Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Women in Afghanistan, Composer Gabriela Ortiz, Tourette Syndrome

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

Five years after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, we hear how it has changed women’s lives in the country and beyond. Anita Rani speaks to 21-year-old Purvin Juma who fled to the UK from Afghanistan in 2021 and the human rights activist Shaharzad Akbar.The Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz won three Grammys for her 2024 album Revolución diamantina, and this week saw the work's UK premiere at the BBC Proms. Gabriela joined Nuala McGovern to discuss how this work was inspired by Mexico’s 2019 Glitter Revolution, the nationwide feminist protests sparked by the rape of a teenage girl by four police officers, during which activists covered Mexico City’s security chief in pink glitter.Dr Amanda Cole found out she had Tourette syndrome in her twenties. Now a professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Cambridge, Dr Cole joins Nuala to discuss her decision to share her diagnosis with her students.A serial sex attacker who had a 'morbid fascination' with sex has been jailed for the rest of his life after he was found guilty of murdering two women and raping a third. His sentence comes after police and the Crown Prosecution Service apologised over a series of disastrous decisions that left him free to roam the streets. To discuss the implications of this case, Anita was joined by Helen Millichap, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, and the author and journalist Joan Smith.Kelly Latimer, flight test pilot and aeronautical engineer, is retiring this year after decades spent flying the world's most advanced planes, and even going into space. She reflects on a truly remarkable career.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty McQuire

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Growing businesses deal with the same problem, too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service, Odu gives you one place. to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the program. Coming up, the composer who turned feminist protest

into a BBC prom's premiere. We asked why a convicted sex offender was free to reaffirm. fend, and we hear from the professor who learned to speak out about Tourette's syndrome. But first, this weekend marks five years since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Life there, especially for women and girls, has completely changed. UNESCO estimates that 2.4 million girls are now excluded from secondary school education. They believe this could approach 4 million by the year 2030. The restrictions on women and girls have become progressive. more extreme. They're barred from most jobs, from parks, gyms and swimming pools and from

raising their voices in public. Some were lucky enough to escape back when the Taliban came to power in 2021. Pervin Juma, whose 21, is from the Hazara minority, which has been persecuted by the Taliban in the past. Thanks to her father's British connections, she and her family got to the UK and have settled in the Midlands. When I spoke to Pervin earlier this week, she told me what she remembers from the day they arrived at Kabul Airport. There was millions of people. I remember I was holding my younger sister who was 10 at that time. I was holding her hand very tightly

because I knew if I just let her go, she will be gone forever. It was really hard. I could see moms and people crying for their child because they were lost. So basically we had to go through millions of people in there until we arrived to a pool, which was about three meters deep, all filled with dirty water, human waste. So all we had to do is wait for my father, hold on each other tight, and my father hold his British passport up and said, look, I'm a British citizen.

That was the time when the British army said, sorry, you just can't bring your mother with you because you're allowed to bring only your wife and your kids. So they sent my grandmother off, and that was when we didn't even see her again. So really chaotic and quite scary scenes from the airport in Kabul. Very scary, very scary. Because it wasn't only rush, it was the heat. It was the hunger, the thirstiness.

And Taliban was shooting at people to live the airport because they didn't want the people to live from the airport to go to other countries to save their lives. My youngest sister was one-year-old at that time. and my poor mom was feeding her, breastfeeding her, while she was very hungry herself. And we stayed in the airport for two nights, cold nights, hot days. It was summer in Afghanistan, it gets really hot as well. And because we didn't know we were going to stay in the airport,

so we didn't take any water or food, because we didn't even expect to live the country. We were like, we're just going to give it a try. We might not even go. Sitting on that dirt with millions and millions of other people at the airport, airport. Heartbreaking to see the moms crying for their kids because they were not allowed to come with them, to see moms are giving birth on that dirt, you know, seeing people asking for water. It was just a heart-shattering. I mean, I would never forget it and it will be forever in my mind. And then you landed in the UK. And then you started college pretty soon after arriving.

What was that like? And I have to say, your English is exceptional, considering how quickly you've learned it. So the first month, they opened an English centre for all the refugees who literally just arrived. In that group, we learned like ABC and like, hi, how were you? That was like very basic things. I had to take three different undergrounds, one bus, to get to college. I remember the first time I was taking pictures of the stations to remember to be able to read which one should I just get off. What a huge culture shock just landing in central London, having to navigate the tubes. system with no English. And you've just finished your first year of nursing at Birmingham City

University. Yes. Enjoying your studies? Absolutely love it. Especially my placements. I didn't have the confidence because when I first chose this course, I was like, oh God, you know, how will I be able to speak like them or just, you know, get the needs of other people and stuff like that? But then the first day of my placement, I went with my patients out and I was like, this is what I would love to do for the rest of my life. I wonder, Pervin, how you feel when you think about the women and girls who are still in Afghanistan? I still am in touch with all of my friends from Afghanistan, my classmates.

We still have a WhatsApp group chat where we share the daily activities sometimes. All they have is their phone and it's really even hard to get access to internet at that time because it's quite expensive. All of them like married, engaged, having kids. Some of them have like two kids and they are much. my age or younger than me. And it's heartbreaking, no freedom, no education, no work, nothing, nothing for them, not even the very basic human rights. I don't see the same smiles on their face anymore. I just don't see the happiness, the shine in their eyes anymore. No hope, no hope.

