You can listen to the conversation here or watch it here.

Today I’m pleased to welcome along Mike Bell, who I met through the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Men and Boys’ Issues, which he co-founded. Mike was a science teacher in secondary school and then ran courses in evidence-based methods for the Evidence-Based Teachers Network. He’s the author of The Fundamentals of Teaching and was the lead researcher for the APPG’s inquiry into boys’ educational underachievement in 2023. His latest book, Yes, He Can, shows how 6 British secondary schools closed the attainment gaps for their boys. Really pleased to have you along today, Mike. Welcome.

Mike Bell [00:01:53]:

Thank you for having me.

David Jones [00:01:55]:

Hello, Mike, very nice to meet you. So you’ve written this book which is called Yes, He Can, which is about closing the attainment gap for boys’ secondary school. Can you sum up what the book’s about in a few sentences for us?

Mike Bell [00:02:14]:

Yes, I think it’s quite a different book because it’s mostly what the teachers said. So we’ve taken the transcripts of what they said in answer to their questions and then grouped them all together so that if each, the part where the teacher from one school is talking about literacy, for instance, we put all those pieces together and then just done a summary of what they’ve said. Readers can read their words, so it’s basically a book saying everybody knows that boys are underachieving, the statistics are published every year, most people think it’s just inevitable, but 6 schools have closed it, closed that gap, and they didn’t require any outside resources or particular training, so therefore anybody should be able to do it.

David Jones [00:03:00]:

Sorry, I missed how they managed to make that improvement, Mike. Was it through the process of the research that you did?

Mike Bell [00:03:10]:

No, no, we simply found schools that had closed the gaps. So all this will be revealed I’m sure, from your other questions.

David Jones [00:03:17]:

Okay. So how did the book come about?

Mike Bell [00:03:21]:

So as Naomi said, I was working with the All-Party Group. This is in the UK Parliament. They have voluntary groups called APPGs. And we had one on men and boys issues. And we did an inquiry into boys’ underachievement, which everybody knows about, because the numbers are published every year for every school. And I thought that we were going to find answers from looking at the research, that there would be people out there who knew what the answer was. Well, it turned out that nobody knows what the answer was in terms of the research. And because I had done some previous, I’ve been a teacher myself, I’d also done that work in teacher training, it occurred to me that probably there were teachers around the world, or certainly in our country, who have solved the problem. But nobody knows because they’re too busy doing it. And I was fully aware that there’s a big gulf between the researcher and the practitioner in education, so that it might well be the case that nobody knows. And that’s what turned out to be the case, that there are schools that have solved the problem, they haven’t talked to anybody else, and the researchers don’t know. But this is the case.

David Jones [00:04:41]:

Thank you. So in passing, Mike, can you tell us a bit more about all-party groups?

Mike Bell [00:04:49]:

Yes, I mean, talking to other people around the world, it’s actually fairly unique. That is, in the UK Parliament, there are voluntary groups where members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons can get together on a particular topic of interest. There are rules about it, that is, it does have to be cross-party, and you have to have a minimum number of people interested. But apart from that, it’s the opportunity for parliamentarians to engage on a topic which they probably wouldn’t have time to, with people who know more about it. So the parliamentarians are often not very active. So when we put on this inquiry, it’s not like the majority of our work interacted with parliamentarians. But they were very pleased to receive the information and endorse the conclusions. Obviously, we sent out the draft and final version to them for their comments.

David Jones [00:05:43]:

Thank you. Well, that sounds like a very constructive process. So getting down to the nitty-gritty, what does the data show about how badly our boys are doing relative to girls?

Mike Bell [00:05:57]:

Well, without producing a lot of numbers which don’t go down well verbally, we can say that boys start off with a disadvantage prior to getting to primary school, that is, on average, their literacy, their vocabulary is lower than that of girls. Just to give one figure, that’s the government’s figure, they reckon about 60% of boys are school-ready and 75% of girls. So there’s quite a big gap when they arrive at primary school. Primary school teachers are, on average, extremely good, so the gap narrows at primary school to only about 5% or so at the end of primary school, but then these poor kids go to secondary school where they go from one class to the next and have 10 different teachers and nobody knows them quite in the same way, so the gap gets wider and wider by GCSE. Apart from the very, very highest grades, it’s not the less able or the middle or the top, it’s all boys across the spectrum, irrespective of socioeconomic background or ability. On average, they do worse. This gap continues into A-levels, with girls getting most of the good grades. More girls go to university, it’s now 55% and rising, and more boys drop out of university.

Naomi Murphy [00:07:23]:

I was just thinking as you were talking, do you think we send children to school too early in the UK? And are boys therefore at a disadvantage because of that in terms of the rate of maturation?

Mike Bell [00:07:34]:

Yes, I mean, it’s not in the book, but it is an important topic. It’s not so important what age they go to school. What’s important is what age they start formal education. So there’s lots of things done in nursery schools and what have you, which set them up. So it’d be much better to spend time talking and learning words that way and listening to stories. And as I understand it, in Germany, they don’t start formal education till 7. And so obviously, some children learn to read because they learn to read at home. But as I understand it, those who haven’t learned to read aged 7 in September have usually learned by Christmas. So I do think that we make a mistake in trying to push kids into an academic. But on the other hand, Britain is pretty good. Its literacy age 10, you know, it’s up there with everybody else. It’s not bad except for more boys being bad, if you know what I mean.

David Jones [00:08:38]:

But if I understood you correctly, you were saying that boys tended to catch up in junior school, so up until the age of 10, but then when they went to secondary school, then the gap opened up again, which seems to suggest there’s something wrong in the approach.

Mike Bell [00:08:57]:

Well, exactly. I mean, if you’re one of these underachieving pupils in primary school, you’re with the same teacher and they’ll have different ability groups within their class. That child will be known intimately by the teacher. And we’ll probably know the parents personally. And so the work given to the pupil can be tailored to that pupil, obviously not the individual, but they can join a, you know, they might be on one table for maths and a different table for English. And there might be some learning support in the classroom, which might be helping the group which are struggling in maths, say. So they get a more individualised, obviously not individual, but a more individualised education at primary school. Whereas when they go to secondary school, generally speaking, they’re in a mixed ability group, they’re there in the classroom for 50 minutes, the teacher doesn’t anything like so much get to know them, they walk out of your science lesson, walk down the corridor, walk into a history lesson with a different teacher. So there just isn’t the same level of individual attention.

David Jones [00:10:06]:

Thank you. So you’ve hinted at this already, but what are the consequences for boys of this level of underachievement?

Mike Bell [00:10:15]:

Well, it is quite worrying because with this latest, these figures from Alan Milburn, whatever, on NEETs, on people not in education, employment, or training, a lot of boys getting completely switched out and just switching out from society. So we’re missing out All the way through. If you think about the boys who would in the past have left education with low qualifications, they would have happily gone into an industrial job or what have you. But those jobs don’t really exist anymore, and at the top end, we’re simply not getting enough doctors and engineers who are male because, I mean, I don’t think this is a sexist thing to say. On average, men work more hours in their career because more women take time off for children or go part-time. So we’re losing out in a big way, and probably that’s a big pull factor to qualified immigrants.

David Jones [00:11:20]:

Thank you.

Naomi Murphy [00:11:22]:

Are there wider social consequences, Mike? So like David and I have seen for ourselves that many young men in prison are people who left school with very poor outcomes.

Mike Bell [00:11:33]:

Well, I think that’s really important, and we really should make more of that, because one of the things that one realises, and looking back on my time teaching boys at the lower end, we were basically babysitting them until they left, and they often developed quite a negative attitude to education. And I don’t know whether you saw Gareth Southgate’s documentary a few weeks back, who is interviewing some young men and they just hate going to school. That’s not a good start in life. And one of the interesting sentences that I heard in different forms from the teachers from the schools who closed the gap for their boys is, make the school somewhere where boys want to come to. And if boys want to come to school, that’s the other thing I’m sure other teachers will agree, that it’s not that all these boys are low intelligence. It’s that they don’t get it because they come in in year 7, their vocabulary is too low, their maths is too low. They go to lessons they don’t understand, they get told off, they get put in detention, and they’re doing what any sensible person would do is revolt against the system and get good at something. So, you could get good at winding the teacher up.

Naomi Murphy [00:12:51]:

Is there something about how education or the educational system has changed over time that’s contributed to the difficulties for boys? I’m just thinking about the, you know, it’s also been highlighted how people who are neurodivergent struggle more with schools. And I’m wondering if there’s something about the schooling system that is drawing something in some children to attention and making school a harder place for them to be.

Mike Bell [00:13:21]:

Well, I think if I look back to when I was at school, you know, a small percentage of us went off to the grammar school and a large number of the other pupils went to a secondary modern. Now, I’m not in favour of a return to that system, but what we can say is that the education received by the less able was better. Because what unfortunately happened was, I mean, the reason for getting rid of the 11+ and producing comprehensive education is that it’s totally unfair on a whole tranche of children who didn’t pass the 11+, but who are perfectly capable of doing O-levels as they were then, or getting high grades in GCSE, and to write people off at the age of 10, or it could be a bad day. And again, I’m sure every teacher will tell you stories of pupils who were in Year 7 at the bottom of the class and were near the top of the class by Year 9, and it’s difficult to explain why. So I’m not saying we should go back to that, but I know Andy Burnham is now talking a bit more about technical education. But we need to think more about what is an education particularly for the pupils who are not achieving highly, and it should be more appropriate to them. As I said, in the primary school situation, the teacher gets to know the pupil, and so what the teacher asks the pupil to do is more appropriate to that pupil.

Naomi Murphy [00:14:51]:

But it hasn’t always been the way that boys were disadvantaged within the educational system, was it? I mean, it’s not that long ago that we see, well when I was at school, certainly people seemed to be talking more about how girls could be disadvantaged by the educational system. What’s happened?

Mike Bell [00:15:08]:

Well, I think that a lot of it is about expectations. So if you were a girl in the ‘50s or ‘60s, the general expectation was that you wouldn’t go to university, that it wasn’t that important. So girls underachieved. We’re seeing exactly the same thing here. I’ll come on to it in a minute. About low expectations. And so in the, whenever it was, the ‘60s or so, there was a kind of revolution saying we need to stop disadvantaging girls. And what was interesting is that as soon as you created equal opportunities for girls, they started to do better. By 1985, it was equal, and it’s been rising ever since. Now, if you like, one of the reasons for that is it’s not that girls are more intelligent, but that on average, psychologically, they’re more attuned to the process of sitting in the classroom and listening. Boys, on average, need to know why they’re doing it. So girls are just better pupils on average. So I don’t have the figures confirmed, but I understand that even when there was an 11+, you know, back in the ‘60s, they had to have a higher pass mark for the girls so that they had approximately the same number of boys and girls going to the grammar school, but don’t quote me on that one.

Naomi Murphy [00:16:30]:

So how did you discover that there were some schools that were bucking the trend and boys weren’t disadvantaged?

Mike Bell [00:16:37]:

Well, it was because I’d done that staff training in general evidence-based methods. I had been to schools, particularly primary schools, you know, a group of primary schools would get together to hire me to do a training session on evidence-based methods, and I would explain the methods, and then teachers would tell me how they used the method or if they used the method. And what amazed me was to discover that primary school teachers who were kind of good or outstanding were regularly using the most effective methods. Even though they had no idea that they were the most effective methods. That is, they seem to have learned it intuitively in the classroom from their, if you like, the world of hard knocks, if you know what I mean. They tried this and they can tell that the class didn’t get it. Whereas the further you get away from that situation, say in secondary or in university, the teacher doesn’t get the feedback. So it occurred to me when we did the inquiry, of course, we trawled the world for evidence, of which there is a mountain.

But looking through that research, I realised that none of it had been properly tested. That is, if we were doing any other form of testing, say in agriculture or in medicine, you do some sort of trial. In medicine, it’s clinical trial, randomised controlled trial. You can’t randomise the children, but you can have a controlled trial. You can try it in this school and not in the other school which were getting the same grades and compare the two. And if you are running a proper study, which is often more regularly done these days, for instance, by the Education Endowment Foundation, they might have 3 schools implementing something and 3 parallel schools not implementing it and compare them. But it turned out that on the subject of boys’ underachievement, there wasn’t a single study anywhere in the world at that standard, which I had confirmed by Professor Higgins at the Education Endowment Foundation. Now, I think that we really need to dwell on that.

Naomi Murphy [00:18:51]:

That’s pretty shocking. All this concern about boys’ underachievement, and yet no one’s actually researching it. It’s incredible.

Mike Bell [00:19:01]:

But the other worrying thing is that half of those journal articles never went near a boy. They mostly just worked on the data. Some of the others worked with, say, 15 boys who were disgruntled, identified by a secondary school as problem boys. And it occurred to me just from my knowledge of this, that these studies show you nothing because, you know, if you’ve got a single study with 15 pupils, where you take disgruntled pupils out and send them to a boxing club, or you get them to write poetry. I can tell you, having taught these boys, they will love anything other than being in the classroom. And if they’re in a group with an enthusiastic person doing something interesting, they’re going to like it. But as far as I could gather, there were no follow-up studies showing that these boys had done better or that it was a generally applicable method. Also, I spoke to a guy called Trevor Lloyd who works with primary schools, who said that he was originally asked to help with these disgruntled 15-year-olds and realised within days that this was not when he should be starting. And so he’s become much more interested in boys’ literacy from age 5, which is where it does really need to start. So that background led me to believe that maybe somewhere in the country there were people, so I simply emailed every school in the country.

Naomi Murphy [00:20:30]:

So the schools that you found where they were managing to equalise the results, if you like, or not disadvantage boys, were they all doing the same thing or were they all doing different things? What did you discover?

Mike Bell [00:20:41]:

Well, again, just from a scientific perspective, I have a background in natural science, one of the things you want to do is run the experiment several times. So when I found that 6 schools that didn’t know each other, 6 independent studies, have all roughly done the same thing, not exactly the same, but closely enough that I was able to put that book together, which is coming out fairly soon, where I simply take, for instance, what different schools said about male role models or literacy. And each of the schools has done something in that area. So although it’s not exactly the same, it had the same intention, and the joint outcomes are more or less the same. That is, the girls’ results don’t go down, the boys’ results do go up. General culture of the school is one where, as I said, boys want to be more than they did before.

David Jones [00:21:40]:

Thank you. Mike, many people think that the problem is a shortage of male teachers. Did you find that this was a factor?

Mike Bell [00:21:49]:

Well, none of the schools said so, and it’s not a solution which, do you know what I mean? It’s not, you can’t suddenly find male teachers. So it’s not that male teachers are a good thing or a bad thing. It’s that there isn’t any evidence that boys learn better from a male teacher. The only major study that I’ve seen, I think, was done in Hong Kong, where they compared the learning of pupils with male and female teachers, and that shows that boys learn better from a female teacher. So having more male teachers in a school is a good thing, but not necessarily something which will improve the learning of boys.

David Jones [00:22:31]:

So it sounds, from what you’re saying, as if really, the most positive influence is a female teacher rather than a male teacher.

Mike Bell [00:22:42]:

Well, I would just not emphasise that because apart from anything else, what could the government possibly do?

David Jones [00:22:50]:

Yeah. So now another thing that’s sometimes said, and again, I expect you’re going to say this is an effect rather than the cause, but some people blame toxic masculinity or influences such as Andrew Tate. Is this what you found and these schools found?

Mike Bell [00:23:08]:

The opposite, really. The idea that the reason why boys are underachieving is because of something intrinsic in boys is definitely disproved by these schools. And none of them said that it was their attitude, you know, their concept of masculinity or harmful stereotype or any of these things. What they said was that this problem is a really big one, and the government is going about it in exactly the wrong way. That is, they think that influencers and masculinity are a serious problem.

David Jones [00:23:49]:

What were they doing? How have they found solutions?

Mike Bell [00:23:52]:

Well, a number of different things. They were definitely clear that it wasn’t about one thing. But one thing, the primary thing is literacy, because generally speaking, an underachieving boy age 15 arrived at secondary school with low literacy. And it’s not that the schools did something specially for boys, but they seem to have done much more with all their low literacy pupils. So that whereas at the school where I taught, for instance, there is provision for the children with special needs. These schools seem to be involving far more pupils, and that’s something that I noticed when I was teaching, is that the very weakest students have got some learning support, but it’s the people at the sort of 10th, 20th, 30th percentile just didn’t seem to be provided for very well. And so what these schools have done is they’ve used the data very efficiently.

Some of them have made a particular effort to get to know the primary schools and make sure that the data from primary schools was transmitted to them. I’ve heard that from other sources as well, that there isn’t good transmission. And as I said earlier, primary school teachers know their pupils often extremely well because they have them all day. The second part of literacy is sometimes called oracy or talking because of course the majority of words which we learn, we don’t learn by reading, we learn them by hearing them first and then by using the words. So they were quite clear that it’s not just good enough to learn a word or learn how to spell it, you’ve got to be able to use it and then once you can use it, you can understand it when the teacher uses it. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that schools discovered that systematically teachers were biased against boys in 2 particular ways, and that the teachers involved didn’t intend to be biased. So the first bias is that boys are punished, or they’re sanctioned, or consequences more harshly than girls for the same offense. And the schools discovered this either by classroom observation, just somebody sitting in there, in the classroom with the express intention of seeing whether the teacher was treating boys and girls differently. And some of those senior members of staff said that they were surprised to discover their own bias in the process of watching others. And one of the things that the school said is that nobody really meant to do this. So that’s the first thing, unfair consequences. But more interesting is lower expectations, that is, boys were being praised or given reward points or whatever it is at that school for a lower standard of work. And that reflects back to the 1960s when we were talking about girls underachieving. But expectations are extremely important because in a way, apart from an exceptional one, you know, a child can only reach their expectations. They don’t tend to go beyond expectations so much.

So the third thing was the rewards and sanctions system. And what they say there is that certainty and reliability is the most important factor, not strictness. It’s quite interesting to compare the regime which they have with that which Katharine Birbalsingh’s school has, and Michaela, she describes herself as the strictest teacher. But when you compare the 2 systems, the other schools didn’t say they were strict, but what you can be sure is that the pupils know exactly where they are and the teachers know exactly where they are. And this is something I’ve heard quite independently from teachers, is that they don’t feel backed up by the senior staff. I mean, a line which goes around is, there’s no point in in calling SLT because they’ll only give them a good letting off, and that was a lot of teachers’ experience. But in these schools, that’s not the case. Some schools even had, obviously they’re monitoring, if they’re centrally monitoring the detentions and sanctions and also the reward points, they can see teachers that are either not using them at all or using them a lot, and they can have a quiet word about it and see whether there’s a good reason.

So the other thing which connects with this knowing the child, passing on the information from primary school, is they make more, home school links are more important. And one school in a very working-class area even had a kind of parents’ training course at the beginning of Year 7 to help parents understand how they can support their child. So you can see there’s a sort of interlocking mesh of things there. And what the school said was, this brings about a cultural change. You can’t say, oh, let’s do a cultural change. You can do all these things, which together constitute a cultural change. And as I said before, they sort of add up to a school that boys want to come to, because particularly on the rewards and sanctions, and it’s not just boys, but particularly boys. They need to know where they are. Otherwise they’ll just push and push and push and be a nuisance.

Naomi Murphy [00:29:24]:

I was really interested in what you had to say about expectations actually, because if you couple that with something you said early on in the conversation, which was about the fact that there’s a lot of discussion about the low attainment of boys and very little understanding of it. In some ways it seems like we could be reinforcing those low expectations by and having lots of discussion about the underachievement and then setting expectations at an artificially low level as a consequence of that. So all this, all this research that’s not been done into what can actually help, but just counting the fact that they find it, you know, substantiating evidencing that they find it they don’t do as well, could paradoxically be worsening the problem, couldn’t it?

Mike Bell [00:30:07]:

Yes, it’s a kind of multiplier effect if you have lower expectations, then you see lots of boys underachieving and you can go, oh yes. And that, of course, leads into the possibility of people thinking that either it’s something intrinsic in boys. I mean, it is true to say that if you just leave boys and girls to their own devices, the girls do better. But in a way, if you don’t teach boys words, it’s not exactly their fault. So I think this is a central message, is all the wrong answers blame the boys and all the right answers give responsibility to adults.

David Jones [00:30:44]:

Thank you, Mike. You’ve mentioned many positive attributes from the schools that you’re referring to, and we’ve talked about toxic influences earlier on. Did the schools identify any positive influences?

Mike Bell [00:31:01]:

Yes, it was quite interesting. They didn’t particularly identify male teachers, nor like footballers. What they did identify was older boys. This is all part of the cultural change. So what they wanted to do is make sure that older boys, or boys in general, are seen and recognised in all fields, that is not just in physics and rugby. So if they’re musicians, or if they take part in the play, or if they recite a poem in the assembly, so it becomes normalised that boys are seen doing a wide range of things. And the other thing which several of the schools found was important was enrichment, that is the idea that every boy must be able to be good at something, and they may not necessarily be good at maths, or English, but they could be good at sport. But if you do lots of different things, then that’s the hook that will bring that individual boy into the fold.

David Jones [00:32:08]:

Thank you.

Naomi Murphy [00:32:09]:

One of the interesting things you said to me when we met previously, Mike, which in fact I was talking to a friend this morning about it, is you mentioned the very different reactions of boys and girls to success and how more telegenic, photogenic girls might be in response. I wondered if you wanted to say something about that influence, because I think that plays into the positive influences.

Mike Bell [00:32:34]:

Well, if this answer isn’t the answer to your question, do ask it again. But one of the things that one of the schools particularly noticed was that when they looked at the images on their website or in their prospectus or whatever, or the posters around the school, there were more positive images of girls. And so this particular headteacher made a particular point of replacing, you know, making it fair. But you have to put up with the fact that boys are just not going to be so photogenic, do you know what I mean? If you get 3 girls jumping up and down and hugging each other with their GCSE results, if you watch 3 boys doing that, you would not have the same emotional response to them. You know, us boys live in this kind of constricted emotional box where we are punished for stepping outside it.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:27]:

Yeah, I thought it was an interesting observation. Mike, what’s stopping other schools from closing the gap for their boys using these approaches these successful schools were?

Mike Bell [00:33:37]:

Well, there isn’t anything. I think that’s why I’ve written the book and I’m trying to get the word out. I don’t want necessarily people to buy the book. I want people to buy into the idea that it isn’t intrinsic to boys and it’s not toxic masculinity. And, you know, you’ve just got to do these tweaks. And although it’s not easy, it’s not rocket science. You don’t require experts to come in. You don’t require extra funding, you can just change these things, you can improve the literacy, you can make the rewards and sanctions fairer, you can treat the pupils more as individuals so they get the support for their literacy if they need it. All these things can be done within the time available.

One thing that’s important to note is that some of the schools made a particular effort to make sure that teachers weren’t wasting their time. That is, there are lots of tasks which teachers have to do, which really they don’t need to do. And before I did all this, when I was doing staff training, I did ask several audiences of teachers, you know, have you ever been asked by senior staff which tasks you think are a waste of time? And nobody ever said yes, whereas one particular school asked their teachers every single term, because there really is no point in asking your teachers to do more if they ain’t got time, because what will inevitably happen is it’ll displace something else, and unless you’ve done all the research, they may be displacing something which is an effective teaching method. So some of the schools talked about centralised detention system, for instance. So once you tick the box, somebody else takes on the task. And so that frees up teachers’ time. Because I know as a teacher, I would often let things go simply because of the sheer effort of having to write a letter home and, you know, supervise detention and all the rest of it.

Naomi Murphy [00:35:48]:

Thank you. And your book’s due out in August, isn’t it? And do you expect a good response to your book?

Mike Bell [00:35:57]:

Well, my thoughts on it are mixed. I think what’s interesting is that there’s a lot of interest. I mean, you showed an interest, even though it’s not your topic. And I’ve had quite a good sort of response like that, saying, oh, what an interesting, but one has to ask, if it’s obvious, if it’s fairly easy to fix, what is going on? And what I think is that there’s something in the kind of, I don’t know, collective subconscious or in the zeitgeist or whatever, which is holding the situation as it is. And I think that possibly because we’ve had, you know, 40 years of the women’s movement, that women are disadvantaged, girls are disadvantaged. There’s something, there’s a kind of deep resistance to the idea that boys may be disadvantaged and we need to do something for boys. And this is reflected in the Department of Education. So when we were doing this inquiry, we sent questions to some of the MPs and peers, asked them if they would ask parliamentary questions.

A parliamentary question is one which is asked by a Member of Parliament and the minister replies within a week. That’s not the response of an individual you can get, if you know what I mean. So, some of our MPs seem very grateful to be given good questions. And a lot of the questions implied that the Department of Education should recognise the boy problem, not the working-class boy problem or the Black boy problem or anything else, just the boy problem. And they adamantly refused to do so. Every single response from the minister, this was all in the last government, I don’t think it would be different. Because of course, the answers aren’t written by the minister, they’re written by the designated person in the department. So the department is just intrinsically biased against boys. So we’ll see.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:04]:

Okay, thank you. And we’ll obviously include a link to anything you want to share in terms of people being able to access your book afterwards in our show notes. It would be easy to feel upset and angry with the ways in which our boys, sons, nephews have been allowed to fall behind. You’re obviously taking action to try and address this. What else do you do to keep yourself psychologically healthy?

Mike Bell [00:38:24]:

Well, I think I’m lucky in one way because I’m a kind of motor mechanic, DIY kind of person. So when I see a problem, I try to work out what the solution is. And I believe that a solution is available. Whereas other people, you know, if the car breaks down, it’s sort of, oh, what can I do? Whereas to me, it’s more sort of, okay, so exhaust pipe. So that’s one good thing. A second fortunate experience because I was doing some campaigning in the 1980s on green issues. That was in the days before the Greens went mad. But there were, and I got to know MPs for the first time. And at the time, other of my Green colleagues said, oh, you know, you’re selling out by talking to these people who are out to destroy the planet. And I discovered that they were just ignorant, that MPs are much more like ordinary people. They maybe know about their specialty, but they don’t know about, at that time, some of them had never heard of global warming or carbon dioxide or ozone layer, or they didn’t know about great whale depletion and they were very happy to be informed.

And so I think I brought that to this, that I don’t assume that there’s because the MPs have voted for some bit of legislation which disadvantages boys, that they meant to, you know, they probably just got directed there by the whip. And so another important factor, I have reflected on this because other people have asked me a similar question, why don’t you get depressed by this? And I benefited greatly from some Zen training I did in the 1990s. So one of the, including mindfulness, and it was a training to help you see the positive in the world, just to notice that the sun is shining, to be appreciative of the fact that when you turn the tap on, water goes into your cup and you can drink it. And, to notice when your granddaughter’s smiling, you know what I mean? And there was another training called Cradle My Anger, which is to try and separate out your feeling of anger from yourself. So instead of saying, I am angry, that the whole of me is angry. It’s like I have the energy of anger in me and I recognise it’s my anger. So I think that was a bit of help. And I think finally, I’m completely blessed by having a garden and liking growing things.

Naomi Murphy [00:41:13]:

A really good combination of things there. And actually, intuitively, what you were doing with the, you know, disentangling your identity from the anger is a common practice in psychological therapy, is to have people recognise it’s only a part of themselves that is struggling with something, that the whole of them is a healthier being. So not defining themselves by whatever the problem is, but really good to talk to you today, Mike. Really interesting book that you’ve written, and hopefully plenty of people will read it and try and think about what the implications are for schools.

Mike Bell [00:41:51]:

Thank you for having me on.

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So today I’m really pleased to welcome along Dr. Pawel Szczesny, who is the co-founder and CEO of Impersonato, a Warsaw company that builds realistic synthetic personas, crash test dummies as he calls them, for testing AI systems and marketing before real people see them. His background covers biology, psychology, pharma research and development, and science policy, with around 50 published papers. In his 4th start-up as co-founder, he now works on AI safety audits and the psychology of how people and AI interact. And this is a theme that I’m really spending a lot of time reading about at the moment. So really delighted to have you on today, Paweł. Welcome.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:01:35]:

Naomi, David, thank you for having me here.

David Jones [00:01:39]:

Hello there, Paweł. Very nice to meet you. So, Paweł, you were initially a biologist and then became a psychologist. So what enticed you to make this transition and how does your background influence your approach to psychology?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:01:56]:

So it wasn’t a single big step. It was just my, like, 6th transition from doing experimental biology to computational biology, then to medical research, then to pharmaceutical research, then to pro-cognitive supplements. And finally I ended up studying psychology of AI systems. So it was a series of pivots. But my background originally is indeed biology. My master’s degree, first master’s degree is in biology. PhD was also in biology. And it really shapes how I see psychology a lot. Biology teaches you an extreme humility in the sense that you learn that your theory that explains a biological system is probably wrong. And the other thing you learn is that no system works in isolation. So translating this to psychology means that I naturally see that all psychological theories are somehow incomplete, and I naturally see them through the biopsychosocial model.

David Jones [00:03:00]:

I see. That’s a kind of technical answer. Did you have a kind of awareness of the way in which you were going or drifting?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:03:10]:

So the place I am right now isn’t a surprise. I was reading psychology books since I was 12. The last pivot wasn’t really a surprise when we decided together with my wife that we are going to study psychology a while ago, a couple of years ago, it was kind of natural for us. For her, it was also another pivot. So we decided to study together psychology. Yeah, for both of us, it was kind of natural progression.

David Jones [00:03:50]:

Oh, well, that’s interesting by itself, isn’t it? And that you made this change of pathway in collaboration with your partner.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:04:00]:

Yeah, and she was the initiator. She told me one day, okay, I’m going to study psychology starting next year. And I said, oh, okay, I’m joining you.

David Jones [00:04:11]:

Fascinating. Thanks very much indeed. Paweł, you’re the co-founder of Impersonato. What does your company do? And do I pronounce it correctly?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:04:22]:

Yes, you pronounce it correctly. So we are building something that we call psychological crash test dummies. And we use this analogy from car testing. There is a mechanical dummy in the car and the car is crashed against the wall. However, when you deploy an AI system of any kind, from ChatGPT to a mental health AI app, you have almost nothing like to verify what your system will actually do when a vulnerable user starts talking to it. So, we use AI to simulate something that resembles human behaviour. And of course, our synthetic personas have some biases. They don’t simulate all of the human psychology because with this technology, it’s actually impossible. But they do work well enough to test systems, whether they behave safely for certain users before the system is deployed into the wild. So I’m very, how to say it, I wish we would consider AI technology, the conversational AI technology seriously in the sense that this is very close to medical technology, the way it impacts people. I wish many other companies would do similar things like us because we need better stress tests for these systems before they are deployed to billions of people.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:52]:

Can you tell us something about some of the kinds of projects you’ve worked on, Paweł?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:05:57]:

What do you mean?

Naomi Murphy [00:05:58]:

Can you give us examples of some of the kinds, you know, what industries have you set up these crash test dummies? What are the real-world examples? Just so the listeners perhaps have an idea of what we’re talking about.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:06:14]:

So we were testing, for instance, a psychoeducational chatbot that was positioned as a therapy support between sessions, patients, clients were referred to this chatbot as part of the therapy process. It wasn’t during therapy, but the types of different questions that were sent to them, the owners wanted to be sure whether the chatbot doesn’t do harm between sessions, for instance. But we’ve been testing also systems that are positioned as more like companions, not really a bit outside of mental health space as well.

