Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Deborah James, Jayson Greene, Infidelity

Episode Date: May 25, 2019

The author, blogger and podcaster Deborah James talks abut living with bowel cancer and why we all need to talk about poo.Jayson Greene talks about dealing with the unexpected death of his two year old daughter Greta.We discuss why the conversation around ageing can be so negative with Ashton Applewhite who is calling for a movement to end ageism in her book This Chair Rocks and with Maggy Piggott who’s book is called How to Age Joyfully.Mary Loudon talks about her debut novel My House is Falling Down about infidelity and an adult love triangle.The author, blogger and podcaster Deborah James talks abut living with bowel cancer and why we all need to talk about poo.People in the UK have a worrying lack of knowledge about what constitutes a crime when it comes to the sexual abuse of children. Amanda Naylor from Barnado’s talks about the lastest YouGov Survey and why we need to be concerned about both young girls and boys and from Cris McCurley a member of the Law Society’s access to justice committee.Lyra Mckee was killed in Londonderry just over a month ago. Her partner talks about living with Lyra why she’s been speaking at an equal marriage rally in Belfast.As a new retrospective of the work of Posy Simmonds opens in London this week we discuss the significance of her work with the curator Paul Gravett, the UK Comics Laureate Hannah Berry and with Edith Pritchett a cartoonist.Presented by Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Jane Thurlow

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. Good afternoon. Today, how to be positive about getting older, no matter what you hope to enjoy. Sex in late life gets better. I mean, it can be the best time of all. The biggest obstacle to that is between our ears when we internalize this idea that because we are older, we are lesser versions of ourselves. Deborah James is known as the bowel babe as a result of her openness about her cancer. She's encouraging us to be more frank about what might be embarrassing. The position of trust. What sanctions apply to a teacher who sets out to groom a pupil,

whether male or female? Posie Simmons has a retrospective of her cartoons and graphic novels. What's been her influence on the next generation of young women artists? She's encouraged me to maybe be a little less lazy with my drawing.

I was looking at Cassandra Dark, beautiful scenes of crowds outside Piccadilly Circus and the kind of light from Fortnum's coming down. I was like, God, you know, just so artfully rendered. I would have just scribbled in the background, and it carries on back there. Mary Loudon has published her first novel, My House is Falling Down,

where she's written about infidelity. And Sarah Canning, the partner of the late Lyra McKee, on grief and her campaign for equal marriage in Northern Ireland. Now, four years ago, Jason Green and his wife, Stacey, suffered every parent's worst nightmare. They were enjoying a child-free day because their two-year-old daughter, Greta, was with her grandmother. Greta and Susan were sitting together on a bench in New York when a piece of masonry fell from a tall building and struck Greta on the head. It would prove fatal.

Jason has written a memoir. It's called Once More We Saw Stars, and he explained how the accident happened. They were just walking around the corner from her building as a senior center, and they would often go visit with the residents there. They loved to see Greta, and they had spent a leisurely morning together, as had we. We were checking in with them all morning, and they were texting us pictures of their updates. And my mother-in-law, Susan, said, you know, we're having the time of our lives here. Why don't you go? You can take all the time you need. And so Stacey and I were actually going to go see a matinee.

And then they sat down on the bench there outside of the building, and it turns out it was a poorly maintained building. It not passed inspection the inspector falsified a report and there was a s-shaped crack in the facade and so from the eighth floor a piece of masonry fell and struck right in the head um another piece hit my mother-in-law on the legs um and we found out shortly after we were headed out to go to the movies and we both pulled out our phones and so we'd missed phone calls from her and that was unusual. And so that's when I called and that's when we found out. What hope did you have when you arrived at the hospital that Greta would recover? I'll be honest.

Um, when we showed up at the ER and, um and we went into the room where she was and we saw her, she was surrounded by a team of people and she was just so pitifully tiny there in the middle of that table. And I think we just knew on some level that whatever happened next, that she wasn't coming back in any meaningful way. We didn't admit that to ourselves or to each other, but I think we both admitted later that we both had a very dark feeling when we saw, and that was confirmed shortly after. We didn't have a lot of time to be in ambiguity about her state, which was painful, but in a sad way, I was almost grateful not to be stranded in between or to have to make any

decisions on her behalf. There was some comfort in that. You did have to make one decision. And that was when you were asked about donating her organs. How difficult was it to make that decision? Not difficult, honestly, it was the only not difficult decision. And that might sound perverse to some. And I know that people have very differing opinions on the body and life and, you know, where those two intersect. And for us, it was just so clear once we were told that the prognosis was fatal and that, you know, they had to certify her brain dead, but they believed, you know, that she was. Once they did do that, there was no question for us that she was coming back or that she was in her body anymore. She was gone. And it was such a meaningless accident, really. There's nothing we could have done to prevent it. It was the only thing we could do to pull some meaning out of

that moment. And I think that from then on, and when I decided to write the book, it was a similar exercise, a similar thought. Like, how can I salvage meaning out of something that seems inherently meaningless? And how can we tell this story? You do say in the book that at one point you became almost overwhelmed with anger and hatred of happy families. How did your response compare with Stacey's, your wife's? We had very different responses. And I think that she did not struggle with the anger like I did. And I think for me, it was a delayed shock response. It was sort of, we had to mobilize so many different things just to get through the accident. I've been an optimist. And

so to have my optimism run into this accident, I think that the shock produced anger. I was angry at the world for, for so many things. And one of the parts of me that was so angry was this part of me that used to believe the world was a good place. And that manifested itself in irrational rages. And this was, I should say that this didn't, this didn't persist. I would say the first six months of acute trauma and shock, it manifested itself. I would be sick with grief, and I would look up and I'd see a father with their daughter on their shoulders, and I would hate that person. And I would, then I would hate that feeling. I didn't want that feeling in myself. I didn't want to be the kind of person who would see a happy family and be filled with dark feelings.