And they always tell me, oh, you know, you're very lucky. You've got these opportunities. And I'm like, I wish I could help you guys as well. It's really heartbreaking. No freedom at all. and I've got everything, but they haven't got anything. How do you feel looking back on the journey that you've had to get you to where you are today? When I look back, especially the experience from the airport and everything, I don't really want to even talk to my youngest sister about it anymore because I really don't want her to recall any of the tiny memories that she could recall.

And I actually am proud of myself, and especially my mom, she is working really hard, and she left her parents, siblings, everyone behind. as well, her 38 years of life behind holding everything in a backpack. I really admire her because, sorry, my voice has just gone down a little bit. She didn't even know any English as same as mine, but for me it was quite fine because I was young and could learn things quite easily. But for her, I can tell now she's preparing for her British citizenship. She's studying really hard. She goes three days to college, two days with another Afghan man. teaching them English. Really proud of her, really. And I want to say a huge thank you to all of

their volunteers in Southwell, especially my English grandmother, Jill, who helped us a lot. I mean, none of them would have been possible without any of their helps. Pervin Juma there. I also spoke to the human rights activist and visiting fellow at Walshoun College, Oxford, Scheherazade Akbar, who, like Pervin, also left in August 2021. I began by asking her how she was feeling about the anniversary. Well, Anita, this is a very difficult day and this is a very heavy week. It's half a decade since my sisters back home have been deprived of all their basic rights. And so this heaviness sits with me every day of August, in fact.

And I try to hang on to little rays of hope that comes from solidarity that I see from women and people everywhere with women of Afghanistan. and from the carriage and resistance that I see from women inside Afghanistan who are still trying to learn, to build, to stay connected. And you're still recording human rights violations, but now obviously from outside of the country. What are you hearing from the women and girls who you support? Well, most women that we talk to, they feel imprisoned in their homes. They say we are alive but not living.

We are breathing, but we don't really have a life. their mental health situation is extremely bad. Just a recent union survey showed that seven out of ten women described their mental health situation as bad or very bad in Afghanistan. There's a mental health crisis because of all the restrictions that women are experiencing. The most vulnerable are women victims of violence, which sometimes can be minors, can be young girls, girls as young as 13 and 14 who have been married against their will

and are living with abusive husbands or abusive families. And in the current legal framework in Afghanistan, a woman victim of abuse can't even go to court if she's experiencing sexual abuse, rape, emotional abuse, economic abuse, psychological abuse. All of this are not crimes. She can only go to court if she's being beaten so badly that she has obvious bruises and broken bones.

And so imagine this 14-year-old, for instance, I heard about her last week, She wants to go to the judge to claim, you know, to lodge a complaint against her husband. First, she needs to get a male family member on board to accompany her because she can't access justice without a man accompany her. Then she has to relay her story to this man, be it her brother, her father, to relay to the judge. If she is lucky enough to get her complaints approved, her husband will go to jail for 15 days. This is less punishment than abuse of animals, which lands you in jail for three months.

So the husband will go to jail for 15 days and then will be returned to live with her because also there are no shelters to take women victims of domestic abuse, no legal support lately for women, victims of domestic abuse. So these are the sort of testimonies that we document, that we try to relay with the UN, with the International Criminal Court, and try to seek assistance and support and pressure to change these policies so women can have access to their rights. I mean, you know, this sort of this gender apartheid that we're watching unfold

and we talk about it all the time on Women's Hour. And I listed earlier, you know, what restrictions have been placed on women since September 2021. What could the international community be doing to help? What more could be done? I mean, it's five years. And the main thing that we have seen from international community, I think the main reason for lack of impact is that they are quite fragmented on their response to Afghanistan. Taliban like to deal bilaterally, which each country, and then with each country, they prioritize interests of those countries. In Europe, for instance, now the priority is deportations.

EU hosted Taliban in June to discuss deportations. So they are willing to look away from the gender apartheid as long as they can. deport a few Afghans back to Afghanistan until their own constituency that they are tough on migration. In the UK, which says that it stands with women of Afghanistan, there's a visa, study visa break in place right now on four countries. That includes women and girls in Afghanistan. So I know girls who got into universities in the UK or were hoping to come to universities in the UK having studied under extremely difficult situations at home, but they can't come now because there's a visa break from the UK, for instance. Similarly, other countries,

countries as well are prioritizing, you know, their short-term national interests. They're not looking, they're not responding to this crisis proportionate to the level of the crisis. This is the worst women's rights crisis in the world. And I wonder if this crisis was happening to Maine, what would the response look like? Would we have the same response from China, from Iran, from UK, from, you know, Germany? Would it be the same level of indifference that we are seeing in lack of action? Another area where the world can move, you know, the international community, can move quickly is international accountability. Germany and three other countries, Australia, Netherlands, Canada initiated a legal initiative. They can potentially take Taliban to international

court of justice. Two years later, we see no action. We suspect this is because Germany wants a good relationship with the Taliban because of deportation. It's heartbreaking to see the situation in Afghanistan because of the impact for Afghan women and girls now and because of the future impact, because it's costing us $1 billion a year, it costs the country, the current policies, the economic cost. But it's also really even more heartbreaking to see that despite this, the Taliban are being welcomed, there is the corporate reception of them. They are being normalized, and women of Afghanistan are being erased,

not just by the Taliban, but by the international community. Shaharazad Akbar, and we also heard the story of 21-year-old Pervin Juma. Next, to the award-winning Mexican composer Gabriella Orters, who's been inspired by women's street protests. She won three Grammys for her 2024 album, Revolution Diamantia. And this week saw the works UK premiere at the BBC proms when conductor Gustavo Dudamel led the LA Philharmonic Prom at London's Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday night. Mexico's 2019 Glitter Revolution saw. nationwide feminist protests sparked by the rape of a teenage girl by four police officers, during which activists covered Mexico City's security chief in pink glitter.