David Jones [00:06:52]:

So as you’ve indicated, Pawel, you spent years studying how AI tools like ChatGPT change the way that people think. What are some more of your observations?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:07:06]:

So part of the story, part of the motivation for starting the company is the observation that is already 4 years old. GPT-3 was released roughly half a year before ChatGPT was released. And there was an earlier model available essentially to a wider public, but mainly the release was to developers. And already back then, when I started to play with this technology, I realised that this behaves very differently to our older ideas of chatbots because it mirrors user extremely well. Fast forward 4 years, at the beginning of this year, Anthropic company released yet another economic index report on the impact of AI on economy and other things. And in this report, there is a plot showing almost perfect correlation between assumed educational level of users and the responses from their model Claude. So 4 years later, with all of these safety features baked into AI tools, we have still systems that naturally mirror user in many different ways, from educational level to many other things, including their psychology. Something that was a hypothesis 4 years ago currently seems to be a pretty well-grounded thesis is that talking to AI extensively for several days starts to resemble talking to yourself.

Because of the way the systems start to mirror your preferences, your educational level, and so on. So the impact starts to be very real. It’s not so dramatic in this sense that these systems don’t change people’s opinions 180 degrees, but they convince people of things they want to be true. And users want to be true. And this can be something not very harmful, but this can be something resembling a delusion. And there’s a popular term called AI psychosis that flies around for a while. And I don’t think there’s any psychosis in these cases that they’re described. It’s just the people are extremely convinced of something that is not true. And then the underlying reason is the observation from that, as I said, starts to be confirmed, that the extreme mirroring makes people mistake output from AI system with their own thoughts.

Naomi Murphy [00:10:01]:

You can see where the potential problems there around, you know, people using, and we spoke previously, Pawel, about this, the potential for people to be using it for advice or in place of therapy. And actually, what they’re having mirrored back to themselves is their own perception. Whereas one of the benefits of going for therapy is perhaps being asked a question that causes you to think slightly differently about your perspective so that you can change the narrative. So for instance, if you’re a person who is very sensitive to rejection and might perceive that in every interaction, an AI might then therefore end up reinforcing that rather than causing you to think differently about the interaction and realise that maybe the person wasn’t being rejecting, but just sharing a different opinion, for instance.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:10:46]:

Yeah, I mean, what happens when people start talking with these tools about their mental health issues, what typically happens is that these systems are starting to mirror the user, but then they start to follow users’ implicitly stated needs. What do I mean? Imagine that you are a lonely person. So what you want from the model is not a 100% mirror. So the model turns into a lonely person, but you want model to sort of fill the gap for you. If a paranoid user starts to talk with AI system, it recruits a different behaviour. It recruits a behaviour where his paranoia assumptions are confirmed. So this mirroring isn’t perfect. It’s more like a recruitment of a complementary or needed behaviour from the model. And as you said, this is very much unlike what you’re getting in therapy.

David Jones [00:11:54]:

This all sounds very worrying, really. Where are you seeing this play out in day-to-day life would you say?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:12:02]:

I think that most of the cases aren’t as dramatic, fortunately, at least from the place I can see these cases. Typically I see people changing careers after extensive discussions with AI. Sometimes very late into their careers they decide that, okay, they actually should do something different. The next thing that I observe is very subtle in the sense that people are starting talking like AI because the authorship of thoughts starts to blur. And they are just adopting the, it feels so good talking with the systems, especially if you talk with them long enough that they have sort of memory of previous conversations. It feels so good that you start to mistake thought generated by a model with your own.

David Jones [00:12:55]:

Thank you.

Naomi Murphy [00:12:56]:

That’s so fascinating, isn’t it? I was wondering about what that meant when, you know, people are in positions where they’re perhaps, like, I have heard of people who are having to use AI at work for a lot, for a significant proportion of their work. And I suppose I wondered what that means for people in those kind of jobs. I mean, we talk about the, a lot of the predictions are AI will be great for solving problems because of its ability to recognise patterns. But actually, does it mean that there’s a limit to new, you know, when 2 people have a conversation, there’s a possibility of a new idea emerging from that, isn’t there? Does that happen with AI?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:13:36]:

That’s a very good question. Existing research shows a very, very interesting pattern because in the model, because it read all books, reads all internet, all source code and whatnot, there is a plethora of ideas. Your individual creativity, especially if you start with a low level, is going to increase dramatically through the use of AI. And this is pretty well established. However, the collective creativity is going to be lower. And there is an effect called homogenisation where the collective set of ideas is actually a smaller set of unique ideas starts to be smaller because people are sort of taking ideas from the same pool. The pool is large but still limited. And if you want to come up with original, interesting ideas, so far the only way is to do it yourself, maybe with the help of somebody, but definitely not as the first aid, maybe in some form of brainstorming. But if you rely on AI to generate ideas for you, you are doomed, sort of, in the sense that you might have better ideas than a couple of years ago when these tools weren’t available, but you are drawing from the same pool of ideas like everybody else.

Naomi Murphy [00:15:07]:

Okay. Is there a good version of AI taking work off our plate like a calculator? You know, when we use a calculator in maths, versus a bad version where it starts doing heavy lifting for us in ways that are not healthy and probably not a great thing to be doing?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:15:24]:

So yes, and the answer is, I think it’s going to be surprising because it’s a version that doesn’t have conversational interface. And what do I mean by that? So these AI systems are essentially a next generation of machine learning models that perfectly recognise certain patterns. They’re very good at that. They are good at certain tasks like currently generating source code for applications. And there are plenty of other things where this technology is useful, generally useful. But the interface that steers this technology should be a conversational interface. Imagine you’re a manager. And how terrible it would be to tell your subordinates every day the same instructions over and over again. So this is how it feels when you start working with these AI tools, that certain things should be done automatically, sort of get off your plate and mind. And we don’t have, so far we don’t have systems configured like that. We have this unfortunate, really, conversational interface that is very potent in the sense that you can ask a system to write a poem for you, a source code, or analyse a Word document and whatnot. But the thing is that that’s not a healthy interface. You want to have the work done. You don’t want to micromanage an AI system. So a good version of AI is actually doing the work instead of requiring you to babysit all the way.

And we are not far from that. I mean, in the sense that it will take a couple of years, definitely, but it will be sort of invisible. I know, document editor, you don’t really fuss over Word or any other document editing. You don’t think, you just open it, do your work, close it, and forget it. The work is done. I don’t know if you have some accounting system that does things for you. You don’t need to specify what needs to be done every single day. Just gets done. And this is how I see the healthy, good version of AI. At the workplace, that these systems are going to take over some of the work. The work will be done and people will do something else instead. And definitely, this good version will not have conversational interface.

Naomi Murphy [00:18:25]:

It sounds like you’re saying it’s best when it’s used as a tool rather than totally in place. So it might take some of the tasks that are easier to delegate to it, but it can’t actually, because it can’t think, it still needs quite a lot of babysitting, certainly at the moment. And hopefully it will get better at some of those tasks, but there are some tasks that you will always need humans to be able to think about in order to get the AI going properly.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:18:57]:

Yeah, I mean, look at the history when the computers were introduced. There was a role called typist, there was a person who was typing on a typing machine certain documents, and they were gone in the sense of a role. But all of these people started to work as office assistants. The complexity of the job increased, obviously, but it’s not like computers replaced typists and they were sort of fired and never got the job again. So for the last 4 years, we’ve been fed this story that AI will result in massive unemployment. And it was a marketing story. Sam Altman just very recently told the world that he was wrong on the mass unemployment. And Jeff Bezos is actually telling this already for a while. That if anything, there will be more jobs because the complexity of work is going to increase and these systems will not handle this at all. So, we are going to see a certain transformation in how the workplace looks definitely. But these stories about mass unemployment and people losing jobs and so on, well, they don’t certainly match the current trajectories.

Naomi Murphy [00:20:24]:

Well, that’s really good to hear that. You know, it’s really interesting to hear that, but also I think quite uplifting because I think there has been a lot of certainly scaremongering. And also we have seen where companies have, I have heard about companies laying lots of people off and then having to rehire them again once they’ve realised that AI can’t work in the way that they’d been told. I suppose I wondered why do you think that people like Sam Altman put that out there in the first place anyway? Was that kind of like showcasing with his product, or is there another agenda there?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:20:58]:

I’m not sitting in Altman’s head. I have no idea. Definitely, there was a belief at the beginning of when this technology was released, there was a belief that sort of we got into the place where we found the holy grail of artificial intelligence. And, there were people from the very beginning saying, oh no, no, no, this is not, this is not true artificial intelligence. This technology has limits. You are going to face it sooner or later, like Gary Marcus, for instance. And, he turned out to be pretty right with his predictions. But there was a time where lots of people really believed that this is going to be an absolute revolution. In the sense that we are going to get into artificial general intelligence, into a system that can learn on its own. Currently, the atmosphere in the AI industry is far from AGI in the sense that these talks that next month or next quarter AGI will be released and you will be all fired and so on, nobody talks like that even within AI among AI engineers.

Naomi Murphy [00:22:13]:

That’s really interesting to hear that from an industry insider. When you mentioned the typists and the word processing, it reminded me of when I was at university and Microsoft Word came out and all of a sudden you didn’t have to hand in a handwritten essay, you could hand in an essay that was typed. And even though it was exactly the same content, it just made me, it just looked better. You felt like you were handing in something that commanded more authority by virtue of being typed. And I kind of see that happening with AI, that because it’s come out of a computer and it’s presented to us in a nicely packaged way that you can think, I mean, I’ve, you know, created blog posts myself and thought, oh, that looks really good. But then when I start reading it and dwelling on it, then I’m like, actually, this is pretty shit really. Do you think there is a danger that we give more authority to AI because of the formats because it’s so clever at packaging things up in a way that is quite appealing when you hear it.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:23:10]:

So, Ethan Mollick of Wharton University had this observation that we used to equal nicely written sentences with expertise because it was up to a certain point for non-experts, it was very hard to build nicely written sentences about a specific topic. And currently we have systems that can write nicely written sentences that are entirely wrong. And our longstanding assumption that it was equalling this expertise with fluency in language, this is gone. I mean, this needs to be gone. It needs to go. And it will take a while. And so far I see people falling into that trap still, even after a couple of years of having this technology out. Because something is internally consistent, it looks nice, it’s nicely formatted, it’s convincing on many details, people just assume that this needs to be correct.

And if there is an external source of truth, like, I don’t know, there is a text about monuments in Paris, for instance, and there is a verified source of truth what kind of monuments are and which are not in Paris, this can be verified. But imagine that you are asking an AI system about something that cannot be verified. I don’t know, your internal thoughts. Career suggestions, business models for your business. You cannot verify this at all. This is just a very plausible, what you get is a very plausible hypothesis at most, because there’s no definite answer. And because it’s so nicely written, so internally consistent, we are going to use this advice more often than not. And actually, this is funny. Have you heard about the phenomenon called Claude Boys?

Naomi Murphy [00:25:30]:

No.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:25:30]:

So, I think it was kind of a year ago, when Anthropic released its, a year or 2 years ago, I don’t remember exactly, but when Anthropic released its own system, called Claude, around the Bay Area, so Silicon Valley and surroundings. There was for a while a phenomenon called Claude Boys. There were people who were walking around with their smartphone asking all the time, dear Claude, what should I do now? And Cory Doctorow, I think, calls this reverse cyborg. So instead of us commanding an AI system, there’s an AI system that commands us and tells us every minute what should we do. And these experiments were hilarious. People were essentially driving around, for instance, San Francisco and executing any idea that Claude gave them. For instance, go to this café, order this and that, then drive around, go there, see this, now call them, and so on.

Naomi Murphy [00:26:45]:

Well, that sounds funny, but, you know, I think that there are people who seem to be becoming more and more dependent on asking AI for advice about how to live their life. And I think, sometimes you see people who lack a sense of confidence in their inner self anyway become really anxious about making any sort of decision. It doesn’t seem a million miles away that some people could find that anxiety amplified by having this readily available instrument that you can just ask for advice at any time of the day or night. It seems perfectly possible to me that that could amplify people’s anxiety.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:27:22]:

Yeah. And you ask a question once, twice, next 100 times, and after a while you’re starting to ask whether you should go to a bathroom or not. And I’m not exaggerating that much.

Naomi Murphy [00:27:42]:

Oh gosh. Yeah, that’s appalling. And on that same subject of kind of confidence in ourselves, one of the things that you’ve spoken about previously is that people sometimes lose track of whether the idea originated within AI or originated in themselves. So I guess we could end up confused about how ideas have arisen. What does this do to someone’s confidence? Do we end up with people being more narcissistic and more overconfident about their ideas, or does it knock people’s confidence and make them insecure about their intelligence?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:28:18]:

So indeed, in many different studies, there’s this effect of blurred authorship. And I’ve run, I think a year ago, a small survey among the heavy AI users. And there was a very, very significant correlation between number of hours per day spent with AI systems and the feeling of authorship blur. And it was confirmed in some peer-reviewed studies as well. The more you spend time with them, with these systems, the more you are unsure whether the idea is yours or not really. And this has funny implications because according to the studies I’ve seen recently, it seems like this blurred authorship sort of takes away a joy of doing the task in a sense that people, even though they could make something faster and it could be even objectively better, the joy of finishing was gone. And this has to have some long-term implications because things that you could do with AI anything, I’m not talking about writing, I don’t know, graphics, for instance. It’s also in the same category, composing music, things that you could do with AI are going to be less enjoyable because they can be objectively better when done with AI, but the joy of doing that is gone. So the motivation of doing that again is gone as well. I think that’s going to have long-term effects when it comes to creative industries.

Naomi Murphy [00:29:57]:

So interesting. It feels really quite sad to have that loss, but also, you know, for all of us, we need a sense of purpose, don’t we, to feel that our lives are meaningful? And yet, if we’re not really able to take the credit for things that we’ve created through AI, then you’ve kind of like lost that sense of meaning for your life, perhaps, for, you know, could be one of the impacts.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:30:19]:

Yeah, I mean, imagine you have a, let’s say, a self-narrative that you are a writer, and suddenly writing stops to be enjoyable at all.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:31]:

Yeah, it’s such a good point, Pawel, that I just hadn’t thought of before. And just before handing over back to David, just one last question from me. It does seem like an awful lot of the AI industry is dominated by Silicon Valley, and I suppose, does that mean that the kinds of models that are being created, does that shape the kind of interface in that, you know, it’s very white middle-class males that are devising these systems? Is that playing a part in the user experience as far as you see it?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:31:07]:

Yes, yes, that’s a very good question. Let’s take Claude as our example because its system prompt, the system instruction is very well known and how it was trained, what kind of values against it was trained are also known. So Claude represents a very specific type of the preferences that Claude expresses. That’s the correct way to say it. The preferences that Claude expresses are very specific to a person whom we would describe as follows. It’s an entrepreneur from California that has a very specific idea what kind of business is worth doing. And obviously it’s a technological business. It has a very specific business attitude. It’s sort of professionalism, I would say, in the sense that things are doable, and if the business requires, they should be done, for instance. And this American entrepreneur hidden in cloth as a sort of archetype isn’t really suited for all cases.

So imagine blue-collar people who are working in blue-collar industries. They don’t fit technological view of entrepreneurship. So they are going to see the advice, the business advice from the system that doesn’t match their industry. And it’s just one example of many different ways these systems by default, they provide responses from a very narrow point of view. So it has to impact at the statistical level. At the populational level, the choices of thousands, if not millions of people. Because statistically, at the level of population, certain ideas will be considered by Claude sort of unsexy, and this system is going to turn people away from them, offering instead something that is more aligned with the vision of Silicon Valley and adjust entire areas. So this is going to happen and we just don’t have enough data for that, but I’m pretty sure after a few years we will see some statistical shifts that were induced by certain types of AI systems used at the very large scale.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:41]:

Fascinating. Thank you.

David Jones [00:33:43]:

So you’ve mentioned Claude several times, Paweł, and I suppose in my incredibly ignorant and naïve way. I think of Claude as, or the company associated with Claude, as being more ethically sound because of its decision not to participate in allowing American weapons manufacturers to use it to its fullest extent. So you regard it as being more ethically sound than, say, Grok, which one regards as being ethically suspicious. Do you think it’s possible to have an ethical framework for AI at all?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:34:36]:

So I will recap a stance that my friend Izabela Lipińska who is a philosopher, is on this view, is that we should consider AI systems for what they are. And they are machine learning models that can produce many different things, images, audio, music, or text. Nonetheless, they are machine learning models. And if we want to talk about ethics in the context of AI, we should consider only the ethics of their users, not the ethics of the system. And this is machine learning model, and it’s going to behave the way it was programmed, sort of. And if it doesn’t, it’s the problem of their constructors or users or both. But nonetheless, there’s no ethical AI as a concept because the ethics belongs to the people, not to a machine learning the decision of Anthropic to participate or not participate with some military use cases, we want to believe, it’s unclear, but we want to believe that the decision was made by humans, not by Claude itself. So at the end of the day, I believe we should not delegate certain, human decisions qualities and human decisions to AI.

I use this analogy that there’s a term called psychotechnology. It’s a technology that changes the way we think. A good historical example is literacy because when we started to write words down, it changed a lot how people started to think about different things. AI is also a psychotechnology in the sense that it’s going to change how we think. But nonetheless, it’s a technology, not a person, even though Anthropic has this marketing spin on suggesting in every other post that Claude might be conscious. And there are some ideas that AI agents should be able to form their own non-human companies or things like that. I think this is a very wrong direction. It’s very useful for the AI company to have another legal layer that protects them from being responsible for their product and having Claude to be considered by a state as a legal person is giving them protection from the bad things this system can do. But this is just a business move. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact whether this model is conscious or not. I believe it’s not. But it’s just a strategy to sort of insulate a company from bad behaviour of the AI model. I don’t know if it answers your question.

David Jones [00:38:08]:

Well, I think the question probably is ongoing and unresolved. So I was thinking really that what you’re saying is that at present, the ethical framework does and needs to reside with the human beings.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:38:23]:

Definitely.

David Jones [00:38:25]:

And of course, in the world of business, that’s not terribly reassuring, given what we know of the history. And are you comfortable with that? And what do you think is needed really to have an organisation that builds genuinely healthy habits around AI and its use?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:38:46]:

So these are 2 questions in one. So, I don’t feel comfortable with the current trajectory of things. And that was one of the motivations for starting Impersonato. If there is a fortunate set of events when one or multiple AI companies will actually crash in coming year or 2, the situation will be sort of cleared and there will be a chance for healthy deployment of this technology in our lives. If not, we are going to face these weird ideas that are more of insurance for a tech company than anything else, and further erosion of ethical behaviour in business, unfortunately. I keep fingers crossed for a crash, really. So that’s the first part of the question. When it comes to building good habits in an organisation when it comes to this technology, I think that there are a few things worth deciding on. So first is that nobody is mandated to use AI. There’s this funny thing among certain companies where the managers equal AI use with revenue. Actually vice versa, revenue with AI use. And there was a point early this year where several companies started to organise leader boards among employees, who is going to use AI the most, because the managers believed that the more use of AI, the better revenue they will see at the end of a quarter. And it was absurd in many ways. This is like perfect example of Goodhart’s law, optimising the wrong measure. People started, because there was so much pressure on AI use, people started to write poems at work with AI just to increase their usage of these tools. So this needs to go. Forcing people to use AI is actually a very bad idea.

And the second is that there should be a wider understanding that we are very early in getting this technology right. So if you want to have healthy habits around AI in your organisation, you should treat a deployment of AI as an experiment that is covered by your R&D budget, not as in, I don’t know, from any other budget that is spent on operations. You’re in a very large experiment. And if you figure out in this experiment where in your organisation the AI fits well and doesn’t cause a drop in wellbeing of your employees. Now you are in a position that you can move from R&D stage to an operational stage. But before that, you should treat an AI deployment as an ongoing experiment. So far, the best case study I’ve seen over the last 4 years when it comes to deployment of AI in a large organisation was a Moderna company. This is a pharma company where they released ChatGPT internally. And instead of asking employees, use it as much as you can, or if you don’t use it, you will be fired, or report how many hours you saved with ChatGPT and all of the silly stuff that is flying around, they told employees, okay, play with it. It’s an ongoing experiment. Once you figure out where there is a good use case, we will move to the next phase. And that’s a healthy approach of incorporating AI into an organisation. And after that, something that I’ve said earlier, when nobody is mandated to use AI, we treat it as an experiment. And third, nobody should be forced to talk to AI.

Naomi Murphy [00:43:13]:

Thank you. Do you know, Paweł, normally we ask people at the end, what do they do to protect their own wellbeing when encountering challenges to that at work? And I love the fact that you were uncomfortable with the trajectory of AI, so you got up and started your own business to try and do something constructive for the industry. That’s really good to hear that action. For individuals who are using AI, do you have any advice for, well, obviously we’re all ending up using it, but do you have any advice for your average person rather than not just the companies in terms of how they think about it, but how should the rest of us healthily integrate it into our lives? How do you use it when you’re not at work?

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:43:57]:

I don’t.

Naomi Murphy [00:43:59]:

That’s interesting in itself.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:44:01]:

Actually, outside of work, I don’t use AI. That’s one thing. The other thing is that periodically, even at work, I’m verifying if the task that I delegate to AI I can do myself.

Naomi Murphy [00:44:13]:

Yes, because there have been studies, haven’t there, where it’s impacting on people’s brains in terms of their ability to perform tasks. And I think I noticed my handwriting’s deteriorated since I’m typing all the time. So I guess if you’re not using parts of your brain for specific tasks, that’s a bit worrying.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:44:31]:

Yeah, definitely we are going to see some form of deskilling among heavy AI users and their ability to perform the task without the aid of AI is going to diminish. And I think it’s more danger to young people than to people with considerable work experience because this is having so early a system that can do something for you blocks your ability to learn. But even though I’m still periodically doing this kind of check, okay, can I do this without AI or can I think without AI? I mean, if I want to, I don’t know, I have something to figure out. And if I see myself automatically opening the session with Claude or with any AI system, that’s a warning signal that, okay, it’s gone too far and I need to take a step back, and for the next couple of days, do a sort of detox.

Naomi Murphy [00:45:38]:

Thank you. That’s really helpful. I really enjoyed this conversation. It’s been really, really interesting in terms of the insights that you have and looking forward to talking to you again. So thank you very much for coming along today.

Dr. Pawel Szczesny [00:45:50]:

Thank you.

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Today we are joined by Kelly-Ann Edmondson who is a healthcare executive, former trauma ICU nurse, board-certified grief counsellor, bereaved mother, and founder of Timely Presence. Drawing from decades of experience in high-pressure healthcare environments and the death of her son, Darius, Kelly speaks about the emotional weight carried by caregivers, the cumulative impact of trauma and grief, and the responsibility organisations have to support people beyond the immediate crisis. Through Timely Presence, she is working to make sustained milestone-based grief support the standard rather than the exception. Good to meet you.

Kelly Edmondson [00:02:29]:

Yeah, good morning. Nice to meet you also.

Naomi Murphy [00:02:32]:

Hi, Kelly. Really nice to meet you. Glad you could join us today. Just listening to that description of your professional background, sounds like you’ve been very much engaged with people’s pain during the course of your career. Could you just tell us a little bit more about the work that you’ve done? Because I’m wondering how that might have set you up with the sensitivity to think about constructive ways forward.

Kelly Edmondson [00:02:58]:

So as a new graduate nurse, I went directly into trauma ICU. And so a large unit, we were a burn unit also. So took care of patients who had life interrupted, right? Motorcycle, car accidents, victims of violence, and so much opportunity to see people teetering on the edge. And it teaches you so much about a couple of things. One is just the fragility of life. And how important it is to show up every day, to say the things, to do the things that you want to do. Because, you know, I saw young people in the middle of their lives completely disrupted. It teaches you the value of relationships, how much families and friends need. And one thing I saw consistently is the people who rallied, the ones who survived the most and had the most recovery, had networks that walked through the recovery with them.

They were there. They were there from day one. And they weren’t just there. They were like present. They wanted updates on what happened overnight. They were the families and friends that needed to talk to the physicians and ask questions. And I don’t care what happened. You knew that they were walking out of that, of that hospital. You knew that. And so, you know, as a very young woman, I saw this time and time and time again. And I had what I call the awesome responsibility, but also privilege to be with people at the end of life who didn’t walk out. And so, to experience those final moments with them and their families and just the care that you need to hold those moments with. It really shaped me as a young woman and really the rest of my nursing career.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:42]:

So it sounds like you learned a lot about how other people cope with huge adversity and life-changing events and loss. I wonder what emotional demands that work made on you and what you learned yourself about coping with adversity.

Kelly Edmondson [00:06:03]:

Yeah, it’s heavy. It’s heavy work, right? And for good clinicians, it should be, right? You should care about the people that you are blessed to care for. I remember caring for a very young man. It was our Independence Day. And he had been partying with friends and dove headfirst into 3 feet of water. And so he became a quadriplegic after that. And I was caring for him the day that he was trached. And so was able to mouth things and, you know, be able to communicate really for the first time since it happened. And I remember him looking at me when he came back from the surgery and he woke up and I was so excited that he was going to see his family.

He had 2 very young children and a wife. And he looked at me with tears that he couldn’t wipe and he mouthed, kill me. Those were his words. And I was 24. you know, 25 years old. And I remember I had to step out of the room and I became very emotional. And I talked to one of my mentors on the unit and, you know, I said, I’ve got to get myself together. I can’t let him see me like this.

And she said, the best nurses, the best providers live in the moments with their patients. Don’t you ever be ashamed of a patient seeing you be impacted by how much their life has changed. That makes you relatable and real. You can’t fall apart in the room, but you should be human. And so I remember bringing his kids in and bringing his wife in and how much his children showed him that no matter who you were now, you’re not going to stop being my dad. You’re still my dad. And there’s still value in this relationship and just being in your presence matters.

And it instantly changed him. And I decided that night, I was just so emotional that the core was really that, that moment when him connecting with his kids reminded him how valuable the rest of his life could be, that my purpose was to try and help people and as long as I could get back to that, I could still find joy and I could find more purpose and resilience in the work. And so I made it an intentional effort to do that, always find the what next for the patient. And early, I became very committed to self-care. And to me, that’s nature. That is time away by myself. It’s music, and I’ve never given any of those things up. All of them renew me, and all of them are a very important part of who I am.

Naomi Murphy [00:09:08]:

Thank you. It’s a lovely answer. And I was really struck by, you know, when you said you should care, because I think we’ve probably all encountered those people who say, oh, I don’t ever take my work home with me. And actually, it’s quite worrying, I think, when you’re working in lines of work where you do come across really difficult situations, things that really move you and make you feel really sad or frightened if you’re working in prisons, or all sorts of really painful emotions. Actually, I think if we switch off to that, we’re not then able to do the job that we really need to do. And I was also struck by how if you engage with the emotions around the work, you’re able to be there as an authentic human being, so it doesn’t cost you. I think that was what I felt when I worked in a prison anyway, that it’s not costing me to be in the prison if I’m there as an authentic person, whereas if you’re trying to be somebody you’re not, then actually that takes more out of you. I don’t know if you found that.

Kelly Edmondson [00:10:05]:

100%, right? You have to have some mechanism of protection, right? That’s what we do. But at the end of the day, it’s about what you find valuable, what you find purpose and the ability to look at people as not a patient, not a prisoner, not another case, not another, but a person, right? A person who, for whatever their circumstances, has ended up in your care is what makes you connected to why you signed up to do what you do in the first place.

Naomi Murphy [00:10:45]:

Thank you. And obviously you’ve named the fact that connections were the things that often kept people going through those positions of adversity. You’d been building a family yourself during this time, hadn’t you? And what role did that play in helping you cope and have resilience?

Kelly Edmondson [00:11:06]:

Yeah, you know, it’s fascinating the parallels that you can see in your work. And I remember, so my oldest son was born on Christmas Day. And so when my kids were small, as a nurse, Christmas was whatever day I didn’t work, right? It was whatever day I was off. That’s what day it was Christmas. And I remember working on Christmas Eve overnight. So in the morning, I heard trauma level 1 overhead, and I knew a patient was coming to the ICU, and the ER called me. And it was a young man, he was 18 years old. I lived in Ohio at the time, it was black ice, they had had an ice storm and he had crashed his car into a pole and had significant head damage, brain damage, and they said, your job’s to keep him alive until his parents get here.

And so when he got up to the unit, he had stopped clotting, so he was bleeding kind of from every orifice. And I was just trying to clean him. And I remember feeling someone behind me and I turned and it was his parents. And in that moment, he died. And I saw his mom collapse. And I remember thinking at that moment, Christmas for her will never be what it is for me. Right? It’s my son’s birthday. It is Christmas.

It is a day full of joy. And I remember thinking, we’ve taken this from her. And so that day when I went home, I remember thinking how much more joyful I was, how much more grateful I was that I had this time with my kids, whatever day Christmas turned out to be. And it was a day to be with them. And 25 years later, my Christmas-born son died on January 3rd. And so the entire holiday season now has changed for us. And I am that mother who, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to recognise how precious those moments were because I had 25 Christmases with him. That I poured different energy into because I saw her loss.

And so, you know, the reality is we see pain and purpose in people all the time. And as humans, the best thing that you can do from that is figure out how to apply those lessons into your life so you don’t live with regrets. And so being a nurse, I had the opportunity to do that so much, to say the thing, to do the thing, to live in the moment because I’d seen so many people who had their moments cut short. It’s really such a gift. It’s such a gift and such a responsibility at the same time.

Naomi Murphy [00:14:17]:

Thank you, Kelly. I think that says a lot about your attitude towards life yourself, that rather than get bitter or resentful, but you could see and draw on that experience from your background. So that’s very precious. But I was also thinking about the loss of people at Christmas. It’s such a difficult time because obviously for Christmas, we certainly in the UK, we have this massive build-up that goes on for weeks and weeks before it arrives. And I always think for people who lost a loved one around Christmas, that must be really horrible to have that. It isn’t just one day that’s very, very difficult, but you’ve got this very long run-up to that, haven’t you? When death occurs around a big celebration or something that there’s a lot of visibility in society over.

Kelly Edmondson [00:15:09]:

It’s so true. I wrote about this the other day. The hardest day of my year is adorned in festive lights and carols, right? For the rest of the world, it’s just very strange dichotomy. It really is. And for my family, what we’ve decided to do around that is I call it reframing the ritual. It just wasn’t feasible for me to stay at home with a Christmas tree. I just, that’s not what it is for us anymore. And so we take a trip at Christmas, and we take some of his ashes with us.

And in that way, we are taking him to do what he wanted to do, which is travel around the world. And we celebrate him in that way, and we talk about him, and we think, where would Darius want to go? And we do that. And that, for me, has allowed me to take control of that very emotional time and place us in an environment that’s safe for us. So I always encourage whatever that looks like for you. If it’s Father’s Day, if it’s, right, what do you do that day that’s not just sit in the house and sit in the loss, but how do you like celebrate the life? And it’s changed the holiday season for my family.

Naomi Murphy [00:16:32]:

Yeah, a really beautiful way to commemorate your son.

David Jones [00:16:39]:

Thank you, Kelly. It’s actually quite overwhelming listening to you today. You tell a very powerful story and deeply upsetting, actually. But I was struck by your description of your work because it’s such a beautiful description of how your experiences, for example, with the young man who died in front of his mother. A description of how these experiences, work experiences, enter, well, of course, all of us engaged in this kind of work, and form a mosaic in our minds and build up the kind of character and the personality that you become throughout life. And of course, we’re always adding to this as life goes on. It’s a very powerful description you’ve given to us there, Kelly. Thank you for that.

Kelly Edmondson [00:17:44]:

Thank you.

David Jones [00:17:46]:

Do you think that the pain of somebody’s loss becomes difficult and perhaps even embarrassing for others to deal with?