That was sad and overwhelming all by itself. And so I hoped the book would help me excavate some of those feelings out of myself. You write that children who lose parents are orphans, bereaved spouses are widows. What do you call parents who lose children? What do you say when people ask if you have children before you had harrison um it's funny um not haha funny but there is a way in which both stacy and i managed that question differently and that was also a manifestation of our personalities and how we grieved stacy would often lie to protect the person she was talking to because she didn't know them. I mean, if it was someone that she thought she might see again

in her life, she might say, well, we had a daughter, but tragically, we lost her recently in an accident. But she wouldn't say that to the checkout counter person. In the beginning, I'm a little bit ashamed to say, although I do write this in the book, because it was honest, I found myself wanting to tell everyone. And some part of that, I think, was this urge to detonate a grenade in other people's days, in other people's lives. It was a guilt-free way of, frankly the beginning, I would tell everybody, you know, who asked whether or not they really wanted to know. And now, I mean, our relationship to our grief has shifted so much. I will often say that we have two children, and I will leave it at that. How has Susan, Greta's grandma, who was there on the day, coped? Well, I should say that even though I am a bereaved father and we went through this experience,

even having lost Greta, I still can't imagine what Susan went through. I still flinch from imagining her trauma and what she endured. Considering that she had to see the accident, the market leaves, I think it's miraculous that she has come as far as she has. She still has PTSD, and she probably always will, but she manages. She watches my son Harrison two days a week, whole days. And not to tie a bow in anything, but I think this is remarkable.

Last week was the anniversary of the accident, the four-year anniversary of the accident. On that day, I had to work, and so I took Harrison to Susan's. And neither of us really acknowledged the fact that it was the same day as the accident. And I went to work, and Susan, without telling me, took Harrison for a walk around the block and went further with him than she ever had before. And I think in a way, she was defying the fear she'd been living with. I was talking to Jason Green and his book is called Once More We Saw Stars. Now, someone who's just hit 69 and has been maybe less than positive about 70 being the next birthday, it was encouraging to hear Ashton Applewhite calling for a movement to end ageism in her book This Chair Rocks. Then

there's Maggie Piggott whose Twitter account about the unexpected joys of ageing has picked up a huge number of followers. She's the author of How to Age Joyfully. Well could our lives, health and the economy improve if we all just change the conversation about getting older? Why is Ashton Applewhite calling for a movement? If we can be persuaded that aging is a problem or a disease, we can be persuaded to spend money on things to stop it or cure it. And of course, it's not a problem or a disease. It's not stoppable or curable. The subtitle of my book is A Manifesto Against Ageism, which is stereotyping and discrimination on the basis of age. I'm urging people and women in particular to look at the culture in which we age

and at the way it frames it as a problem. Okay. Have you ever thought of it as a problem in your own life? Indeed, before you got older, how did you view older people? I don't think I thought about it much except as some vague, scary thing. I definitely started writing about this about 10 years ago when I was in my mid-50s because I was afraid of getting old. And sort of the light bulb thing that happened was I started looking around and researching, interviewing older people and learned in about 30 seconds that everything I thought I knew about what it was like to be older was way off base or flat out wrong. Maggie, when did you stop your other job? Because I know you had a high flying job. Well, I had to retire at 59 because due to ill, and I was devastated because I absolutely loved my work. What were you doing?

I was basically a civil servant, but also a barrister. And I didn't want to give up. I wanted to go on working for as long as possible, basically. And when I did give up, I found it a huge shock to begin with, actually. For the first year, I didn't know what I was going to do, and I thought I'd never be really happy again. And yet, eight years down the line, I can quite sincerely say, and I'm amazed to say it, I've never been happier.

I've never felt more fulfilled and I absolutely love my life now. What have you done to make that possible? Well, I just think that this time in life is just such a great new stage to have more time to enjoy yourself, to spend time with friends and your family. I've taken up dancing, which is my new passion. I took it up before I retired, but then when I was ill, I couldn't do it for a while. And then I went back to it and it got me better and dancing has absolutely changed my life my mantra is you don't stop dancing because you grow old you grow old because you stop dancing yeah now a couple of months ago on the program I talked to one of our listeners who was contemplating stopping dyeing

her hair and this was a serious point in her life. She was actually trying to have a real conversation with herself, got a huge reaction from the audience. I certainly dye my hair and can't. Yeah, okay. And I put it to you, Ashton, you might as well. So I actually put the white in my hair. I figure no one believes me if I say I don't dye it. But we're aren't we all complicit in in the whole business then by doing this? You've hit the most difficult nail on the head. I don't like to blame people for problems that affect them. But when we women compete to stay young or foster this idea of, you know, judging each other by age, and we all do this, no judgment. We each need to age in our own way and at our time. And, you know, dyeing your hair is a really good way

to hang on to your job. For example, I wish that weren't a successful strategy, or lying about your age or knocking early accomplishments off our resumes. But when we do that, we become invisible as older women. And when a group is invisible, so are the issues that affect us. Those behaviors aren't good for us because they're rooted in shame about something that shouldn't be shameful, and it gives a pass to the discrimination that makes those behaviors so effective. Has any society anywhere in the world got this right

in terms of valuing older people? We used to be told the Japanese were rather good at it. Everyone looks wistfully eastward and says, isn't it better over there? Everywhere, capitalism and industrialization, urbanization have made massive inroads where you start to have separations of the generations. Ageism makes inroads where you have all generations living together. That's better. Societies that venerate older members are great places to be old in, but not necessarily great places to be young in.

