffragist. All will be revealed.

And I'm going to be joined by the journalist Polly Curtis, who spent the last three years investigating why so many children are going into care. But first, Prince Andrew has reached an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Dufresne, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17 years old. The Duke of York told the BBC in 2019 he had never met Miss Dufresne and he had vowed to fight the allegations in court, but he's now agreed to pay an unknown sum to her charity, which helps victims of abuse. Prince Andrew has always denied the allegations and has not admitted any liability. Liz Stein has been speaking to the BBC this morning. She lives in the States and was one of Ghislaine Maxwell's accusers. She says she

was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on multiple occasions over three years. I think that this shows survivors that nobody is above the truth. I think that the New York Times in their article this afternoon said that Andrew may be a capstone of the Epstein saga. And we don't know that yet. It may or may not be true. It would be unfortunate. But I think this shows that his decisions have consequences. He lost his royal and his military titles and his duties, his public association with his family, and he went from royalty to a private citizen practically overnight. He was publicly disgraced, but he'll still have a better life than anyone could dream of. And whatever he lost as a result of this can never compare to what the victims of Epstein, Maxwell and the men that we were trafficked to have lost from our lives.

There's no amount of money that could compensate for that. And I think that in negotiating her settlement, Virginia was very wise in going after things that are much more important than money. That was Liz Stein talking to the BBC earlier this morning and sharing her reaction to the news of the settlement. Well, with me now, Georgina Calvert-Lee, an employment and equality lawyer at McAllister Oliverius, and also an expert on non-disclosure arrangements and agreements and settlements. Good morning, Georgina. Hello. Welcome back, I should say, because we last spoke about how if this had ended or would end in a settlement, how it could look like justice. What can we understand from this settlement to mean in terms of justice potentially for Virginia Dufresne?

Well, I think it can be seen as a great win for Virginia Dufresne, although I don't really like to even use the term win, because the great thing about settlements for victims is, sure, they don't get vindication in a court of law, but we all know how, especially the criminal justice system and also the civil justice system, let down victims of sexual violence. So there's no guarantee she would not also have been let down, and I don't think we should put it on her shoulders to try and fix the system by testing it out in her case. This settlement, however, has given her back the reins of some control over her future. So I think it's, if you think about sexual abuse as a

wish by one person to dominate and control another, litigation is not so different from that. The outcome is very black and white. You have a winner and a loser. The great thing about a settlement is that you can have two parties brought together in which the victim can really sculpt the kind of outcome that she would like. And it need not just be money. It can be donations to charity. It can be making the future better, not only for herself, but for other people.

So I think she should feel she should feel very happy with the outcome. And yet there's not there's not an admission of guilt from Prince Andrew because the settlement is an agreement, as you said, that that both come to. Was that a surprise to you? It's not a surprise because that's usually the one thing that the defendant will not want to give up. There would be many ongoing legal repercussions for Prince Andrew had he admitted guilt. The criminal justice system is still out there. He can still be prosecuted for crimes. And if he'd admitted guilt, he would lay himself wide open to that. So no, he hasn't admitted that, but he has changed his tone significantly. So he has yielded. And in settlement, both parties have to yield. And in some ways, I think it goes beyond the

paradigm of winner and loser, the person who dominates and controls and the person who is victimised, to give both parties a better chance at a future. Because I think even defendants should have a chance to rehabilitate themselves. You say he has yielded. Just to go back to that statement that was supplied to the judge, it is the first time that he has expressed regret of his association with Jeffrey Epstein. And also there is a line saying he accepts that Virginia Dufresne has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. And it's been noted in some of the commentaries today by some of the reporters covering this, that this is a big change of tack in terms of those unfair public attacks,

because the way that his lawyers had been positioning Virginia Dufresne and trying to attack her in terms of their defence of Prince Andrew had in fact been the source of some of those attacks. Yes. I mean, he and his lawyers have taken a very pre-me too strategy to this litigation, which has been very disappointing for many, many onlookers. They've taken a scorched earth policy, essentially, in trying to have her claims kicked out at every juncture. And I think he should have been moving towards the settlement table right from the get-go. So he's lost a lot and he has only himself and his lawyers

to blame for that. Let's hope that other victims of sexual violence see some hope in the way that he has been finally brought to the settlement table. And Virginia Geoffrey has suffered a lot. Well, just, I mean, if I could give an example here, you know, only a few weeks ago, and this is in one of the reports by Guy Adams in the Daily Mail, it's saying the Prince's lawyers were attempting to persuade a judge that an old newspaper article that dubbed Virginia Giuffre as a money-hungry sex kitten ought to be used as evidence in court. And

I just wonder, when you do have a settlement like this that lays down this statement the way it does, does it go? Does it does it change the view of of people if you've already had those sorts of attacks out there? Has the harm already been done? Again, if we're trying to look at justice and how this might feel from her position this morning? Well, I think the change of tone goes some way towards redressing it. But I do hope that the settlement terms do take into account the extra harm that's been heaped upon her by the way Prince Andrew and his lawyers have conducted themselves during the litigation. And when you say the settlement terms, do you mean the amount of money? Yes.