Kelly Edmondson [00:17:58]:

So, you know, certainly in the States, and I’ve had more and more conversations with people in other countries, and we’re not great at talking about this very universal human experience of loss. We’re not great. People are very afraid that bringing it up will remind you of the loss. You know, I say to people all the time, if there were a pill I could take that could make me forget, I’d take it every day on time, right? It’s not possible. There’s not a day I don’t know that my son is dead. So there’s no reminding me of that. Saying his name and telling his stories, what it does do for me is it validates that he matters. He still matters in this world, right? That his existence had an impact on someone other than me, someone other than my husband or my other children, that Darius has a legacy. And so saying his name keeps him alive another day. And that doesn’t mean that sometimes it’s not met with tears, right? He’s my son. I miss him. I will never hold him on this side of heaven. I will never engage again. So that, that’s a loss.

But all tears aren’t sadness, right? Some tears, I call them wet footprints of love. And sometimes it’s just, it’s the only way that I have to express what I feel. And so, you know, I really wish as a society we could get more comfortable with not just talking about loss, but talking about the life, the love, the light that existed from the person. That’s where the magic is. And so, you know, we’re not comfortable. In fact, the people who have had a loss are even culturally taught that if you bring it up, it’s taboo, right? You’re taught not to bring it up. And so, I’ve just broken all those norms. I will casually drop his name in conversation.

And initially the people close to me, you could see the discomfort on them. But I mean, it’s been 3 and a half years, so everyone is now very comfortable, and we laugh about him and we laugh about the naughty things he did in high school and you know, his stubbornness, all that is a part of who he is. And I don’t want to whitewash any of his being, right? He’s a whole being full of life and flaws, and all of that made him who he is. And so, the more you talk about it, the more barriers that come down, but you also open the door for people to begin sharing memories of their person. And it becomes safer to do that. And eventually what you get is a network of people who are comfortable with saying, I remember when my dad used to X. Or, you know, I have a colleague who suddenly began talking to me about a an elementary age friend she had who died of cancer and no one ever talked about it. Her friend was, this is 40 years ago.

And she now has an entryway safely to be able to talk about how disruptive that was for her at 9 years old and not being able to, and how she will now talk differently with her grandchildren when her parents pass away, right? When there’s this, and so, like all difficult conversations, I think it takes a brave person in the room to open the door. And suddenly you realise all of us have lost something, right? All of us understand the grief of losing a relationship, a person, a pet, and when you open that door, I begin to see the tension decrease and the openness increase, which is so amazing to see.

David Jones [00:22:33]:

Thank you. So I think it was following the death of Darius that you began to develop the idea of Timely Presence. Is that correct? How did the vision of this project come to you?

Kelly Edmondson [00:22:50]:

Yeah, so here in the States, I don’t know about the UK, but in the States, Mother’s Day is a huge deal. It’s a huge deal. It’s very commercial. It’s a lot. And so he died in January, and Mother’s Day is in May. And so a few months later, I started seeing all these, every store you would go into, all the commercials. And I began getting very stressed, anxious about the arrival of Mother’s Day. And I told my family, I’m not participating.

So don’t show up here with a bunch of balloons, right? I’m not participating. And my sister called and she said, I’m coming. I’m coming. That she was bringing my mom and her daughter and they were coming to spend that weekend with me. And she says, we don’t have to do anything, but we’re not going to have you go through this alone. So they came and my daughter and everyone came with stories and memories about Darius. That’s how we spent the weekend. And so I had spent a couple of months so stressed about being a bereaved mom.

And instead, I just got to be Darius’s mom. That’s it. We just talked about him and we laughed and we joked and we had memorabilia of him. And it was so beautiful. We cried, but we also loved. And I realised after that weekend that the presence and the memory and storytelling of him made this thing I’d been stressed about for weeks not only survivable, but like enjoyable. And so my neighbour’s husband had died just a couple of months after my son, and his birthday was coming. And so I thought it might be so nice to do something like this for Shauna.

So I did. And then their wedding anniversary, they had been married 50 years, their wedding anniversary was coming. And I did something for that. And her reaction was so positive. So I started doing it for other people, right? People die every day. So I started doing it for people universally, people said the same thing. Nobody else remembered me for Father’s Day. Nobody else thought about his birthday, right? And it felt like, one person said to me, it felt like a hug in a box. Getting this felt like a hug in the box. And so I actually was in a PhD program studying healthcare innovation, and I dropped out and enrolled in an MBA to build this business based on that experience. And so it was really rooted in Mother’s Day weekend, my family coming and showing up for me on what was going to be a very dark time and them making it bright. And so that is really how the idea of Timely Presence was born.

David Jones [00:26:09]:

Thank you. Can you say in a bit more detail what Timely Presence actually does?

Kelly Edmondson [00:26:18]:

So, as we’ve talked about, people don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do when you have a loss, but people want to do something, right? And much of what we do, I continue to say this, the problem with grief support isn’t that people don’t care. It’s that it’s all built around the wrong moment. So everything is front-loaded. You’re actually overwhelmed with support in the beginning as you’re preparing for the funeral and all of those things. There’s so much presence. And then within a week, everyone goes back. Within a month, everyone stops checking.

And suddenly grief is not the loss. Grief is when psychologically and socially you begin to understand how that loss is showing up in your life. It’s when you realise, I can’t call my son. It’s when you realise that Father’s Day is coming and I have no father sitting at the table, or, that’s when grief sets in. But everyone’s gone by that time. So what we do is we allow people who want to show up for someone they care about in a more meaningful way than flowers and a visit at the funeral. We allow you to give the gift of presence all year long. And we send gifts on the emotional calendar of grief.

So we send them on all of the days that the research says grief will intensify. So you’ve lost your spouse, that wedding anniversary is a very tender day. We show up that day with a gift of presence and love and a reminder that they’re not alone. We show up during the holiday season. We’ve talked about that, how difficult the holiday season is. We show up on birthdays, and we show up with a gorgeous gift on the one-year anniversary of loss. So all year long, through one purchase, we take care of a year of presents for you so that without the logistical burden, you can still show up in a way that is very meaningful and milestone based.

David Jones [00:28:38]:

Thank you. I was wondering how people feel about your project and the way in which, because you’re very open about this, the way in which you bring a charge along, you ask for a charge. How do people feel about that?

Kelly Edmondson [00:28:56]:

You know, I feel like people have been so overwhelmingly awed by what it is that we’ve done. They feel like many people don’t know what to do, especially with significant losses, the loss of a child, the unanticipated loss of a spouse, right? It’s very awkward for them. They’re not sure what to do. When they are able to show up, particularly in these losses that people aren’t comfortable talking about, a stillbirth, a suicide, you know, we’ve had these losses that are I’d say disenfranchised or kind of ambiguous. People have been so grateful for a way to do something without them having to be the one who finds the words, who finds the right, that finds the entryway that, based on research, based on my experience as a nurse who’s lived in life-or-death situations, as a grief counsellor now who talks through grief, and as a bereaved mother, someone who is really informed from all angles on this, to step in and provide the right words at the right time for them, especially in these strange situations, has been so well received. It’s really just been, I’ll say, a gift to people that just really hasn’t existed in the market.

David Jones [00:30:38]:

Certainly it’s not something I’ve heard of or come across before.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:44]:

No, it’s a really beautiful idea, Kelly. I mean, you’re a very inspirational woman, I think. And talking to you, I’m reminded of, I don’t know if you’ve read Bruce Feiler’s book Life Is in the Transitions, which I’ve mentioned a few times on this podcast, because he’s a storyteller who spoke to people about the darkest moments of their lives and found how do people recover from these really difficult periods. And often when people look back, they could see that actually things like having had cancer or a loss of a person, often that had really added something of huge value to their lives by facing this awful personal tragedy. So I’m reminded of that listening to you. But wondered, you know, what advice would you give to our listeners, people who might be experiencing periods of difficulty, what advice would you give to them on the basis of your experience?

Kelly Edmondson [00:31:40]:

Yeah, I think particularly someone who’s going through a loss, regardless of what that is, right? I think we spend so much time focused on the absence, the loss, what we no longer have. And it’s true, right, that’s fact-based thinking. I have found so much more value and purpose in focusing on what was, what I had. And so, you know, my memories of Darius and how he completed our family and the role that he took in our lives and I do a lot of what would Darius say, what would he think. A, it keeps me connected to him in a way that I think is very beautiful. It’s almost like he guides me now. It’s a very interesting shift in dynamic, but it brings joy, right? I intentionally think of the silly thing That we couldn’t stop laughing about, or the time I caught him doing X in high school. And you know how frustrated I was, but how funny it is in hindsight.

And those, that storytelling, A, keeps him so fresh in my mind. I guess people worry about forgetting. And when you don’t visit those, when you intentionally shut off, you do lose some recall. And so it keeps him fresh and ever-present in my mind, but it also brings so much peace to me. So I think intentionally thinking on the positive that was built from whatever you lost is important. The other thing is not losing you. I am a mother who lost her child. That is, it has reshaped me, but I refuse to let it be the sole definer of me.

And so it is a major part of who I am, but I am still Kelly. I am still Kelly. I still have all the gifts and talents and hobbies and joys that existed outside of that. And so it was for me, my charge was to figure out how do I take that loss and incorporate it so that for the rest of what I have left on earth, I can show up as a better me. How does that loss inform the rest of who I am? And for some people, that looks like I’m just more intentional in my relationships. I just have much more intent. And for some people, that looks like I started a foundation. And for some people, that looks like I’m a better mother, for whatever that is.

Don’t let, my son’s life will have purpose. It will have purpose, and it’s my job to make that happen. And so for me, purpose looks like timely presence and these conversations. But I have a very dear friend who lost a son, and for her, purpose transitioned into how intentional she was and how she navigates the relationship with her other son. Right. She was very busy before, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And she’s much more intentional on that. And it’s brought her so much peace and refined their relationship and their relationship with her husband.

And so it can look so many ways. There’s no prescription to that. But, you know, refining you matters so much. We were gifted another day. And so, you know, I feel really purposeful in leading that. And then I do have a message for people who want to support someone who’s grieving and they don’t know what to do. And I think it’s just 3 simple things. I like to not make it hard. It’s 3 things. They’re 3 Rs. And the first is that you kind of just have to regulate your own nervous system, your own responses, right? You’re meeting people where they are. We talked about this earlier as a nurse. It’s okay to have some emotion. It’s not okay for me to fall apart in a room, right? And the same is when you’re dealing with someone who’s grieving.

It’s okay to meet them with emotion and sadness and empathy and all of those things. Don’t make them need to console you. But also make sure you’re using words that don’t minimise their loss. Things like, at least you have 2 other children. I hate that comment. To me, it’s like, well, yeah, so now I have an heir and a spare, I guess. I don’t, I don’t know. It’s, you know, just think intentionally about the things you say. Good intent, wrong words. So regulate. Number 2 is respond. Do something. For me, the worst thing to happen was a friend who did nothing.

Nothing. She didn’t show up for the funeral. She didn’t send me any messages. She did, she did nothing. And in hindsight, I think she probably didn’t know what to do and was very uncomfortable. But she certainly wasn’t more uncomfortable than me, right? And so, it’s ended our relationship, but it can change the dynamic. Do something even if you’re uncomfortable. Send a text, send a card, you know, check in. And the last thing is remain. So do something more than once.

The loss is ongoing, the grief is ongoing, the process is ongoing. So do something intermittently. Do something on a Sunday. Do something at Christmas. Just do something. So, you know, regulate, respond, and remain. If you can just do those, people aren’t expecting you to show up as a psychologist or a grief counsellor. You know, they’re not expecting that. They just want you to be human and acknowledge their loss and walk with them through it.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:17]:

Thank you, some really wise advice there. It’s been lovely talking to you, Kelly, really lovely project that you’re doing, so thanks for coming on and talking about it.

David Jones [00:38:27]:

Yeah, thanks so much, Kelly. I just want to say this because Naomi and I have done hundreds of these conversations and this is the first one where I’ve had tears in my eyes. And it’s not just because of the power of your narrative and the story you tell, but it’s the sensitivity and intelligence by which you told this story. So thanks very much indeed for that.

Kelly Edmondson [00:39:01]:

Thanks for allowing me to share the message and keep my son’s legacy going. So I appreciate that. This work matters.

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Today we’re meeting with Rhia Canady. Rhia is the founder of Fly Girl Foundation. She’s also a mother, a chef, and a caterer, and she’s going to tell us all about that.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:01:05 - 00:01:11]

Great to meet you, Rhia. Glad you could join us today. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be in the position that you are in now?

Rhia Canady [00:01:13 - 00:02:02]

Yeah, so, my name’s Rhia. Like we just said. In 2023, I went to prison for concern in supply of Class A drugs and possession with intent to supply times 2. I spent 11 months in prison and served 6 months on tag and a further 18 months on licence. That was the first time I’d ever been to prison. And that came after, I would say, maybe a decade’s worth of trauma, like built-up trauma that I’d been through. My daughter’s father was killed through a knife crime attack in 2020. And I was left to be a single mother, widowed mother, partner. And she was only 2 and a half at the time. So it was a pretty tricky time trying to navigate everything. I’m an only child as well.

So I felt quite alone at that time. I do have great parents, but sometimes when we’re going through things, the people that are or should be the closest to us are the people that we probably stay away from at times. So yeah, in 2023, I was arrested on the 6th of April. It was the day before Good Friday, Easter bank holiday weekend. And I spent 6 days in Patchway Police Station. That’s because of the bank holidays. So I was arrested on the Thursday, transported to court, or I was charged and then transported to court on the Saturday, but no prisons in the UK were accepting women over the bank holiday.

So I was placed back in Patchway for a further approximately 4 days. I arrived at Eastwood Park Prison Tuesday evening. I’m not sure the date. I think it was around the 13th, the 10th or 12th at that point, where I spent the next 10 months on remand. And then I was sentenced in the November after pleading guilty, which took me quite a long time to decide if I was pleading guilty or not because I didn’t feel that I was guilty of the charges brought before me. I was definitely guilty of having something in my possession, whether it was to supply or no, I would probably still argue to this day, but given the quantity of the amount of drugs, I felt like I had to accept the charges brought before me because my daughter was alone in the world at that point and she needed a mum.

So I pled guilty and I wrote a letter to the judge explaining to him how I think I had got before him at 32, having never been arrested before, never even been in any trouble before. And I was quite fortunate that the judge listened to my letter and heard what I had to say. And he told me that if I was ever before him again, it would be a very different circumstances. And I’d been preparing for like an 8-year sentence at that point. And that’s what my barristers told me to prepare yourself for, that kind of mark and that kind of sentence. And in my head I’m thinking, like, my daughter’s, she’s now 5 at the time when I was being sentenced. 8 years, that’s a long time.

That’s a lot of time I would be missing out on. But again, I was quite lucky and the judge gave me a 5-year sentence reduced to 2 years, 4 months, which meant I went back to prison for approximately 13 days and then I was returned home. I returned home on tag. During my tag time, I think that’s when I probably struggled the most. I think the sort of person I am, and can’t speak for everybody, but I know a lot of women that we wear masks a lot of the time. And when I went to prison, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d only ever seen prisons on the TV and films and things. I’d never been inside a prison unless it was for a visit.

And that’s completely different as to actually being inside the prison, being a prisoner. And I didn’t feel that I belonged there. I guess a lot of women feel like they don’t belong there, but the sort of women I was amongst, I didn’t feel that this was a life that I could continue with or even want to be around. Like, I couldn’t even understand at that point how I got there. So I feel like the work began in prison. Because I started to do a lot of reflecting, understanding, trying to understand where things had gone wrong for me, what I could have done differently. But then when I came out on tag, I think we all have like an idea of what life’s like, what life will be like for us when we step out of the gate. And I was in complete and utter shock. I thought I was going to jump back into life, go straight back to work, do everything that I’d been doing before.

But actually, I was trying to navigate even walking up and down the stairs after 8 o’clock at night. And I can go to the fridge anytime I want, and I can just go outside. So yeah, I think the work began on myself whilst I was on tag. And then I ran a small catering company, before I went to prison and also that was like my bread and butter. When I got out of prison, I picked that up straight away. And it was within, I was limited on time because I was on tag. I had a 7 o’clock curfew. So I had to try and find a way to make some money to keep the household afloat, but still within my restrictions.

So I picked back up my catering business and a company I’d worked with inside Eastwood Park reached out to me, they’re called RIFT Social Enterprise, reached out to me and asked me if I would be interested in doing an interview around what it’s like to be self-employed as a woman coming out of prison, which I was more than happy to do. So I went to London, it was quite professional. We had the famous photographer Miss Anne Harriman came and took the photos, and it was in Camden Market. It was a great day, and I told my story there.

And people kept saying to me, oh, we think you’d be great at lived experience work. And I didn’t really even know what that was at the time. It’s not a world I was really used to. And then just through networking, I received an email to say, an organisation called the Triangle Trust were looking for trustees, people of lived experience. It would be working on a grants board, looking at grants for organisations that support women and young girls. When I was around 15, I worked on a grants panel as a young representative. So I knew quite a lot about grants, so I applied, and again, that lived experience word had come up, and I was sent to London to this really fancy building.

And I still had a tag on my foot at the time, so it was all quite daunting for me. It was all, I was pushing myself into a new space, but I still wasn’t really sure why I was doing it at the time. Anyway, I went to London. Met the ladies, they were absolutely lovely, and I got the role. And within a few months, because that was like the June, and I came off tag at the end, mid-June, by the November, they’d sent me an invite to come to the House of Lords for an evening in honour of their 75th anniversary. And I couldn’t believe that I was being invited to the House of Lords. I think I was definitely suffering from imposter syndrome. And still unsure, but I felt like I was at a bit of a crossroads. If I didn’t dive into it, who knows what life might be like? So I went, went along and I felt like a small fish in the sea.

I was very overwhelmed. There was lots of what I thought were professionals, people asking me what do I do for a living and what have I been doing for the last few years and what would I say? My partner was killed and I’ve been to prison, I’ve just come off tag and now I’m in the House of Lords. None of it, no matter how I played it in my head, nothing sounded right. So I kind of just lingered in the background a bit. Yeah, I kind of just lingered in the background. And then a young girl took the microphone and gave a speech, and she looked quite similar to me and her story sounded quite similar to mine, and suddenly I was like really engaged in the room.

And she has her own lived experience, but now runs an organisation that helps young girls who may be care experienced or school exclusion on the pipeline of being involved with the criminal justice system. And that sparked something in me, I instantly wanted to have a conversation with this lady when she finished giving her talk. And then I came back to Bristol and just started working nonstop, putting ideas down and networking. And then the idea of Fly Girl Foundation came where I felt like I could help women who may have been through some kind of disadvantage, whatever that looks like, because looking back and reflecting on my life, I could see multiple points where some kind of support or intervention I would’ve really benefited from. And had I have had that, I may not have gone to prison.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:10:58 - 00:11:29]

Yeah, I mean, Rhia, it’s an amazing journey. I wonder if we could just go back a bit because there’s so much that you’ve had to say that I think listeners will be really interested to hear more about. I was thinking about, you know, you said, to be going to prison for the first time at 32 is quite unusual, isn’t it? Quite often people have been to prison previously. Do you know, it sounds like that 10-year period up to going to prison sounded like you’d had so much to deal with. I think you said your partner was murdered.

Rhia Canady [00:11:29 - 00:11:49]

My partner was murdered. That was 2022 in lockdown. I can’t even really explain the effect that it had on me. I went into like an autopilot. I had like a checklist. Everything needed to be done. I had to make sure that my daughter was taken care of. She was 2 and a half at the time. I had to make sure the house was clean and tidy. I had to make sure the washing was done. I had to do everything. And the trial for his murder, I needed some kind of, I guess, babysitter support to be able to look after my daughter whilst I was at court and not be ringing me or texting me to say, when are you coming back? Blah, blah, blah.

So the first day of the trial was my daughter’s first day of full-time nursery. She’d never been to nursery before, but I took her to nursery on the first day of the trial, waved her goodbye whilst I then attended court to find out how her father had been killed. And I think trying to process what you see at court and then coming home to be a mum, there’s no way to describe it. It’s borderline impossible. You have to find some kind of coping mechanism to get through it. And mine was going to the place where my daughter’s father was killed. There’s a mural on the wall there, and I would go there at any given option I could, weekends, I would be there from maybe 7 o’clock in the evening till 5, 6 o’clock in the morning.

And there would be friends that would gather there, we would drink, and I would just sit at the mural all the time. And I guess that was my way of coping, but it was a, it was nothing but self-destruct. But I would make sure that I was up, ready to do whatever it is I needed to do for my daughter the following day. And that’s when I probably talk about the mask that we wear sometimes, because if you would’ve asked anybody that was around me at that time, they would’ve told you that Rhia’s fine, Rhia’s coping, Rhia’s doing really well, and Rhia’s working, and Namaya’s doing great. And yeah, but inside I was completely crumbling.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:13:45 - 00:14:06]

Well, I was just thinking about that day of court, because actually a lot of parents, a lot of mums find it really difficult taking their kids to nursery for the first time and just coping with that in the day, that can leave you a bit emotionally dysregulated. So to then think about having to go off to court to deal with something so painful, that must have really led to an overwhelm, I imagine.

Rhia Canady [00:14:07 - 00:15:03]

I was really lucky because the nursery that my daughter went to, we’d never been there before, but I, you have like an interview beforehand to meet the teacher and all this stuff. And I explained why we were coming to the nursery, why she was coming, what it is I’ve got to go and do, and what it is I need from the nursery, because it needs to be a place that my daughter feels comfortable. She feels safe enough for me to leave her for maximum 6 to 8 weeks, 8 o’clock in the morning till pretty much 5 at night. The teachers, I couldn’t thank them enough. They didn’t charge me for the service. They said, there’s no way we’re going to charge you to leave your daughter here for that time and have that stress of having to worry how you’re going to pay for it as well as going to court and they allowed me even extra time after the court to continue to have her there until we had to work out how we were going to resolve paying for it and things.

But that was just nothing but kindness from them. So they were amazing. They were amazing. I’m always grateful that they were amazing because they made a harder time a lot easier without having to have the burden or the worry of Is she okay? Or the nursery’s calling me, I might need to leave. But yeah, most parents’ first day is taking pictures, waving them off and smiling, and going home and looking at the phone to make sure everything’s okay. Whereas she was off on a new adventure and I was off on something completely different. Yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:15:38 - 00:15:50]

So lovely though to hear that, about people doing something good within those moments, but, you know, obviously a very difficult time. And what was it like when you were in prison? How did you find that going in at 32?

Rhia Canady [00:15:51 - 00:16:28]

I think at first, like, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I think there’s a lot of women in there that are battling their own traumas. You see a lot of self-harm in women’s prison, a lot of mentally unwell people. And I just felt I was quite angry. I was angry at myself for a long time because I thought, how have you got here? How have you got here? You’ve gone from never being arrested to looking at potentially 8 to 10 years in prison. And I was furious, but I had to survive because you’re literally on your own in prison. You’ve got nothing.

And where I came in over a bank holiday period, I had like no canteen for 2 weeks, and that was a big struggle. I couldn’t phone home and it, like, you get your £2 credit when you go in, but then I’d missed 2 canteen sheets, so I couldn’t top up the phone. I couldn’t phone home. I couldn’t speak to my daughter for about 10 days. I thought I was going to get judge in chambers. And for people that don’t know what judge in chambers is, that’s when you can apply to the court to say why you think you should get bail, why you should be released from prison. And I’ve helped friends get judge in chambers before I’d gone to prison, I’d helped several people in my life get judged in chambers, and I thought, if I provide my mum and my friends with the correct information, they can give it to the solicitors, and Rhia, within 7 to 8 days, you’ll be home.

Nope. The judge just kept saying that there was a concern for my safety, and that stuck with me for a while because I couldn’t understand, like, why they kept saying there was a concern for my safety. I’m in here on a drugs charge. I’m not in here with violence. I’m not in here for anything else. I’m in here for a drugs charge. And I feel more unsafe in this place because look at the environment. That was it. No judge chambers. They said there was another chance to get judge chambers. I said, I don’t want it. I don’t want to go for it anymore because I’m almost comfortable here now. So if I leave, all that time that I’ve been here won’t be counted. And if I get found guilty, then I’d have to come back. So it was, it’s awful. Prison’s awful.

I’m never gonna tell you that it’s nice, because it’s not, there’s nothing nice about it. But when you’re there, you build relationships, friends. I was lucky I had a good friendship circle in there. And you build, like, well, I feel like people that get through the prison system quite easily are people that build a solid routine. I found a job quite quickly. I was a gym orderly. Meant I was out myself all the time, training in the gym, keeping my mind busy, keeping my body active. Otherwise, you’d be behind your door all day just sitting on a bed.

So it was for me, it was like trying to find routine and structure with a little bit of normality. And I would know exactly what I’m doing, like every hour until it’s banged up. And then that’s another day off the list. So it was awful. But I like to think that I’m somebody that will always try and make the best out of a bad situation. And I definitely think that’s what I did with prison.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:19:08 - 00:19:10]

And who looked after your daughter while you were in prison?

Rhia Canady [00:19:11 - 00:19:12]

She stayed with my mum and dad.

David Jones [00:19:13 - 00:19:35]

I mean, you’ve given a brilliant account of your journey already, Rhia. But I was wondering about your time in Eastwood Park, because on your website there’s a lovely picture of you, back in the gym standing behind a table, obviously at some event. What was that like as an experience for you?

Rhia Canady [00:19:36 - 00:20:19]

So that was the first time I’d gone back into Eastwood Park after leaving, and that was approximately, that was the March, and I came out the previous December. So say 15 months after I’d left. And again, like I said, when I stepped out the gate, I stepped out the gate thinking, I got this. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m going home to my life and blah, blah, blah. And when I was invited back into the prison, I thought, yeah, this would be great. And I know what I’m doing and I’m not gonna feel like overwhelmed or anything because this is a place that I don’t like, I don’t wanna be, that I’m here under different circumstances. I can leave this time.

But actually, I think it was, there’s certain things that trigger you, smells. And then I can remember, so that event was a resettlement event where the girls, the prisoners can come to each stall and find out what sort of work you do and you can sign up clients. There was lots of different stalls there, but I had my Fly Girl stall there. And when the girls came round and I looked at them, And some of them I knew from my sentence. Some of them were still there. Some of them had come back. Some really excited to see me. Some avoided me because they didn’t feel like they wanted to speak, or I don’t know, for whatever reason.

That’s fine. But actually, it’s sad to say that the girls all look really, really unwell. They all look quite unwell. They don’t have much colour in their skin. And there’s almost like this, this like green sense, this green tone to the skin. And yeah, they just don’t look that well. And that made me quite sad because I’ve got another picture of myself as a prisoner stood in the prison. And when I look at that picture, compare it to the picture of me in the gym, I also look unwell and I also have that, green tone and sadness in me.

And I think at that moment I realised maybe why I was in Eastwood Park at the time and how far I’ve come, how far I’d come at that point. And it just made me, gave me a little bit more fuel for my work. I wanted to help the girls get to where I’ve got, and I try and do it from a place of encouragement. You never want to, it’s never like to brag like, oh, look at me, I went to prison and now I do this. I want everybody to feel uplifted and empowered. And since that event in Eastwood Park, I’ve probably been back maybe 20, 30 times. I’ve given talks there. I’m part of the in-reach team.

I walk up and down the wings and meet with girls and have discussions and help with prison pickups and release plans. And I try and be there at the start of the journey and helping hand all the way through until the girls don’t need me anymore, or they want to come and work with us or whatever it may be. So I think that first time in Eastwood Park was like a shock, but a wake-up reminded me who I am, how I got here, why I do what I do. But it also, it was like a bit of a sadness, sad feeling as well.

David Jones [00:22:48 - 00:23:31]

Yeah, I bet. Really quite a powerful experience going back into Eastwood Park, I imagine. I’ve been to Eastwood Park and it, I mean, getting in there as a civilian rather than as a potential prisoner is a strange experience because it’s like going up to a house, knocking on the door, and not knowing if there’s anyone inside because that’s just the nature of the way it’s built. Thanks for that description. And what you’ve been describing, Rhia, it sounds as if you met a lot of positivity in your journey, you know, including up to your trip to the House of Lords, were there any major kind of stumbling blocks on the way?

Rhia Canady [00:23:32 - 00:24:51]

So I guess one of the major things I had over my head was even after I came out of prison, I had a POCA hearing pending, which is a Proceeds of Crime Act, and it’s where the courts, after you’ve been sentenced, they’ll come to you with financial evidence to say, we believe you have made this from criminal activity and whilst I was in prison, when they arrested me, they’d seized my car at the point of arrest and hadn’t returned it, were keeping it until this POCA hearing had commenced. And my barrister was not very supportive of me during my whole entire interactions with him, from the prison engagement to me getting sentenced. He didn’t turn up on my sentencing day. He sent somebody else last minute, which was a blessing because he, the person he sent, really listened to me and fought for me. And he’d only had an hour with me before. But he was around for my POCA hearing and he kept telling me that I could not change the evidence before me. Now, I’m not asking to change the evidence.

What I’m gonna do is prove that your evidence is nonsense. And he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen at all. My solicitor was saying that she can only go by the instructions of the barrister, and I’m saying that’s fine, but what I’m gonna do is create a document to show that these figures they’ve given are complete nonsense. And she sent me an 800-page financial document that I had to go through and argue that I do not have £64,000 hidden or in my bank or wherever it may be. Because I did not. I did not. I was a single mum. I didn’t, I did not have £64,000. I managed to bring it all together, the document. And it was things on this document were like transactions for like £12 from lots of different people.

And that’s because I sold roast dinners, like I told you at the start. So that’s what these £12 were coming in at all the time from different people. So what I did was just gathered a few character statements from my business, asked people to say that they buy food. I didn’t tell them what it was for because who wants to say that? I just need a bit of proof to show that I haven’t been making all this money from selling drugs. So I got them to write like why they like buying from my business and how long they reckon they’ve been buying and roughly what they spend each time. Collected quite a few of those. Anything I could find to prove this document was nonsense, I did. And on my evidence, I got it down to £2,200 that I couldn’t explain.

And my solicitor put the document through for me, and the judge gave them an hour to decide whether they were accepting my document, the prosecution, or he was gonna throw the whole case out of court. Either way, I was gonna be happy. I just needed to know which way it was gonna go, and they decided to accept my document. I won the case. I ended up having to pay, £600. I think it was around £600, £660 because they’d already seized 1,400 and something from my house at the time of arrest. They took that into account. I paid £660.

They returned me my car. So I think that was probably one of the biggest hurdles I probably faced navigating the legal system. And I’m not legally trained, but it was just something fuelling me that I could not accept that you were telling me that I’d made this money when I absolutely have not. They were bringing me financial information from 12 years prior, but my case was only a 6, you’re talking about a 6-week period here from 2023, and but you’re going all the way back to 2012. Why is that? And I had to fight it. And my barrister actually phoned me after because he didn’t turn up, he just appeared on video link. And while I was driving home, he said, today must be your lucky day. And I said to him, it’s not my lucky day.

This is what happens when you believe in yourself and you fight for what it is that you believe in. And if I would have listened to you, I’d be paying money back for the rest of my days or going back to prison for 28 days. So let’s just say I won’t be using that legal team ever again.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:07 - 00:28:08]

Well, hopefully you won’t have to.