Well, Gabriella joined Nula in the Woman's Hour studio earlier this week on the eve of her proms premiere. Nula began by asking Gabriela how those glitter protests had affected her and her creativity. In 2019, you know, this, you know, young girl was raped by a police officer. And all these, you know, collective women, you know, groups went to the streets and threw glitter everywhere. But they didn't do only that. I mean, they threw glitter and then became very violent and they grow graffities in all, you know, these important monuments. And, you know, these protests became very controversial. So since that day, you know, all these, you know, academics called the day of the glitter revolution because of that.

So immediately when I decided to write a ballet I thought about, you know, I mean, I think I need to speak about, you know, all these, you know, differences of violence against women. And this is an exploration about that. And what does it take to write for a ballet? It must be somewhat different from some of the other works that you've done. Well, in the case of the ballet, you have to tell story. I mean, you can do something very abstract in terms of music.

but I wanted to talk about an important subject. So in this case, I decided to talk about, you know, the violence against women in Mexico because every single day, 11 women are killed in my country. And I decided, well, I'm an artist. I need to speak about that. Yes, I went to Mexico City with BBC's 100 women 10 years ago. It was 2016, and it was to explore that issue of femicide,

which they believed was a crisis point then 10 years ago, a decade ago, but I did look up some of the figures since then, and it has actually gotten worse, which was very sad news really to read about how those figures have increased instead of decreased. And of course, your work comes through this time as well. I want to play a clip from, this is Act 6, Speaking the Unspeakable. So much energy there. Tell me a little bit about your thinking behind that now that we've listened to a little. Well, when I decided to explore all the different kinds of violence against women. I did this collaboration with a Mexican writer, Christina Rivera Garza.

She just recently won the Pulitzer Prize in U.S. For a book, you know, Christina's sister was killed by her boyfriend a long time ago in the 90s. And so, and this, you know, the cases still remains there. I mean, you know, the killer is still out there. And so Christina knows this object very well. So what we did is an exploration of all the different kinds of domestic, I mean domestic violence or physical violence or psychological violence. So this is, I mean, and so I did this with Christina.

And just the little clip that we just heard is it's about, you know, all the different stages of domestic violence. Now there's a, there's a documentation, fortunately, you know, the Mexican government, printed a documentation of all these different stages. When you are in a toxic relationship, you can really realize where you are. So that movement exactly talks about that. So at the beginning, the music, it's not so violent, but as soon as, you know, the music develops becomes more violent.

But let's talk about you as a Mexican woman coming into the world of classical music. How was that? Hard. Very hard. Well, I mean, yes, I mean, in Mexico, you know, I started, you know, studying and I did my, you know, I went to the university and everything. But then, then for me, you know, to get an international recognition that was hard because as a Latin American composer, you know, it was very difficult. I have to confess that normally, you know, the future of music for so many years has been detected by Europe. And so the fact that. The fact that. The fact. The fact. that I came from Latin America, the fact that, you know, it's a totally different culture, is a totally different continent. Well, my aesthetic was totally different as well. So it took me a lot of time to, you know, to really... But you didn't have to pair it back. Like I read that some critics called your music too exotic, for example. And I know rhythm was so important to you and aspects that perhaps were missing in some European classical music. I'm just wondering how

you stayed the course to be able to remain yourself and not be, I suppose, reduced to what perhaps they wanted you to be? Well, you know, everybody thinks about, you know, Latin America, you know, with different kinds of stereotypes or labels. And I'm totally against that because it's really a lack of knowledge about, you know, what Latin America is and about Mexico. Mexico's a huge country and it's a multicultural country. So, I mean, we have so many different things. things happening. And so the fact that, okay, you know, Latin American music has to be really enjoyable and like fiesta kind of thing. And yeah, we have that. But we have other things and we can be profound and we can be, you know, I mean, yeah, different. So this idea that, you know,

okay, Latin American, so you have to write really Edanson or a mariachi piece, I mean, it's actually completely unfair. You know, we have the right to do so many things. And when you think about all these European composers, you don't think that, you know, Mozart is exotic composer or you're not, you know, putting all these labels into these composers. Why, you know, we have to have those labels. I mean, we come from Latin American.

So can we get back to little Gabriela for a moment? You had a piano teacher, who I believe was the catalyst for your career. Can you tell me about the moment when you decided to be. become a composer? You know, I decided, I mean, obviously I played the piano and I play the normal your parents were musicians as well, folk musicians. Yeah, they will, yeah, they belong to this, you know, a group very important in the 60s, Los Folkloristas. So I grew up, listened to all this folk music and I love it, by the way. But then I decided to play the piano. My mother, you know, knew that I love music and she was the one that, you know, I offered me to play the piano and to get me a

piano teacher. And then, you know, when I start playing Bartok's music, you know, Bartok comes from Hungary and his music is different from Mozart or Beethoven. And then, you know, it's very rhythmic in certain ways. So I found a connection with Bartok. And I was playing, you know, these little pieces by this book that it's called Microcosmos. And then I decided, well, if Bartok is writing little pieces for piano, I'm going to try to do that. So I didn't. did. That's what I did. And then I love it. I simply love it. And I decided, well, I think, I don't think I have a future as a pianist, but I think maybe I could have a future as a composer. Gabriella Orte's speaking to Nula there. And you can listen back to her Revolutione Diamantia,

performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel on BBC Sounds and IPlayer paired with Beethoven's 7th Symphony. Still to come on the program, how one girl's dream of spaceflight eventually became a reality despite twists, turns and setbacks along the way. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to the daily podcast for free via BBC Sounds. Now, when Dr. Amanda Cole found out that she had Tourette's syndrome in her 20s, she thought it would destroy her life. Now she's an assistant professor in sociolinguistics at the University of Cambridge. The neurological condition affects more than 300,000 children and adults in the UK

and can cause people to make sudden repetitive sounds or movements. Having previously kept her diagnosis hidden, Amanda has now shared it with her students. When Nula sat down with Amanda earlier this week, she asked her how she came to get her Tourette's diagnosis. Well, so when I was sort of 15-16, I started getting a, movement at the back of my throat. So I saw various specialists and eventually with my mum we saw a neurologist and the neurologist was the first to say, okay, I think this is a tick. But at that point, it was just that one tick. It was kind of intermittent. It wasn't something I was really worried about. And they said, you know, it might just go, don't worry about it, basically. Just get on with

your life. And then as time went on, I just picked up more and more and more motor ticks. I saw a neurologist at various different points. I had various tests to rule out other things. And then it was sort of my early 20s, I think I started getting vocal ticks. So I started saying things and that was the point where they said okay we think this is Tourette's but what was that like for you know a young woman coming that there's a diagnosis but even before the diagnosis for your body your voice to be doing things involuntarily yeah it was it was frightening and I think I think what really frightened me was the fault of Tourette's because I didn't know anyone with Tourette's there's still I think very little public understanding of Tourette's and I guess I was

so victim to that, but to me, Tourette's was, what I still think prevails, is this very sensationalised portrayal of it that we see in the media, often where people are acting it, and it is absolutely this point of ridicule, and it is stereotyped, it's very extreme, and often it is people swearing, or saying kind of vulgar things, which is a form of Tourette's, but actually it's a minority of people with Tourette's have that, so between 10 and 30% of people. But obviously, to me, this is just what I thought was going to happen to me, or I just thought Tourette's going to ruin my life. It's like everything I've been working towards, like what I'm learning at school.

All of that is going to be basically completely invalidated because I'm going to have this condition outside of my control that is going to mean that that is all I'm ever going to achieve Tourette's. And what you mentioned there, because we mentioned there's different types of Tourette's. Coprolalia is one type of Tourette's where people sometimes can involuntarily, say, obscene words or terms, which some people, I think, maybe have a stereotype that they have in their head sometimes about that.

We'll come back to that particular aspect because it was in the news as well. But for you, your day-to-day life, how do you find it? So I think most people probably would have no idea that I've got Tourette's unless I tell them. Or if they know me very well, they probably would then start to pick up on it and I would tell people.

But the ticks are something I'm actually able to suppress to quite a high degree. And that varies from people, like from person to person with Tourette's. Some people can't really suppress their ticks at all. They just come out. but I can kind of suppress them, which makes it sound like it's just not a big deal, but it kind of really is,

because suppression is something that does take quite a big emotional and physical toll. Some people say it's like holding in a sneeze. I would kind of liken it to being like, just go about your life, but just never blink, or only blink if no one's ever going to notice. So that's kind of how I, so got about, you know, if you weren't allowed to blink,

you'd be like, okay, no one's looking at me right now, I'm going to like getting loads of blinks and then I'm going to turn away and blink. And that's kind of how I manage my ticks. And I think that's something, it, I've never even really done consciously, but since I was young, I've just, it's become so, so, so, like, highly tuned, so fine grain now that I'm doing it so, like, so subconsciously that I tick when I think people aren't looking, when I think can get away with it, or even,

like, the vocal tick, sometimes I can say in my head or just, like, say something quiet enough that I think it's going to just kind of take the edge off. But I, and I think suppression can make sometimes people think that my Tourette's and other people's is mild or that it's not an issue. but it is it's like this real feeling of like uncomfortableness itchiness and it's something that really can like take your focus away and that is something that actually is hard to manage and I can understand that it takes an awful lot of energy to do that and I think we're all multitaskers

but with Tourette's you're doing your life but also always in the background you're thinking am I ticking is anyone looking at me ticking how am I going to hide this tick or even just doing that subconsciously but it's something that is really kind of energy and time consuming and that's why I kind of feel as well like I don't kind of want to be the sort of palatable face of Tourette's that it's basically okay because I've got Tourette's but nobody notices. And I think I want to be able to tick freely and I want that stigma and shame to be kind of dismantled in society so that we can tick freely. And I would say also about coprolalia because I don't have coprolalia.

I don't say vulgar things. But I think we have to as a society split apart the person and the tick. You were inspired to speak out about your diagnosis. as I understand, after an incident at this year's BAFTAs, where the Tourette's campaigner, John Davidson, who has Coprolalia, he involuntarily shouted racial slur because of an involuntary verbal tick

while the cinema stars Michael B. Jordan and Deloy Lindo were presenting one of the categories. It was so public, I guess. I'm just wondering what your initial reaction was to the fallout from that moment or your thoughts on now. I just found it a very upsetting time, and I think it was for lots and lots of groups of people, and I think people with Tourette's as well really did feel that.