We're looking at a massive global phenomenon of longer lives. And we need to really think in terms of equity across the lifespan. And we should actually celebrate the fact that people are living longer. It's a massive achievement. If you're fortunate, of course. It shouldn't be something any of us take for granted. What about sex relationships and dating, crucially? Because you do you mention in your book that actually sex, apparently horrifically to some of our younger listeners, possibly sex carries on and sexual urges do not stop. Sex carries on. And for many people, women in particular, sex in late life is gets better.

I mean, it can be the best time of all. The biggest obstacle to that is between our ears, as you really sort of already referenced, when we internalize this idea that because we are older, we are lesser versions of ourselves. And I defy either of you to think, you know, who you are now. We're all older women to think, are we really less attractive, less fun in bed, less interesting than the woman we used to be? And if we are, where do those notions come from? And I think it's the total opposite. I think actually as you get older, you have more to contribute. You have more wisdom, more experience.

And you can contribute so much to society. And we have a huge amount to offer. And younger people recognize that and we ought to be doing as much as we can to encourage people to take their own steps to age well and improve their own lives and improve the lives of others. What I'd love to see is more friendships between younger women and older women. Yeah, reach out. Reach absolutely, make friends of all ages. One huge advantage that women have in aging is that we maintain social connections and that is the most important component of a good old age. Ashton Abelwhite and Maggie Piggott. Mary Loudon is known for her nonfiction. She's

written about Middle England, the clergy and nuns. And she's now completed her first novel. It's called My House is Falling Down. Lucy is a photographer in her 40s. Her husband Mark is a painter and they have twin began. At a party, over tea in a cafe, in Angus's unfamiliar watery home. It's irrelevant. I fell in love so inordinately that time and place mean nothing. Like carbon dating, deciphering love's earliest imprint is an imprecise business. When and where provide history and geography, but only why conveys anything worthwhile. Only why is significant, and only why matters. Like why, when I knew so little of him still, I would allow a man who is not my husband

to declare himself to me, except that he recognised me for what I am, a woman at odds with herself. Mary, why did you choose to write about infidelity? More than I wanted to write about infidelity, I wanted to write about telling the truth. I wanted to write about something that happens to lots of us over a lifetime, which is that one meets attractive people all of one's life. And if one is already in a committed partnership with someone else, that can produce difficulties. And we're in a culture in which it is largely the done thing to cheat rather than to be upfront. And I wanted to write a book in which you remove the deceit,

because then if you have a love triangle where nobody's actually lying to anybody, you are dealing with something that is completely different morally, psychologically, emotionally. And that's what I wanted to do. So I have a woman who asks her husband what to do when she meets someone else she falls in love with. But Mark's response is, to me, bizarre. He does at one point say, well, spare him the details. But then, of course course he does quite frequently ask for details, but he takes it calmly. How surprising is that? Well, it's surprising until you complete

the book and realise why perhaps Mark has done that. And I can't, I don't want to produce a great spoiler, but there are very good reasons why Mark reacts the way he does. But I would want to say that it was very important to me to write about men who are not behaving in the way that we expect them to. Men who don't behave aggressively, who don't say, you know, it's not worth it. I'm going to change the locks. You know, I didn't want that kind of thing. I wanted to write about men who wait, men who are patient, men who are hurting, men who don't know what to do, men who in the moment maybe say, fine, go do what you need to do. Because these things happen, but they're

not talked about. And until we can broaden our conversation about love affairs and about women and men and the fact that women also transgress and fall in love and the fact that some men you know wait in the background the way women culturally and historically are supposed to have done until we talk more openly about that we're not really going to get as far as we need to lucy it does seem to be angry to me at his apparent lack of reaction or furious jealousy. Well, I think she's very torn, isn't she? She sort of wants him to defend his right to his conjugal rights. So she wants him to say, no, of course you can't go off with this other guy because you're mine.

And on the other hand, his allowing her to do so gives her free reign and she can justify to herself the fact that she's able to engage in this love affair without self censure, if you like. But in fact, she does engage in self censure. She's very punishing when it comes to herself. She's a very prickly woman. She's in midlife. She's having a crisis. She's feeling insecure, lost, not quite sure about her work, not quite sure about her parenting. And feeling, I think, rather neglected by her husband. I think that too. He's always very busy.

He's always very busy and he's always got his head down and he doesn't really look from left to right and he comes in and enjoys the kids when it suits him. But she's there at the coalface, as it were. And I think this is the story of many people. So it was important to me to write it in that way. But I wanted to write about real people. So then none of the characters, the three main characters, are always likable. None of them is always sympathetic. None of them is always wonderful. And I think that's really important. I think that's the same for us in life, isn't it? If we have friends who are going through these things,

it's complicated. It's never simple. She does say that she finds loving them both inconvenient and at times shattering. And I find myself thinking, oh, just have your cake and eat it, love. Did you ever think that? That she was having her cake and eating it?