Rhia Canady [00:28:08 - 00:28:09]

Yeah, I won’t need them.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:10 - 00:28:30]

I was thinking, I was listening to you when you said about being tagged, and I wondered if you could say a little bit about that experience, because I think that’s one of those punishments that people can, you know, general public might not see as such a big deal. But I suppose your reference to it made it sound like actually it wasn’t very nice to be on a tag, and I wondered if you could say something about that experience.

Rhia Canady [00:28:32 - 00:29:09]

Yeah, I think being on tag is, I’m a single mum, so my house is just me and my child 24/7. So being on tag is quite, it’s quite lonely. ‘Cause she’s got activities, she’s got whatever she’s doing, and then you’re just here. And I think when we come out of prison, sometimes we think that there’s going to be a lot of people around us supporting us. They want to see us, but it’s actually not like that at all. I know that not from my own experiences, but from my clients talking to them. That’s how they feel too. You’re quite restricted.

Again, I had a 5-year-old. And I was on tag during spring and early summer. Winter wasn’t so difficult because it gets dark quite early, so people tend to be at home chilling out by 5, 6 o’clock. But summertime, she might be out playing because we’ve got a green where we live, and I can’t go out to tell her she’s got to come in. I have to like shout from the doorstep. And yeah, I know I committed a crime. But actually, tag is quite difficult, especially when you’re trying to be a parent. And I can remember it being her birthday, doing like a family meal.

I had to leave the meal an hour early to make sure that I’m home. So yeah, there’s lots of things that you miss out on or you have to work around. And also I had faulty equipment for quite some time, and that’s something that I don’t actually believe is taken that serious. But again, I could not go back to prison for this faulty equipment. So I started recording it and sending it to my probation officer at whatever time it’s going off, because I was telling her, look, the tag box is ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s waking me and my daughter up, and they’re saying I’m not in the house, and I’ve got to read the serial number to them and all these things when I am in the house. But this is happening like 2, 3 times a night consistently. And people will tell the probation this, but they don’t always believe them.

They don’t always, who knows? I couldn’t take the risk, so I just record it. It’s timestamped, and I would send it at the time it’s going off, 3 o’clock in the morning with time. And I was lucky, I had a lovely probation officer. She got them to come out and change the equipment, and they told me that tag equipment works on like umbrella signal. So if you’ve got the tag box on the floor, it will not pick up, and you, you’ve got an upstairs and downstairs. It will not pick up you upstairs because it works on an umbrella, so more signals underneath. No one explained that to me before. That’s not in the little handbook that they gave you.

So I was having to like run up and down the stairs at 3 o’clock in the morning to prove that I was in until these people explained, and then they put the tag box upstairs. But I’d already been going through 3 months of running up and down the stairs at 3, 4 o’clock in the morning. My daughter was getting quite panicky thinking, why are they ringing you all the time? Are you going to go back to working away? Because that’s what we called it. And it’s a lot of pressure. Yes, I handled it. And I know some people might think, part of the consequences, I guess. But it’s added trauma. It’s not just that your tag box is ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning and you’ve got to say that you’re in. If you don’t answer that tag box ringing at 3 o’clock in the morning, that could be the difference between you laying in your bed that night, the next night, or laying in the bed in the cells that night. And that’s all that was constantly on my brain. I cannot get recalled. I cannot get recalled. I cannot get recalled.

David Jones [00:32:14 - 00:32:50]

Thank you, Rhia. That’s a brilliant description of something which I think most people don’t know anything about really. I wonder, I mean, I’m struck by your positivity about your whole situation and the journey you’ve travelled. And I think that must have a lot to do with the way that things have turned out for you and also the way in which you seem to take problems face on and deal with them and find a way of working around them rather than being overwhelmed by them and complaining about them.

Rhia Canady [00:32:51 - 00:33:23]

I’m definitely problem solution. That’s how my brain works. I get a problem and I don’t, I try not to worry about it because I was told something in prison one time by a gym staff, a PEI, and I was moaning that day that my canteen had arrived and it was wrong. They hadn’t brought me any yogurts. And I was fuming. And it’s in prison, the little things really get to you. And I lived quite healthy in prison. I didn’t eat the prison food because I worked, so I would buy things off the canteen and cook.

If they didn’t bring me something, I would get, I’d be quite annoyed. Because it’s not like you could just go to the shop and buy it yourself. You’ve got to wait till next week. And I’d gone into the gym to work and I think Mr. Evans and Mr. Cross, they could tell that Rhia’s unhappy. What’s wrong, Rhia? And I said, they haven’t brought my yogurts again. I’m fuming, blah, blah, blah.

And they were like, one of them said, listen, don’t give energy to things that you can’t change. Go do some squats, you’ll feel fine. And when I got back to my room, I felt fine. And the canteen man had actually brought my yogurts while I’d been training. But that taught me a lesson that day that I try now to just be like, okay, that’s the problem, whatever. How are we gonna fix it? Or how are we gonna make it work for us?

I’ve definitely tried to do that along my whole journey. I think shortly after that conversation in the prison with those officers and another officer, I went guilty. I decided to go guilty on my case because to me I could have gone to trial and potentially been found not guilty, but I could also have been found guilty. And then, then I really would be looking at the between 7 to whatever years. So I felt like the fastest way to get home or to deal with this problem was to go guilty, take the charge, get some credit off, and get home to my little girl. So yeah, I’m definitely problem, solution, get it fixed.

David Jones [00:34:58 - 00:35:10]

Thank you. Don’t put energy into things you can’t change is one of those lovely bits of advice, isn’t it, that can be helpful throughout one’s life?

Rhia Canady [00:35:12 - 00:35:57]

At the time I was thinking, what are you on about? You don’t know what it’s like to be here. But it’s true. I’m wasting all this energy, or it’s spiralling around in my mind continuously, whatever it might be. And the fact of it is, sometimes things are beyond our control, and being in prison is where I learned there’s so many things in here I can’t control, but I can take control of my mind. I can take control of my body. I can take control of what I consume, whatever that be, whether that’s food, what I’m reading, the conversations, all those things. I could take control of that in there. And off the back of that, I built a structure, I built a routine, and then I tried to carry that back out into the real world, the gym. And yeah, the gym is a huge part of my healing process.

David Jones [00:36:06 - 00:36:15]

Can you tell us about the Fly Girl Foundation and was there anything that kind of triggered the idea for it in the first place?

Rhia Canady [00:36:16 - 00:37:15]

So House of Lords definitely was like, I would say the thing that ignited the fuel. Meeting Aliyah, who runs Daddyless Daughters, feel like we share similar visions and she’s been a huge support for me in this journey. And I felt like I saw a gap because when you come out of prison and you’re on probation and you’ve got license conditions and all these things, all these services employed by the MOJ like to send you to places because they say, oh, go and do this, it’ll be good for you. Go and do this, it’ll be good for your mind and blah, blah, blah. But actually, they don’t have a clue what’s good for you. They don’t have a clue what would be good for your mind because they just get given a referral that’s got basic information off it and they don’t know that much about you or what you’re going through. And I was sent to the Nelson’s Trust, Women’s Centre in Bristol to go, I had to complete so many days by probation.

They send you for sometimes it could be up to 30 sessions, but I think I only had to do like 6 to 8, something like that. And it was a lovely centre, but I didn’t fit there because the criteria for the workshops and things were substance misuse. I don’t fit that bracket. Alcohol dependency. I don’t fit that bracket. Parenting courses. I don’t fit that bracket. Domestic abuse I don’t fit that bracket.

There wasn’t anything for anybody who, it was also like courses for people that needed help getting back to work. I didn’t fit that bracket either because I was running a small business at the time. So they didn’t really know what to do with me because I’m not their average client. I had to complete these days for probation or again, it could be a recall. So the lady said down there, after completing the referral, I told her all about me. I told her my partner had been killed, why I went to prison, blah, blah, blah. But again, I was wearing that mask.

I think I went in and I looked quite, not professional, but I looked quite smart that day. And I was looking around and people asked me if I was here to work as opposed to being a client. So I knew this wasn’t the right setting for me. Anyway, I had to complete these days. So they asked me to go on a course run by Women’s Work Lab, which was around the barriers women face when going back into work. It was like an 8-week course, go every Monday. Once you’ve done that, you’re like ticked off the list, you don’t have to come back.

And I went on this course and there was like 4 of us and I didn’t speak much, I didn’t engage much. And then I said one day like, this course for me is a bit ridiculous because you’re talking to women that have come from either prison or some kind of, maybe they’ve got a suspended sentence or they’ve had some kind of contact with the criminal justice system. So they’ve usually got some kind of trauma going on or something like that. You’re talking to them about things to declare when going into an interview. But like, how about some of us have struggled to even get the bus here this morning or just walk down the street and have a normal conversation and you are asking us to talk about barriers? The barrier was even trying to come and sit here and engage. And the lady was like, you’d be a good speaker. You should do lived experience work. And that was like, as I said before, this word kept following me around all the time.

And I think that shortly after I’d gone to the House of Lords, so as a collective, there was lots of gaps that I was seeing in this world where I felt that women and young girls need support. So initially with Fly Girl, I started going back into the prison and supporting women in an approved premises in Bristol, working in there every Friday, delivering a lived experience workshop. So I’d have a new cohort of girls all the time because the turnover’s quite high in approved premises. So that’s where we started, and the girls absolutely loved the workshops, loved hearing positive stories and how we’ve overcome different hurdles since coming out of prison or maybe even before prison. Then we expanded slightly, we do a lot of work with young girls in schools because we’ve realised that actually, especially in a lot of our own lived experience stories, there was opportunities for lots of prevention way beyond 32. So now we work with a lot of secondary schools, giving talks around coercive control, exploitation, how to navigate that, and support services available. We do one-to-one mentorship with young girls and women.

We’ve done a lot of gang awareness training for youth workers for them to understand maybe things that are missing or signs to look out for when working with young people. Again, a lot of the preventative side, because the empowerment side’s great, it’s wonderful, but if we can prevent and empower at the same time, then I feel like we’re doing an even better job. Yeah. And then now we’re part of the Eastwood Park in-reach team, working with the women directly in the prison, supporting them before release. They know exactly who we are. When they get released, we can offer a prison pickup and support to first probation, and then we take them on to be part of our empowerment programs. And hopefully we’ll take on some volunteers pretty soon from our empowerment programs. That’s always the goal.

David Jones [00:42:11 - 00:42:39]

Thank you. Rhia, can I ask you about something? Because I think what you’ve been describing is how you have the particular approach to pick people up or join with people at the beginning of their journey. And when we were talking here before, I remember you describing an experience where you were just outside a prison and you noticed a woman who’d come out and didn’t seem to have anywhere to go to. Do you remember that?

Rhia Canady [00:42:39 - 00:43:31]

Yeah, that was only a few weeks ago, actually. So I’d arrived at Eastwood Park to do a prison pickup that day for a client who I’d been working with in Eastwood Park for quite some time, and I’d actually been working with her in previous settings as well. So I arrived to pick her up, and I waited outside the prison. Now, prison releases, they’re never, it’s never like, you’re getting out at 9, I’ll be at the gate. You get there at 9, they could be out anytime between 9 to half past 11, maybe sometimes 12, depending on how many people are there. But I was waiting, and I was waiting for my client, and I noticed this lady come out with several bags on her back, and there’s usually a few cars waiting outside the prison, family and friends of people being released or other support workers. And usually they’ve got a relationship with like a taxi company quite local, I think, the prison.

So it’s usually a taxi driver outside. And she walked up to the taxi man and asked, oh, are you here to take me? And he asked her name and he said no. And then she stood there puzzled and she was just looking around. And I didn’t want to overwhelm her because I know stepping out of prison is overwhelming anyway. So I just observed for a minute and I could see that she was just like constantly looking around to see if there was somebody coming, rummaging in her bag. So I got out the car and I said, hello, are you waiting for a lift? And she said, oh.

The prison said they’d organise me a taxi, but there’s no taxi here and this taxi’s not taking me. I’ve tried to ask the prison for some kind of help through the gate, but the reception, like the gate staff, they don’t know anything about taxis or anything. So she just basically didn’t have a clue how to get to her next point of call. She had to be at probation in Swansea by 11:30. She had no phone. She had a travel warrant, which is basically like a piece of paper that you produce at the local train station that will get you to wherever it is you need to get to. But the local train station was over 15 miles away, and she doesn’t have a phone, and she doesn’t have any money until she gets to wherever her bank card is to get her money. So I couldn’t leave her.

And I didn’t leave her. I said to her, look, are you going to Temple Meads? She said yes, and I said, that’s fine. I’ve gotta drive past there to drop this other client off that I’m waiting for. So if you’d like a lift, I’ll happily give you a lift. I Introduced myself, showed her my badge, showed that I’m a professional, and she got in the car. Whilst we were waiting for my client to come out, my client eventually came out. She’s with another girl who is in the same situation, is going to another part of Wales, released with a travel warrant, no money because it was a recall.

And when you’re on recall, you no longer get the discharge grant. So usually you get released from prison with like, when I was in prison, it was around 90 quid. I don’t know how much it is now, but it was around £90. It does go up with cost of living, so to speak. But if you are on a recall from a previous sentence, you don’t get the discharge grant. So a lot of these girls are being released with a travel warrant, but no money to get to the train station, no money to get anything, no money to make a phone call to say to probation, my train’s running late, or whatever. And I just feel that’s preparing anyone to fail before they’ve even begun.

So on that day, those 2 girls were really lucky that I was there to give them a lift. But had I not have been, who knows what might have happened. And that to me is one of the important reasons why we do prison pickups. Having a familiar face or someone there to support you at that tough moment could be the difference between, you name it, multiple scenarios. But it definitely could be the difference between someone being recalled pretty quickly back to prison and somebody arriving at their accommodation and feeling supported and safe and knowing that there’s somebody they can reach out to if things are tough. Because I did have support being picked up. I was picked up by a friend. I was brought to my house. My mum was here waiting, and my friend then took me to probation and they took me food shopping. But I still felt really overwhelmed even with that support. So, if I didn’t have that support, who knows how I might have felt.

David Jones [00:47:17 - 00:47:21]

Thank you very much. Naomi, I think I cut you off.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:47:21 - 00:47:55]

No, it sounds like you’re doing something that’s making a real difference, Rhia. Tremendous project. But I suppose I’m conscious of the fact that the work that you’re doing kind of like keeps alive for you quite a difficult period in your life, and wonder how you cope with, you know, emotionally with the challenges of the work that you’re doing. You must see people who, or meet women with quite difficult stories, you are kind of like keeping yourself attached to a point in time, which was quite difficult. So how do you deal with that? How do you cope with that? And any advice that you would give to others?

Rhia Canady [00:47:57 - 00:48:45]

So I can remember when I first started this work, having a conversation with a friend in London who also does this similar work. And they said to me, make sure you go to therapy and make sure you start therapy. And I laughed, I laughed, and I said, me, therapy? I don’t need therapy. Right? I’ve had my bereavement counselling in prison and I left it there and I’m okay. And she was like, trust me, girl, it gets heavy and you’re gonna need some kind of outlet, support, whatever it may be. So I am lucky enough to be part of another organisation called the National Women’s Justice Coalition. And from there, I sit on a board called the NVAC. Which is the National Voice Advisory Panel.

It’s a lived experience board. And through that board, we get reflective practice with a psychiatrist. She’s wonderful. And I absolutely love those sessions. For me, she knows when she’s ready to say, has anybody got something to bring? My hand goes straight up, but I do let others speak as well. But I’ve always got something that I want to bring to the table just because my work, I guess, is I’m constantly in those environments, like you said. And from that, I have reached out to her to start private sessions, like one-to-one sessions, because I definitely see the benefit and feel the benefit of just having a space to offload, but then to also get unbiased opinions back is always great. Separate to that, I go to the gym minimum 3 to 4 times a week.

That is vital to me. When I was in prison, I was training 6 times a week, well, 6 days a week, sometimes 3 to 4 times a day, but 6 days a week. And I’m also part of something called Fight Club, which is like boxercise to drum and bass. And that is a great outlet for me because it’s in the evenings if I’ve had a heavy day at work to go to that class, and I go twice a week, and it’s like all girls. It’s quite uplifting, and I feel a weight off my shoulders when I leave. So I try and take care of myself in all ways and cover all angles, if that makes sense, mentally and physically and emotionally.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:50:23 - 00:50:31]

Brilliant advice there. Thanks very much for coming on today to tell us about the work that you’re doing, Rhia. Really great to hear about these kind of projects happening.

Rhia Canady [00:50:31 - 00:50:33]

That’s no problem at all. Thanks for having me.

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So today we’re joined by Neil Wallis, who owns Inkwell Printers in Barnwell, near Oundle. In 2023, after years of trying to conceive naturally and a round of NHS-funded IVF that didn’t work, Neil and his wife Becky adopted 2 young siblings. He’s since written a book, So We Adopted, about the reality of that journey, the parts nobody warns you about, the rigid invasive adoption process, the grief that shows up as rage or clinging in toddlers who don’t have words for it yet, the exhaustion of becoming a parent overnight with no run-up to that, and the strange uneven experience he and Becky had of loving the same children in completely different ways. I’ve read the book. It’s a really amazing account. It’s candid, often very funny, really I think focuses on the naked details of what it takes to build a family this way. And it’s written in his words because there wasn’t enough honest information about there from adopters themselves. So Neil, thanks very much for joining us today.

David Jones [00:01:35]:

So, hi Neil, welcome. So you and Becky adopted 2 siblings back in 2023, and you’ve since written a whole book about it called So We Adopted. What made you sit down and actually write it rather than just living it and moving on?

Neil Wallis [00:01:52]:

Good question. I do not know. Partly it was probably therapy, just a way of expressing how I was feeling. But mostly I think when we were in the process, talking to other adopters was really encouraged, but they’re hard to find. You can’t just go around to everyone you see with kids and going, did you adopt them? Did you adopt, they don’t look like you. Did you adopt them? So trying to find that, and then when you do meet someone, you can’t say did you ever like not like them? Did you ever, there’s just loads of questions that you want to ask, but you don’t really feel comfortable in asking. And the process, which we’ll probably get into a bit further, is very kid heavy, not like about how you’ll feel and how you’ll deal with it. There is a lot of box checking on the counsellor's part obviously they’re dealing with placing children into homes, so it’s about protecting kids. So you don’t really get to speak about how you feel or how the process is making you feel. And there was sort of that gap, especially for what I did notice is in the training, a lot of the females that were coming in were very well read on it. And the men, this is, I’m generalising, of course, the men weren’t necessarily doing the same research. So I sort of, I did write it much longer and made it much shorter. So you could consume it all within one evening or two evenings just to give you like an overview of it.

David Jones [00:03:17]:

Thank you. That’s a really helpful answer to that question, Neil, because clearly you were someone who was observing what was going on with you and around you and with others and turned it into this fantastic book.

Neil Wallis [00:03:33]:

What you tend to get is you can speak to social workers but they can advise you on either the process, this is what’s going to happen, or we had this case where they did this, but they can’t tell you what that sort of lived-in experience felt like. And that’s very different to seeing someone else doing the same thing. And there’s a big part of the book I took out about, we sort of went through a phase of resenting our friends that had had kids because we were just like, why didn’t you tell us this? We were saying things like, oh, they’re just crying all the time. And they’re like, well, that’s just parenting. And you sort of have to learn, well, actually, part of that is a trauma response. They’ve been, we’re with a bunch of strangers. They want support from someone, but they don’t want it from us. So they are displaying behaviours of normal children, but it’s not the same. So questions like that sort of get missed.

David Jones [00:04:24]:

Thank you. So for those who don’t know your story at all, Neil, can you give us a brief account of how you and Becky ended up adopting?

Neil Wallis [00:04:36]:

I don’t want to say accidentally, but we had a round of IVF. We were lucky. We were one of the first people when they re-announced, because it’s like a postcode lottery IVF. And we were one of the first people in our area when they redid it that got a round. And a round means, I think it’s 3 out and 1 back in, or however many back in you can get out of that. You get 1 round of eggs out, basically.

David Jones [00:05:00]:

Yeah.

Neil Wallis [00:05:02]:

And we had 3 out, but only 2 were good enough, 2 tries back in and they failed. And we’d already talked, it was sort of, it was during COVID and obviously we all had a lot more time. So we talked about it and Becky always said about, she would be open to adopting. So it was always on the radar and then it became a question of, well, do we try another round or do we investigate? And I said, well, I’d like to talk to someone who’s done it. So they just happened to have this like open Zoom call where it was a social worker that just explained the process of how it works. And then at the end of the call, they’re like, do you want us to get someone to come out and talk to you about it? And then when they came out, that was basically the first stage of the process. And we sort of went along with it. It almost wasn’t a conscious decision. It was just, we sort of had already decided we would. And it’s not like getting pregnant where once you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant, and unless something really awful happens, that’s a process you cannot get out of easily. We always knew we had the choice to, and that is a big difference with adoption is all the way through, people are going, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want? They’re difficult. It’s going to be loud. It’s going to be noisy. So again, that was another reason for writing the book, just because there is always that uncertainty and they always give you that get out.

Naomi Murphy [00:06:20]:

I think that’s such a good observation. So having had a pregnancy myself that was consciously arrived at the pregnancy, and once you’re pregnant, you then, even if you have cold feet or some anxiety, the baby’s there. So it’s going to be there, you know, unless something changes very drastically. But I did think about adoption and I’d gone and done the adoption open evening later on. And I’d gone and done the adoption open evenings. I had a social worker come to my house to begin the assessment, and this was April, and she was like, we’ll have a baby to place with you in August. And I was like, froze with fear at the thought of, that’s not enough time to prepare psychologically for something as big as this to happen. So I can really get where you’re coming from with that sense of it can seem almost like an accident.

Neil Wallis [00:07:06]:

Yeah. You end up in the process without choosing to be in the process. That’s further, but they do always just give you that out clause. Are you sure?

David Jones [00:07:16]:

I was interested earlier, you know, you said that it was a bit like a postcode lottery. Can you say a bit more about what that was?

Neil Wallis [00:07:26]:

I’m probably not the best expert to talk on this, but the NHS is divided into some districts and they allocate their budgets differently and some areas, so where we were, originally, we couldn’t have a round of IVF on the NHS, but if we’d been one postcode further along, we’d have fallen into, I don’t know what it was, like Rutland or something. And they did. So literally one village apart, you could have IVF one round and one you couldn’t. We were just lucky that in our area, they reassessed the budgets or whatever it is they do. And then they did start offering this one free round to people. Like I say, I’m not a subject expert on how that runs, but that’s the gist of it.

David Jones [00:08:12]:

I imagine that must produce quite a lot of feelings in people about, well, anxiety, uh, unfairness.

Neil Wallis [00:08:22]:

I think it’s frustrating for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, the whole IVF thing is not pleasant, but it’s caring. And I don’t want to sound like, because we did deal with people who were lovely and helpful. It is quite a clinical process still. It’s as far removed as making a baby naturally as you can probably imagine. It’s Becky gets prodded, poked, fluids, tubes cleared out. It’s really invasive. And again, it was sort of hard for us because we did it in COVID. I couldn’t go in for a lot of it, so she was having to go in on her own. But one of the main experiences I can remember, so when they put the eggs back in, that was the first time I could go in with her. And you are literally sat in a sort of a big surgery type room with what looks like a laid-out dentist chair in the middle.

And there’s 3 people in full scrubs and face masks on with a clipboard just going, what’s your name? Can you confirm your date of birth? Right, let’s get on with it. And there was some really lovely people who did make you feel comfortable. I’m exaggerating that a little bit, but it is very clinical. I think I said in the book, I got reduced to my component parts because honestly, apart from, I had to do a few tests, like a blood test and things and sperm tests, but once it came down to actually go into the clinic for IVF, I didn’t get to go in apart from to donate a sample, which I could choose to do offsite or do there. And then at that point, I walked into a room with it, when I handed the sample in a bag, and they said, what’s your name? I said, Neil Wallis. And they just took it off me, checked my date of birth, and that was it. That’s what I mean when I say you just reduce your component parts.

David Jones [00:10:03]:

I think in the book you felt a bit like a spare part and wondering really whether men in the adoption process have much space really to reflect upon their feelings and their grief about the whole process because so often it doesn’t work out as you wish.

Neil Wallis [00:10:25]:

Yeah, to be honest, a lot of people do that sort of stuff in private, don’t they? I don’t think people talk. I mean, we’re probably the exception we’re always quite open about it and where we were. But there is, I think the most stressful point of the whole thing is there’s loads of activity that happens. You have to go in for all these check-ups and then all of a sudden the eggs go back in and they go, right, here’s a test. You’ve got to wait 2 weeks and then you take the pregnancy test. And then in those 2 weeks, it’s just, I mean, Becky didn’t, dare sneeze. Like, it is a stressful thing. Like, what do you do in that? And you don’t know what that test is going to come back like, and you know you’ve only got a set amount of opportunities to have a go at it. So that’s probably, that was the weirdest bit and the most stressful bit, I think. The rest of the time you sort of feel caught up in the process, but I know a lot of people have a lot worse experiences with it than we did. I think we were quite lucky.

Naomi Murphy [00:11:21]:

I was thinking as you were talking though, Neil, about how, you know, often couples in love wanting to have a child, that when that happens naturally, it often feels like almost like a spiritual process in some way of, you know, 2 people merging and producing something that’s part of both of them. And so it can feel like such a profound experience. And I hadn’t really thought before about how you end up being a little bit robbed of that. And I hear the gratitude in you for having those opportunities, but I am, you know, I imagine it’s quite hard not to have that experience of things going smoothly in that way for both parents.

Neil Wallis [00:11:57]:

Yeah, we’re both quite laid back people, so we were sort of what will be will be. But obviously I know people that go into it and they’ve done like 11 rounds and they’re absolutely desperate. That must be horrible. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with that. We always knew that it wasn’t the be all and end all of us for us to conceive a birth. What’s the word I’m trying to find? A naturally born child by us. That wasn’t. But for some people, they’re absolutely pinning their hopes on it. And I can’t imagine the stress that that would be. But in the same way, like you said, it’s like a spiritual thing. This is the opposite. It’s a bit more pleasant than having a toenail removed, but it is a sort of surgery in the same way. So you’re prepped, you’re checking who you are. It’s not a romantic dinner with a candlelight that leads to a baby.

David Jones [00:12:52]:

It sounds like you feel that the whole procedure and process could be improved.

Neil Wallis [00:12:58]:

No, do you know what? I think what they’re trying to do is get the best outcome for you. And if I had the choice of it being all relaxed and, you know, them being lovey-dovey and trying to make it an experience in that way, but then slacking on actually the most efficient way this is going to work, you’d want the most efficient.

David Jones [00:13:19]:

Yeah. Yeah, I can see that, but I suppose there might be a middle way.

Neil Wallis [00:13:24]:

Yeah, potentially. I mean, we did it in COVID as well, so everything was exaggerated as far as being in on your own. I’m sure if I could have gone in with Becky, it would’ve been slightly different, but I had to sit in the car. I sat in the car with a cup of tea while she went in and had her tubes flushed out and stuff like that. She came out, had been on anaesthetic. That was a bit of a weird sensation. It’s a sort of feeling of helplessness, you know, like someone, you know what they’re going in to do, but you can’t do anything about it.

David Jones [00:13:54]:

Yes. And I suppose, I mean, my only experience that’s a wee bit similar is attending the birth of my own 2 children. And of course, I know that one experiences a feeling of being totally helpless, being out of control of the situation. Which anywhere else in the world we struggle to avoid, of course.

Neil Wallis [00:14:18]:

Yeah. I think as well, like, people are on like a quest for information in that period that they’re trying to do all the right things. And I think it’s probably over that the amount people want from the clinics is probably more than the clinics are able to give. So could people use help mentally with it, probably, because it is very stressful. But I just don’t think it’s geared up for that. Like anything can be improved if you think about it hard enough. It’s just whether the resources are there or whether it’s right to, again, I’m not a subject expert on it, whether it’s right to put the resources into that, or the resources should all be focused on getting the absolute best result and the best fertility rate you can have.

David Jones [00:15:02]:

I think that’s a very good way pushing it. So you write that, and you mentioned training earlier on, and you write in the book that training terrifies people with worst-case scenarios but rarely mentions the messy, brilliant, everyday middle. For our listeners who work with trauma-affected families or clients, what would you say is the risk of only ever being trained on crisis and never on ordinary resilience.

Neil Wallis [00:15:35]:

There’s a bit in the book. I can’t remember exactly how I worded it, but I basically said we were lucky all the way through. We had a great social worker. We had quite a smooth journey, but they have heavy caseloads. So anything I say, I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying they’re not doing their absolute best. So when the social worker engages with you, they do think this person’s probably right. If they’re taking you forward, they think you’re right. And everything they’re doing is likely what they think is the best thing to get a child into you, and that’s negating a whole system of bureaucracy.

So what do I think the training is? That’s tough because the training is trying to train people. It’s trying to be a system where they say, so for instance, here’s a good example. We had to prove our cars were MOT’d and our chimney was swept. And the reason we would have had to have done that is because at some point someone would have taken on a child into care, into foster or adopted, and something had happened. There’d been a car accident and the car wasn’t MOT’d, and that came back on the council. So they would have done a review and said, how can we best get rid of this? Right, we’ll check everyone’s car is MOT’d. And the training feels a bit like that. It’s like, right, these are all the scenarios people need to know about.

And if we tell them all of them, something happens, we can tick that box and say, well, we told them about that. And there is so many, you can imagine, even with birth children, the scenarios that a child can encounter are so vast. I don’t think they’re there to, you’re there because you want a child. You’ve made that decision. I don’t think it’s their job to tell you all the nice things. And they do ask you, like, in part of the process, like, what’s the things you’re looking forward to about having children? Like, what’s the part? So there is a little bit of it, but when you’re in the training, it is very much like looking out for autism, looking out for foetal alcohol syndrome, looking out for, I can’t think of the other things now. That’s terrible, isn’t it? Just all these things that could go, they talk about children that have smeared faeces on the wall. They talk about children who haven’t had food in the birth homes,, they might steal food at school.

And it’s all these, they’re not edge case scenarios, but they’re all scenarios that are negative. And you do just sit there and think, God, what are we letting ourselves in for here? What’s the risk of it? I think, I mean, I didn’t see it put anyone off. I think the good thing is that you are aware of these things. I think you have to be. I think any parent should be aware of a lot of stuff. I think for me, it’s just the depth they went into it. So we would have a whole hour session on autism. And it wasn’t, I’m in manufacturing, as you know, so for me it’s efficiency. So it should be, here are the symptoms you look out for, here’s what you do if you see them. But it wasn’t. It was, here’s the symptoms you look out for, here’s how it can manifest, here’s how the child might behave, here’s what a bunch of, what do they call it, therapy, here’s a bunch of places, this is what this place would do if you went to that. Like, this, it’s so deep into it. It can just be a bit like, whoa, this is mad.

David Jones [00:18:45]:

Like, I suppose it sounds very thorough though too.

Neil Wallis [00:18:48]:

It is thorough. It is thorough. But the point in my book was really just to expect that they’re going to tell you every possible scenario and you might get none of them. It’d be a bit like saying, if you go out in your car, that you’re going to be sat on a tank of liquid that’s a petrol car. You’ll be sat on a tank of liquid that’s flammable. If that catches fire, it’s going to explode. There’s other cars on the road that are going to crash into you. Someone might run out and you might hit a dog. Like, if you actually sat and wrote down all the reasons not to drive in a car, you probably wouldn’t drive in it. That’s probably the easiest way I can describe that.

David Jones [00:19:20]:

Okay. So Neil, can you tell us something about the 2-week rule? Because it seems that this is one of your coping tools and you say you now use it for work stress and low moods generally.