Right, because I think we should get to that because culturally, I've discovered this before on this programme, there is a difference in the UK to the way money is viewed and the way it's viewed in America. And in America, you tell me more, it's often viewed as justice. Yes. Well, we have a justice system where the only currency of redress is money. That's not the victim's fault. That's not anyone's fault. I have many clients who are also victims of sexual violence. None of them would rather have money than to go back to a situation where they had not been subjected to violence. That's absolutely universal. But unfortunately, money is the only, and I must say very sorry,

stand-in for being left intact and not subjected to violence. And the amount of money hasn't been disclosed, we should say. There are reports swirling around this and also about how it's been funded with reports certainly on the front page of The Telegraph this morning saying Her Majesty the Queen, in part, will be funding this. We won't know. Any of the details do you expect on this or will it come to light? Well, I suspect that it may be leaked. I mean, it doesn't have to be kept quiet. I'm a firm believer in not having NDAs in these types of agreements. I don't think there's any shame in money. As I said,

that's the only way of trying to address harm. People need to get therapy. They need to put their life on track. We may find out. I suspect, given the rather old-fashioned way in which Prince Andrew's lawyers have been conducting his defence, I suspect they will, in the old-fashioned way, want to have an NDA over the settlement terms too. But it would be nice if they were transparent. Yes, well, we'll see, I suppose, on that front. But just another legal question before bringing my next guest. You mentioned there an NDA. You're not a fan of those. And we've also explored that with you previously. But do you worry that there has been an NDA in this instance?

How will we know? Because of course, is this the end of the case or can she speak out again? Those sorts of questions are swirling around as well. Well, there's a lot of evidence that gagging a victim from speaking out about what has happened to them causes them long-term harm. So I hope that she hasn't been gagged about what happened to her in the past um from I I gather from the fact they haven't told the judge the um financial terms of the settlement there's some clause in the statement that suggests that they might be keeping those um private uh at a minimum I mean if you're going to have an NDA, then I suppose not saying the amount is OK, because that is something that Ms. Jafray may also want to keep private. It's her own business. But I very much hope that she is not being gagged from talking about her past experiences. The charity is also set to receive, the charity is called SOAR that she set up.

It was formerly known as Victims Refuse Silence. It was set up in 2015. I should say we contacted that charity, the charity, this morning to see if we could speak to them. We're still very keen to do so, to hear, of course, what the plan is with the money and how it will be. But again, that's a part of this settlement that has been made much of. Georgina, stay with me for now. Let me now cross to the Labour MP, Jess Phillips, who is Labour's Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. Part of this statement, again, to go back

to it, is right at the end, Prince Andrew has pledged to, by demonstrating his regret for association with Jeffrey Epstein, by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking and by supporting its victims. What do you make of that, both in your position politically, but also, I know, as someone who has worked with vulnerable women? I think that it's based on the way that, as you've already discussed, his lawyers treated Virginia Geoffray throughout the process. The sudden change of tone is an absolute victory for Virginia Geoffray. But excuse me, as somebody who works in the field, if I don't find it particularly convincing and it's going to take a huge amount of effort um and i think it will be incredibly hard for prince andrew to make that effort because people like me and those who

work in um sexual violence services human trafficking services are certainly not going to have open arms to his allyship and i don't know how exactly he is going to display. He says that he will work to sort of prove that his remorse in this case. I don't know how he could possibly do that. And even if it was just finances. Now, the money that will go to victims of trafficking from this settlement is Virginia Dufresne's money, not Prince Andrew making a donation to this charity, which of course, as a very wealthy man, he could have done at any point in his life prior to this. That is Virginia Dufresne's money that is going to victims of trafficking. But I have to say that, when I worked in rape crisis services and any charity, in fact, there is a matter of ethics

about who you will and won't take money off. example if you work for a lung cancer charity you won't be taking money off cigarette companies as an example that I think even just financial resource in this instance would not be particularly welcomed and it's going to take a huge amount of effort on Prince Andrew's behalf to ever bridge that particular gap. I mean, he has always denied the allegations. He hasn't admitted any liability. So perhaps some listening will think the comparison to a lung charity taking money from a smoking tobacco industry is not quite there. But I suppose what you're saying is, how is he going to make these efforts and how will those be welcomed? Also, you're absolutely right.