That why couldn't she just say, yeah, I'm enjoying this, this is fun? Because I think that actually the reality is that while there are bits that are fun when you're lost in them, there are so many more bits where you feel torn, where you cannot be in two places at once, where if you're with your lover whom you deeply love, you can't be with your children. When you're with your children and your family, where if you're with your lover whom you deeply love, you can't be with your children. When you're with your children and your family,

you can't be with your lover. And I think she feels that pull and that tear, and I think she wishes she could lead sort of two lives, two parallel lives. And I think she's also probably motivated by something that certainly motivates me in my life, which is just a real fear of and irritation at death. You know, we're going to die.

And she wants to pack in as much as she can. I was talking to Mary Loudon. Still to come in today's programme, the position of trust. What sanctions apply when a teacher grooms a male pupil? Sarah Canning, the partner of the late Leora McKee, campaigns for equal marriage in Northern Ireland. And the influence of the great cartoonist Posey Simmons on The Next Generation.

Deborah James is an author, blogger and podcaster who's known online as AtBowlBabe. Her intention is to sweep away the taboos that surround bowel cancer. She was 34 when she was diagnosed three years ago and she aims to encourage us all to be more open about those things we might find embarrassing, know what symptoms to look out for and not be afraid to speak to a doctor if we're worried. She has a column in The Sun and she takes part in the You, Me and the Big C podcast. It's a tough platform actually in terms of who wants to talk about poo. I think that's, you know, a big challenge. It's not pretty,

it's not sexy, it's not a topic of conversation that people want to kind of address. We know it's the second biggest killer in Britain actually after lung cancer. Which is amazing I didn't know that when I was first diagnosed I think that was a good thing I didn't know that but I think it's one of those cancers that we like to hush into the corner we don't really want to talk about it and lung cancer awareness is another one and we know that awareness of these types of cancers whilst they are increasing they're not increasing as much as awareness still of things like breast cancer. Let's start then with you and your own situation you were a deputy head teacher busy busy woman but only in your 30s. Only in my 30s I was on a

fast track scheme to headship but at the time I was just really busy and when you're really busy you don't think about your health. Your health is secondary to everything else that's going on and I was losing a bit of weight and I was really really tired but I was taking a school out of special measures. Of course I was tired. And what about your bowel habits? Had they changed? Yeah they had. I was pooing up to eight times a day. But not every day? No not every day. It was all very intermittent and I assumed that actually it came with stress because why wouldn't you? So I assumed that maybe when Ofsted was about to come calling I'd be running to the loo and I think that's quite a

normal rational chain of thought however the key thing for me is that over a course of about six months I started passing blood I was going more and more often and the symptoms even though they were waxing and waning they were actually progressively getting worse and I kept on going to my doctors and the doctors would take one look at me and I look healthy from the outside. I would waltz on in with a big smile on my face and they would put it down to stress and then the change in bowel habits was IBS. And the blood, the quantity and the sort of blood that you were seeing? Yeah, now this is really important actually. It changed all the time and I actually quite often had fresh blood and because I had fresh blood people would assume therefore that I had hemorrhoids or I had piles which is quite

common and statistically it's way more likely to be hemorrhoids or piles and actually what it transpired was when they found my tumour it was because it was very close to my rectum. So when my tumour was bleeding, the blood was coming straight out. So that is a misconception. But how did they find that tumour? Because in the end you had... In the end, I actually took myself off to have a colonoscopy done privately. Now that is all my tests kept on coming back normal. So my blood tests, I had a poo screening test and, you know, I kept on being told basically it's IBS and I kind of said you know actually hang on a moment I don't feel well so I took myself off and I had a colonoscopy which is a camera um up your bum and it was at that

moment and it was the 16th of December 2016 I will always remember that date. And I booked in to have the colonoscopy on the last day of term in the morning. And I chose not to have the sedation because I was going to just quickly pop along, have the colonoscopy, and then pop back in for lunch, and then finish the rest of the day at school. And I never went back in for that term because obviously I was told there and then that they suspected that I had cancer. Now you are we should say statistically you are an outlier. You are young you are fit you want you don't fit the pattern of someone with bowel cancer do you? No but I'm not that unique and the more I've discovered I might be an outlier but I've discovered actually there are lots of

outliers like me. Statistically and I know statistics can tell you anything one in 18 women will be diagnosed with bowel cancer and more is more common in men it's one in 15. It's one in 15 and that's our lifetime risk statistically it were more it will be more likely to happen over the age of 50 however as a report you know it it was out on friday actually is showing it is the largest growing cancer in women and men under the age of 50 um mainly in western countries and therefore i hate this therefore there is an automatic assumption that it must be diet related you know the reason that the bowel cancer incidences are up is because we're all eating pizza. Now, I've discovered that there are lots more people like me. I was vegetarian.