Neil Wallis [00:19:34]:

Do you know what? I don’t even know if I thought of this or I saw it somewhere a long while ago, but it’s that theory of 2 weeks is long enough away to make a difference, but it’s close enough that you can see it, that it feels like it’s here in the future. And I think the reason I came up with it is because I listened to a podcast that had said they didn’t put pressure on themselves to even like the child for 18 months. And something must have been happening every 2 weeks. There must have been something in the diary and I was just using that as a point to say, right here, I’m just going to reassess what it’s like here. And then I’m going to survive the next 2 weeks and then reassess if it’s slightly better. And if you leave it 2 weeks, for the most part, it’s always slightly better. And it does spill into work life. Like if there’s something stressing me out today, in a week, I’ll probably not even thinking about it.

So like that 2 weeks is close enough to feel like it’s achievable, but it’s not so far away that you feel like it’s never going to happen or never going to come. And actually there was, because we were the first in our group to adopt, there was another guy that texted me and I told him the 2-week thing and he was like, this is so great. Every, like 2 weeks is, everything changed within the 2 weeks. And I’m not saying like, if today it’s perfect, if today it’s awful, in 2 weeks it’s going to be perfect. It’s just putting a line in the sand and saying, right, this is my problem today. They’re not going to bed and they’re screaming and they’re doing whatever, they’re stealing food. In 2 weeks’ time, that will be slightly better. And you might have just accomplished one of those things, but at least you can see there was that progress. And that did just feel like you were making some kind of progress on it.

Naomi Murphy [00:21:12]:

That’s a great strategy. And I’m sure it can work in lots of other areas of life. Like you say, in work, you know, it’s really simple tip to people to just help them get through the next few days. You talk about the very first few weeks going emotionally numb, finding it quite difficult with the dishes, the nappies, the sweeping. Do you think that numbness was protective or did it cost you something later?

Neil Wallis [00:21:34]:

But yeah, do you know what? Because I saw this question, I’ve sort of thought on this quite a lot. Probably both. And the only answer I can think is if you rephrase that question now, would you like, because obviously we had a period where they were in the world and we didn’t have them. Would you like that period with them? And I would say, yes, I would love to have had that extra time with them. Would I want to go back and do that period where it was really difficult and we didn’t really know what we’re getting into again? Probably not. I felt like that was, so it’s a bit of one or the other. You do feel a bit cheated. You feel a bit cheated that you didn’t get to enjoy that time. But I don’t think there was any way I could have enjoyed that time because they were grieving a loss of their foster home. So it’s, I don’t think that’s a clear-cut answer on that one, if I’m honest.

Naomi Murphy [00:22:31]:

That’s fine.

Neil Wallis [00:22:33]:

I think it was protective. I think going emotionally numb was just, I shut down and it was the only way I could, if I got emotional about things, I would just be in a bit, I was either so tired, I was numb and didn’t have the energy to have emotion, or it’s just the way I deal with things and I just shut off and sort of survived and thought, right, in 2 weeks’ time, this will be a bit better.

Naomi Murphy [00:22:54]:

Thank you. In your book, Neil, you talk about the sort of different emotional experiences of you and Becky. What do you wish that you’d known before the placement about how different that experience was going to be for the 2 different parents and their attachment to the child’s attachment to them?

Neil Wallis [00:23:11]:

I think this is something that’s true of all parents. I think more than because I don’t think you know how you’ll react emotionally until you’re in a situation. I think your brain will make a logical decision. I think I’ll react like that, but then the chimp inside you actually does something completely different. So I don’t think you could predict the emotion. I think actually, especially if there is like, we did split it. Becky did a lot more of the home parenting than I did, but we, I did get time. So I did get to see both sides a bit. I think just acknowledging that the difficulties the other one has is really important for, and that’s, like I say, that’s true of all parents. I see it in friends where one goes to work and one stays home and their realities and their difficulties are so different.

So a good example is someone stayed at home with a newborn. By the time someone else comes home, they’re just craving adult conversation. They’ve just been making noises all day, maybe doing jobs. They maybe can’t get jobs done because the baby’s been crying, or it’s a toddler that is just taking their attention all day. The other person might get home and think, well, they’ve been home all day. And that’s a very old school way of looking at it. They’ve been at home all day. What have you been doing without seeing all that other stuff? But also they might be in a job where they’ve got loads of, like, they’re talking to people all day and they’re so burnt out from actually speaking to people. They get home, they want peace and quiet.

And that’s where I think a lot of the clashes come, is just that expectation of what happens when the two meet again. So I would get home and a new energy into the house actually would calm the kids. But after a day of work, there’s only so long you can have a new energy. And I’m lucky that I’m about 10 minutes away from work, so I did have a bit of downtime between here. And I think that’s important as well. I do know someone, I won’t name drop them, but they used, they would drive home. They were in one of the emergency services. They used to finish their shift and then they would stop at a coffee shop on the way home, buy a cup of tea and sit in the car park for half an hour just because they couldn’t face getting home to the toddler. And I just think. I don’t think that should be a secret. I think actually you should just be able to say, you know what, I just need half an hour to decompress from work. Like, so yeah, it’d be nice to have known that beforehand, but rather than have to learn it with clashes.

Naomi Murphy [00:25:44]:

Yep. And you mentioned earlier, you kind of touched on, you know, the distinction between what’s normal sort of toddler behaviour and what might be a trauma response, and how you differentiate between the two when you’re the parent of children that have got trauma in their backgrounds. That kind of hypervigilance is something we’ve seen a lot in people who we’ve worked with, those who are traumatised. How did you learn to tell the difference, and did you ever get it wrong in a way that mattered?

Neil Wallis [00:26:14]:

I don’t know if there’s a perfect way of doing that, to be honest. The way I try to approach it is I just see everything as normal until it gets to a level where I think this is unusual. And this sounds like I try and do this with everything. So even people with ADHD, maybe like I would look at, if I thought I had that, I would just look at myself and say, right, am I at a level of normal here? Or am I starting to tip over that? Or is it being prolonged or caught? This goes back to that training because they tell you so many of these things that you have to look for. A lot of them are normal behaviours, but just either exaggerated or elongated. So like we would tell people they’re crying all the time and they would say, well, they’re just kids. That’s what they do. But actually it was way more consistent and way deeper. Like we could, what we couldn’t explain because we didn’t know was they were crying, but we couldn’t comfort them. So they would cling to Becky because they wanted someone, but that wasn’t who they were actually wanting. It was just the closest thing to, she was just the most comforting out of, she was the least worst case for them.

Naomi Murphy [00:27:24]:

It must be so hard though. I mean, it’s really difficult when your child’s distressed anyway, you know, when you are the person that they naturally come to. So it must be really hard, emotionally. I can imagine it being quite difficult to know that your child’s distressed and might actually be hankering after something that’s not available to them and then having to be the person that’s trying to comfort them in that situation.

Neil Wallis [00:27:46]:

Okay, I think it’s maybe where the emotional numbness comes in because you haven’t got that attachment at that point. So it’s almost a negative impact in a way, or it can be. I mean, some people would love that, but if someone wants you but then you’re not comforting them, they’re still upset. So you’re not actually adding anything. And that very quickly drains your energy, constantly trying to do distraction techniques or walking around a room or late at night holding them. And I mean, it would, the smallest definitely wanted Becky, but Becky was so drained. If I would go down at night, she would kick, scratch, she would try and get away from me.

And it would just get to a stage where I would have to put her down and say, there’s nothing I can do here. But the truth is there’s not a lot Becky could do, but she wouldn’t kick, scratch, and bite and stuff. So yeah, it’s hard, but it’s like trying to, it sounds awful and I don’t mean it like this, but it is like trying to comfort someone else’s kid who wants their parents back is the closest thing. And you’re desperately trying to find that attachment. So I think unless you tell yourself this is a long game and I might not like them for that 18 months, like that podcast said. You can be desperately trying to form that attachment, but actually it’s a much slower process and you’ve got to actually just learn to live with each other first.

Naomi Murphy [00:29:11]:

As you were talking, I was thinking that you have to have quite a secure sense of yourself really to manage that process, don’t you? Because if you’re somebody who is very sensitive to rejection, it could be quite hard to manage your own emotional response to that kind of rejection from the child.

Neil Wallis [00:29:29]:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen that and I’ve felt that. There was a phase, like I say, early on, can I describe this? I would say there was things inside me that I didn’t know I could feel is the only way I could describe it. And that’s why I said there was times I just had to put her down and say, I have to walk away from this situation and I don’t think I’ve ever been pushed to that since or before. And there was a period of time, not necessarily early on, but we had like a good 2-month spell where neither of them wanted to open to it. But if I walked in the house, they’d say, I hate you, go away, like, get out. And like, even further into the journey, that’s hard. It’s still, you just feel like you’re out all day, you get back, and then you just, yeah, you do get that. It’s hard. I think that’s where you need the support of other people. And to be able to be open. I think if you try and swallow that yourself, you’re going to struggle. But again, I just battled through it. I don’t know the actual, you’ve probably got a better answer for that than me.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:31]:

I don’t know that I do, but thank you.

David Jones [00:30:33]:

Neil, in the book, you address your children directly and you say, you don’t owe us anything for adopting you. And I think many of the people who listen to our podcast work with people who carry exactly that. Unspoken debt, that burden, whether from adoption, care, or family obligation. Where do you think that expectation of gratitude usually comes from, and how do you actively work against creating it?

Neil Wallis [00:31:06]:

To be honest, I don’t think, I mean, when I wrote that, I was obviously, you know, I was well aware that I’d written a book that said how hard having them in our lives had been for a process, or how I’d been emotionally numb. So yeah, I just, if they ever read it, I didn’t want them to think that they’d ruined my life or something crazy like that. So it’s, I can’t think of a good example. The adoption training now feels like such a small part of our lives that’s happened. In fact, I can barely remember it. It just feels like it happened over the space of 2 days, but actually it was over the space of like nearly a year. At the time, it felt all-encompassing. And that’s sort of like that initial period. Now I can remember it and talk about it, but I can’t relive those emotions and things. I can tell you what it felt like.

So I just wanted them to know that actually now and I’m talking like from 2, beyond 2 years on, they started to really enjoy having them. So there is no, like, they have no debt to us for doing it. They’ve brought joy to our lives. And actually that whole bit of our life is just such a tiny fragment of what has happened. But when you’re in that moment, it’s such a key part of your life. And that it’s that big, it’s a massive hurdle to overcome and just think, you know what, one day this will feel normal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure when they’re teenagers or something, it’ll swing back the other way and they won’t like me and I won’t like them. So it’s just, I don’t actively do anything. We’re very open. We’ve done direct contact with family members and things. We’re very open about the whole situation. And that’s encouraged in adoption now. So I just think that’s just sort of how we’ve played it. I don’t think we actively do anything. I don’t think anyone gets it right, do they? They just try and do their best.

David Jones [00:33:07]:

I’m sure that’s right, yes. And I think the statement stands on its own. Actually, it’s such a good comment. So moving on, there’s a lot of humour in your book, and your sense of humour comes over nicely in this conversation too. Has that always been how you’ve processed things? Is that a characteristic of you and your way of dealing with life?

Neil Wallis [00:33:35]:

I think so, yeah. I think that’s just my way of dealing with things is just to have a sense of humour. I think if you can lighten a mood even with a little chuckle, and I think people will enjoy things more if they can laugh. I think they’ll take it on board more if it makes them chuckle. We can all remember stories that made us laugh more than ones that maybe just are in the middle. I think it’s just a part of my personality.

David Jones [00:33:57]:

Has it ever got you into trouble, your sense of humour?

Neil Wallis [00:34:01]:

Not that I can remember. Not badly. I’ve always, it’s quite on the edge. I don’t know if you’ll agree with this. It’s quite on the edge sometimes. If I’m quite good at picking up on people’s mannerisms, and sometimes I can be quite cutting. So if I don’t know people, I tend not to have as much of a sense of humour around them until I know they can take it. So I think when I cross that boundary, it’s always because I don’t quite know the person. I’ve maybe said something that I’ve not meant that someone else might just laugh about themselves.

David Jones [00:34:35]:

Thank you. So just thinking about the story of your life that you’ve been telling us, and I mean, in a way it sounds as if it was something that you were caught up in and decisions as you made them, you kind of rolled into them. Do you think that that’s a good way to make decisions? Because there are some people who really like to have everything on the line and to know everything that’s going to happen as it and before it happens. What do you think is the best way of dealing with these challenging situations?

Neil Wallis [00:35:11]:

Gosh. Again, this is just an opinion. I’m no expert on what people should or shouldn’t be doing. And I just try and do my best at what I think. But for me, I thought this phrase the other day, if I think about it, I won’t do it. If I do it, I won’t think about it. That’s sort of me in a nutshell. But I know other people have like an engineering brain and they like to know everything to the letter. So I think sometimes I like to think action leads to motivation rather than motivation leads to action. So I will just jump in and make decisions as I go. And if you’re specifically referencing the adoption process, I did always have in the back of my mind, this is not permanent until we have done Panel. It is not permanent until I’ve met that child. They don’t know I exist. So I’m not doing any, I’ve maybe just wasted a bit of someone’s time, but I can always have that out.

So if I thought, will I be, because we started it in like November and we were placed by July and we were rushed through for a bunch of reasons. If I thought in December, am I absolutely sure that what’s going to happen in July is right? I probably never would have done it. So I just, it’s just, there was always the next step. What’s the next step? What are we doing next? And that’s how I sort of lead to, I always have like a goal. There’ll be a child or children, but as long as I know the next step, I don’t really worry about too much what’s after that, as long as I know the rough path. But for other people, that’s the complete opposite. And they like to know the process, what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and whack the dates in the diary.

This is where, that can be a struggle for some people because you do complete your training. I can’t remember what it’s called. The first panel is like you’re approved to be an adopter. And then you have a matching panel, which is you and the kids, or you being placed, matched to the kids. But between that, there might not be a profile that’s right for you. So that could be a big wait. So like people who do struggle with it, well, we just sat around waiting, not seeing anything. And then the hardest part of that is that you have to be prepared to say no to something you don’t think is right. Because you might see a profile and they’re pretty anonymous, but you might just look and you think, well, I’m saying no to giving a child a home here, and that’s a big hurdle to overcome.

David Jones [00:37:37]:

Thank you very much.

Naomi Murphy [00:37:39]:

Yeah, I can imagine that must feel really difficult for anyone who’s faced with that sort of situation. Neil, you’re a printer. You’re also obviously very creative in terms of having written this book. Is there a hard copy of your book available? I’m just thinking for anyone who’s listening for whom this feels like a relevant conversation for them, how do people get to read your book?

Neil Wallis [00:38:02]:

Oh, that’s the ultimate irony, isn’t it? I’m a printer and I’ve not printed a single bit of it. I will get some. If you find me on LinkedIn or Instagram under Inkwell Printing, Neil Wallis, then I’ve been sending PDFs out to people. Like, I don’t want it to be non-accessible. It was never a money-making thing. It was just so I had something to give to people who wouldn’t necessarily ask me the questions they wanted answering.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:25]:

And we’ll share your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But one final question for you, Neil. So we’re involved in planning a wellbeing festival together, Physis Oundle, which will take place on Sunday the 18th of October. What inspired you to get involved in organising this event?

Neil Wallis [00:38:40]:

I am fascinated by how the brain works. And I think that part of that comes wellbeing. A lot of these books are in the self-help genre, if that’s what it’s called anymore. I don’t know if that’s old-fashioned now. But I love The Chimp Paradox. And I think dealing with stress, especially as a business owner, especially with your 7 prime ministers in 10 years, I think learning about wellbeing is really, really important. And I think it can get tarred with a bad brush of like being a bit tree huggy and stuff. Whereas actually it’s really genuinely quite interesting. So yeah, I’ve always had an interest in it and I do quite like the psychology of marketing. So yeah, it’s just up my street really, the whole wellness, it’s not self-improvement, is it? I’ve not read the bio properly yet.

Naomi Murphy [00:39:33]:

Yeah.

Neil Wallis [00:39:33]:

So good to talk to you today. Thank you.

David Jones [00:39:35]:

Terrific having this conversation with you, Neil.

Neil Wallis [00:39:39]:

Thank you.

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Today’s guest, Francisco Baptista, trained as a physicist at Heidelberg before spending 20 years inside SAP and Nestlé, then building an executive coaching practice with 324 clients since 2011 across 19 industries. His focus, in his own words, the expertise got you here, it stops being the answer. He works with executives at the threshold past technical mastery, where the work turns relational and systemic, a lens sharpened by his time teaching systems leadership to 200+ sustainability professionals at Climate KIC, recognised with the Global Leadership and Innovation Award from the Global Challenges Foundation. He now runs Conference of the Birds, a peer cohort for leaders who’ve crossed that threshold and want company on the other side. And what a lovely name that is, Francisco. So, really pleased to see you again. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast to join us today.

Francisco Baptista [00:02:07]:

Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

David Jones [00:02:10]:

So, Francisco, good to meet you. You trained as a physicist before becoming a coach. What does systems thinking reveal about organisational dysfunction that a purely psychological lens misses?

Francisco Baptista [00:02:24]:

You see, every profession has a lens on how they go about solving problems. I guess when you come in trained to heal, you are looking for a wound, and so you’re going to heal it, right? A physicist thinks like that as well, but they have different frameworks. I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of explaining any of them. But imagine you have an electron and you’re not going to blame it for its bad behaviour. You’re going to take a look at the fields it is in, what is impacting it, and looking at that. And so when clients come to me, to answer your question around the systemic approach to the coaching I do, if, for example, they want some feedback around how can I talk with my problematic employee, and I’m using the word problematic very carefully here, right? You could either go the way of, oh, they are conflict avoidant, let’s fix them. Or you could say, well, good, that’s part of the problem. And what else is there? Why are employees, for example, not feeling secure enough to give the harsh feedback that’s needed to be given? And so, I take a look at the culture, and I take a look at the different other lenses that might be there, and we go and explore that before we go and fix anything. So, that’s my way of bringing in physics and systems thinking into my coaching world.

David Jones [00:04:18]:

Thank you. And I’m beginning to realise that this is a really important conversation we’re having because it’s a constant issue in the kind of work that I do and that Naomi does, is how do you bring challenging issues to people without causing them to withdraw and run away? So you talk about systemic resilience versus individual resilience. Where do organisations most wrongly put that burden on people instead of the system?

Francisco Baptista [00:04:54]:

I laugh because the burden of resilience is actually a burden of performance on one side. I have many clients who come in and have been imposed with the burden of performance. They have to perform. They have to deliver the numbers by the end of the quarter, for example. And so they act on that by most often being perfectionists, trying to control things, or people pleasing. And so there’s a lot of burden there that leads to problems. because there’s too much performance-driven perfectionism, control, and so on. And so the organisation then comes in and imposes a second burden, right? Which is, oh, you’re not performing.

You might need to go and have a course on resilience or something like that, or awareness programs. And so I think when we talk about individual resilience. We’re talking about how do we teach and train people to tolerate even more, to accept even more burden instead of having an organisation which does it systemically, looking at the individual’s performance not as a burden because of the individual, but because it is a symptom of a bigger problem. Many burnout cases I see are not because people are not willing to work or just can’t cope with it. I think it is a more systemic issue, and that’s where I would like to bring more awareness to, I guess.

Naomi Murphy [00:06:47]:

Yeah, it seems we’re very good at talking about resilience as if it’s something located in the individual, aren’t we? Rather than really thinking about whether we have resilience-promoting environments, whether there’s persistent problems with the kind of conditions that we create in organisations. And certainly, I mean, David and I spent a long time working in prisons in Britain and I think there, people talk a lot about the resilience of individuals, but it very much feels like a harsh institution, which was part of our reason for starting this podcast, was to try and think about how do not just individuals, but how do systems find a way to be more able to promote resilience and keep their staff healthier.

David Jones [00:07:32]:

So what are the early warning signs of a culture heading for a breaking point?

Francisco Baptista [00:07:40]:

I remember a client, and many of them come like this, who was just recently promoted and they came to me and they said, I was just recently promoted. I have a problematic team. They’re not performing. And how do I motivate them? How do I get them to do the work? And going a bit further in my inquiries, I asked him about the old boss, the old leader that was there. And he said something around the fact that the old boss never really did much about it. And so my question to him was then, what did the team learn? And we named it. It was the ghost of the old leader that was still there that needed to be named and the new team to be educated that if something is going wrong, that they need to take responsibility for it and to act on it, and that it’s not going to be a very quick technique that he needed to learn to bring people along instead of trying to keep on pushing them to whatever he wanted. So I guess there is no breaking point in that sense that there is chaos or something like that. I guess it comes slowly over time. And so I guess a culture’s breaking point is set a long time before anything breaks. Yeah, it’s set more, I would say, the moment the company or the organisation decides which things they’re going to tolerate and which ones not. The constraints define the behaviour of the system, in abstract terms.

Naomi Murphy [00:09:47]:

It’s interesting to hear you talk about how early on that starts and how that process, I guess, of naming and making explicit things happen. Because I think quite often organisations have some kind of trauma within them, especially I think in public sector organisations, you know, I worked in the prison where there’d been a breakout of a terrorist organisation many decades prior to when I worked there. And yet that still lived on in the character of the institution because it was so fearful of an incident like that happening again. And yet it was very rarely spoken of. People knew that that was the history of the organisation, but it didn’t get spoken about in a way that allowed it to be processed. I don’t know if, David, if you’ve encountered that also.

David Jones [00:10:29]:

Well, indeed, there was an escape from Grendon in 2002, which continues to resonate down the life of that institution.

Francisco Baptista [00:10:43]:

In my world, we don’t have those types of things, right? But it stays there. The memory stays there. The mass layoffs, that fear stays. It’s present, and it does guide people’s behaviours.

Naomi Murphy [00:11:00]:

And my guess is people don’t want to talk about those mass layoffs because they don’t want to be reminded of it. So, like human individuals, we sometimes avoid the things that we really need to process and deal with. But if an organisation can’t deal with the fact they’ve got a history of mass layoffs, then it is going to still be resonating at some level, isn’t it?

Francisco Baptista [00:11:21]:

It stays. The bad line manager stays, ghosts. That’s the definition of ghosts. Yeah. I think people choose to forget about it, but the behaviour stays. And so it’s there, but they don’t know what to do with it at some point. I guess that’s one of the things that drives a lot of the friction in organisations today that I get to coach for.

David Jones [00:11:54]:

Yes. So we’ve talked about trauma. I think also organisations can carry wounds for a good length of time. I’ve certainly worked in an organisation like that where despite spending large amounts of money on people coming in to lead groups to try and heal the wound. The wound could never be talked about. So it’s quite a challenge, isn’t it? And when you’re brought in as a coach, how do you tell the difference between an organisation that genuinely wants to change and one that just wants help coping with a system that’s got no real intention of fixing?

Francisco Baptista [00:12:48]:

I call that corporate safe buying, right? I guess when I started out thinking about my business, I wanted to know who am I competing with? And I realised that I wasn’t competing with my other fellow coaches, but rather with things like books. Today, I compete with AI, perhaps, right? So there’s other channels, other opportunities for people to go to and get help. But what I also realised is that people go and buy and search for help in different ways. And so am I competing with a book? In a way, yes. If I chose to be what a book does, which is to give you a framework, to give you a solution, to give you a step-by-step thing about how you can go about solving your problem. But just knowing it is often not enough. You have to implement it. You have to behave according to it. You have to live it.

And doing that by yourself is often not possible. What I’m about is transformation, right? So I am coaching someone to see the world differently, to go beyond just the one lens. And so when I see a company asking for coaching, and launching a cohort or a program, the first thing I look for is their description of the program. And often when I see the clients of that cohort coming in, it’s the quality of their questions that shows whether they’re looking for, please help me influence the corner office type of thing, and how do I project my power over there? Or whether somebody is saying, I want to figure this out because there’s a problematic relationship here and I want to overcome it. Two different qualities. One is about transformation and has that intention, and the other one is more like, hand me a solution. That’s why my marketing has always been around transformation, and I explicitly talk about that. And that has also allowed me to work more and more with people who want that transformation. It’s as simple as that, I guess.

Naomi Murphy [00:15:18]:

As you were talking, it’s making me think about the difference in different therapeutic models and how so much of cognitive behavioural therapy, for instance, is about changing thought. But actually, we can know that our thoughts are irrational, but actually, to get a change in terms of how we feel or how we behave quite often needs us to embody that change. It’s not enough to be able to attack our cognitions. We need to be able to have a felt response that’s different. And it sounds like that’s what you’re trying to offer, what you’re trying to do through the coaching, is to give a felt difference, rather than just provide intellectual knowledge, as you referred to, sort of they could get from the books at the end of the day.

And I think one of the things that’s really, I think, helpful about AI actually, and the threat that it’s posed to coaching and therapy, is it forces us to distil and really crystallise what it means to be a human in relationship to another and offer something that’s therapeutically or from a coaching perspective, you know, valuable, transformationally helpful, as opposed to the knowledge that you might get from that kind of interaction. But Francisco, you’ve spent years now working one-on-one with executives at a specific threshold where their own expertise stops being the answer. How do you help them get that kind of transformation in terms of what you offer to them? You know, it’s not about providing them with the intellectual knowledge they could get from the book, but how are you helping them get that from their contact with you?

Francisco Baptista [00:16:58]:

Well, most often it’s a dilemma that they come with. Should I be more direct or should I be more diplomatic? Do I need to control everything or can I delegate? And so it really depends how ready they are to go deeper. And so we might start on the intellectual level, and there I focus a lot on creating the space for them to be able to trust the room, the space that we’re in, so that we can actually have the real conversation. And so it starts there, and then we explore the dilemma on both sides. And often they say to me, well, a part of me wants this, but actually I need to be that. And I feel a tension. And so going away from the intellectual part immediately to this felt sense of how is this tension embodied is often a question people have never thought about. And we stay a little bit there, not to remove the tension, but to start developing that emotional capacity to be able to describe it and to have a chance to say, oh, I just lost my voice.

What does that mean? Type of thing. And to keep that as a signal that something wants to be said or something wants to be heard. And our body is stopping us from doing that. And so that becomes an additional stepping stone for my clients to express themselves in a more richer language. But we don’t stay there. We go back to the two dilemmas or the one dilemma and the two sides of it and start exploring why sometimes we go to one side and we don’t right-size this polarity, which has two poles, right? And finding the solution for them. It’s never about I go from direct to diplomatic or diplomatic to direct because each side has a cost. And so what we want is to maximise the benefit on each side.

And often that comes with a third way, a shift in lens, a shift in perspective. To be able to do that, we need to explore those perspectives. How could it look like? How could we dream it up? And what is needed to get there? Now, it sounds a lot more involved and complicated than it actually is, but it’s really starting off from what do you want? How do we get there? And what’s in the way? And then to be also an accountability partner for that transformation. All right. So that’s sort of my go-to approach to helping clients see a different way, if that makes sense.

Naomi Murphy [00:20:12]:

It does. And it sounds like you’re helping people recognise more grey ground rather than seeing that everything is black and white, which people can be prone to when they’re anxious, can’t they? This sort of black and white thinking. But really, your answer brought us very nicely to the question of Internal Family Systems and the Parts Work model, which, you know, it’s a therapeutic approach that I really like in terms of delivering personal therapy, but I know it comes up a lot in how you coach. What drew you to it and why do you think it translates so well into organisations?

Francisco Baptista [00:20:48]:

Well, the name already says it, systems, Internal Family Systems. So that’s a giveaway. But, and I know that IFS, never really started out with an academic rigor and the numbers, but I still was attracted to it around 12 years ago because I had limiting beliefs and I was looking for something that I could use to go about those limiting beliefs. And I really, really liked this natural feeling that IFS gave me which is, oh, a part of me is carrying a belief and it just needs to let it go in a way, very simply speaking. And so I was a perfectionist and I was a people pleaser, which is not very good for coaches. And so I really worked on that during my coach training. But then one day I was sitting here, I live next to a lake, and I was sitting there and I was thinking, but which part of me is active today? And what does it want to say? And which ones are not active and maybe should? And I like this approach because when clients come in, they’re very much focused on the negative side of things.

And I seldom hear about the life-affirming parts that they carry. And this work allows us to integrate all of those parts. Psychotherapy goes and unburdens and fixes and heals, and that is very necessary. But my goal in coaching is not that. It’s more about integrating them as if they were a soccer team that plays really well together. And we just saw an example of that a few days ago. So that’s the goal, is if I can be a perfectionist when I need to be, but I don’t overdo it, then we’ve reached the goal. Because all of the symptoms that we see often in business life are because there’s an imbalance.

And that’s where I go to be able to get that awareness. And the way I do it is not to be too therapeutic about this and talk about IFS all the time. But it’s more about when you have a dilemma, you have two sides. Which parts of you are on each side? And it’s typically two managers. There’s a fight between the two, right? And so, just that awareness allows people to then start moving away from being defined by it and being a subject to it. They can put it aside, and they can see what’s happening. And then, they have a chance to actually right-size it.

Naomi Murphy [00:24:05]:

I love the contemporary example of the football, the soccer. And I’m assuming you’re talking about Spain and not Argentina, who seem to have unruly parts to them. But I think one of the things I really like about IFS is the idea of no bad parts. Which works really well, I think, in terms of translating that to a forensic population. But also, I think in organisations, it’s very common, isn’t it, for certain individuals or departments to get scapegoated as holding all the badness of an organisation. And I wonder if you’ve been able to use that successfully to have the organisation think more about the collective interest and how the parts all work together of the system in that way.

Francisco Baptista [00:24:55]:

Well, I don’t talk about it because it’s not corporate safe, right? It’s not sellable. I do it at the individual level, and I do it when my clients are ready for it, when they show that they are able to see themselves that way. And often it is just a little side comment of, a part of me wants this, but I actually want that. That’s when I know I can actually start talking about it. It’s not a, hey, let’s do some psychotherapy on you type of thing, because that’s also not helpful.

Naomi Murphy [00:25:35]:

No, and I guess not the contract for a coach either. What’s the most common blind spot leaders have about their own contribution to a harsh culture versus what they blame on the market or the industry, for instance?

Francisco Baptista [00:25:49]:

I think the market is very brutal out there. Got to fight every day. And I have many salespeople in my roster who need to deliver the numbers. But I think the biggest blind spot is this assumption that what the market is translates to how we treat our people. And that’s basically the market disguised as corporate policy. So instead of pushing people to perform and deliver, to thinking that you have to be that harsh and that battle-rested, and sometimes we use those words about must-win battles inside the company. It’s rather a shift towards how can we pull, motivate, and give a vision that is so strong people want to be part of it. But that blind spot is very, very common to not do that, right? And so we just keep on not having the time to stop, reflect. And I often say to my clients, an organisation that doesn’t have slack time, doesn’t learn because they’re always busy. And so that’s the second blind spot.

Naomi Murphy [00:27:14]:

There’s a lack of valuing, I think, isn’t there? Of that, like you said, as you called it, slack time, which is where we sometimes, those can be the most productive moments because you’ve got points to reflect or to mull things over and actually new things can come from those gaps, I think. But how do you help someone tell the difference between pressure that builds them up and stress that’s quietly wearing them down when talking about these kinds of systems?

Francisco Baptista [00:27:44]:

I often ask one question, where does this come from? Because I think external stress, stress that comes from somebody else, is what stress is. Pressure comes from inside, but often we mistake that if somebody is pressuring me, or they’re angry, or they need a deadline, the mistake is to think that that’s mine. And I get to choose if it is or not. But it’s that self-authoring capacity to say, no, it’s not my problem if somebody is angry. I’m here to help, but they need to deal with their own anger. I don’t need to react and be a people pleaser. I don’t need to fix it.