His guilt with regard to the accusations made by Virginia Giuffre has not been proven in court without question. That's not. However, what he is guilty of and what his legal team is guilty of is falling for every basic victim blaming trick in the book and his guilt in that is written into court documents it has been written about in the newspapers he basically undermined every argument that people in the sexual violence sector have been trying to undo he lent on every myth and stereotype about rape victims to the point where even trying to accuse Virginia Giuffre of criminality, I very much suggest that the first thing that Prince Andrew should do if he wants to prove how much he cares about victims of trafficking in the United Kingdom is to read the modern slavery bill, which of course will have been signed by our

monarch into law, where section 45 of that particular act has specific recourse for people who are forced into criminality by view of their trafficking. Now, the very, very, it was so awful to watch, not only undermining Virginia Dufresne, but also undermining all previous child victims of historic abuse in the US to try and argue in the case that they shouldn't, that the statute of limitations should apply in the case. And that would have affected all child victims of sexual, historic child sexual abuse. This is not dignified.

From the beginning, I think Georgina is absolutely right, there was a path that Prince Andrew could have taken without suggesting his guilt, where he went to the table, where he spoke to the FBI when first asked, where he cooperated throughout. He has not, in the past three, four years, however long this case has been going on, shown any sign of remorse or dignity of his position or of the undermining of the dreadful things

that get said about sexual violence victims? I mean, we don't actually know if he did go and talk to the FBI in the end. This was something I explored with Gloria Allred. But you're one of the lawyers who's very famed in America, a women's rights lawyer who's represented lots of victims and survivors in different cases. But you're right to say there was a call out for him to go straight away. And there was a delay.

I just wanted to ask then, making it closer to home, because Virginia Dufresne's charity is with her abroad. Do you think, do you expect Jess Phillips, any work to be done by Prince Andrew on this side of the pond, knowing as you do many of the charities and people who work in this space? Could you, would you welcome that? I have to say at the moment, the answer would be no, because I don't think he has anything to particularly offer.

I don't know. He's not got any expertise, clearly, in this field. So if all he has to offer is power and money, then I'm afraid to say it falls into the terrible power and control that leads to violence against men's violence against women. However, what I would say about this regard is Prince Andrew probably has an even faster line to Boris Johnson than I do. And he's a well-connected man. So maybe he could start with calling the prime minister and asking why the government is currently overseeing a 10% increase in child trafficking in our country and the highest number of child trafficking victims,

British child trafficking victims, since records began. Maybe he could make it so that the British government were putting more resource into that. He has a direct line there, but I doubt it. Those are the questions, of course, you were asking, and you're perhaps welcome to support in asking. The government wouldn't see it that they preside over it. But yes, it's happening, as you put it, on their watch. And I wanted to ask about the message that I just received. I want to ask both of you about this. But Jess, first to you while I'm

talking to you. There is some sense coming through on some of the messages this morning, that the settlement isn't a good result for both sides. And I'll just read you this message, which says from a listener that doesn't give a name, it's a very poor result for both sides. They've both proven it was all about the money after all, and they were both prepared to compromise on their so-called principles. The only people to benefit from this sordid and exploitative actions are the lawyers, as on that culture of money and justice. But do you think, are you hearing, are you surprised by some people feeling that there is a disappointment that Virginia Dufresne accepted a settlement? I'm not surprised to hear it.

I expected to hear it, if I'm perfectly honest, because it's a sort of, it's again a myth and stereotype about these sorts of cases. The idea, for a start off, Prince Andrew was never going to go to prison. This was a civil case that could only really ever have been settled with finances. So, you know, if people have a problem with the justice system in the UK, I suggest that that is not the responsibility of Virginia Dufresne. They should contact law enforcement in the United Kingdom and ask why no charges have been taken or in the US for that matter. So, you know, like many 74 out of 75 victims who come forward and say they've been raped, no charges are ever laid.

That is not Virginia Dufresne's responsibility. She doesn't owe us justice as we might have wanted to see it. Virginia Dufresne doesn't owe anyone in the public anything. And so too many victims feel like, oh, well, I've got a responsibility. I have to do this because otherwise other people might get harmed. Well, actually, the only person who should think about that are the perpetrators of these crimes. Victims are not responsible for our justice system. And if they were, it would be considerably better. Georgina, your take on that, the disappointment from some that she settled, or as it's seen, she settled, of course, they both settled.