I am vegetarian and I have been for 25 years. I was fit. I was active. I was healthy. I didn't tick any boxes. And I've discovered in the community that I now move within, in the bowel cancer community, most people are actually like me. But I guess that there will be people who have, for a string of reasons, perhaps not had a great diet, just had a stress-filled life, who will wind up with bowel cancer and aren't going to be the sort of people who seek out communities like the one you now inhabit. They're just not going to, are they? No, No and that actually we know that that is more likely to happen in older people. Now we cannot deny that the fact that there is a link to a lack of fibre, there is a link to too much red meat, to a lack of exercise

and we have to know those risk factors because as somebody sitting here with bowel cancer and advanced bowel cancer I would personally like to at least have a bit of a balanced life and try to reduce those risk factors. And the politics of cancer and the pink aspect this is a terrible expression but the sometimes breast cancer which is an absolutely horrendous disease we should say. It is, rachel died from breast cancer but it dominates the space you would you say that a hundred percent i um cannot stand pink fluffy stuff do not get me wrong for one second i think the work that has gone on in terms of advocating awareness of breast cancer over the last 20 30 years is phenomenal it's saving women up and down

the country and And I think it needs to be applauded. It has been applauded. But I think there is space to start addressing other cancers. There are more women dying of lung cancer and bowel cancer in the UK than are dying of breast cancer. And the reality is actually these fashion, you know, campaigns or these makeover campaigns all looking at kind of making women with breast cancer feel better is all good and well you know I like a good lipstick and you know I have bowel cancer and you know I don't want to feel excluded just because I have a different type of cancer and you know what it's time for people to start shouting

about these other types of cancers what happened with breast cancer is people stopped thinking of boobs in a way that we can't talk about breasts. And as a result, it's saving lives. But you know what, we need to do it for other things. I'm here talking about bowel cancer. That's what I will continue doing is talking about bowel cancer. And it's not pink and it's not fluffy. Deborah James was talking to Jane. Sophie emailed, I had my large bowel removed

because of bowel cancer when I was 25. I'm now 36. And I have also had an autoimmune liver disease and liver transplant at the beginning of this year. From the amount of broadcast and magazine coverage given to breast cancer, you'd think it was the only disease women ever suffer from. And Esther said, My lovely husband died of bowel cancer and I worry about my two adult children and this disease. Let's keep talking about this subject, no matter how embarrassing it is. If you've been watching Emmerdale recently, you'll have been following the story of Maya,

a teacher in a secondary school and one of her pupils, Jacob. They'd been sexting each other and kissing before Jacob turned 16. Then, after his 16th birthday, they had sexual intercourse. Here, Jacob discovers that she's been reported to the police. Why would you do this to me? Seriously. Did you really think we were going to let you go with her? I want to be with her.

She'd have been hundreds of miles away by now if she could have been. No, you don't understand. She came back for me. She came back for a passport and a big bag of cash. We read the emails. Jake, I know you don't want to believe it but she was manipulating you. I'll never forgive you for this.

Well, the producers of the soap have been working with the advice of Barnardo's, who've conducted a poll to find out how well the concept of position of trust is understood when it comes to an adult grooming a child, regardless of the child's sex and age. Jacob obviously is a boy, and when the sex takes place, he's over 16, the age of consent. But nonetheless, Mayer's actions as a teacher are illegal. Well, to unpick the law and the results of the poll, I spoke to Chris McCurley, a solicitor and member of the Law Society's Access to Justice Committee,

and to Amanda Naylor, head of Child Sex Abuse at Barnardo's. Why was it important for the pupil in this storyline to be a boy? Well, Emmerdale had approached us at a time that we'd recognised that boys were very under-identified in terms of being referred to our child sexual exploitation services. So in terms of research around a third of boys are suspected to be sexually exploited out of the population so two-thirds girls one-third boys but we weren't seeing that in our services and so we applied for some funding from the Home Office and were successful in working with a group of boys who we found actually in the criminal justice system who themselves have been sexually exploited and what we really wanted to

look at is why those boys have been missed in terms of their own experiences and why they were only picked up when their behaviours started to become aggressive and violent or criminal activity that they were doing and basically those boys spent a year teaching us around how boys express vulnerability, why boys don't tell us they're being exploited, and why adults refuse to see it even when they do try and tell. Now, Chris, police records show 290 incidents of this kind of abuse in 2016-17. What law is broken if a teacher, say, has sex with a pupil even over the age of consent? The Sexual Offences Act 2003, which has been amended many times to widen the scope of what

abuse of trust means, makes it illegal to have sex with somebody who is between, well, somebody who is under 18 and who is in your care in certain professions. So the offences include having sex, trying to get someone to have sex, watching sexual acts. The teachers are obviously a very clear category, but there are other categories as well who are in positions of trust and care. What other jobs would you include in that?

Also included are hospitals, clinics. It applies to social workers. It's currently limited to regulated settings, so it could be a regulated apprenticeship, for example, but casual work experience wouldn't count for this. So although the age of consent for sex is 16, we put people in a position of trust, literally, with our children, and we trust them to take care of them and look after them

and not to abuse them. But for teachers, they're in direct contact for children for very long periods of time, can be an intensive relationship, pupils can develop crushes. And these incidences should be prosecuted, I think. So at 16, you're still legally a child. Now, Amanda, Barnardo's commissioned a poll by

YouGov to see how people responded to the scenes in Emmerdale. What most surprised you? What most surprised us really was the terms that were being used. So the fact that a quarter of adults think it's every young boy's dream to have sex with an older woman. And they use the terms of having sex without thinking around the power differentials. And what we analysed and came to conclusions around that was we don't see boys as vulnerable as girls. And that's a real issue because anybody who has a 16-year-old boy knows that, yes, they're exploring, they're becoming a young man. But at the same time, they need safe environments. They're hyper-sexualised, hyper-masculinised, and actually we need to be looking at the development stage they are and giving them safe, non-sexualised environments to learn and grow, and schools should absolutely be one of those places.