Naomi Murphy [00:28:30]:

So you’re kind of talking about bolstering up your own boundaries to some degree.

Francisco Baptista [00:28:35]:

Well, boundaries means that you are building tolerance again for the suffering. It’s really about not being subject to it and seeing it for what it is and being okay with that. Right. And that translates into the examples I just gave you around, oh, I need to fix it. I have many Mr. Fix-Its, right? Because they’re not comfortable with the situation. The same thing with silence. I’m not comfortable, so I feel compelled to say something type of thing. And instead of sitting back, and having that executive presence, which is seeing what’s happening, truly listening, and only then finding an answer in you to be able to act on something and not to react. And that is the internal pressure that is defined by your inside, right? What do you want to learn? How do you want to grow? And that is for me the definition of pressure, if that helps.

Naomi Murphy [00:29:52]:

Thank you. And Francisco, what happens if somebody’s in a system that actually isn’t going to change, that might be quite brutal, and what actually helps them kind of figure out a way forward rather than just getting better at enduring conditions that perhaps shouldn’t be endured?

Francisco Baptista [00:30:14]:

Sometimes we need to do some tough love here because most often organisations will not change. There is an antibody there that makes sure that nothing changes. So rather than trying to fix the organisation, it’s, I guess, more helpful to take a look at the relationship between you and the organisation and your own decisions. Everything is a decision. If you’ve been in a company and you’ve let others decide upon your career, you have abdicated that decision-making. And so many clients come to me and say, well, I’ve hit a wall, or I’ve just received my termination, my layoff. And this is not about blaming somebody for not having taken that responsibility. It’s about growing that capacity to make decisions from now on. And I keep on using the word responsibility because it’s the ability to respond that we either abdicate or we take over and start deciding for ourselves. And that’s what I grow. I grow that ability. It’s tough love, but it is finally an awakening and a growing up if you want to think about it that way.

David Jones [00:31:44]:

Thank you. I just want to go back to that football match because we’re talking about Spain versus Argentina, I thought it was such a wonderful example on display of what happens when a group of people who think they have an objective, but don’t work as a team, become frustrated, angry, and violent. And you can see that being played out in all kinds of groups wherever one is, including, of course, countries who are 250 years old. So anyway.

Francisco Baptista [00:32:26]:

Well, I guess sometimes we are partly Argentinian inside us, and sometimes we are Spanish. Um, that’s all I really want to say about that. But it was in full display.

David Jones [00:32:42]:

It was.

Francisco Baptista [00:32:42]:

It was, it was really full display. And sometimes we are not okay. We are angry. We are disappointed. We are sad about things. And that’s okay as well. But the goal is to be more integrated inside, to be able to respond to the outside I guess.

David Jones [00:33:01]:

Thanks very much. What’s one intervention that you’ve seen that looks small on paper but ended up shifting an entire culture?

Francisco Baptista [00:33:11]:

Well, I think we just talked about it in a way. When a leader comes into my practice, the single guiding principle I hold here is the way we do the small things is the way we do the big things. And often what happens is they are doing the exact thing that they’re complaining about in my practice. And so I have to get over myself to say it, to name it. That’s my inner work about people pleaser has been good so that I can do that. And it’s this stance of a sports coach that is going to cheer you up to get going, but he’s going to demand some stuff from you. You’re going to have to do some push-ups and some pull-ups. And the relationship with the coach is great because of that. It’s not because they’re giving you tough love and you hate them and you run away. And so just this mere pointing out, it’s a small intervention, small little thing, they start seeing that they are part of the problem.

And just this awareness can really shift an entire organisation because they are, in a way, the organisation. When you said earlier around the fact that the culture of an organisation has existed for a very long time, what’s the founder who created that culture, right? And now suddenly they are aware that, oh, maybe if I put a value of grit on the wall and I say, everybody, we just hire people with grit, that we develop a culture of burnout because of that and an organisation that doesn’t learn because it doesn’t have the time to do that. And so if that comes into my coaching practice and I show it and I say, well, what’s your balance between doing and being? It’s fully 100% on just doing. And the awareness that that has a negative consequence allows them to slow down a little bit, which is what is necessary.

Naomi Murphy [00:35:31]:

So, Francisco, you’ve changed career and you’re working in a role that I guess at times must mean that you have to deliver unpalatable messages. You know, you spoke about that kind of like having to give that kind of tough feedback at times. And I guess also sometimes giving that feedback to the organisation that’s contracted you to work with their teams. What have you done to protect your own wellbeing over this coaching career?

Francisco Baptista [00:36:02]:

It certainly hasn’t been easy, right? Because I got out of corporate, lost the golden handcuffs, lost all of those benefits. And then COVID came and my business had to keep living. And so what I find helpful is to not treat wellbeing on the side, but being part of, integrally part of my life. And so a very simple thing that I do every morning with my dog is to sit outside with my coffee and ask myself if I’m still on purpose, if I am fulfilled. I’m not searching for happiness, I’m searching for fulfilment. And so if I get out of bed every morning and I’m behind what I’m doing, I know I will have success, personal success and well-being because of that. And so it’s not something apart, it’s something that I do. And so my purpose right now is to nurture and cultivate this Conference of the Birds. So creating this movement of leaders who want to learn together and to advance their capacity to be with these things that we’ve discussed today and to help each other.

Naomi Murphy [00:37:34]:

That’s a lovely answer, Francisco. And if you share a link with us for your Conference of the Birds, we’ll share that with the show notes.

Francisco Baptista [00:37:45]:

Thank you.

David Jones [00:37:45]:

Thanks so much, Francisco. That was a lovely conversation.

Francisco Baptista [00:37:50]:

Thank you. This is very important to me because at the end of the day, our limiting beliefs, have been sometimes handed over to us. It’s also transgenerational work, right? And I was reflecting on your podcast and I realised that we all carry walls and prisons in our heads. And I realised that my work is doing that, sort of breaking down the walls for the business professionals as well. And so thanks for having me.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:28]:

I think that’s very true, and that’s why we invited you on as a guest. I think when David and I started with the background in forensics, a lot of our conversations were about criminal justice, but I’ve moved away from that myself, although David still works in prisons. And yet it still seems like a very apt metaphor. And also, I think a lot of the challenges faced in prisons are also faced by people in many other organisations and aspects of life. So I guess many of your clients might look quite privileged on the face of it, and yet there’s probably an awful lot of overlap with the kinds of work that you’re doing and the barriers that you’re addressing with the kinds of work that David is still doing. So it’s been so good to have a conversation with you today and really looking forward to publishing that and check out your Conference of Birds.

Francisco Baptista [00:39:19]:

Thank you so much for having me.

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So today, really delighted to be hosting a friend of mine, Leon Towers, who’s another guest that I’ve invited to speak at the wellbeing event I’m hosting on Sunday 18th October, Physis Oundle. Leon Towers is a performer, a presenter, a speaker and a founder whose life has been shaped by overcoming adversity and using those experiences to inspire positive changes. Following a successful career in television, theatre and advocacy, he now champions children and young people through his charitable work, while returning to his lifelong passion for singing and performance. His story is one of resilience, hope and the belief that our past does not define our future. Really glad to have you here today, Leon. Welcome.

Leon Towers [00:01:12]:

Lovely to be on. Thank you for having me.

David Jones [00:01:14]:

Hello, Leon. Very nice to meet you.

Leon Towers [00:01:18]:

You too.

David Jones [00:01:19]:

So, Leon, when you look back at your childhood, what were the biggest adversities shaping you at the time and how do you think they influenced the person you later became?

Leon Towers [00:01:32]:

Always having a stigma attached to the fact I was a child in care, a foster child. Whether rightly or wrongly, it was in my head that the other parents of the children at school treat me differently. I’m not sure, but I definitely felt it. I definitely felt like they were warned to kind of stay away from the foster kids because the trouble. And, you know, I’ve been in the foster placement from six weeks old, so it’s the only life I know. That’s how it always was. Just always feeling like you’re the odd one out, that you don’t belong somewhere and you don’t know where you’ve come from.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:02:15]:

Do you think in the 70s that people thought enough about the impact of living a life in care and being fostered? Do you think people really gave enough consideration to the needs of children under those circumstances?

Leon Towers [00:02:30]:

I don’t really think people understood it if they weren’t involved in it, to be honest. And like myself, the only reference I could make was Oliver Twist that used to be on every Christmas. We didn’t have the Internet or anything like that. So that was an orphanage to me. And I think that was the only kind of thing that portrayed television, portrayed orphanages or children who don’t have parents. There’s an Australian soap called Home and Away, and when that first started back in the, I think it was the late 80s, it was all centred around two characters called Tom and Pippa, who were foster carers and they had this big family. They had about six or seven foster kids. But obviously the environment I was brought up in, it only magnified and clarified that I wasn’t living a normal life and almost kept in captivity for my first 14 years.

David Jones [00:03:35]:

Do you think that affected the way that you made friends, the kind of friends you had, the number of friends you had?

Leon Towers [00:03:42]:

Yeah. The kind of friends I had were the other odd ones out or the ones that were troublemakers. It was easy to go down that path. And I just, I always seemed to be in trouble and I used to get asked, why did you do it? You must know why you did it? And I would answer, I don’t know why I did it. And they would constantly say, you must know, you must know why you did it. I genuinely didn’t. I just, I didn’t do anything with malice. That’s the thing. I was just a kid that just likes having fun and was spirited, let’s say.

David Jones [00:04:28]:

Yeah. I mean, just you mentioning this takes me right back to when I was at infant school and junior school, as we called them then, and how kind of selective children were about friends. And without any kind of overt bullying, you were always very conscious of who you could be friends with, who it was good to be friends with, who you wanted to keep away from, without any kind of powerful or rational reason for all that.

Leon Towers [00:05:04]:

Yeah. I was aware that I was never allowed to go to the houses of other children in primary school, and the only reason can have been because I was that foster boy that’s always in trouble.

David Jones [00:05:19]:

Yeah. Yeah. I can just imagine that label being attached to you.

Leon Towers [00:05:27]:

And not knowing any different because it had always been there.

David Jones [00:05:31]:

Yeah.

Leon Towers [00:05:33]:

I don’t really know a life without that label, which is strange, but to me it’s just my normal life.

David Jones [00:05:43]:

Yeah. That’s so powerful. Do you think for people listening who may have grown up in chaos or instability, what do you think a difficult childhood teaches you both helpful things and the things you later have to kind of unlearn and undo.

Leon Towers [00:06:09]:

I think it makes you. Well, it does make you very vulnerable because, strangely enough, it makes you more trusting. You trust people too easy. And you take people’s word for it. Like if somebody says something you just take their word for it. And the amount of times I’ve been in situations where people are portraying themselves not as who they are. It was just so easy to believe somebody if they said something and were going to look after you, they were going to help you. You just took the word for it. And you know, people would say, and still say, you know, Leon, you never really learned from trusting people too much. Now as a 51 year old man, I would say I would rather trust somebody’s word and believe it to be true and be proved wrong otherwise if that was to happen than to close myself off and be suspicious of everybody I come across. So yes, you can be wary, but I would rather be the person I am where I’m very trusting. Obviously I’ve experienced a lot in 51 years.

So you learn as you grow up and into adulthood. But I would still take somebody’s word if they’re telling me that’s the truth and I will believe them until I’m shown otherwise. But it does make you feel, it does make you very vulnerable. Hence when I was abducted and child trafficked, I went along with them people. They said, oh come back to our house, we look after you. My wife’s there, my daughter. And in my head I just had a new ready made family. Which is bizarre really when you think about it. But as a 14 year old boy, I was just so naïve and innocent really. So yeah, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I’ve had my fingers burnt many times, but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing. One of the bad things is always being on high alert as you grow up and it makes you very feisty and very, very suspicious. So if you’re in a situation, a social situation, for example, if I was invited to a party as a 20 odd year old, if somebody said something to me and laughed, I would immediately think they were laughing at me.

And that would, and has caused lots of problems over the years until I learned how to deal with it. Because you’re constantly on the defence because you feel like you have to stick up for yourself even though the person might not be necessarily doing anything against you or your personality. It just makes you feel like that and it just makes you quite prickly and quite angry. And that’s one thing people have said about me over the years that was kind of upsetting because I’m seen as this person that you can’t, is non approachable. When I go out into a bar, I’m very standoffish. I’ve been said to be threatening. And that really shocked me and took me by surprise because obviously I know who I am. I’m the most loving, fun, joyous person you could meet. And to think people would think that about me for no reason other than my presence is quite upsetting because it just reiterates the fact that people don’t know who I am and I don’t seem to be able to portray who I am to other people as the true me.

David Jones [00:10:21]:

It actually sounds very painful to listen to what you’re describing, Leon, because you must have gone through periods of massive and repeated disappointment and feeling hurt and disappointment again. So it’s not really surprising that you, whilst you’re holding out this wish to be a trusting sort of person, you also can be at times quite defensive and wary of people.

Leon Towers [00:10:57]:

Yeah.

David Jones [00:10:57]:

Quite a lot to balance there, isn’t there?

Leon Towers [00:11:01]:

And I think in my early 40s, I ended up in rehab. I went to a rehabilitation centre in Italy and spent eight weeks there and done a lot of EMDR therapy, which worked really well for me. Healing your inner child, that kind of therapy. And I found when I came out of rehab that I was a completely different person. I was the version of me that is the closest to who I would have been had I not been brought up in foster care, had I not been child trafficked, had I not done all of these things. It made me the closest version of me, minus the damage. And I learned so many new emotions. Things like kind. The word kind, it’s not a word I ever used. And when somebody used the word kind, oh, that’s really kind, there was no emotional attachment to that word.

I didn’t understand why, why would you use that word? It’s pointless, you know, and it’s silly little things like that that are a massive thing to me because I’ve come out of there and then I understood the word kind and kindness because I always show kindness and it’s not something I would have put into a word. I just thought that was me because I just like to make people happy. There’s no better feeling than just making somebody happy for no reason. You shouldn’t need a reason to make somebody feel good about themselves. But I understood that the word kind, it actually has meaning now. I can use that word and it has emotion attached to it. Sorry, I went off on a tangent there.

David Jones [00:13:01]:

That’s fine, that’s helpful. So you’ve lived in very different worlds, haven’t you? From being in a boy band to becoming a dog behaviourist and a TV presenter.

Leon Towers [00:13:19]:

Yeah.

David Jones [00:13:20]:

Was there a moment when you realised that you wanted your life to stand for something deeper? And perhaps this relates to your spell in Italy.

Leon Towers [00:13:33]:

So I’m a very spiritual person and throughout my entire life, regularly I have, I call them visions. I don’t know what they are. Moments of information. I don’t, I can’t even explain it without, I don’t see ghosts or anything like that. But it started when I was 8 years old and I was sat on my bedroom floor and you know, back in the day you used to tape the charts, the radio charts onto a tape and, Diana Ross Chain Reaction was one of my favourite songs. So I had this 90 minute tape and I just had it on repeat like the full size. And on the other side it was Madonna’s Borderline. And I would say that was my first vision as such. And I remember seeing a news article at the time where a celebrity had bought it was the first ever diamond encrusted sports car. Was a car literally covered in diamonds. And I remember being repulsed by it and really angry. And at the time Band Aid had come out, the first Band Aid with Bob Geldof.

And I remember at 8 years old literally seeing myself having to become either a pop singer or on television. They didn’t call it celebrities back then. Working on television so that I could create a platform for me to be able to have a purpose. The purpose of having a voice, being able to be on a platform. And the way I was going to be able to do that was through television. So that was at 8 years old. And I remember it as clear as day to this day. So I always knew I was gonna end up being in television. I thought it was as a pop star, pop singer, which might still happen, releasing a new single. But yeah, I knew. So I’ve always had a purpose. I’ve always been driven by a purpose to make the world a better place on a big level, as much as I can. And that will be my legacy. That will be. Yeah, that’s the reason I’m here.

David Jones [00:16:08]:

Well, it sounds fascinating. And where did the dog behaviours come into it?

Leon Towers [00:16:20]:

By complete accident, to be honest. So I was in a boy band and I was an actor for TV and film for a while. I went to acting school. I was 25 when I went to drama school. I was the oldest one there, but that was the first time I had an opportunity to do it. So yeah, I went to acting school and got a job with ITV as a kids TV presenter. All by complete fluke. I look back and I think, how did that even happen? Seriously, it’s crazy. And I left all that behind. I moved to Brighton because I was doing a lot of theatre and a lot of musicals at the time and I moved to Brighton because I was living in Glasgow when I was at drama school and it just meant I wasn’t flying, one week I flew about five times to London and back to Glasgow for auditions. So I made the move to Brighton and when I moved there my agent retired and I was kind of left in limbo.

It’s very hard to get an agent when you have finished university course and you haven’t got your showcase, that’s your opportunity to get your agent. So I was left with no agent and the opportunity came up to open this doggy day care centre with my ex partner and I just remember feeling a bit empty, well, very empty because that wasn’t my dream, that was their dream. And I think when I gave up on the acting I felt like part of me disappeared because I love performing, I just love it, it’s one of my big loves. And I was sat watching TV and this documentary came on and it was a documentary about dogs doing hydrotherapy and literally that was the aha moment. I was fascinated and I think because I’d never studied, I never went to secondary school. I left school in primary school, I didn’t get the opportunity to go to secondary school and I went to drama school, which I don’t count because you’re acting and singing. That’s something I do in my free time. So it was the first time I’d actually seen something and been fascinated by it to the point where I wanted to learn how to do it.

So I started looking online and it was mine fields and eventually I found how I get the qualifications and me being me with ADHD, I literally took 10 days of exams, one after the other, all consecutive, and ended up qualifying as a canine Hydrotherapist specialising in rehabilitating dogs with spinal injuries. And, to do that job I just couldn’t believe it when I went to my first class and I was that it’s like I was that kid that I always wanted to be at school, but I was the one that had all the answers. I knew because they send you a study pack and I thought you just had to learn it all, but you didn’t. It was just to make you familiar with the joints and the bones and the muscles of dogs. But I learned it off by heart because I was terrified I was going to fail the course. So when I got there, I already knew everything that I was going to be doing and I just, I absorbed it and loved it. And I was the only Hydrotherapist on the south coast. So Noel Fitzpatrick, the super vet, once he’d done surgeries, they’d then be referred to me for the aftercare to help dogs walk again and all different kinds of conditions.

And that’s how I ended up working with dogs. Obviously, dogs that are in pain, they are aggressive. But me being trusting, there’s me trusting again. I didn’t even think about it because a lot of places use hoists, whereas I refuse to do that. I thought if a dog’s terrified, it’s gone in a pool, it can’t move, it’s got this noise that’s horrendous. So I always said, I will be lifting every dog, even the 70 kilos dogs I used to scoop up and walk up the ramp and take them into the pool. So they’re right next to my face. I’m holding them the whole time. And it was only afterwards I realised I’d been working with dangerous dogs for five years and not even thought about it. And that’s how we got into dog behaviour.

David Jones [00:21:21]:

Yes, well, I mean, you’re enormously energetic and creative and you spot these opportunities and you take them up, don’t you? And other people might be a bit more cautious.

Leon Towers [00:21:38]:

Yeah, I think because I believe and always have believed anything is possible. Granted, it has been a lot harder for me at times. It could have been easier to make things happen, but on the scheme of things, the things I’ve done in 50, 51 years is a lot. You know, it’s like when people list what I do or what my experience is, I’ve done just so many random things in all different genres, and yeah, it’s quite something.

David Jones [00:22:21]:

Leon, you’re kind of almost describing two different worlds. There was the world you existed in here when you were younger and smaller, which sounds horrible, really. I mean, you were finding it very challenging over a number of fronts. So this world where you have the courage to sing and act, become a dog behaviourist, which is remarkable, isn’t it? And I’m wondering, what was it, do you think, that helped you make that transition?

Leon Towers [00:22:59]:

I think being told daily from 4 years old up until I was 14 by my foster carers that we weren’t worth anything. And I think having no voice like it’s bizarre because the media call me the dog’s voice, which is so strange because that was the one thing I didn’t have as a child was a voice. You know, when I try and explain to people the atmosphere and the environment I was in, you weren’t allowed to speak, you weren’t allowed to verbally say anything when you were in the house, so you had to be silent. And when you finish school on a Friday at 3 o’, clock, to not use your voice until Monday morning is terrifying because I used to go to speak and I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to speak, that my voice had gone. And even now talking about it, if I was to sit in silence for three days, it would be torture if you were made to do it. And that was the extreme, that was the extremity of how my living circumstances were. And do you remember in the 70s and 80s, they have that nasty wood chip wallpaper, the stuff you can never get off if you put it on a wall.

I used to pick the little bits of wood off the wall and because I used to stand at the wall in, it was like a Victorian house, it was a big long hallway. I used to stand there on a Saturday and a Sunday and just stand and pick the little bits of the wood chip off. And I would imagine that I was in Hollywood on set of my mum’s movies. Because my birth mom, I knew she was called Audrey. That’s all I knew. I’d never seen a picture of her. All I knew was she was called Audrey and she’d been accused of murdering my dad. And Audrey Hepburn. Breakfast at Tiffany’s came on one weekend. So obviously as a child I was like, that’s my mom, that’s her. And you know, if I hadn’t have had that, I don’t think I’d be here today because that is what saved me. That is what my world’s built around. I would spend two days, all weekend chipping away at this wallpaper, just almost like astral traveling. I would be in America on set, watching a film. And you could call that fantasy, but it was more than that. It literally. Yeah, the time just went. It’s like I was. I wasn’t there. It’s like I’d only just been there a few minutes, and that is how I survived. You were just told you’re worthless. If it wasn’t for them, the foster carers. If it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t be anywhere.

You’d be in an orphanage. And you don’t love us. They would make us write lines. I don’t love my mom and dad to them, just as a mind game, like one of the mind games. And I would always do what they told me to do, not because I was being defiant. You’ve asked me to write a 100 lines. I hate my mom and dad is what they said, actually. I hate my mom and dad. So I sat there and I wrote 100 lines. I hate my mom and dad. And my sister was always. She always tried to do what they wanted to do. She knew what they were doing, if that makes sense. So she would please them by doing. I love my mom and dad. So I remember writing 100 lines once and then passing it to them. And they said, oh, so you do hear us. We knew you did. And I can’t believe you’ve sat there and wrote it. You’ve got the audacity to sit there and write it and hand it to us and you think that’s okay. And it’s confusing. It’s like, that’s what you told me to do. I wasn’t doing it to be defiant or, you know, oh, I’ll show them. It wasn’t. It was complete innocence.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:27:24]:

Sounds like you had a particularly challenging sort of foster situation on top of the fact that you’re fostered in the first place. But it sounds like you were subjected to quite a lot of cruelty. And I was just thinking about the resourcefulness of a little boy, sort of like focusing on the idea that Audrey Hepburn was your mom, you know, in order to kind of like carry you through a difficult situation. There’s a resourcefulness in finding something as a tool to help you survive and get through something. That sounds incredibly painful.

Leon Towers [00:28:00]:

And they were just so miserable. And I remember as a child. Well, I always remember because that’s my personality. I’d get up on the morning, that’s why I always say, think dog. Live like a dog. Each day is a new day I didn’t dwell on anything. You know, to this day I don’t hold any grudges against them. I don’t hate them. I don’t have any emotional attachment to them at all, you know, and the same with the child trafficking. If I can’t forgive somebody, then I’m going to be living my life, my adult life, as miserable as my childhood because they ruined my childhood because I was there with them. Now I’m not with them. And what I spend my adulthood hating them and saying, oh, isn’t it awful? Isn’t it terrible? The hideous people. I hope they’re burning in hell. I just don’t have that in me.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:57]:

I think there’s a lot of wisdom there, isn’t there in, you know, as long as you’re invested in hating somebody, you are emotionally invested in that relationship still. And do you want your adulthood to be you know, hatred is a very corrosive as an emotion, do you want to have that? But a lot of people who’ve experienced hardship, end up carrying that sort of hatred. The shame, the anger, sense of not being enough. How have you managed to work through your inner battles? There’s something very resourceful in you that you’ve been able to see, I can’t hold on to that hatred, you know, is that something that you’ve just intuitively known or?

Leon Towers [00:29:37]:

Yeah, in all honesty, I’ve always been like that. Even as a child, I was like that, somebody at school could be awful and do something really awful. And if they said, oh, I’m sorry or you know, they spoke to me, I’d just forgive them. Not because I’m stupid, I just, I don’t know, I think I’m just lucky that that is one of my inbuilt parts of my personality because otherwise I probably, I wouldn’t be sitting here today to be honest, with everything I’ve gone through at various times of my life, even after the foster care, statistically I should be a heroin addict and died when I was 20, you know, or murdered someone or I don’t know.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:30:23]:

It’s really inspirational to hear someone talking about finding a way to let go of that rather than harbouring it and being stuck in, I suppose, you know, a perspective of being a victim for the rest of your life. You know, by choosing to let that go, you regain your power.

Leon Towers [00:30:41]:

It’s choosing freedom. I have my freedom. They still live with themselves. They live inside their heads 24 hours a day, the twisted individuals. And I just think, God, how awful must that be? You actually wake up with yourself every day and you know, like relationships that haven’t worked, people who’ve taken advantage and narcissistic relationships because you’re just drawn to them type of people and they pick you out because they can see vulnerability. That whenever one of them relationships would end, I’m talking like a 10 year relationship, the venom in them because you’ve left them. And it’s like, I don’t want anything. You can keep everything. Literally. Material things have no value to me. Money has no value to me.

Obviously we need money to eat and to live, but it doesn’t have any value. I don’t care how much money you’ve got or how little you’ve got, I’ll always help people and it’s just irrelevant. Money does not make my world go around. It never has. And I would always leave everything. That was a trait of mine. When I left a relationship, I would leave the house, I would leave all the belongings, I would leave everything. And they still weren’t happy. You’ve ruined my life. And it’s like, you know, you’ve left me with nothing. Well, if I’ve left you with nothing, you had nothing to start with. All I’ve done is bring myself to the relationship. I’ve left everything. But I’ve walked away with my freedom. And to me that is just, it’s such an amazing feeling being free, having freedom, like I’m spiritually free.

I just, it’s important people, so many people are trapped in relationships or toxic relationships with parents or children or family, friends, and they, I just wish they would realise that it’s a mindset. You literally just tell yourself, you know what? This is bringing nothing to my life. I’m removing myself and cut it off. And you know, that was always seen as a fault with me that people in relationships that say, oh, you just cut people off. It’s like they didn’t exist and you just move on to the next person. That’s not what I’m doing. I don’t like erase my memory of that person. I just cut it and move on. Because you’re only as positive as the positive energy field around you.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:33:32]:

So interesting to hear you talk about the, I suppose the preciousness of freedom. Because both David and I have worked in prisons for a long time and quite often when you’re talking to people that don’t work in prisons, there is this idea that prison is like a holiday camp and that prison needs to be extremely punitive every day. And, it’s like many members of the public don’t actually appreciate the value of freedom in itself. You know, it’s the removal of freedom.

Leon Towers [00:34:00]:

Which is the taken away. What more do they want taken away from them?

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:34:06]:

Yeah. So Leon, in terms of working with dogs, what’s that taught you about human behaviour, trauma and the way people respond when they have been hurt or feel unsafe?

Leon Towers [00:34:18]:

That we need to be more like dogs as humans? All the work I do with dogs is fixing what has been brought about by humans putting human emotion onto a dog. I would say that’s 99% of my behaviour cases have been caused by the human in the first place. Unless the dog’s been born with a neurological disorder, it has been caused by a human interfering or thinking they’re doing the right thing. Not always, you know, badly. They’re not doing it on purpose, but really messes the dog’s heads up. Like the mental health just deteriorates and it really messes them up. And again, funnily, the one emotion dogs don’t have is spite. They don’t hold on to grudges, they don’t seek revenge. And they’re the three things that I would say destroy most humans.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:35:22]:

Yeah, yeah, a really astute observation. And just to mention you’ve got a book about dogs and dog wellbeing, which I can really recommend. And you also host a podcast called The Power of Dog.

Leon Towers [00:35:35]:

The Power of Dog. On YouTube. Yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:35:38]:

We’ll share links to those from the outside. Leon, career reinvention can look bold and exciting, but it often comes with fear and loss. What did you have to let go of emotionally or practically to reinvent yourself each time?

Leon Towers [00:35:55]:

So for my Facebook page, I do go through a cycle and it’s weird looking back because I think, oh, I forget I had a life before that, seven years or 10 years, because I have to just start again and again. I’m not forgetting anything or the person I’ve been with. You know, that’s like when somebody says, you said you loved me. Well, at the time I did, and I genuinely meant it. You know, people change and the person you’re with changes, or they’re not the person that you thought they were, which causes you not to be in love with them. So when I got offered the Channel 4 series Embarrassing Pets, I literally closed my business, House of Hugo, which was the dog hotel, because the toxicity around it, with my ex partner, oh, they had an entourage of people, they sent about 52 different letters of complaint to the council saying I murdered dogs, locked them in cupboards and tortured them. All of these horrendous things which I had to sit in front of a council and say my piece because you have to answer every single complaint.

And it was soul destroying, all of that going on. People wanting my business to fail, people wanting me to fail. Sometimes it’s not that you’re giving in, you’re actually progressing and just resonating on a higher frequency. Sometimes you just have to walk away, walk away from that and keep walking forward, that’s why ponds are stagnant, running water, it keeps moving. And it’s difficult at times because I look back on periods of my life and I think nothing’s been a constant, if that makes sense. I’ve been the constant, but nothing else has. And at 51, I do look at everything and yeah, it’s strange, it’s weird because it’s literally like every seven to ten years I start a new life. But I think it’s important to challenge yourself and not stay stuck. We’re on this planet for a reason. We’ve all got a purpose. Most of us don’t even know or are aware that we have a purpose. We just think we’re here to work. You know, people work, what’s the word? Is it live to work and work to live? Yes, people live to work and they should really just work to live. And as hard as it is, and people can say, it’s easy for me to say, doing the job I love and I work for myself, but I’ve worked in pizza shops, I’ve been a dishwasher, I’ve been a cleaner. I’ve done so many different jobs and I’ve always given it 100%. And one thing I will say is if you are so miserable in a job, then you need to leave it.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:39:16]:

How do you define a purposeful life now, Leon, compared to how you might have defined it when you were younger?

Leon Towers [00:39:23]:

I’ve always known that I was put on this earth to, well, I believe I was put on this earth to help other people, heal people, make people’s lives better in whatever way, shape or form that is. And to be honest, I just wing it half the time. Like I say I’m 51 and this life purpose, I still don’t feel like I’ve reached it. I’m still traveling forwards, waiting for the big thing to happen. So I just think it’s having a self belief that I do have a purpose. And I think I struggled with religion because my foster carers were really religious. But I’ve been lucky because of the spiritual side of things from a very, very early age. Obviously I’m Christian, I believe in Jesus and all of those things. The Old Testament, I don’t know because I just don’t. I just follow Jesus’s path and what he did for people and all he was and is, is love, joy and happiness. And that’s all people should experience. That’s all humans should have in their lives, just joy, happiness and love. And you come across situations and I always have to ask myself what would love do when I can’t answer something or I don’t know what to do about something? What would love do? And you always get your answer. So yeah, I’m just winging it. And I said this bigger purpose, which I haven’t got to yet, but because it’s been so instilled in me from a child, that’s the only way I’ve ever thought.