Well, I agree with everything that Jess Phillips has just said. It's not on an individual to try and fix our broken justice system, which lets women and victims of violence down time and time again. The important thing that justice can give to individuals is choices. And nowhere do you have more choice and opportunity to use your own agency than in crafting a settlement to your liking. So I think I admire Virginia Geoffrey. I admire the creativity in which she's approached it. I admire the fact that she's set up a charity.

So I think she has stuck by her principles. Let's just talk finally to Jess Fitzbrough about one other element of this. Your colleague, Rachel Maskell, the MP for York, has called for Prince Andrew to remove his association with the city, of course, as the Duke of York. In her words, carrying a title does create an ambassadorial relationship with that place. What do you make of that call from Rachel? Look, you know, I mean, if that is what the people of York feel, then Rachel is absolutely right in representing their views.

As Birmingham doesn't have a Duke, Nobody wants to be the Duke of Birmingham. Not yet. Not yet. They might, they might still. There are more royals coming. I am totally available for offers, although I'm not the person who gets to give those out. Well, maybe, maybe there'll be a Duchess of Birmingham. I will gladly put myself forward as the Duchess of Birmingham. But to be honest, the titles, you know, it's not something that victims of crime ever particularly raise with me. But if that's the way that the people of York feel, then absolutely it's right

that Rachel Maskell represents their views in that regard. Labour MP Jess Phillips, Labour's Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding. Thank you. Georgina Calvert-Lee, an employment and equality lawyer at Macalester Oliverius. Thank you to you. A message here that says justice isn't one thing.

It means something different to different people within different contexts and with different restraints and opportunities. More messages coming in on that to which I shall return. But when I ask you for your views, for your emails, for your texts. We take it very seriously indeed. And that's why my next guest is with me because she got in touch with the programme and explained what had been going on for her, with her during lockdown. She's a Woman's Hour listener. She's a full-time carer, former history teacher. Joanna Williams sat down at her kitchen table and wrote the biography of the great Miss Lydia Becker, as it's called. She thought the world needed to know about the 19th century Manchester suffragist beyond, I think, the three lines, two lines you'd found in a textbook.

Good morning, Joanna. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me on the programme. Well, it's lovely to have you. Thank you for messaging in and telling us what you've been getting up to. So you only saw a few lines about her when teaching history. Is that right? Yes, that's right. It was actually during a year nine lesson.

We quite a long time ago now used to teach about women's suffrage to year nine. And yes, there was a photograph and a couple of lines underneath it. And and I remembered it. I don't know why, really, because it was a very minor part of what we were doing. And we were looking mainly at Emmeline Pankhurst and so on. And later on on I was teaching sixth formers about pre-first world war Britain and we did a section on the suffragists and they were very enthusiastic and interested in it and I think that kind of enthused me about it as well so when after I retired my husband shortly after I retired had a stroke and I became a full-time carer

and I started doing research into various things actually and various topics but settled finally in 2017 on doing something serious on Lydia Becker because the more I read about her, the more I realised that actually she was a really important national figure operating well largely from Manchester for the first 10 years and then in London as well and I thought she deserved a biography and I also realised when I was reading around that actually she was the only early women's suffrage leader who didn't have her own biography so I thought there was a bit of a gap there so I decided to fill it you decided to fill it lockdown came along and it was an absolute godsend because being a carer on your own my husband can't speak so I was kind of like really

isolated but sitting at the kitchen table working away on this was um really helpful to keep my sanity well let's come back to that in a moment, because I definitely want to also hear about that and on the personal front. But with regards to Lydia, you're right, she's not a name that springs to mind when you think of the history of that period and women campaigning for the vote. And yet it was she who inspired, in part, Emmeline Pankhurst.

Yes, that's right. Emmeline was quite a lot younger. And when Emmeline was 14, her mother, she came back from her school, her mother took her to a women's suffrage meeting in which Lydia Becker spoke. And she, in her own autobiography, says that after this hearing Lydia Becker speak, she was a confirmed suffragist. It inspired her to think along those lines as well. And in fact, she also mentions in the autobiography that her mother took the Women's Suffrage Journal, which was a newspaper started by Lydia Becker, edited by her. She was the chief contributor and she also funded this as well, to a large extent.

So, you know, she was getting her influence into their home in that way as well and how did she lay the groundwork for women getting the vote because she did die before it was achieved oh yes well before she died in 1890 and i mean the suffragettes weren't even started till 1903 so it was quite a while before and it wasn't just her she was working with a group of other people but she was the mover and shaker the leader and unofficial leader because her official position was honorary secretary of the Manchester suffrage society but she was she was pushing all the other societies in London and Birmingham and Edinburgh Bristol to follow her lead and adopt campaigns that she'd suggested and other methods and so

she was very very very significant there. And I think her main importance really in looking at the big picture, although there were victories along the way, but her main importance was to move the attitudes both of society and Parliament towards the idea that women should have full rights of citizenship really, the right to vote in general elections. And in Parliament in particular, in the 1880s, she was the chief lobbyist of the women's suffrage movement.