So, Chris, how do these cases play out in the legal system? Would a woman grooming a boy be seen as reprehensible as a man grooming a girl? Typically, we see a lot of cases reported of much, much older men grooming and having sexual relationships, which are on the verge of consensual with young girls. It's difficult to find true figures for this. Andrea Durham at Durham University did some research in 2015, but it was by a Freedom of Information Act request, and she found out that 100 plus teachers had been reported, female teachers had been reported. And quotes in her research suggest that about 19% of breach of trust is committed by women. I think it's very sensationalised in the press,. I think it's very sensationalised in the press,

but I think it is less sensationalised in the courts. I know in a recent case, a judge in sentencing a teacher said, I accept it was consensual, what 15-year-old boy wouldn't want to accept that wonderful offer, which I think really spells it out. So Amanda, hearing that from a judge, what have you found is the impact of this kind of abuse when the victim is a boy? So that's really important because I think we think boys just get on with things. What we recognise is boys don't just get on with things, they do things differently to girls and their behaviours are very different. So with girls we might see internalised behaviours,

we may notice mood changes, they may talk to their friends, they may talk to their parents but often very internalised behaviours. With boys we see externalised behaviours, they become angry and confused and their behaviours are sometimes seen as deviant and so instead of asking boys what happened to you, which is what we do to girls girls what's happening what why are you feeling like this we ask boys what's wrong with you and suddenly we add that level of shame and guilt that it is your fault actually you're a boy you should have been able to say no you're strong enough why did you get yourself in this position all those assumptions that society lays on boys makes them silent and makes them not tell us or ask us for help and working with the boys within Bernardos services has really shown us that if we don't ask boys what's happening

to you and we don't intervene in situations like that the consequences for them in terms of potentially the criminal justice system drugs and alcohol use as coping strategies anger and violence breakdown of families these are all very real things happening in families right across the country right now. And Chris, what kind of sentences could people found guilty of this crime expect? I think people could be very surprised. The sentences vary very widely. Like, for example, in a non-consensual rape, the maximum sentence is life. Many of the sex gang groomers got into double digits with their sentences,

even where the young person considered them to be their boyfriend, for example. But in these breach of trust cases, the maximum sentence in the Crown Court is five years. In the Magistrates' Court, because it can be tried in the Magistrates' Court, the maximum sentence is 12 months or a fine or both. But the reality is that there's a significant disparity. Some get prison, but a lot get suspended sentences. Some get community-based sentences. Some get prison sentences all the way up to the maximum five years. And think about one particular case, Matthew Dawson, earlier this year, a 24-year-old teacher had sex with a 17-year-old pupil and he was given a 12-month sentence. So there is the possibility of a prison sentence.

Amanda, just briefly, who are you hoping to get your message out to? To everybody because it's everybody's responsibility to support and care for children. We want teachers to be really thinking around their boundaries and behaviours. We want parents to be noticing if things are going wrong and also if maybe adults are potentially grooming families as well as children. We know people in positions of trust often befriend families in different ways. We want people to be aware and be asking boys how they are on what's happening with them. Amanda Naylor and Chris McCurley. And we had an email from someone who didn't want to be named, who said, I'm a male in my mid-forties now.

I was a just-turned 17-year-old boy on a youth training scheme when I lost my virginity to a woman aged nearly 30 at my placement. At the time, I thought it was what I wanted. In hindsight, I was groomed. Now, last Saturday, only a month after her partner, Lyra McKee, was killed in Londonderry, Sarah Canning addressed a crowd of thousands of people in Belfast. Her message was simple. Same-sex marriage is legal in the Republic of Ireland and in the rest of the UK, so why not in Northern Ireland? How is she managing to protest when she's still grieving for Leara?

I'm not entirely sure. A lot of people just keep saying that maybe it's Leara who's with me and she's carrying me forward. She would have used her platform, and she's always used her platform, to voice about the injustices and the unfairness in our society. So I just want to carry on doing what she did. It is a very difficult truth, isn't it, this? But it is a truth, nevertheless, that her terrible death has given you this platform.

Yeah, I mean, I'd give it back in a heartbeat and just continue our little boring life together where we didn't do very much, but we loved every minute of it. But the world doesn't work that way. And I have a platform and there are some people who want to listen to me at the minute. So I'm going to use my voice while I have it. What happened on Saturday? Could it have happened even five years ago in Northern Ireland? What would you say? There's been a massive growth in the support for same-sex marriage. It didn't surprise me that there was such a big crowd. It maybe surprised me some of the voices that have come out in support.

We've seen massive changes within some of the unionist parties even. Some members of the UUP, the Ulster Unionist Party, marched with us on Saturday and carried little placards, Ulster Unionists for marriage equality. And that's huge. Four years ago, Mike Nesbitt said he still opposed gay marriage, but he warned other unionists that they would be on the wrong side of history if they continued in their opposition. And now, on Saturday, he was out in force with the rest of the crowd, marching proudly for, you know, marriage equality in Northern Ireland. So that's progress, isn't it? It's huge progress. You know, and you have to...