It was a hard time. It's a complex case, but I think one of the real things that struck me about it is that there's such a big societal misunderstanding of Touretz. I saw lots of commentary around it being, like a tick being akin to like a Freudian slip or a person saying something maybe that they really mean, but Tourette's where, you know, you just don't have that filter that stops you. And that's just not the case. Often when people have coprolailut tips, they're saying,

it's like their brain making them say the kind of worst thing that they could possibly say in that moment. And I think that understanding was actually missing in a lot of the commentary that I saw. And it actually isn't just about coprilalia. It's about Tourette's generally. There's so little research. There's so little public understanding. There are so many misconceptions around Tourette's. And I think it really is time for us to kind of break those down. And of course there's a lot of criticism as well about following the event. I know the BBC said that they profoundly regretted the events around that broadcast

and that they apologised for the serious mistake that was made in allowing a racial slur to be broadcast and then remain on the eye player overnight and into that Monday morning, they do say they understand the hurt and shock that the mistake caused. But you have, coming back to your bravery, you have spoken to your students at Cambridge about it. How does it feel now?

Does it feel different? I actually think when people know I've got Tourette's, it is actually somehow a bit liberating because then I do think, okay, well, if the tick kind of slips out or like, you know, if they notice, it does kind of take that pressure away I think of where I was constantly trying to hide it the whole time.

So, yeah, I think it has been a positive experience overall. Do you think your lived experience of Tourette's would have been different if you were born a man? Yeah, I think it would be, yeah, as I suppose it probably is for everything, all the experiences that we have as we walk throughout our lives. I think there's going to be that difference. But we do know that there are some differences in the way that Tourette's can kind of present between men and women. and I mean it's obviously not my area of academic expertise but we know there has been lots of research that has shown that

but even within the research done so much of it is focused on men in fact nearly all of the research on Tourette's is on men or within those studies if there are women predominantly the subjects of men so our understanding of Tourette's is still very much skewed masculine and we do know things like women or girls tend to have a slightly later onset we know that women are less likely to have remission

of ticks over the lifespan and that's something I felt like I was told by a neurologist in my early 20s, by the time you're 40, you won't even have ticks anymore. Like, they'll just get better and better. But actually, they just seem to be getting worse and worse. And actually, it's only when I kind of looked into it that I read, oh, actually the female experience does actually tend to go more that way. And I think I've been told a lot of the way that it presents in men. Right. So just there is not that research that we often come up against you in any medical conditions that women have. And I know that there was a study from the movement disorderous clinical practice that they were talking about long-term overall positive

prognosis for individuals with Tourette's, but as you mentioned, it's mainly studies are done on men. You do have, just in our last 30 seconds or so, let's talk about some of the positives. You have hyper-focus, I hear. Yeah, so Tourette's very rarely comes alone. So 90% of people who have Tourette's tend to have it with other conditions, such as ADHD, OCD, autism. So we actually kind of have to think of it as this sort of profile or like a cluster of different conditions. But specifically within Tourette's, there have been shown there are loads of benefits. So things like hyperfocus, high levels of empathy, creativity, tend to be articulate and have good communication skills. And these are all great things. And I think it just shows that Tourette's

is a specific way of being rather than something that has to hold you back. Dr. Amanda Cole speaking to Noola there. And if you have any concerns about your own health, we advise you speak to your GP. There's one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odo.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. Now, as you will have heard in the news over the last few days, a serial sex attacker who had a morbid fascination with sex has been jailed for the rest of his life after he was found guilty of murdering

two women and raping a third. 40-year-old Simon Levy killed Carmenza Valencia Trujillo in March 2025 and Cheryl Wilkins five months later. Earlier that year, he raped a third woman in the same Tottenham car park

where Wilkins was later found dead. Levy will never be released, but his sentence comes after police and the Crown Prosecution Service apologized over a series of disastrous decisions that left him free to roam the streets. The Independent Office for Police Conduct or the IOPC is currently examining how Levy was managed over the four-year period from his first conviction in September

2021 for sexual assault up to his final arrest in September 2025. To discuss the implications of this case, on Thursday I was joined by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Miller-Chap, director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, and the author and journalist Joan Smith. Given that politicians and law enforcement agencies repeatedly say violence against women and girls is a priority, I started by asking Helen how a proven sex offender could be free to murder two women in London. It's the right question to ask, of course, and this case is devastating. And I know that some of what is being heard about this case by women and girls in London particularly,

but potentially and obviously nationally as well is going to make them wonder about safety. It's going to make them wonder about trust in the police and awfully it might make them less willing to come forward to us if they're experiencing sexual assault or any of the range of sexual harms we know were experienced here by the women involved. And can I just say before we go into the thing I'd love to be able to talk about a bit

which is what are we doing and how we do see this as a national emergency with a continuing amount of pressure from us to get things better, to just acknowledge the undeniable harm to the women affected by his crimes. Do you, like many women listening today, have your head in your hands as well? I think that's quite a fair description, because as well as being a police officer with a very important role to try and make sure that we are doing everything possible,

to still listen to everything being said to us about where the system is currently failing, but also my responsibility is to keep trying to encourage people to report, to come forward and where they may legitimately not have the faith to come to the police, there are many other services who can give immediate help. Well, earlier this morning on the Today Programme, we heard the response of Mina Smallman, mother of sisters, Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman, who were murdered in North London in 2020. Let's have a listen to what she had to say. He was on the sex offenders list.

So that should be high priority. and the system failed. The problem is that there is no joined-up thinking. You know, the attacks and the way he attacked people and how many women he attacked, his hunting ground was London transport. He knew he could just get on a train and attack women willy-nilly.

This is ridiculous. The Met knew he was dangerous but failed. The courts knew he was dangerous, He was dangerous, but they let him out. They put him in, but they let him out. He actually attacked a female prison officer. How on earth do you get out of prison and you have sexually assaulted a prison officer?