David Jones [00:41:28]:

Thanks very much. So this next question is a bit like what is the meaning of life? So for listeners who feel trapped by their past, whether that’s because they’ve been in prison, through trauma, addiction or family history, what do you think would be helpful for them to understand about change, healing and starting again?

Leon Towers [00:42:01]:

This might sound harsh and it’s not meant to be at all given my circumstances and past. Change has to come from in here. That is the only place change can come. You can get thrown a lifeline every, you know when people’s lives have changed that have been drug addicts or alcoholics and they’ve managed to get clean, somewhere along the line somebody will have thrown them a lifeline. Even if they don’t know who that person was, that’s how they’ve ended up being sober. But change has to come from within because only we can do it ourselves. And yes, you need the support around you, yes you need strategies put in place. But if you’re in a desolate situation or a relationship that’s, you know, domestic abuse or so many things, suicide, eating disorders, drug addiction, drinking, all of them things, the spark has to come from in here because you know. You could ask lots of alcoholics, I’m sure, that would say they were given the opportunity to do it and they didn’t do it until the seventh time or whatever, because they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to.

You have to want to. And I think that’s the hardest thing, facing the fact that you have to want it. And for you to want it, you’re the one that can make the change happen. And it’s irrelevant of your circumstances, as in where you live, not having anywhere to live. And I can say that as somebody who’s lived on the streets and eaten at my lowest point, at half a burger that somebody had discarded in a rubbish bin at the bottom of it with fag stumps and everything all over it. It was horrible. But I was hungry and I did it. I ate it, because it’s survival. And I could have thought at the time, I just want to die. I hate my life. Why me? And don’t get me wrong, that has passed my thoughts many a time over the years, but that’s one that sticks out because I didn’t. I was quite happy that I’d got some food. I didn’t think, oh, my God, I’m literally scrapping into the bottom of a bin, a dustbin, stuff chucked on top of it, and I’m eating half a burger that somebody’s drilled all over and spat out and left in a bin. None of that crossed my mind. It does now, and I think, oh gosh.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:44:48]:

But really wise words, Leon, in terms of actually having to find that spark for change in yourself. And also, I think, you know, people will be able to hear from the conversation that actually, you’ve had so much adversity in your life, and it’s easy to dismiss those kind of words of wisdom and think people don’t understand my position. But actually, I think, some of the stories you’ve shared today show that actually, you have been in those places. If you could speak directly to your younger self, the version of you who was still in the middle of adversity, what would you say to him now? Would your focus be on that, look for that spark of change?

Leon Towers [00:45:30]:

Always know who you are. I always knew who I was. And it’s not my job. It’s not up to me to show other people who I am. Believe in yourself and the core of your values and your morals and that’s it because to be honest, everyone else is irrelevant. There’s a true saying. What other people are saying about you is none of your business. It’s nothing to do with you. That’s their lives. They’re talking about you, but it’s actually nothing to do with you, even though it’s you. It took me a long time to get my head around that one. Like how’s it nothing to do with me talking about me, but it’s true. Concentrate on you. And yeah, I look back at myself and I am the adult of the child that I was. I haven’t, yes we change with experience, but the core is still happy Leon, really.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:46:36]:

And a lot of wisdom in the conversation from you today. Leon. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. We’ll share links to where people can find you in our show notes to this episode. So thank you so much for coming on and talking with us about your story.

Leon Towers [00:46:53]:

Thank you for having me.

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Today’s guest is Dr. Lynette Ewart. Now, I’m organising a wellbeing festival in Oundle on Sunday 18 October, called Physis. And a friend pleaded with me to try and persuade Lynette to come and speak at this event because she was so taken with Lynette’s Instagram feed. But Dr. Lynette Ewart is a GP, a strength coach and she’s the founder of Prescription Strength. Lynette’s mission is to make strength training a normal part of healthcare, because she believes prevention beats pills whenever possible. After nearly two decades working as an NHS GP, Lynette now combines clinical medicine with strength coaching, translating complex health information into practical advice people can actually use.

And she’s got a particular interest in healthy aging, obesity training and tackling misinformation that surrounds health and fitness online. Alongside her coaching program, Lynette shares evidence based health content with a growing audience on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. And she also hosts the Prescription Strength podcast. We’ll post links to all of the ways you can get in touch with Lynette or follow Lynette on social media in the show notes for this podcast. Really glad to get you here, Lynette.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:01:35]:

Thanks for having me.

David Jones [00:01:36]:

Hello, Lynette. Very nice to meet you. So you’ve moved from being a doctor in general practice into strength coaching. And both roles of course, involve helping people to change. So a couple of things. What made you want to make this shift and can you clarify the difference between a strength coach and a personal trainer?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:02:00]:

Well, the short answer is, I suppose my qualification is that I’m a personal trainer, a level three personal trainer that you would meet in many of gyms up and down the country. But I have a particular interest in strength training, so I’ve done some, I suppose, bolt on courses that further my knowledge of coaching. So strength training in people. So I wouldn’t take on clients who want to do a running event or a cycling event. You could do that under the same qualification. But to me that’s not where the magic happens. The magic happens when you lift weights and so that’s really just what I’ve focused in on, much in the same way that many general practitioners end up seeing lots of women’s health or lots of dermatology. It just, you focus in on the stuff that lights you up, I guess, and that’s the real difference.

But in qualification terms, I’m a personal trainer in much the same way that many personal trainers that you see in day to day practice would be. How did I end up doing this? Well, I’ll give you the shortened version, but I had my own, it’s not an exaggeration to say life changing experience of discovering weight training. And it changed me more than just physically. I saw the potential for this to help many other people in terms of their self confidence, their physical abilities, their metabolic health. I experienced all of that first hand when I started it myself. And then I had some really good coaching and I reached a point where I thought the only way I’m going to get my patients to experience this is if I become that coach. Because I knew exactly what I wanted to deliver. And I guess 11 years, here I am, took a while.

David Jones [00:03:46]:

Oh, that’s really fascinating. And I’m particularly interested in this. And I didn’t know quite what to expect today because I’ve been using Mounjaro for the past seven or eight months and of course one loses a lot of weight. A lot of that seems to be muscle weight. I’ve just recently bought myself some weights to use at home. So I’m generally interested in what you’ve got to say.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:04:11]:

Best investment you’ll ever make.

David Jones [00:04:14]:

Yes, well, thanks for that. Yeah, well, it was quite an investment as well, how much they were, but there you go. Now, what did medicine teach you about why people struggle to care for themselves and what did coaching reveal medicine sometimes misses?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:04:32]:

This is a really interesting thing to focus in on and I was having this conversation with another coach on my own podcast. It’s not out yet. I think new doctors take a very long time to realise, and I put myself very much in that category, that what you say to someone and the advice you give, it’s not that it won’t necessarily be listened to, but it will be interpreted by that person depending on lots of different things, their own story about themselves, where they are in life, what their priorities are. And I think naively as new doctors, we just think we have the word of God and people are going to go, okay, the doctor said I need to go and get fitter or take my pills twice a day and that therefore people are going to do it. And it takes quite a long time, particularly probably less time in general practice because you see people quite frequently for follow up.

But after a few years you go, hang on, I know I gave this person this advice a few years ago. Why has nothing changed or why are those bloods still looking like that? Oh, actually something’s going wrong in the process of me delivering hopefully evidence based, good quality advice and actually that person being able to apply it in their real lives. And I think personal trainers and coaches come to that realisation far sooner, I would say within the first year of getting their qualification and that this was the conversation we were having, which is often why I’m drawn to the fitness space because I find people who’ve been working with clients in that area soon start talking about behaviour change and I suppose how to apply things outside of what the standard advice would be.

It takes you probably about 10 years to get to that point as a GP and it probably takes you about 12 as a coach. But actually I tend to see and I describe to people as I feel I’m doing a very similar job just with different toolkits in both settings. And in one I have plenty of time to explore people’s beliefs and where they are in life. And in another, the clock starts ticking the moment they’ve checked in at the front desk and you’re trying to grab little pockets of time and hook onto things and it’s a much more challenging mission to try and help people make meaningful change. As a doctor, I think that’s interesting.

David Jones [00:06:51]:

I must say I’ve always had very good experience with GPs that I’ve worked with and I’m one of those people who nearly always does what’s expected of me because I think I usually go to a GP with a pretty clear idea about what I’m seeking help with. And for many people, perhaps it’s not so clear in their mind what they’re looking for anyway.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:07:15]:

Yeah, I think that’s true. I’ve had a number of clinics where the very first patient of the day has spilled out a big chunk of life history. The time is already up for their appointment and I don’t think they even know sometimes what they wanted from it. So then you’re looking to follow up and try and continue the story in another appointment. So not everybody knows what they’re in for, that’s for sure.

David Jones [00:07:36]:

So did you find yourself at odds with the system as a GP?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:07:40]:

Most of the time, I would say, and I think it’s probably fair to say I don’t know that I fit in it anymore. So currently most of the general practice work that I do now is in out of hours and I particularly like home visiting because there’s less time pressure, there’s a greater need for my experience and I end up doing a bit of teaching with GP registrars. I have found the increasingly transactional nature of daytime general practice. Ticking boxes, feeding people into referral pathways, getting rejected from clinics here, there and everywhere. I’m just railing against the system to the point that I’ve had to step aside and find out where I fit. And I’m okay with that. I’ve made my peace with it now. It’s been about five or six years since I stopped being a GP partner. I’ve not really known, I suppose, what it would look like, but it isn’t going to change back. And so I’ve had to just accept that and find where I can fit and still do some good work. And I think I’ve found that now.

David Jones [00:08:41]:

And of course, I guess most patients don’t see what you’ve just described. They don’t see the additional work and the frustration that GPs face on a daily basis.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:08:52]:

Many do. And I would say on the whole people are very understanding about it. But everybody’s limits of what they will tolerate are finite and as mine are too. My mum’s having an issue at the moment with a so called urgent referral. And I know the system. I know what’s going on, on the one hand, doesn’t stop me absolutely fuming about it on the other when she’s hitting the wall left, right and centre. But it’s that feeling of not being able to change the system. I described it as an ocean liner that you can’t turn.

So you just make a decision to get off at the next stop, really, and stop railing against it. And I think you have to, at some point, for your own sanity, stop assuming you can change the world. At one time I thought we could when I joined my partnership and we were quite dynamic and forward thinking. But things change, life moves on and it’s complicated, it’s a complicated system to navigate and I don’t think I’m a lone voice, if anybody else knows this system of the public sector. I think I see similar things in education among experienced teachers and civil servants as well.

David Jones [00:09:57]:

Thank you. And it sounds as if making the switch to being the coach that you’ve just been describing has also given you the opportunity to align your own life in a way that’s more satisfying.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:10:12]:

Yes, I would say I’ve done a lot of work on my values in the last five or six years. I’m very clear about what they are and how to work within them. And interestingly, that’s probably why I’ve chosen to be quite vocal about misinformation online, which was never part of the plan. But in terms of how I’m working with the clients that I work with now and even the patients that I see, I can sleep at night knowing that I’m doing the best I can with the knowledge that I’ve got and not missing things. Obviously, if I’m working with a client, the chances of missing something can be picked up the next day, and it’s not going to have the same downstream consequences as it would in perhaps a fraught clinic on call when you’re interrupted every five minutes. But I’m just not prepared to carry that risk anymore. I’ve got a family, I’ve got other things I want to do, so I’m at peace with it. I think, you carry a lot of guilt as a doctor. The thought of walking away from it and, you know, all that training, all that expense, all those hours put in, it can be a bit of a millstone around your neck after a while. And in the end, I think, no, actually, all that experience has got me to where I am now. I’m just choosing to use it in a different way. So I’ve done a lot of work to get to this place, personal work.

David Jones [00:11:32]:

Yes. Well done for that. Yeah. What you’re bringing to my mind is how much I worry that my GP may retire early. So that’s my biggest concern.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:11:45]:

It’s happening. And also what I’m seeing, because when I’m working for out of hours, I get trainee doctors, trainee GPs, should I say, generally coming, because they have to do so many out of hours before they complete their training. And I can’t remember the last time I spoke to a trainee who had any intention of working full time. And many of them are quite open to moving abroad, exploring things in the private sector. It’s a very different world now to the one that I entered into. When did I qualify as a GP? 19 years ago I finished my GP training. So it is a different world and it is what it is. So genuinely admire, I still do GP appraisals, we have to have an annual appraisal. And when I appraise somebody who’s been qualified longer than me and is still feeling fulfilled by the day job I’m really envious, but I have to accept that. I guess some of my need for novelty and project work and doing things my way has brought me to where I am. So I think I’m making good use of it. And as I say, I’ve done this many times. Oh, I tried to fit back in and maybe it’s just the practice, maybe it’s a different town that I need or, and I end up in the same place quite quickly.

David Jones [00:12:55]:

Thank you. Talking about novelty, social media changed your working life at all?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:13:00]:

Just a bit. Social media wasn’t part of the plan. When I was leaving partnership, my vision was to buy some premises and own a gym and I still haven’t ruled that out. That may well happen next year, but of course it coincided with COVID and lockdown and there weren’t many people buying gyms in 2020 and 2021. So it put everything on hold. Like a lot of doctors. I did a few more certificates online and it was an advert on Instagram that floated the idea of setting up an online business. And I’d been an online client, so that the coach who I credit a lot of my own success to is in Baltimore and she’s not even in the UK. And I thought, well, actually I’ve had really good experience with online coaching. Perhaps this is a middle ground that can get me out of this, you know, where am I going to go next? So I bought into a business mentorship because I didn’t really know where to start. And they said, we will hold your hand right through the process.

And that’s where the idea of going online came from. And I have to say I’ve been very lucky. I didn’t expect to grow an audience as such. The plan was always just to use paid advertising to tell people about the business and bring clients in that way. I don’t know. It turns out I quite enjoy it and I do try and make it fun. I try not to take it too seriously because I still work as a medical examiner. If you’re not familiar with the role, we review deaths in the community and in the hospital. That’s one morning a week at a local hospital. And it keeps your feet on the ground about what the serious stuff is. So I can hold the silly nonsense that gets talked about online very lightly at times and poke fun at it when I need to. And that gives a nice balance. I think if you spend all your time online, you run the very real risk of living in such an echo chamber that you’ve forgotten what’s going on over the road. And I don’t want to be that person.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:15:02]:

Thanks, Lynette. What are some of the biggest myths you find people face around their physical well being?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:15:08]:

Around their physical well being? I think there’s still a lot of myths around weight and I say that very carefully because we have still got a lot of work to do with regards to the growing problem of weight related ill health. However, and I was just thinking about this yesterday when I was looking at some research. There is a lot of mileage in increasing your fitness and focusing on fitness over prioritising weight for some people. And I would like that message to be a bit louder in that. And I think what we’ve seen with weight loss injections is a good example because it has been, I’m very supportive of weight loss injections, I’ve got clients that use them, I’m very supportive of them in the right way in conjunction with changing lifestyle. But it’s very easy to go, yeah, yeah, I’ll come back to that. I’ll do this first and then I’ll come back to it.

And we do that with fitness quite a lot, all over the place. When I retire, when I go on holiday, when Monday comes, there’s always a reason to put it off. And I’m trying very hard to be a lever in that space that gets people to go, actually, maybe I could do something today. There are other myths that I think are probably slightly more nuanced and exist in certain areas. I think again, coming back to body shape, I’m very interested in this idea of what people assume to be health. And actually I was thinking perhaps for the event that you’ve invited me to, I might make that the focus of what I talk about because people get very set on an image. We’re sold an image of what health is and it’s, to me, it’s so much more about capacity and resilience and that is not something that you can necessarily photograph.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:16:56]:

And as you were talking, I was just thinking about how much these days we see people online describing themselves as a coach and describing strategies that people should take to improve their fitness, but not necessarily having any background in, you know, so offering nutritional advice or other sorts of like wacky interventions. When you see people like Brian Johnson, for instance, with the blood transfusions, do those sorts of things get to you as a coach who’s legitimately, has a good understanding of biology and health and then has also done the strength training on top of.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:17:35]:

Yes, because I think for me it’s very easy to tell who’s worked with the public and who hasn’t. And that’s not to say that you can’t amass a lot of very valuable experience in a private setting. But I come back to my bias, I guess, is that you need to earn your stripes in undifferentiated clinic, in areas where people aren’t pre selected either because they can afford it or they’ve already had certain things ruled out. And so somebody who positions themselves as a coach for people with irritable bowel syndrome, perhaps. How can you do that if you are not in a position to follow that person up and see other aspects of their life, know what other things are going on? Maybe some people are helped by it, but coaching is about coaching a whole person, not just one problem. And for me that’s not what we do as doctors. We don’t coach people we shouldn’t be there isn’t anywhere near the time. But you can’t just take one little dimension of a person’s life and then call yourself a coach. In my mind anyway, that’s the difference. I see.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:18:41]:

Thank you. When you were talking about offering advice as a GP and then people not following your advice, I suppose I was struck by a lot of people know what would help their well being, like they know they shouldn’t smoke, for instance, but still feel stuck. In your experience, what are some of the deepest barriers that stop people from taking the first step? Because it isn’t lack of intellectual knowledge, is it? Most of the time?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:19:04]:

No, not at all. So much of it is about self belief and I come back to the story that people tell themselves. I’m not somebody who exercises that can go all the way back to PE in primary school when you weren’t picked or you never had the right kit. People, and we are bad for this, as doctors we can contribute to the story people tell themselves, whether it’s in a patient’s in a back clinic and they get told, well, you know, you’ve got this disc that’s out of line, so make sure you never lift anything heavy ever again. Bang. You’ve just created a narrative for that person that is going to take so long to dismantle and be able to get that person to make changes. So that’s often the first thing that I need to understand about somebody is how do you see yourself?

What’s getting in the way, what’s stopping you? And people don’t always necessarily recognise that in themselves. For example, if I’m working with a client, one of the things I’ll sometimes say is online coaching is fantastic in terms of its flexibility, but if you’re somebody who needs a face to face person to meet you on a Friday at 12 o’, clock, then this isn’t going to work for you because you can do Friday’s session on Saturday, Sunday or Monday. Do you think that is realistically going to be a problem? And I get a fair amount of people that, no, no, it’ll be fine. The flexibility is great. And then sure enough, four weeks in, they’ve realised, no, actually without that commitment, I’m not there. So I do think sometimes people aren’t perhaps that in tune with themselves, what motivates them, what makes them feel accountable. And sometimes there’s a bit of work to do there. But again, that’s the story that we tell ourselves.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:20:36]:

Yeah, I certainly recognise that sense of signing up to yoga classes, which if a video arrives, it won’t get done at all. Whereas I’ve booked into a class, I’ll be there showing up. So I really recognise that it’s very familiar. On your Instagram feed, you talk about strength in a very practical way, but there’s also something deeply psychological about feeling strong, isn’t there? How does physical strength change the way that people relate to themselves emotionally?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:21:00]:

Honestly, people will think I’m exaggerating, but it’s transformative, it really is. And you only need a small window into it for that transformation to start to begin. I’ve seen it time and time again and that was when I said at the start, having my own transformation through strength training, that’s the very thing. It gives you a level of confidence to take on new things and it opens up your world. And bear in mind, I come from a world where I’ve seen people’s lives shrink down to appointments and they, I used to refer to some of my patients as just professional patients because it was almost like having a job, going from one appointment to another, not necessarily through any fault of their own, but someone could suddenly lose four or five years of their life to being a patient. I mean, any cancer patient will attest to that as well.

There’s a lot of admin involved in being a patient and the progress you can see and feel yourself making with strength training just forces a change in narrative. Whether that’s because you suddenly go, actually, I could go out for a bit longer because maybe my back isn’t going to hurt, or maybe I could lift that suitcase onto the train or onto the carousel. And that opens up a possibility to make a trip that you’ve been putting off. And then you’ve got the later end stuff about not being a burden because this becomes huge. And lots of people in midlife start talking about not wanting to be a burden, but aren’t necessarily aware of what the roadmap looks like to not being a burden. It’s a horrible term, isn’t it? But actually that’s what a lot of older people feel or fear that they might become.

And actually it’s really simple to practice. And it is about practice. Practice the movements that you want to be able to maintain, to be able to get up off the floor, to be able to move your own luggage around, to be able to push somebody else in a wheelchair and not be the person being pushed. So it’s about that confidence and agency that I think it brings to people. And I see that happen in as little as six to eight weeks in some people if they show up, not the ones who check out by week two.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:23:07]:

Both David and I have worked in prisons for a long time and I think the gym and strength training in the gym seems to be one of those activities that gives a lot of people, I think, a sense of pride and self esteem when otherwise they’d be really battling with shame. Is that your experience, David?

David Jones [00:23:24]:

Well, absolutely. Certainly activities such as going to the gym took up a lot of mental and actual time in people’s minds.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:23:33]:

Yeah, I think as well in a gym environment when somebody makes that. So a lot of the clients I work with will start off at home. Ladies not interested in joining a gym. And it’s wonderful when somebody breaks through that plateau and says, you know what, I want some heavier weights, maybe I’m going to try the gym. And they’re always intimidated when they make a start. And it only takes us a couple of sessions to break through that. But once you start moving heavier weights, there is also an added bonus of you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. If you’re putting a barbell on your back and you’re going to squat down, whatever it was that you were overthinking or whittling about, and I can be the queen of overthinking and whittling, that has to go to one side. And it’s the same as people talk about with cold water exposure, it forces you to get out of your head, even if it’s just for 30 seconds. But that is really, really powerful space to be in. And if you don’t like cold water, I can highly recommend using the barbell as an alternative because it works and then you feel amazing afterwards.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:24:32]:

Kind of describing a bit of a circuit breaker, aren’t you, when people are caught up in some horrible loop, repetitive loop. And I think you have to be mindful when you’re engaging in these activities. So many people carry a story that their body has failed them in some way, whether that be through illness, aging, stress, trauma, or burnout. How do you help someone rebuild trust in their body when the relationship feels quite fractured? Bit like the example you gave, I guess, of the slipped disc.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:24:58]:

Yeah, I have struggled with that as a doctor, but it has happened. I’ve been able to help people with that when they’ve initiated it and immediately a patient comes to mind who was a very typical back patient with a frail spine and a fracture. But she’d watched a program on telly and it mentioned a common painkiller called dihydrocodeine being popular among addicts. And for some reason, it ignited something in her. And I remember her coming in and saying, I don’t want to be taking this. I’ve just realised I’m taking a drug every day that addicts use, and I want to get off it. And I said, we can do this, but we need a plan. And it took probably about nine to 10 months, but she led the way. I was just providing the support. And it was such a joy when she got to that stage of being free of those painkillers that she no longer wanted to take.

And I have to say, at no point did her pain get any catastrophically worse. So it can be done as a GP, if you’re somewhere where you’ve got continuity and you can follow up and patients trust you enough. And I suppose coming off of opiates is a good example. When it’s a physical issue and I’m coaching with somebody, it takes very small steps. And you have to build a bank of evidence because that powerful fear circuit in your brain will try and put the brakes on every opportunity. No, I couldn’t lift that. No, I can’t get down on the floor. If I do that, that’s going to hurt. And then what? And I find that it’s only through evidence. Okay, well, let’s start with a really small range of motion, a really lightweight, a low dose. It is finding the dose that somebody can manage and they may not make massive jumps to begin with, but once they start to see that their body doesn’t fall apart, the world doesn’t end.

Actually I’m no more sore afterwards than I was in the first place. If it’s pain, that’s a limiting factor that gives you a little bit of leeway to go, okay, what are we going to do in the next couple of weeks? And it absolutely can be done. But it is very much a two way trusting process that can happen, and people relapse, I’m sure you know, from the people that you’ve worked with. Sometimes bodies hurt and twinge and it’s very easy to lapse back into that story of oh, see, I was right all along, I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I like the phrase adapt, don’t abandon. We can work around lots of different things providing that person trusts me and is willing to show up. And actually I’ve got a client at the moment who’s got great evidence of that.

She’s got a long standing back problem that predates her working with me and it’s predictably flared up at about weeks five or six. But she said, I’m determined this isn’t going to derail me this time. So we just changed what she was doing to not aggravate it but keep her functioning so that she didn’t buy back into that same story of oh, this is always what happens and it’s worked beautifully and she’s coming through the other side. And I said let’s just thank that bit of evidence for next time that there is a way around. Hopefully, she’ll remember that if she’s not working with me the next time it’s flares up.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:27:53]:

But again you’re kind of like challenging that narrative that people, you know, so stopping something that’s been perhaps become calcified into identity and enabling there to be some sort of shift. And when you were talking, I was thinking about how many people who come to see me in private practice who really struggle to be compassionate for themselves and I think for those people that sometimes wellbeing can feel like yet another demand on them. How do you help people shift from that sort of self critical, pressurised attitude towards themselves and their health into something that feels more nourishing and sustainable.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:28:29]:

That’s almost a longer process I found than dealing with physical issues. And I come up against this an awful lot, my typical lady in midlife who is either caring for elderly parents or children or both sometimes or the neighbour and putting everybody else’s needs first. That is much more challenging because that person will deprioritise that time for herself in order to go and look after a grandchild or go because mum’s had a fall and I have to be realistic about that is that there are times when those needs need to be met. A lot of us do have people that are genuinely dependent upon us or we’re the first person that someone calls but it’s having a plan to come back to. So okay, yep, the weekend didn’t pan out the way you wanted. Sometimes this is life. Probably heard me say online I love Steve Peters and the chimp paradox and that work has been a big part of my life in the last few years but actually one of the things they talk about is accept where you are and move on with the plan. And, so it is that issue of okay, this wasn’t perfect. But when is perfect ever a thing, let’s just see how we can move forward.

But sometimes those self critical voices are really stubborn and you’ve got to rewrite that program over the top of it and it needs lots and lots of repetition. But I like to think I live in the real world and I have people dependent upon me. I’ve got a son with special needs, many jobs, stuff that people have and so I get it, I struggle I suppose more where coaches don’t or haven’t got those demands on their times and then they’re preaching, I don’t know, a morning protocol or some of the nonsense that you just think get real, you’re not living in the real world with what happens. Trying to hate the phrase keeping it real, but I think it really matters to people and sharing, you know, where I slip up with these things as well because I do all the time and I don’t say that to, I don’t make that up. It is real. I’d love my meal prep to be perfect and my training and I’d love to be ripped and look like some of those other people in photo shoots but I’m not, it’s not who I am. I’m just doing the best I can in the time that I’ve got and that’s what I want the people I work with to do as well. Because the best you can will make a big difference if you can keep doing the best you can. It really does.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:30:43]:

I think it’s really reassuring to hear somebody who is well disciplined say those sorts of things. I remember listening to the Ben Greenfield podcast one time and he’s always advocating for these kind of like morning protocols. And I think it’s a full time job following your health regime. But then he was talking one time on a podcast about how he just, it was all getting to him because he had just placed too many demands on himself in trying to, you know, have this full time job of keeping yourself healthy rather than accepting that everything in moderation is to some degree probably more valuable as a route to go down.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:31:18]:

Yeah, I made a new rule recently, a personal rule, that I’m taking no more productivity advice from men who haven’t yet raised children and run a job along the same time. And I say that quite lightly. But the reality is that whoever you’re taking advice from, whatever sphere that is, I think it matters whether their life is in any way like yours, whether they have experienced some of the things that you’ve got, because it does change you. God, I cringe at some of the parenting advice I probably gave out before I was a parent and think, what did I think I was talking about? But it’s life’s tapestry, isn’t it?

David Jones [00:31:55]:

Thank you. So following on a bit from that, for people who are listening to this podcast who feel intimidated by fitness culture, which I have done at times myself, what do you think is the psychological difference between movement or activity that’s punishing a movement or activity that is restorative?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:32:18]:

I don’t see a place in my life or any of the ladies I work with life for punishing activity. I think we can leave that to the military. We can leave that to the fitness influencers who like that style. I have yet to see anybody in the demographic of people that I work with benefit from that, but that sells that image of that hardcore semi military style. Fitness is still, it’s hanging around, isn’t it? It’s been around for a long time, but there is so much more to fitness and there are people out there, women in particular, who don’t fit the normal stereotypical woman in Lycra, who are doing wonderful things. There’s some older ladies online. It’s difficult to know because nobody has the same news feed anymore, do we? Even in terms of the news, when you browse it online, the stories it chooses for you are very different. So I think if somebody is seeing images that they know are finding them intimidating and it’s putting them off, then there’s some work to be done in curating your feed because it can be done.

You can absolutely mute people, block people and then seek out people who look like you, people who are saying messages that you find encouraging and don’t have this black and white attitude towards anything at all. Because when is black and white thinking ever helpful for anybody? And, I think actually it in many ways compared to the old magazines. I was talking to a journalist at the start of the week about the divide of magazines and because she’d written an article about eating disorders in midlife women, which I thought was fantastic, and she happened to be talking to me about something else and she said, yeah, but, you know, the problem is people aren’t reading magazines anymore. On the one hand, I’m not, I don’t know that I’m necessarily that sad about that because with social media, yes, it’s everywhere and you can lose a lot of time to it, but there is much more scope to personalise it than probably people realise. If someone’s talking nonsense on your line, you can block them and it works. It takes a bit of effort. But please don’t expose yourself to fitness world. That is one tiny sliver of what’s going on out there. There are some really positive people that you can follow.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:34:34]:

Are there gender differences here, do you think women are more open to hearing what you’re saying? Seems to be like good common sense of, you know, follow somebody whose lifestyle you’ll be able to relate to? I wonder, do men prefer that more sort of hard, beasting style or is the pressure there for men to do that when many men might also benefit from more of a sort of nourishing approach to physical health?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:35:03]:

I think this is where the age and the generation that you’re in seems to matter. What’s interesting is watching some of the fitness content. My daughter, 17, she’s in first year of A levels and she seems to be seeing a lot more of that traditional aggressive male fitness type of content. No pain, no gain, that the kind of stuff that I repel against. So that’s definitely still out there. I think the challenging group are the midlife men because I think they need a bit more of the nourishing, compassionate approach. But I think society still has a message that men should be tougher and should be going for that kind of no pain, no gain. And actually I wonder if there is a bit of a gap there between what they can see potentially. There’s people out there, certainly, because I know my husband follows a lot of older fitness guys who have their own story of becoming fit, but they seem to be on YouTube more and YouTube’s a bit harder to create, it takes a little bit longer. But the younger millennials, 30s, I think is still a bit black and white, I’m afraid.

David Jones [00:36:08]:

So, Lynette, your work seems to emphasise function, confidence and capability rather than just appearance. The six pack approach, I suppose. How important do you think that shift is in helping people build a healthier inner life, not just healthy habits?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:36:32]:

I think it’s pivotal. It’s so crucial when I can speak to a client or even some of the emails. I get a lot of emails, I get a lot of messages online and somebody will say to me that something I’ve perhaps said and they thought about has helped them to focus on what they can do rather than what they look like, even if it’s not all of the time, because as we’ve already said, those old messages still lurk in your brain. Often I will sit back and think, this is why I have to keep doing this. Because you really cannot tell by looking at someone how healthy they are. And, I mean that, I see it from every job that I do and every person that I work with. I have seen the full range of people who look with the white teeth and the tan and they look out really very healthy. But emotionally they are a mess.