In Northern Ireland, baby steps are important. That was more of a giant leap. We know that when it was debated in Stormont, the MLAs there, they did support same-sex marriage, admittedly only by one vote, 53 votes to 52. What stopped it being implemented? There's a thing called a petition of concern, and it was introduced in Stormont to ensure that we're quite a divided society. We call our divisions orange and green,

so the orange side would be Unionism, Protestantism, Loyalism, and the green side is Nationalism, Republicanism and Catholics. And although our society isn't quite that black and white to use another colour analogy we can't have any one side being seen to have an upper hand we have to have a parody of esteem something that we've been saying for many, many years so the petition of concern was introduced

so that no one side would be seen to have a right or an upper hand in Stormont. And the DUP used that petition of concern to block marriage equality. At Lear's funeral, you did get the chance to talk directly to Theresa May. What did you say to her? Well, what I said was basically the message that I gave to every politician I spoke to that day was that they have to do better. To say that Northern Ireland is a devolved part of the UK is unacceptable at this point. We haven't had a government in almost two years.

Our politicians are still getting paid, but they're certainly not sitting on the hill making decisions for us or positively improving our society. So I said to say that she's like same-sex marriage and abortion rights are a devolved matter is ridiculous because we aren't devolved and at the minute we really need to look towards Westminster to actually legislate on our behalf. Was she sympathetic? She was typically politician-y. You know, she nodded her head, she said, yes, yes, yes.

But there were no assurances, there were no promises made, and I didn't expect it. But, again, I had a chance to say my piece, and I took it. Would you have ever thought of yourself as being the sort of person... I mean, in your professional life, you're a nurse, aren't you? No, I'm a phlebotomist. OK, forgive me. But nevertheless, that's some world away

from standing in front of the current prime minister and, well, letting her have it in the nicest possible way. Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, I would be somewhat active on Twitter. That's about as much as I would do. I did a little bit of campaigning in the Republic around the repeal the eighth referendum aside from that yeah it's never been something that I could have imagined myself doing. And in terms of the investigation into Lira's death

the police have described I think the atmosphere is difficult and challenging but people have come forward and have given information haven't they over 100 in fact oh yeah I mean I think it's something like between 140 and 150 people have come forward with information which you know might not sound like a lot but in Derry it has a lot you know we have this culture particularly in in Republican and nationalist communities, where the police aren't trusted and it would be very, very rare that you would contact the police. And lots of people stepped forward and contacted the police off their own merit to provide information because the people of Derry don't agree, the vast majority anyway, do not agree with the actions that were taken on Holy Thursday.

None of us want to see guns on our streets again. None of us want to deal with murder and bombs and just the destruction of our town and the destruction of people's lives. So for people to step forward has been amazing and I massively, massively appreciate the contribution and the bravery of the people who did. Nevertheless, there have been arrests,

but no one, we haven't come close to anybody being charged with the killing of Lira. Do you think that is going to happen at some point? It's hard to say. You know, I have to have hope. Hope is the only thing that carries us forward, and I think hope is something that can be lacking, particularly in cases like this.

But I'm putting my faith in the police. They've done an amazing job so far. They're taking some of these people off the streets, and that might not sound like much, but, you know, the fewer of them around to indoctrinate young minds, the better. My hope is that they will find the person who murdered Lear

and that he'll be put away for a long, long time because he deserves nothing less. But in the meantime, if they can keep picking these people off one by one and putting them in jail and keeping them away from the society that wants to move forward, that can only be a positive. I think you described your life with Lear as not very exciting earlier on, but happily unexciting, if I can put it that way. That was the case, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we lay on the sofa and watched murder documentaries, which is ironic. All we wanted to really do was be happy, have enough money to pay our bills and go on holiday a couple of times a year. And that's what we did. And perhaps be allowed to marry. Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, it was on the cards, but we knew that we couldn't do it in Northern Ireland. We would have to go to the Republic. So what of your future now? That's a very good question. I have absolutely no idea. At the moment I'm taking everything one day at a time, one step at a time. Lots of things are up in the air for me. I work in the hospital where Lear was pronounced dead, and the idea of stepping back through those doors absolutely terrifies and nauseates and ticks the wind out of my sails.

So there are so many parts of my life that are affected outside of just the future that I dreamed of with Lyra. Sarah Canning was talking to Jane. Yesterday, a retrospective of the work of Posie Simmons opened at the House of Illustration in London. You may have seen her work in The Sun in the early 70s or in The Guardian from the late 70s. There was The Silent Three, Gemma Bovary, Tamara Drew and Cassandra Dark. There's no doubt she was a

pioneer in cartoons at a time when the art form was dominated by men. What influence has she had on the generations that followed her? Hannah Berry is the UK Comics Laureate, Edith Pritchett is the winner of last year's Observer Cape Graphic Short Story Prize, and Paul Gravett is one of the curators of the exhibition. How did it come about? Our first exhibition, actually, our first retrospective was in Brussels in 2012, which I curated. And it seemed strange to me that we hadn't had a proper celebration of Poesy's genius in the UK. And in 2014, the House Illustration was founded. Poesy was very active as an advocate for a home for illustration, which is the first one we have in the UK. And in 2014, the House Illustration was founded. Posy was very active as an advocate

for a home for illustration, which is the first one we have in the UK. And then it very obviously came together when a book I've just written coincides with the exhibition, a monograph, her first book about her work and her life. Hannah, as Comics Laureate, what's so important about Posie Simmons to you?