Helen, what lessons must be learnt from this case? So there are lessons about how we treat victims when they come forward, and I'll go into a bit more detail if that's all right about that. but there are also lessons about how we can't rely on a victim coming forward necessarily to understand the risk posed by people. That puts pressure on victims. The police and law enforcement have to get much better at detecting predatory behaviour, not only through the reports that come from victims, but the ways we join the dot on the reports we may already have in a system that, as is described, is not sufficiently joined up,

but also the things that we might be able to spot if we do good basic police work, in the public spaces, be it transport, be it parks, be it, you know, nighttime economy premises, where people, women, girls may be telling us they feel less safe. We are already doing work like this. It needs to be scaled up and it needs to be deeper work. But, for example, plainclothes officers going to places where we know women feel unsafe or where we've seen a spike in relation to the kind of offences we're talking about, watching people, watching presidary men, intervening before harm happens.

because we do know the volume of these issues is high, and our ability as a system which is a certain size to deal with it, part of the issues we're seeing in this case as well, is a real challenge, as the Commissioner outlined this morning on the other programme. Why? Well, because if you think about, for example, the number of monitored sex offenders and how that brilliant legislation that encourages the collaboration

to monitor risk in the community, ever since that legislation has been in place, we are expanding that group of offenders and we are a system attempting to manage in collaboration. It's not just the police, obviously, it's probation partners as well, a really large number of people making it really incumbent on us to spot the risk within the risk and really understand where the highest harm is. The answer here is obviously good law enforcement and policing where we can, but it's also about prevention and I think it's about trying to make sure we're working across

the system to take out these behaviours and to make sure that these crimes don't happen in the first place. I'm always trying to talk about the whole system and it's easy to say that. You need to break it down. What exactly do you mean? It's education. It's spotting things before they get to an escalated level and dealing with them. But it's a challenge with the system the size it is. Joan, what's your reaction to this case? And what are your biggest concerns? Well, it's three and a half years since the government announced that violence against women and girls would be part of the strategic policing requirement, which means that it's put on the same level of priority as terrorism and organised crime. And can we imagine anybody who's a suspected terrorist being arrested so many

times for so many offences, getting bail time after time? You know, the court accepting excuses, he didn't turn up, I think, on three occasions for court hearings. And he said he wasn't well. He said he had mental health issues. Why was he not arrested? It's a whole system of failure. So how does the criminal justice system need to change to recognise the risk posed by repeat perpetrators? Well, I think what this exposes is the failure that the sheer numbers of these dangerous men and the difficulty of monitoring them. So the probation service, I think, is currently looking after working with 244,000 people. That's a huge workload. And there's the question of what happens if someone breaches a protection order or, you know,

a woman whose ex-partner has come out of prison is not allowed to go near her. The National Audit Office looked last month at what happens when a woman reports a breach of an order. And in about half the cases, nothing happens. And so, you know, women are being told, don't worry, he'll be monitored, he'll be subject to exclusion orders. But nothing happens when he re-offends. So I think it is a whole system failure. But it's also about the real absolute importance of believing victims and also just believing how bad these men actually are.

Helen, it's five years since the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer. And police told us then that it was going to be a turning point for restoring trust in forces across the UK. It just hasn't happened. And I understand why you are saying that so directly to me and I absolutely say that there is so much further we need to go. But I also want to take an opportunity to talk about some of the work that is going on.

and it has surfaced in this case as well so by no means finished in terms of what's required of us but victims feeling that they are taken seriously across the range of sexual offences that we're talking about here which can include everything from non-contact sexual offending right through to rape and making sure that whether you are the first responder, the call handler, the neighbourhood officer

who might be the first person a victim comes to to disclose what's happened is entirely able to correctly handle that in a way that makes a victim feel believed, gives them confidence that they are taken seriously, and is acted upon quickly, particularly in circumstances where you may say the individual single incident is at a certain level in our threshold of crime, but if you take it together with other things that might have happened in the same place

or potentially the same perpetrator, when you look at the whole pattern and make the links, which I know in the past we have very definitely failed to do, you start to get a sense of how you see the wood for the trees here and really start to target the most harmful perpetrators. Well, that's incredibly important because there are two things I wonder here is that, you know, senior officers like you understand patterns of crime. I wonder whether it's filtered down to, you know,

the ordinary detective constable or PC who's called out to a crime. But the other thing is escalation, because all of these offences are serial. A man very rarely commits a rape or a sexual assault and then goes back to leading a complete blameless life. These are men who actually continue to commit these offences and they escalate. And if the criminal justice system lets the women down,

they escalate to things like murder. I mean, Simon Levy didn't start out as a murderer. He started out as somebody who assaulted women, who raped women. And they develop a sense of impunity. I'm sure you've seen this, Helen, that men who are being arrested, being asked about crimes, and then nothing happens, they develop a sense of impunity. And that's why I argue that in some ways the criminal justice system is actually creating serial offenders.

Helen. I don't think I would accept quite that categorisation, but the parts of that that I most definitely agree with is that unless every person in the workforce who is charged with the very solid responsibility of receiving a disclosure from a potential victim of a crime like this, that in my mind there is no such thing as a lesser sexual offence or a so-called less serious sexual offence and I think part of our system in the past has put false thresholds in between the categories of offending here

and we're working so very hard through Operation Ceteria to recognise that if you absolutely take a suspect-focused view of the crime in front of you, consider what else that suspect might be in terms of posing a risk wider than what you have immediately in front of you. That is the answer to some of this. and I'm determined to make sure that that sort of philosophy, which is academically driven, it's informed by the voices of victims, survivors and the specialist sector, is applied to the much wider range of offences that we've got

so that all of them feel sufficiently serious to the officer. And as Joan suggested, is it being filtered down? Is this message being heard by everybody? Well, I think we're starting to, and I know that it will be patchy, because I think one of the reasons, the centre that I'm now that have the privilege of being director of in its first year, And the whole purpose of that is to set a single good standard nationally for Chief Constable and forces to follow and setting up what we expect to be the standard around this so that literally every person is doing the right thing,

not just a patchwork of good and less good. Joan, what questions should we be asking about a system that's designed to protect women? Well, just exactly how it protects women. I mean, the commission this morning was talking about the sheer volume of men who are having to be monitored. And so these are men who are on the sex offenders register, who've committed multiple offences against women, who've come out of prison. What exactly does the monitoring consist of?