She engaged with the MPs. She was in deputations to visit ministers and so on. She was very, very hands-on with Parliament. And she was considered to be their expert on parliamentary procedure and so on. But she also did a lot of speaking around the country. Well, I was going to say, I'm learning from you and your work, she addressed male and female crowds, which was unusual. In the 1860s and 70s, that was considered to be

almost immoral for a woman to stand up in front of a mixed group of people, men and women. And in fact, women didn't go to meetings as such. So it would have been, you know, even worse to stand up in front of men. She did. She travelled all over the countries addressing meetings. And at the beginning, they were packed out because the idea of going to see a woman making a speech was such a bizarre thought to most people. And she had huge audiences just to come and see this strange woman and they were expecting to see somebody very

manly and ill-dressed and you know not not a proper feminine lady at all so to her it was really important to give the right image and she always took great care with her self-presentation and how she dressed and the women's suffrage meetings generally, when they had women on the platform, they put the pretty ones at the front, the well-dressed ones at the front, so that you could give the right impression. Don't frighten anyone here. You can still look pretty and make the point.

Sorry, I was just... You told a lady who was very working class to go around and speak to the working class women because she... In contrast to what people believed, the early suffrage movement, she certainly did appeal, tried to appeal to working class women because she what unlike um in contrast to what people believe the early suffrage movement she she certainly did appeal try to appeal to working class women as well um and she she had she actually paid a couple of working class women who were good at speaking to go around and address working class audiences i think she realized that you know she was very

middle class and maybe it wouldn't appeal in the same way well that's also that's also very savvy in terms of getting your message across and getting more people on board and being representative and I think what also comes across which is which is maybe it was ever thus but is a bit disappointing from your work is that women of the suffrage movement were not always very supportive of each other for instance Sylvia Pankhurst was quite dismissive of Lydia Becker is that right? Yes yeah sadly yes Sylvia said that she wasn't a good wasn't a goodator and wasn't very clever, basically. And I think that was really unfair. I think there was a tendency in the suffragette movement,

and Sylvia, because she wrote her books, has been the most read and the most heard about. But I think there was a general tendency to sort of dismiss the earlier campaign as a failure because they didn't get women the vote but I think you have to look at it this is kind of a building blocks I mean certainly by 1890 from the attitudes in 1860 where it was ridiculed in parliament and they compared giving women the vote to teaching dogs to dance you know and other insulting things like that by 1890 it was being seriously discussed in Parliament, and many people were of the view in Parliament

that it was a question of when women would get the vote rather than if. So I think they did achieve a huge amount. And that was as part of a movement about women's equality in marriage, married women's property, that they couldn't own property at the beginning, but by 1890 they could. The whole question of autonomy of women was much enhanced. So there was a lot of change generally. Indeed. And you cover all of this. And I also love the fact that you did go into a bookshop, looked at who was publishing the history books, saw who you liked the look of and got in touch with them. And now the book is here. But it's actually the fact that you were doing this,

as you say, it was a bit of a godsend that I just wanted to hear a bit more about because that also caught our eye in your email that you you said you you kind of needed this because of the loneliness of of your husband's condition exactly I mean um obviously I've been a carer for quite a few years by the time that the pandemic came along. And because he can't speak and was increasingly housebound and now is bedridden, it was a very lonely situation to be in. And when lockdown came, of course, that was accentuated because at the beginning, there was no provision for people like me to have a bubble or anything like that and so it was quite quite isolating but it was something that I could do yes exactly sitting at

the kitchen table because although I did have to get to record offices to look at the resources in London and Manchester and Liverpool particularly I was very looking at the family branded around and would come and stay but I couldn't ask them to do that too much so the rest of the. I was very lucky that the family rallied around and would come and stay, but I couldn't ask them to do that too much. So the rest of the time I was busy writing and looking up things on the internet and wonderfully the newspapers are now by and large online. So there was all kinds of resources I could use and it just kept my brain going and kept me busy and, you know, I wasn't just sitting at home feeling miserable it was a really great thing to have to be able to do it well no well done you it sounds like

to be in the company of Lydia Becker as you essentially were was it was a good friend to have during lockdown especially in your circumstances thank you for getting in touch with us all the best with it Joanna Williams. The book is called The Great Miss Lydia Becker, if you want to know more, but we've given you a taster. But now to the work of a journalist and author who spent the last three years looking into what's going on with children and the care system with the central question, are we removing children too quickly from their families and putting them into the care of the state. As it stands, there are 80,000 children in care in England. A third of those children shouldn't even be in care. Well, that is the argument or central to the argument of Polly Curtis. But another important question we need to ask, especially after some very recent and upsetting stories of child cruelty,