She's almost the matriarch of British comics. I always think she's this incredible... Grand dame. Yeah, the grand dame. She's this incredible character, this central figure that... I mean, she's been in comics as long as I've been aware of comics existing. And she's somebody that, well, I'm assuming we all aspire to be. Just need the relevant skill and wit and charm and patience.

And they're not easily come back. Not at all, no. Not necessarily. Edith, when were you first aware of her? I think I first came across her books when I was about 14. It was Tamara Drew in my parents' house and I remember picking it up and flicking through it and it's so beautifully drawn and also a little bit saucy in places.

So I remember thinking, I must read this. But were you already beginning to draw and wanting to copy the kind of things that she was doing? I actually think I'd always kind of, because I'd always been good at drawing, but I'd done kind of very kind of square, boring, charcoal pictures that I wasn't terribly interested in. So I remember reading her work and being so kind of excited by the idea that this was how you could, you know,

draw, this is how you could tell stories and, you know, utilise any skill set I may have. Now, Paul, I know that you've got very early work and comics she produced as a teenager in the exhibition. Yes. How would you describe those early pieces? Precocious and actually with all the skills that she's gone on to develop. I mean, she's very cleverly, in one of the things she's done, she satirises a women's magazine, it's called Herself, and she does everything down to the horoscope, the advice columns and

the adverts brilliantly. She did them while she was at boarding school and got into trouble, so it was actually confiscated. So she's had a cheeky, a very observant skill from the very beginning. Hannah, how would you actually describe her work and the style in which she works? The characters that she produces are so... They're so rich and they're so cute and so shrewd. I mean, you can look at her books and you can recognise her comics and you can recognise people in them immediately,

even the attitudes they have, the words they say, but just the slight poses, they kind of reverberate. They're very easy to... Do you have a favourite character? I've just... I really love Cassandra Dark. I know it's the last one, but I really... She's such a great character. What do you love about her?

I quite like the fact she's so cantankerous and yet kind of lovable with it. Edith, to what extent do you think you might have been inspired by her technically? I think a great deal. I think she's encouraged me to maybe be a little less lazy with my drawing. I was looking at Cassandra Dark recently and these kind of beautiful scenes of crowds outside Piccadilly Circus and the kind of light from Fortnum's coming down.

It's just beautiful. And I was thinking, I was like, God, you know, just so artfully rendered. I would have just scribbled in the background and been like, and it carries on back there. So I'm just, you know, the attention to detail, the kind of tiles in the background of a kitchen. She published, Paul, work in Guides to Women's Rights. She did in the 70s, that's right. The Sun ran quite a racy cartoon, as I recall it, at the same time. How did this, I would have said feminist,

justify doing both? I think, well, she got a fantastic break to be given a daily cartoon in The Sun in 1969 when the paper launched. And she was able to, over time, subvert the requirements, as you might imagine, of the humour in The Sun so that some of the sexist elements could be directed back at the character, this lecherous bear, he was a naughty bear,

by the dolly girl character who was the victim much of the time early on. And so she was able to turn it around. Also, of course, her own developing career meant that she could then move to The Times and Natalie to The Guardian, which became her permanent home, which is much more in tune with her political beliefs and aspirations.

And so she was able to move on after that period. And certainly with her Guardian strips, she was able to satirise the readers themselves. This is, as Hannah was saying, we recognise ourselves in Poesie's comics, sometimes uncomfortably, of course, with all our contradictions, all our aspirations for moral standards

or doing the right thing, often not doing the right thing. And her three couples, not just the Webbers, but the Wrights and the Heaps in that long-running series on the women's page, just came alive and still stand as one of the masterpieces of British comics. I know, Hannah, that you know her personally. How has she supported young women coming up behind her?

I mean, well, part of that is her being so visible as a prolific and fantastic female creator, which I can't stress how important this is to be able to see that as a young female comics creator, to know that there are women who are so successful. I mean, when I started out, I didn't believe that there were female creators because I couldn't see them. Now I know that there's an even, I would say an even number of male and female creators.

If you pop into LCAP, the East London Comic Arts Festival, next month you'll see there's a very sort of equal balance. But at the time, and from the outside of the comics world, it looks as though it seems to be very male-oriented, very male-skewed. To have somebody so visible, as I say, as a matriarch, to be able to follow is very important.

What would you say the industry is like for women now? I mean, I look at the papers every day and I see a lot of men's names doing the cartoons. What's it like for you, young and upcoming? I think that's very true, but I'd like to think that all these men are kind of an older generation and there's definitely lots of young women on Instagram and different kind of social media platforms who are kind of coming through and making themselves seen. So I think it's...

But do you get paid if you're doing it on Instagram? No, you don't. Unless you're kind of a massive following. I mean, I think it's more to do with kind of exposure and kind of hopefully seeing, being visibly popular, having a kind of a positive influence on somebody hopefully paying you. Edith Pritchett, Hanna Berry and Paul Gravett. Now on Bank Holiday Monday, Tina Dehealy will be exploring what women wear at work

and whether it really matters. And then on Tuesday next week, what's it like to come out to your parents? How do you prepare? What if it all goes wrong? Tina will speak to Amelia Abraham, author of Queer Intentions, and the YouTuber

Riyad Khalaf, the author of Yay, You're Gay, Now What? And of course, we'd like to hear from you. If you've experienced coming out as a parent or as a child, please get in touch with us. You can email us through the website. And that's all for this Saturday afternoon. Do enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Bye-bye. 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.