And, you know, we know that from the National Audit Office, that some men who are supposed to be wearing tags. I mean, the National Audit's Office thought about 9,000 men who should be wearing tags and not wearing them. The government says it's only 5.5,000, but that's still only 5.5,000. Helen, at the centre of this, we've just got to come back to trust and women.

I mean, what would you say to women who look at the big picture and decide it's just not worth reporting a violent or a sexual attack because they just feel the justice system doesn't work to protect them. And I understand that that might be how some people feel. I would urge them and I hope that by listening to my determination on this point to really support national policing to make the improvements necessary, to recognise where I am saying we are training officers better, I am ever hopeful that the reaction that a victim gets when they come to us is excellent

and consistently excellent. but and if a victim of a crime like this is not ready to come to police, there are all sorts of other ways that they can get immediate help. The sexual assault referral centres will collect forensics, will provide medical and therapeutic support, and will allow us to identify, even though the victim remains completely anonymous, anything that the policing can take from that

and give the victim a choice potentially later down the track to come to us. That was the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Millerchap, Director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection and the author and journalist Joan Smith. And if you've been affected by anything you've heard in this discussion, you can go to the BBC Action Line website where you will find links to support. And here's some more of the statement, the Crown Prosecution Service centres about the case of Simon Levy.

We recognise the level of concern around this case and we've carried out a detailed review of our handling. We accept there was relevant information regarding bail that was not provided to the court when bail applications were being considered. Our actions fell short of the standards that victims, families and the public are entitled to expect. In particular, there were points where we should and could have taken a more robust approach to representations about bail based on the information available. We cannot know what decisions the courts would have made had different or stronger representations been advanced. But we recognise our responsibility and we are sorry for the shortcomings we have identified.

We are taking action to strengthen training, case oversight, and our approach to bail and risk in serious sexual offence cases. Now, have you ever lost your call when your car stalled at a roundabout? What about stalling a plane at 30,000 feet on purpose? Well, here's a woman who has made a career out of performing such terrifying feats. Kelly Latimer, the trailblazing flight test pilot and aeronautical engineer is retiring this year after decades spent flying the world's most advanced planes and in more recent years, even piloting spacecraft.

She was the first female research test pilot hired at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. And as you might imagine, following the astronaut dream as a woman was not always the most direct path. Well, Nula spoke to Kelly and she asked her, had she always known she wanted to live life quite literally on the edge. I'd always wanted to be an astronaut. You know, that was like from a little kid, and I was just fascinated with space. I was like a little space nerd growing up.

I mean, I loved sci-fi and would get books on moon and Mars and all that stuff. So that was really what motivated me just wanting to be an astronaut. So what happened? I mean, we wouldn't have had that many role models, let's say, you know, when we were growing up for female astronauts. Yeah, you know, so when I was looking it up, so for me, I was, you know, it was about junior high because I figured by high school I needed to have a serious plan, you know, how to make this happen. So I went to the library, pulled out the encyclopedia and read about astronauts. And yeah, they were all men. It was all, you know, like it was all test pilots and they were all fighter pilots.

But at that time, they had just changed the rule to allow women to be military pilots. That was around 77 was the first class of women to graduate. So my timing was great. And I thought, well, sure, there aren't women astronauts yet. But that's just because they haven't had the path and the ability to do that. And I'm coming along right at the perfect time. I love this girl. I love this girl in the library making a plan. Yeah. And what's funny is, you know, the encyclopedias. And so I started reading about how do you become a test pilot? Well, you have to be an officer. And I was like, oh, how do you become an officer? And, you know, I looked at the different services. And it was like, you can go, you know, ROTC. You can go to the academies. I'm like, ooh, the academies. I just saw this movie, women at West Point about the first women going to West Point. So I start looking up the academies and they go, you have to be a male. And I was like, no, I know they changed it. But it was an older. encyclopedia. So you had to go and get every year they had a little change sheet, right? Because

the encyclopedias only came out like four or five years. So I found the change. I'm like, oh, okay, I knew it. Yes. Women are allowed to go. So you applied for the Air Force Academy, thinking this is the path that you're going to take. This is the early 80s. I understand that you kept it a secret from your parents. Yeah. Well, because I just thought they would think, I didn't think they were against me going. I just thought they would think I was crazy wanting to do it, but I was just determined that was the plan. So I actually wrote, before my freshman year, I wrote a little typed letter to the Academy. You know, dear sirs, my name is Kelly Latimer. I'll be attending high school. I would like to get information about applying to the Air Force Academy. I would be,

you know, applying for the class entering in 1983, and they sent me a whole package. So I got the package, hit in my room, read all about it. I had the whole plan on how to get there. I was very motivated. What happened to the dream to become an astronaut? So I could still, I was still building my resume to be able to go to test pilot school. So I couldn't do the route, the fighter pilot route, which is at that point, most of the astronauts who were pilots were fighter pilots, but women were coming along going to test pilot school, but with a cargo background. Having to do a diverted course, let's say. And so as I watched it, the first shuttle pilot was Eileen Collins, and that's what she did. So just right ahead of me was my first role model.