is actually are we quick enough to remove children from abusive homes and how do these two things sit alongside each other? This is an extraordinary fact which kind of took my breath away this morning. A child dies every week in the UK at the hands of someone they love and trust. And of course, only last year there were the examples, excuse me, in 2020, six-year-old Arthur Lambinjo-Hughes was killed by his father and stepmother. We also heard the case of 16-month-old Arthur Lambinjo-Hughes was killed by his father and stepmother. We also heard the case

of 16-month-old star Hobson, very recently punched to death by Savannah Brockhill, her mother's girlfriend. An independent review of children's social care in England is underway, due to be published soon. It's billed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the children's social care system. That report due out in the summer. Joining me now is Polly Curtis, whose research has gone into a new book called Behind Closed Doors, Why We Break Up Families and How to Mend Them. And Alison Bavitch, who's the National Director of the Scottish Association of Social Workers, part of the British Association of Social Workers. A warm welcome to you both.

Polly, in the new book, you described England as having the most interventionist system of child removals in the world. How did we get here? So that's exactly what I set out to try and understand. Why are we removing so many children and whether we're doing the right thing? And I would never argue that we shouldn't remove children. I think it's the most important thing a state can do to safeguard children when they need it. But I wanted to understand the other side of this story. Why are so many children in the care system now?

And there are things we know about. We know that there were spikes after high profile cases such as Peter Connolly. We know there are more complex problems in society. So children, child sexual exploitation, gang crime means children are being removed, not because of the risk of their families, but because of their communities. But actually, if you span back and look over the last 30 years, there has been this consistent trend of more and more children going into care that's very much driven by the rise of our understanding of neglect and emotional abuse rather than physical and sexual abuse and that's

because of very good evidence that shows neglect and emotional abuse are incredibly damaging to children but the problem is it's really hard to draw the line between neglect and poverty. And with emotional abuse, it's really hard to draw the line between emotional abuse and mental health problems. And who should we be helping in that situation? And what I really found was a system that is now removing children from their parents before we've done everything we can as a society to support them to stay together and just to give a couple of examples of what that looks like I met mothers who had their children removed because of their poor mental health before they had been given any help for that mental health problem beyond a course in CBT, an online course in CBT. So we're removing a child and that dramatic intervention in family life before we've done everything we can to support that parent to parent better. I met parents who were told their life was

too chaotic, their housing wasn't stable, there wasn't enough food in the fridge before anyone said, why isn't there enough food in the fridge? Why doesn't this family have enough money to live on? And from the social workers I met, they told us that they had so little resources and time to spend with families that it became this kind of conveyor belt into care because there was nothing they could do to support the family to stay together safely well let me um if i may paula i think this is a really good moment to to play part of one of your interviews now it's the experience of a young woman whose child was removed from her 10 years ago it's broken the system's broken i mean if it was down to me it would all be stopped closed down shut down and start again just start all over again let's just scrap the way that everything is all the systems all the

processes get rid of it all and just start again because it's not fair on anybody it's not fair on the children that are in care it's not fair on the parents that are left behind it's not fair on the people that are taking on these children um whether that be special guardians whether that be foster carers or adopters and also it's not fair on the social workers the social workers have an impossible job it's absolutely impossible and i never understood that I never understood that that was one thing I was so angry at social services when my kids had been taken and now I get it like they just don't have enough time for each family they don't have enough and also decisions are being made from way above them like it's not the person that you're working with that's making a decision about your life.

It's someone that you've never met. It's somebody that is reading it on a bit of paper and making that decision as to what is best for you and your children. And that's never going to work. Let me just ask for a bit more context on that, Polly. But of course, I will bring in Alison Bavidge, who's the National Director of the Scottish Association of Social Workers, for that point, to answer that point. What do you want to happen is that we need to be doing more to support families earlier to identify what they need what help they need in their lives to parents successfully at the moment we're getting to the families too late so we're missing children in terrible circumstances and then we are removing them because there's nothing else we can do at that point just two figures to share with you.

Over the last 10 years, the amount that local authorities spend on early intervention has been cut in half to just under £2 billion. But the amount spent on late intervention services, so taking children into care, has increased by 30% to £7.2 billion. So it's just shifting straight over to the intervention side, because we haven't got the time and resources to support families to stay together. And I think that's really, really a damning situation. This should be the most precious thing that we do as a society. Alison, to bring you in at this point point what do you make of what you've heard so far which bits ring true for you? I think Polly's book overall will ring extremely true for social workers and the complexity of working with families where there are mental health issues domestic abuse coercive control how do we support parents who are not abusing to help them be safe

and protect their children absolutely i think there's something deeper here about the role of social work and perhaps what it has become over the last few decades which is you know social work is really about not getting to that crisis point about not having to intervene statute you know by statute um at those points in people's lives where things have simply got so risky. And there are, as you say, there aren't the services. Caitlin said social workers have an impossible job. I think it's really difficult these days sometimes for people to trust social work.

We don't have the relationships perhaps in communities that we have. We're not working with communities to develop the strength to understand what's going on there. It can feel really risky for people to just ask for help from social work. The Social Workers Union recently did some with LBC, has done a survey recently on how social workers are and the impact that working through the pandemic has had on them. So we know that over 50% of social workers say that their caseloads are unmanageable and putting vulnerable people at risk. We know that eight out of 10 social workers are suffering stress at work and two thirds say their mental health is suffering. A third of those in Scotland are suffering an emotional response at work such as crying every week. So what we've got is a perfect storm here.

In Scotland we've got a variety of approaches. We heard Jess Phillips earlier talking about Violence Against Women and Girls in Scotland. We've got a particular programme. My organisation develops, has some training that's available for social workers across the UK, actually, in terms of reframing how we work with people in abusive situations. Can I just ask, though, I suppose, the sense of this, because there's

a lot of detail there, and you mentioned the name Caitlin, which I say that's what we're calling that woman that you just heard the clip of, the mother who was kind enough to speak to Polly. But what I wanted to understand was what Polly said is that there seems to have been a trend shift, which is to remove the child as opposed to those early interventions. Do you agree with that? I think in Scotland, the case may be slightly different.

There's a bell curve following Liam Fee and Brandon Muir in Scotland, who were kind of in the late 2000s. The figures in Scotland are slightly different in terms of being more evened out across the last couple of decades. However, these events definitely have impact. And it's the lack of support services and the lack of being able to frame particularly mental health and domestic abuse in a way that we can support parents to be better parents we can support them with the with the services that they need and the time that social workers need to spend with them to develop their parenting capacities rather than um kind of waiting until the risk seems too great and things have gone too far so the reforming of of social care, Polly, is that what you're talking about?

Social services here with that early intervention? Because, of course, at the same time, I'm minded to remember whenever we hear of the terrible, tragic death of a child at the hands of someone that they should have been in the care of, there is that cry, why weren't they removed? Why were they left in that position? And I totally understand the instinct to remove more children to prevent cases like that, because it's just so horrific to see the details of how those children died. My view of it is that these two problems, the children removed too soon without the early intervention and the help and the children missed are two sides of the same problem which is a lack of investment and time put into the social work capacity and by the way there are some areas of the country

that are doing this really really well so there is a postcode lottery in the rates of children going into care in different areas. And I was focused principally on England. And you go to places like Leeds and they have, as a council, said we are going to work in a really kind of integrated way to put children at the heart of all our decision making and make Leeds a better place to grow up and then they've put a lot of time and resources into early help and into engaging the family as a part of the solution as well as the problem. Do you have faith in this review that's coming out in the summer of England? So I'm really interested to see what the review says. It's been really interesting to watch Scotland, which has this amazing programme that can look like, I think there is potential for change to happen.

And I really hope that happens because I didn't find anyone in the system defending the status quo. Lawyers, the judges, the social workers, the foster carers, the children themselves all know this is going wrong. So we've got to get some kind of impetus to change this. I think where these things can fall down is on money. It does need more intervention. But the weird thing about this story is it's one of the few areas where actually we could save money over time because the cost of children being yes exactly of where the money first goes polly curtis thank you the book is called and the research is in there behind closed doors why we break up families and how to mend them alison bavage thank you so much for the perspective of social workers but from the scott point of view, as the national director of the Scottish Association of Scottish, excuse me, of social workers.

A statement from the Department of Education for the programme says everyone working with vulnerable families has a responsibility to keep children safe. For social workers, this means assessing the risks they face and identifying the most effective means of protecting them. Sometimes this will mean removing the child from the family. To support these complex decisions, we're investing in social worker training and development, plus programmes designed to support families to stay together safely. The Independent Review of Children's Social Care is also looking at how to reform the system, to which we will bring you when it is published. Now, according to new research, it was women who led the bronze age immigration to Orkney an archipelago off the northeastern coast of Scotland and it has surprised researchers this finding the study by the universities of Edinburgh and Huddersfield combined archaeology with the study of ancient human

remains from the bronze age well earlier I spoke to Dr Maria Parler senior lecturer archaeogeneticist from the archaeogenetics Research Group at the University of Huddersfield. And I started by asking her, what is archaeogenetics? It's a branch of genetics where we combine archaeology and genetics together. So we try to look at genetic variation, both in living people, but also in long-dead people, to reconstruct our past. So instead of digging, like excavating physically sites, we look at the human remains from those sites and we extract the DNA. What did the study set out to discover?