If you can see it, you can be it. Yeah. So I was. went to test pilot school, 96, graduated. Then I did three years of flight testing. So at this point, I kind of had the whole resume when the NASA cycle came out for applications. So I applied all this time, all this effort. I apply. And actually interviewing twice. But the bottom line is I got disqualified for a thyroid, like a thyroid antibody reading in my blood. It's just so frustrating. A very female thing as well, might I ask. It is. And as a matter of fact, from our interview group, there's another woman in my group. She was in the engineering category.

She had the exact same thing. And so for them, for NASA, is just disqualifying. And so the note I get from the flight doctor was, well, it's a condition that may or may not affect you for the rest of your life, but you should monitor your thyroid. However, there's

nothing you can do to change it, and it's absolutely disqualifying. How do you come back from something? I know you're laughing and smiling, but the disappointment must have been intense. We've just gone through this career trajectory. that you've had all kind of working towards that point. Yeah, it was like the ultimate gut punch. And so I went through, you know, all the stages of grieving pretty much.

I was, you know, I was mad. I was sad. I was, you know, mad again. And then when I finally got over all of that, you know, I realized that I just had this amazing career. I've flown around the world. I've got to fly all these different airplanes. And I have this incredible resume.

I have all of these other opportunities in front of me. And honestly, I would have never done any of it had I not been pursuing that dream. So I felt like this isn't going to happen, but wow, look at where you are. So interesting. I understand at times in your career you've had to like stall a plane at 30,000 feet as part of tests. How does that feel? It feels fun. One woman's idea of fun is another woman's idea of a nightmare.

But let's talk about space a little bit more because I understand. Three years ago, you did make it into space as a commercial astronaut. Yep. So as I was working for Boeing, a friend of mine who was a pilot at Virgin Galactic at the time, called me and said, hey, we're building our program. We're just getting ready to finish our first spaceship vehicle. And if you ever wanted to do this, now is the time. So I came down, met the whole team, saw what they were doing.

And I was like, I'm in. And what was it like? Tell us a bit of what the experience. experiences. Yeah, so the mothership basically flies the spaceship up to about 40,000 feet, and then the spaceship gets dropped. You light the rocket motor. So from the spaceship side, it's this really kind of enjoyable flight as you go up, you know, for about 40 minutes or so. And then all of a sudden, it's game on. So once you get dropped, the spaceship drops straight down. You light the rocket motor. And within about a second and a half, you get 70,000 pounds of thrust going straight. And I had flown a lot of aircrafts. It is the most astounding acceleration I have ever felt on anything. It was amazing. So you're accelerating straightforward at about three and a half Gs.

You know, G is like one time the force of gravity. It's three and a half G's going forward. And as we get lighter, the thrust is the same. So the acceleration increases. So you just feel yourself getting just shot out of the atmosphere. And as you look outside, you see the blue sky. turn to this deep blue and then you just see this, it's almost like a black velvet come down where you're just looking out it, there's nothing. It's just a void. It's just utter dark and black.

And so in this void, you see the entire planet come into view. And it is just the most brilliant, beautiful, magnificent thing that I'll ever see. I mean, it's just, it's just breathtaking. It's astounding. It's hard to even describe the feeling. I think you're describing it so beautifully. Did it feel, I don't know, some sort of vindication or like... Yes, yes. After that flight, I looked back and everything was worth it. Yeah, everything was worth it. How wonderful.

You know, it is a commercial space tourism company. Does that give you pause at all? You know, so many people will complain about it really being in the echelons, no pun intended of, like, you know, these just the very few, the very wealthy, the elite within the world that are able to do it. obviously environmental concerns as well when it comes to space travel when people say there's enough issues down on earth? Yeah, I think like anything, it always starts very expensive and very few get to do it. But the goal of Virgin Galactic is starting there, but then building it up.

And then once you start having a larger operation, everyone gets to have that experience. The cost comes down and then it becomes something that everybody can do. And the thing about it, you get that view of the Earth. You get that view of like the little tiny atmosphere. And it really is different. Like you can look at pictures and you can see stuff. But when you actually get out and have that chance to look down, it gives you all different perspective on the earth, the planets, our responsibility, how precious it is. And you look down at this beautiful, perfect little planet that has everything we need to keep us alive. And you go, we should probably take bitter care. Which I suppose ties in with the environmental concerns, though some are trying to get,

you know, for example, regular flights to be curbed. I think the thought of Virgin Galactic or whatever other company, you know, proliferating from all many people to take flight in this way would be a cause of concern for them. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's hard to get over that because there are carbon concerns. And if you're doing, I'm not sure what, how many flights it becomes where it really becomes an issue, you know, we flew one flight a month for six months, So six flights isn't going to do anything where you're hundreds of flights

and then you're hundreds and hundreds of flights. But at that point, you also have the ability to change your fuels. You take a look and say, hey, how do we change these things? That was Kelly Latimer. And if that piqued your interest, you can catch the engineers flying at the edge, which was broadcast on the World Service last Saturday in partnership with the Royal Commission for the exhibition of 1851. And the live panel with Kelly will also be broadcast on TV

on the 22nd of August on BBC. News, BBC Eye Player and on the BBC World Service YouTube channel. And that is it from me. On Monday's programme, comedian Lucy Porter will be in the Woman's Hour studio to bang the drum for middle-aged women, who, as she puts it, are the exhausted meat in the middle of the sandwich generation. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. And don't forget to join Noola at 10am on Monday.

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