This study began at a time when we didn't have any data from that part of the British Isles for that specific timeframe, which is the Bronze Age. And before we started, there was another study coming out on a previous time, which is the Neolithic. So we had an idea about what was the genetic composition of those communities before but we had no information on the Bronze Age and we wanted to know more about the Bronze Age because it was a time when Europe and the British Isles underwent a massive change in the genetic composition. So new people came at a time when the previous populations were living through some kind of declining situation,

even triggered by probably climate change. And they essentially reshaped completely the genetic composition of these communities. In the Orkneys, which is where the samples we analyzed come from, the Bronze Age does not appear as really strongly. I mean, there are not many archaeological traces of it having gone there. So the idea was that these communities were perhaps

so isolated that they didn't change much. So this was our starting point. So we started analyzing these samples, so human remains that were excavated from a site in one of the Orkney Islands, which is called Westray. And when we started looking at the results, we actually found two major surprises. The first one was that, genetically speaking, these people had been changed by the arrival of the Bronze Age.

So in that sense, they were similar, genetically speaking, to the English population or the Scottish population or even the Irish population. So they had been affected. They were far from being isolated. They were in the center of it. But the second surprise was that they had been affected in a different way. So normally this Bronze Age genetic component has been associated with the arrival mostly of men. And that is visible because the male genetic component of the receiving populations was

completely wiped out and replaced with the Bronze Age male genetic component. In the Orkneys, we don't see that. We actually saw that the neolithic, the local male genetic component survived. And so the only way that we could explain this reshape of the rest of the genome was that females, women, were those that brought these new Bronze Age genetic components into these communities. That was a surprise because normally it was men leading the immigration rather than women. Actually, this male-driven change has been so strong because it's been observed everywhere in Europe.

So Europe, British Isles is always men, while in the Orkneys, clearly it was the women that did that. And do we know why they were moving, what they were doing, what the reason for women leading the Bronze Age immigration was? Well, it's very difficult to make inferences on how people thought at the time. Clearly, these women were moving there and have been moving there for quite a while because the genetic component, the male genetic component survived for about 1,000 years. So it means that for at least that time, it was mostly women that kept coming into these communities. So I would assume that they were willing to move there for some reason. We think that those communities were appealing to them because thanks to the environmental conditions, they managed to maintain some kind of self-sufficiency

and they were, we think, quite prosperous communities. So these women were in a way enticed to move there. And were they moving to join men or were they moving their whole family there without men? No, no, they were moving to join men. What we see in the genetic signal is that what survived, so what was transmitted to the future generation. So clearly these women were going there to marry. So we think that those communities practice patrilocality. So when they married, this means that usually males from a community marry, when they marry outside of their community,

the woman comes and lives at the husband's place or community. You conducted this research by extracting DNA and analysing it. Yeah. And now that we know this, and it was a surprise, which is always nice, I imagine, when you look at the research that you've produced, the data you've produced, and it's not what you were expecting. What do you think that means in terms of changing our understanding or how this kind of fits into a bigger picture now we know this about those women?

From me, from my perspective as an archaeogenesis, this means that we should never be sure of anything. of the male-driven bronze revolution, it was almost a dogma, because it is how things have gone everywhere else. But now we know that, at least in Orkney, things followed a completely different trajectory. It wasn't a male-driven, but it was a female-driven transformation. So these, from my personal perspective as a scientist, means that we should always look for extra evidence because I never believed that things are set in stone.

There will always be surprises. And I believe that these surprises are particularly likely to happen in these apparently peripheral communities like Orkney's that nowadays we are used to consider as very like secondary or far away from every like major center of events but in the past they were clearly they had clearly a very important role and they were at the center of a far-reaching network. With regards to the role of women, I mean, obviously, this is what we are interested in here. I don't know whether these women had a completely active role in this transformation, but as a woman, I feel like even if they were passive actors, they in a way had the last laugh because genetically speaking, they completely transformed those communities.

So as such, they left their sign and forever and for future generations. There you go. Dr. Maria Parla on those surprising findings that it was women who led Bronze Age immigration to Orkney. She wasn't expecting to find that. Thank you very much indeed, as always, for your company today and for all of your messages throughout the programme and your reactions to the stories. And actually, we've got one of you, one of our listeners on, which was brilliant. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

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