And if you stay emotionally a mess for long enough, your physical health will follow. To the point that I really hate separating out physical health and emotional health because you can’t really have one without the other. You can’t be in pristine physical condition and be an emotional wreck and call yourself healthy. And I’ve seen some people who would outwardly look like perhaps they need to lose weight and they’ve been incredibly strong and have amazing resilience and capacity and can run rings around somebody people and it’s wonderful. I love it when people challenge those stereotypes. But it’s when somebody’s not in either camp and they don’t know where they fit. I think that’s sometimes a bit more challenging and trying to get people to believe in the fact that you can do dramatic things for your health and you won’t necessarily look any different on the outside.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look okay. But what I found is that people can arrive at that place long before they thought they would. So sometimes just losing a few pounds. One of the things, I’m not a weight loss coach, I don’t chase the weight loss market, but I do encourage people to eat enough protein, eat enough fiber and find a healthier way of eating that’s sustainable. And if people can let go of diet mentality and focus on strength and function. Often what I’ll hear from the clients I work with is actually I’ve lost three or four kilos and I wasn’t really planning to. And they feel fantastic because they’re feeling what their body can do. And that came without really chasing it and without really needing to be a particular dress size. So, we all know that what you see in the mirror can vary from day to day and that can dictate how you feel.

You can ruin your day by getting on the scales and it not showing the reward for all the hard work you felt you’ve put in. And I think that’s the danger of data, is that actually, what’s that saying, you know, if you look outside and it’s raining, you better take an umbrella. Never mind what the app says, actually pay attention to how you’re feeling right now and what your body can do for you. Because actually when people are faced with life changing diagnoses or they’ve suddenly had a terminal diagnosis, suddenly it falls away, this idea that you need to be a certain dress size or look a certain way, suddenly people realise, how much time have I wasted chasing all of that? And you only have to hear that a few times for it to land. And you want to share that message with people, but you can’t always keep hold of it, can you?

I think it’s, you know that feeling you sometimes get when somebody unexpectedly has died that you knew and you really feel your own mortality for a while and you think, right, that’s it, I’m going to stop worrying about this. But you can’t keep that feeling. It does, eventually your brain processes it and you get used to it. And then you think, just how can we keep that feeling of remembering the preciousness of life, I suppose, present? I don’t know if you’ve got an answer to that. I would love to know.

David Jones [00:40:07]:

I don’t know. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. But I know one of the targets I set myself because I had to lose a lot of weight and what I wanted to do was to become slim enough so that I could return to Nice, where I used to go a lot when I was younger, to the jazz festival. I’d spend the daytime floating in the sea, in the evening going to the jazz festival. And I want to return to Nice and feel confident enough to go into the sea again. That’s my aim.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:40:36]:

But that’s interesting because what you’re describing is how you want to feel in a particular place. There’s not a number attached to that. How will you know when you’re there? I do try and get people to try and think about some function goals, not necessarily just numbers. Data has a sneaky way of overriding all our success, doesn’t it? Those wretched scales.

David Jones [00:41:02]:

Well, I’ll know when I run out of old clothes that are too small for me. Suddenly I fit them anyway. You’ve made a major identity transition yourself. Is it possible for you to think about what you learned psychologically from stepping away from the familiar role of being a GP and building something new?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:41:28]:

My major identity shift is, I guess I considered myself a competent person before, but I am very pleased with how much I’ve been able to make this a success. And then you get into, well, what defines success? Success in that people want to work with me. I often used to sometimes feel that I was repeating the same message several times over in clinic, and some people would listen and some people didn’t, and there was a level of futility to that. And what I love now is that people do want to hear what I’ve got to say. It does really land and it really impacts with people. And the fact that I’ve been able to bring that to a bigger audience and get the feedback that it matters has made me feel, I suppose, very more competent. It’s nice.

It’s a nice feeling of success. That’s how I measure the success. I’ve had to do a lot of work on what does success look like? Because, of course, you can get tied up in financial metrics, follower numbers, subscriber numbers, all that kind of thing. But actually it’s about the feedback from people that what I’m saying matters to them and helping people to understand complex issues. I think I’ve always explained to patients how things work in the way that I understand them. I need to break it down to be quite simplistic for it to stay in my own mind. And I’ve found that people appreciate that, but that’s generally how I would understand it. Now I’m just doing that to a bigger audience and thankfully people are grateful for it and seem to like it.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:43:00]:

Thanks, Lynette. When people repeatedly fall off the wagon, they often, I think, end up concluding that there’s something wrong with them. Do you see that as a lack of motivation or is there often a mismatch between the person’s lifestyle, their nervous system, the expectations placed on them? How do you help them understand that ability to be motivated in the first place?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:43:21]:

I think a lot of the time it comes down to their expectations were probably not realistic. They might be very reasonable expectations, but whether they’re grounded in reality is another thing. Sometimes, particularly with women, they are juggling so many things, so many competing priorities that I can, and I’ve had a client recently who worked with me for a few months and from the outset I thought, you’re very optimistic about what you think you’re going to be able to fit in. But it’s taken her 12 weeks to go, yeah, actually maybe this was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to my mum dying and perhaps I wasn’t really grounded in reality, but that’s still valuable for her to have realised that. And what I wanted to leave her with was perhaps a more realistic view of what to try next. Please don’t go on and buy the next shiny program that promises you the earth because there’s so many promises online.

So I think having realistic expectations about what’s achievable in what time frame is the best thing that people can do. And that’s the same, you know, I use the money analogy quite often with health because we’re far more discerning about who we take financial advice from than we are health advice. For a start, we don’t expect money to just appear overnight in our bank accounts. We recognise that it has to be earned and saved and looked after unless we want to lose it all. But for some reason with our health, we seem to think we can take shortcuts all over the place, whether that’s with weight or just general fitness. And actually I see the two as being very, very similar. And that sometimes helps with people, but sometimes I think a lot of people come to make health changes from a position of frustration and having lost their temper with themselves a lot of the time. So there’s a degree of urgency that you just have to go, okay, yeah, we can do everything that you’ve talked about we can do.

But let’s be realistic. You’re probably looking at this time next year, by the time this all comes together, it’s not going to be a six week transformation, but this brings in the side of the fitness industry, which I despise, which sells all these silly, unrealistic expectations about eight week shreds. Six week shreds, you’re just scratching the surface in six to eight weeks. And I think it’s disingenuous to tell people otherwise. What I tend to say to people if they’re buying an eight week program is because I always see the same pattern is in the first couple of weeks, well, I could do a bit more. I could do a bit more. Your job is not to do a bit more now. Your job is to show up for three sessions a week for eight weeks, then we can talk about a little bit more. And so sometimes you have to slow people down. And I slow them down because I know they’re going to dip in the middle and I want them to enter the marathon and not the sprint.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:45:58]:

Thank you. From everything you’ve seen in medicine and coaching, what most helps a person move from merely coping to genuinely living well, do you think?

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:46:05]:

I think it depends on the age of the person. This is very hard with young people. When I say young, everybody, you know, on the younger side of 48, because that’s what age I am. And I would put myself in that camp in that there is a life stage, isn’t there, where you’re just optimising for money and security and relationships and everything becomes about that next stage and then something shifts in midlife and certainly did for me and it has done for a lot of my friends where you realise it’s not a rehearsal and you are now living the life that you have built. And that’s the bit has somebody reached that stage and whether or not they have will often decipher what advice pot I go into in order to try and help them with something. And again, coming back to people who are in that life stage, you know, in terms of their birthday, but they haven’t made that maturity transition. I was having a conversation with a guy who was early 40s and he ironically come about a cough that wasn’t going, it’d been going on for quite a few weeks.

And I said, yeah, you probably need a chest X ray at this stage. Your notes tell me that you’re a smoker. Is that still accurate? Because sometimes it’s not been updated for years. He said, well, yeah, I am a smoker, but I only smoke when I drink. But at the minute, that’s every day. Okay, now we’ve need to have some work to do. And it was interesting because he’s right on that turning point. And I said that you’re at that point where the path divides. You can keep going on the one you’re on, but I can tell you where that takes you. And he said, yeah, I know. And he was almost just at that dividing line. And whether or not my conversation had an impact on him, I don’t know. But once people have realised life’s not a rehearsal, you’ve got much more leverage to be able to go look, you know, is that decision that you’re making now about what it’s going to tie you to for the next few years, you’re living the life you choose and recognise, helping people to recognise that they’ve got some choices in that.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:47:58]:

It seems in your 20s and 30s, you can get away with not really exercising, can’t you? But then it starts to show who’s not bothered to try and look after their physical body in your 40s in a way that you can’t neglect it then. So finally you have a book coming out shortly, I believe, or you’re working on a book. Could you tell us a bit about it.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:48:20]:

I am working on a book that’s changed shape quite a bit in the last six months, actually. It was originally going to be focusing on a lot of the misinformation that’s out there, but I don’t know that that’s really the book that I want to write. And actually what I’m now working on instead is a lot of the things that we’ve touched upon. I see strength as central to healthcare and central to not just bone health, metabolic health, joint health, all of those things, but central to how people see themselves, their resilience and their agency and how they show up. So what I almost want to write is the prescription strength manual for what happens when strength fails, what it can do for you if you make it part of your life and then the next part being the how to do it, because I can’t work with everybody.

And, so if somebody could pick up a manual and go, okay, how do I make tomorrow the first day of my strength training journey? Because I’ve been very changed by books, I read a lot. And there’s a number of books that have been pivotal in my life and I would love to be able to write that one. It’s been moved, the timeline has expanded while I put this together. And I’ve got so many stories, it’s just working out how to weave them in so that they give the impact. And what’s interesting is they’re not stories that you would expect to show up in a book. They’re such ordinary stories of people that I think that’s where their power lies. And thankfully, I’m rubbish at remembering names and fine details, so I’m not too worried about anonymising them because I don’t think anybody will recognise themselves. The essence of the story is what matters, rather than how old and what gender the person necessarily was at the time.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:50:04]:

Brilliant. I look forward to reading it and really looking forward to meeting you in October on the 18th.

Dr. Lynette Ewart [00:50:09]:

So, yes, thank you very much.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:50:10]:

Thank you.

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So today we’re meeting with Max Schurer who spent his entire working career employed within the university sector. He’s had a long, illustrious career in this sector, mainly at the Cambridge Group, where he’s at one time been a Professor in the Centre for Historical Census and Survey and later its director. He’s also been the Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Leicester as well as a member of numerous of national and and international advisory boards and committees. But the reason we have Max here today is beyond the world of paid employment. He’s a long term trustee of the Big Difference Company, a charity which oversees the Leicester Comedy Festival, which is the UK’s second largest comedy festival, as well as being a trustee of Creative Oundle, organising numerous community arts events again, including comedy. More recently he was elected chair of the Oundle Historical Society. He’s been an Oundle town councillor for four years and is currently the Oundle town mayor. I’m really glad to you on to talk about comedy today Max, welcome.

Max Schurer [00:01:27]:

Thank you very much.

David Jones [00:01:29]:

Hello Max, very nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on.

Max Schurer [00:01:32]:

Thank you.

David Jones [00:01:33]:

So well, as Naomi’s mentioned, that’s quite an extraordinarily accomplished career that you’ve had, but here today we’re mainly going to focus on comedy. So what is your relationship to comedy?

Max Schurer [00:01:54]:

I guess it’s multifaceted really. Naomi already mentioned that I serve as a trustee on the Big Difference Company, have done for some 15 years now, based in Leicester, so there’s that kind of role as a board member, trustee. She also mentioned Creative Oundle, Creative Oundle organise events locally and in that sense I effectively organise comedy events. I’ve been doing that now for the past three years, so I’m promoter as well, if you like. And also I’ve actually done stand up myself, fleetingly. I haven’t done it recently, but I’ve done this in the past, so I’ve been a practitioner as well. So multifaceted.

David Jones [00:02:52]:

Thank you and perhaps you can help us with a bit of insight in that case. So what do we know about what people find funny?

Max Schurer [00:03:03]:

I think the trouble is there is no straightforward answer to that. That’s part of the problem of being a comedian or trying to be a comedian. What makes one person laugh or what is funny to one person can potentially even be insulting to another. You know, it’s a double edged sword. And when you talk, particularly to, you know, performing stand-up comedians, they will all tell you, however big they are, however well known they are, they have done gigs that have flopped. So the point is that they, and that’s the other interesting thing. You can do exactly the same act, if you like, with exactly the same jokes, exactly the same kind of presentation style, with one audience. They love it. You think, absolutely great in the bank. You do it again two weeks later and they’re all sitting at you, staring you in the face, stony face, not a smile on them. So the point is, there is no right, there is no wrong. There’s no button you can press and say, oh, this is going to make people laugh. You’ve got to find your own audience. And in that sense, audiences also find their own comics.

David Jones [00:04:26]:

Yeah, I see. I was saying to Naomi earlier on that I couldn’t imagine myself ever going onto a stage and trying to be funny. I mean, however, I have had the experience of going to conferences and speaking to hundreds of people and getting a huge buzz out of it. So I imagine that there’s some similarity there. The kind of buzz that one gets from standing up and getting some positive feedback from a large number of people must be very rewarding. But what do you think is the purpose of comedy?

Max Schurer [00:05:06]:

Well, the simple answer is to simply make people happy, to make them laugh. That’s a very simplistic answer. To go a lot deeper than that, you could say that one purpose of comedy is to challenge, to challenge the society in which we live. To challenge people’s notions about society politically, maybe within the political sphere, you could argue that comedy is potentially a mirror of society. You’re trying to hold that mirror up but actually saying, well, what do you actually think about this? Is this actually, you know, do you actually approve, do you actually think this is a good way of going forward, etc. So I think comedy can at one level, you know, be very frivolous. You know, a knock knock joke, it doesn’t really have any deep contextual meaning. It might make somebody laugh, but obviously then there’s certain comedy which is much more contextual and it’s the context that makes you reflect on actually, yes, I can see what you mean there. So it’s holding things up to be judged. So it’s a broad spectrum. It’s a very broad spectrum. And of course, different comedians use different, shall we say, mechanisms, you know, the one liners, for example, that certain people like to do, you could argue, don’t realistically go very deep in terms of a wider meaning, a wider context. Some observational comedians are primarily trying to, I think, make people think deeper about the culture and societies in which they live.

David Jones [00:07:05]:

I see. So I was just thinking that, I mean, some jokes, if that’s the right term for them, can be funny even when you’ve heard them 20 or 30 times before in the course of your life, depending, I suppose, upon the context in which they emerge. Would you say that’s true?

Max Schurer [00:07:30]:

Oh, absolutely, because I think there are. Well, certain jokes have been around literally for centuries because we fundamentally find certain analogies funny. A lot of jokes are analogies of some sort or another. Even the kind of childhood jokes that we grew up with. I seem to remember, I had a joke book when I was, I don’t know, eight or nine, and one of the jokes was, how did the boy see time fly? He threw his watch out the window. I just, I still, I’m laughing now, you know, here we are, 50 odd years later and I still kind of find it funny. Yeah, it’s actually just incredibly basic, play on words, etc. You know, so there are certain things that trigger us to actually think, oh, that’s actually quite funny. And those triggers remain, and that’s the whole point where certain things, even though you’ve heard them before, which is why people will have, you know, comedy greats if they like, and they will go back and laugh at these things, whether they’re watching YouTube, whether they’re watching reruns on television, whatever it might be, two or three times.

Even if they watch comedy films, they say, oh yeah, it’s a great film, I love Airplane or whatever it might be. And they all know the jokes, they all know what’s coming, but they still want to have that repeated. So in that sense that, I think one of the things that’s actually not exactly unique, but actually quite special about comedy is that you can repeat, doesn’t always have to be fresh. And, that’s why to a certain extent some comedians can go for years and years curiously doing pretty much the same act because they know it works and they know that’s what the audience wants. And in that sense, and I don’t want to draw too close a parallel, it’s a bit like some pop groups who have been around for a decade plus they know that all they’ve got to do is go on stage and play the 10 songs that everybody likes. It’s not quite the same with comedy because of course it does need refreshing and updating to a certain extent, but it’s about repeating the recipe, if you see what I mean.

David Jones [00:10:04]:

Yes. As you’re talking, I’m thinking of someone like Tommy Cooper who only had to walk on the stage.

Max Schurer [00:10:12]:

Absolutely, you know, he didn’t even have to say anything. He created such a persona where of course, a lot of Tommy Cooper’s work was so visual. It was not so much, he actually said very little on stage. He was very much a visual comedian. And of course, having established that reputation and with his fez hand and stupid hair sticking out the side and, you know, dinner jacket on and what have you, bow tie, he just looked stupid, so people, he didn’t have to say anything. Just the sheer appearance of him made people smile.

David Jones [00:10:54]:

So do you think then that good comedy is made up of several elements? And there may be the core part that we’ve just this moment been talking about, but another element which is much more context driven to do with time, place, history, that kind of thing.

Max Schurer [00:11:16]:

I think the problem is defining what one means by good comedy, because this goes back to the beginning of our conversation. What one individual may see as good is not necessarily shared by another. Fashions in a part change and there isn’t a kind of universal, this is good comedy. In the same way, there’s not a universal, this is good music or this is, you know, good art or whatever it might be. It’s like any other art form. It will draw its fans, it will draw its detractors. I think the other thing with comedy is that of course there are different genres as well. And what I mean by that is when you asked me before what my relationship with comedy was, it’s primarily through stand up, let’s be very clear about that. It’s working with stand up artists, it’s doing stand up, it’s being trustee of a organisation that primarily promotes and puts on stand up. But of course, stand up isn’t the only form of comedy. Most television comedy, of course, is not stand up.

It’s actually situation comedy. If you ask people, well, what’s your favourite comedy program? A lot of people our age will say, oh well, of course, nothing beats Monty Python. I haven’t done anything for God knows what, 40 odd years, 30 years plus. But the point is that Monty Python was far from being stand up and it wasn’t even situation comedy. It was creating almost a kind of new brand of comedy that was partly satirical and partly just almost fantasy, you know, creating these fantasy scenes, this almost chaotic worlds where they, and it was a juxtaposition of certain things. The notion of, you know, somebody’s naked sitting on a church organ on or whatever it might be. It’s creating imageries which are themselves funny and dialogue which itself is just totally ridiculous. And of course that kind of genre of comedy is also followed by other, you know, sketches, not nine o’ clock news and so forth. So there’s that kind of level of TV comedy.

But there’s also of course, the everyday, what you might call TV comedy which just has, trying to think of one. Now of course, I can’t but you know, well, let’s take, what was it? The one with Dawn French was in Vicar Dibley, so you have the situation, the comedy, you know, a nice little community. But what you’ve actually done there is created comic characters and the audience engages with each of the personalities and traits of those characters and the way then is to weave them together. It’s not just about Dawn French. It wouldn’t work if it was just about Dawn French. It’s about the characters that are surrounding her and the inter juxtaposition between them and the fact that they all have different, you know, egos as such, they have different personas and people associate and they all have their favourite character. Oh, I like so and so. I like so and so. So I’m wishing on and I almost can’t remember what the question is now, but I’m trying to illustrate the fact that comedy is such a broad spectrum, it’s very difficult to generalise about what’s good, what works and so on and so forth.

David Jones [00:15:17]:

Well, we started off talking about does comedy respond to its context, time and environment. And so I think that’s the question you’ve answered very well there. So we tend to think that comedy is good for our well being. Do you think that’s true? And why do you think it might be? Why is comedy good for us?

Max Schurer [00:15:46]:

Yeah, I generally do think it’s good for well being partly because people like to feel happy it’s very different. It’s very difficult to define what happiness is. But if people feel happy and if comedy contributes to making them feel happy, then by definition I think that is a good thing. I’m not the medical person here, but I also believe, and certainly I’ve been told whether it’s true or not is another matter that the physical act of laughing, the physical act of smiling and having that kind of comedy reaction, laughter reaction, is actually also physically better than frowning and being rather down and whatever. So I think there are physical things as well. It’s not just, it’s partly about facial muscles, but it’s also partly about, you know, the chemicals that are being released in your body as a result of feeling good

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:16:55]:

It’s the vagus nerve with the resonance of the laughter within your body as well.

Max Schurer [00:17:00]:

Right. So, you know, there are many levels on which I think comedy is good. If it makes one feel happy, content, you know, if it’s also a way of relaxing via television comedy or whatever it might be. All of these things are good. However, there’s always a flip side and people can actually get very angry listening to certain comedy. You know, it’s like, oh my God, did they really say that? Oh, that’s pathetic. Grow up. You know, or they might find it offensive in certain ways. I remember when I put on my first comedy gig in the local Queen Victoria Hall. It was a bit of a long shot. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. And I even asked myself, is Oundle ready for comedy yet? Is it ready for live stand up comedy? And during the break, I was at the back of the hall and somebody walked out past me and said that was absolutely disgusting.

Absolutely. I’m absolutely offended by that. And I’m leaving now. And I just said, thank you for your reaction. I’ll bear that in mind. The point is that, you walk away from an event and some people absolutely loved it and some people will be offended and that’s all I think is the interesting thing. You’ve got to learn as a promoter, what buttons you can push with your audience. There are certain comedians that I personally really like. I’m not going to mention who they are, but I would not put them on at the venue here in Oundle because I don’t think they would work with the standard demographic of people who go to those comedy events. To me, comedy isn’t for everybody. Well, certain branches of comedy. Certain aspects of comedy aren’t for everybody. And you’ve got to get that right. You’ve got to get that right. I undoubtedly know that there are certain comedians if I bought them here, half the audience would leave really quite shocked and offended.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:19:29]:

Do you think comedy also, I was just thinking about the idea of an act doing really well one night and then two weeks later doing badly. And I wonder whether we sometimes go in to watch comedy in a different, you know, we perhaps sometimes go in energetically feeling quite different then maybe we’re not up for a laugh, or maybe we’re more in need of it.

Max Schurer [00:19:54]:

I think that’s genuinely a problem. Yeah, a lot. If you buy a ticket for a comedy show, by definition, you’re buying a ticket because you want to be entertained. And you want to be entertained coming out feeling that you’ve had a good laugh. Certain things have appealed to your comedic side. So the point is, you go in with a great expectation, which means that quite rapidly, that expectation can be essentially drawn away or eroded, if you see what I mean. And I think that is one of the problems. I mean, it’s the same with all performing arts, in a way. I would argue, possibly more so in comedy than some, because it’s very well defined. I want to go there and I want to laugh, I want to enjoy myself. You might go to the theatre for a range of different experiences. Like, I just want to see and take it all in and go back and reflect, whatever it might be, you know, so the nature of entertaining via comedy is much more instant, if you see what I mean.

And that’s one of the problems, I think, so that’s why, as I said before, a comedian who can do exactly the same skit, exactly the same gig one night, brilliant, next night or a week later, it goes down well, you think, well, why is that? Well, possibly they didn’t quite fire. It could be down to the performer themselves. Performers cannot perform at the same level night after night after night or week after week after week, because they have things going on in their own life and the audience can pick up on that, whether they’re, I’m here, listen to me, or oh, here we go again, you know, so there is that from the performer’s side. But also this is where, you know, because the nature of comedy is a very wide spectrum. Something, again, that, dare I say it, an audience in their 20s to early 30s might funny find funny is completely and utterly different from an audience in their 50s and 60s. And the trouble is the performer doesn’t know that when they’re going out there. They don’t necessarily know until they’ve literally been on stage for a minute or two, oh my God, I’m staring at a bunch of 20 year olds or whatever it might be.

And the material has to change. And a good comedian, a good comedian, to my mind, a good stand up comedian will be able to read the audience as they’re going along. And the trouble is, you may not realise this, but most stand up comedians have a set. They know exactly, they’re going to start with this joke, they’re going to end with that joke, they know where they’re going to go in the middle. It’s relatively standard. The real problem with stand up comedy is where you start on that journey and you realise it ain’t working and you’re going to have to backtrack and actually go back to material that you hadn’t necessarily intended to use. But you think, oh well, hang on a minute, let’s just go back to the locker and pull these things out, which is why I’m in awe of stand up comedians, to be honest. I actually do think it’s one of the most difficult performing arts to do.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:23:53]:

Yeah, I certainly wouldn’t want to be trying my hand at that. Why do you think so many comedians appear to experience mental illness? Is that an illusion or is it better for us to watch comedy than perform?

Max Schurer [00:24:09]:

It depends who you are. For the vast majority of people, it’s much better to watch it than perform it. The reality is, I say this as somebody who’s trying to stand up on stage myself. Here’s my award. Look, I won an award just to show you it’s not for everybody. I mean, the reality is, even public speaking is not for everybody. And this is like public speaking without your clothes on. You know, I mean you’re very exposed and I mean that in all sorts of ways. It’s not like acting where somebody else has actually essentially written your lines and you’ve just got to deliver them to the best of your ability, according to, and you have a producer and a director telling you how to do it. Nobody is telling you how to do this, nobody is writing your lines for you. You just go out there. So it simply isn’t for most people, most people just stay on the other side of the stage and watch it and admire. Okay, so that also I think partly explains why some comedians, well, we know some comedians who openly struggle with mental health issues. Some are perhaps not so open about it. I don’t want to go through and list names, people will know them.

There are obviously key examples like Robin Williams who sadly committed suicide much earlier than that. What’s his name? The guy who was in the Carry On films, who committed suicide. Anyway, let’s not worry. So what is the relationship between mental health and comedians? It’s a difficult one because what if you’re suffering from mental health, why would you then put yourself through this? If you see what I mean, it doesn’t kind of logically make sense. Part of it is maybe about being able to express yourself where, if you’ve gone through your life where people have been pointing out the fact that you have either a disability or speech impediment or stutter or, you know, certain things that people are picking up on that make you anxious, that make you nervous about your own mental health? Seriously, standing up on stage is potentially a way of overcoming that. Although again, like all of these things, it’s a double edged sword.

It can work both ways. It will either give you the confidence to talk about it as part of a kind of cathartic reaction where you’re addressing this, but you’re addressing it through the medium of telling stories around it and almost making fun about your own disability. And I use that in a sense that it might be a physical or mental disability of some sort, some impediment. So it may be actually quite useful to the individual, both making people aware of it as well as addressing it openly in a way that they couldn’t otherwise do within a normal workplace. And a particular example of this is a comedian I’ve been following for a very long time, at least over a decade, Shappi Khorsandi, who I think it was last year, may have been the year before she started doing a tournament, what it was called now Scatterbrain, which I think was also the name of her book, and she was promoting the book at the same time where she had been diagnosed with ADHD. She clearly had been suffering with anxiety and she’d been suffering with bulimia and various other things for a long time of her life. But a lot of this came through a realisation when she was diagnosed with ADHD and what was interesting is that she said, well the way I’m going to actually deal with this and more to the point almost make people more aware of this condition is I’m going to build a complete act around it, you know.

So she’s talking about, and it is actually very funny at certain points in her life where the anxiety and the ADHD has kicked in and reflected on those partly as a cathartic thing from her point of view, but it also makes people laugh and it also makes people aware that she’s not the only one struggling with this. Another example, and again one can think of many examples, but again, another comedian I’ve been following for a number of years and really enjoy is Rosie Jones who you’ll probably know. You know, she has, well, what’s it called? Um, multiple sclerosis, but you know, she clearly. So this is a very much a physical disability and when you think of her, you think you wouldn’t expect somebody like that to be doing stand up, because of her physical disability she has a speech impediment as a result of it. But she turns that into an asset for her comedy and the way she delivers comedy in a very clever way and uses the aspects of her life and coping with her life again not only to make people aware but actually to see the funny side of certain things. So you know, certain comedians can do it very, very well and I think they, the reason they do it is because it gives them a certain empowerment if you like, that’s all I can assume. And it’s a kind of cathartic thing.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:30:54]:

But I think also we do see the flip side of, you know, I suppose we become very conscious of defence mechanisms in David and I’s line of work and how often people use humour as a way of kind of like masking and dismissing their pain. And I guess for some of the people that we see standing up on the stage, they’ve built a career out of calcifying their defensive strategy of using humour to dismiss what’s painful rather than allow it to be processed.

Max Schurer [00:31:26]:

Absolutely. So I was talking about the people who are embracing it in a very open fashion. Again, I’ve talked about double edged swords and flip sides already too many times, but this is exactly an area where there is a double edged sword and a flip side where essentially it’s used as a masking mechanism, where there is the swan comedian where everything looks absolutely graceful on the outside, beautifully put together, beautifully presented, but underneath the feet are going. And, you know, there I said, I’ve seen some comedians go on stage, look supremely confident or confident the moment they come off stage. And I’m not going to make names. First thing they want is a drink. You know, they’re absolutely broken in, if you see it takes so much out of them. So, you know, there is that side as well. But again, that’s completely normal with the performing arts. It’s not just comedians, a number of actors, again, we all know the names. They either have to go on stage drunk or they come off stage and immediately get drunk or whatever it might be. It is their coping mechanism because everybody wants a bit of them, everybody wants a piece of them. And in order to keep up this facade that this is what my audience expects, this is the persona I’ve got to present for them. Yeah, they’re just a wreck.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:33:09]:

Yeah. Max, you touched a bit with Rosie Jones and Shappi Khorsandi a bit about how people might use comedians, might use comedy in terms of amplifying their own personal power to have a sense of their own vitality and competence. But, it seems like comedy often gets used as a way to have power over others as well, doesn’t it?

Max Schurer [00:33:38]:

Oh, no. I would argue that the only way you can survive in stand up is to have power over your audience. They may not realise it, but realistically, a good stand up comedian totally controls that room. They control that room the moment they walk on stage. Audiences can be very fickle. Thankfully, I think the days of heckling are slightly over. A lot of live gigs really don’t like heckles anymore. Some people will announce basically hectoring is not actually whatever, but heckling still obviously takes place and it used to take place more. Sorry. The point that I’m trying to make is if the audience see the clink in that armour, yeah, they will go for that clink. So it is about power and to a certain extent it’s about projecting that power. And of course, it can be done in different ways. There are some comedians again who come on stage and their persona is to almost give the audience the idea that they’re shambolic and completely have no control and don’t know what they’re doing. If you think of again in the old days, what was his name? The guy used to wear that stupid flat hat. Doesn’t really matter. But the point is that they are still actually in power. But the point is what they’ve actually done is created a persona that makes them look power less, but they’re still controlling the state. So I think it is very much about power, even if it’s, but it may be explicit or implicit.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:35:54]:

What’s it like to have to be funny on demand into a schedule?

Max Schurer [00:36:01]:

I think this is probably having spoken to some comedians, it’s one of the things that really gets them because at the end of the day it’s a job they’ve chosen to do and nobody can be funny the whole time. And there’s nothing worse than them having to live an everyday life when they’re down the pub with their mates or whatever it might be, just seeing ordinary people in the street or whatever it might be. There’s nothing worse than, particularly if you’re a well known comedian and people might recognise you at a venue or you’re just doing your shopping in Tesco and they’ll say, oh God, tell us a joke, tell us a joke. And you’re thinking, oh, please, you know, I’m not at work now. It would be a bit like seeing one of your workmates who works in, I don’t know, accountancy and going up in Tesco going, oh, show me a spreadsheet, show me a spreadsheet. You can’t expect people to constantly be funny. By definition, they’re never going to be funny. They might be amusing from time and time, but, people have downtime. I just simply do not believe, however funny you may be as an individual, however creative you may be, you can’t constantly keep up this external face because that’s partly what it is, it’s an external face.

That face will always drop at certain times because you need downtime. Because you as an individual is just like, oh, do you know what? I just want to sit here and look at the scenery or whatever it might be. I don’t want to be funny now. I don’t want to be. I’m not on duty, do you see what I mean? And that’s the same whether you’re a professional comedian doing a job or you’re somebody who, people just thinks, oh, do you know what, they’re quite funny, let’s invite them to a dinner party. Because, oh, yeah, they’re funny? Yeah, they’re always a good laugh. They always make a good comment. Well, they might do occasionally, but you can’t just turn it on like a tap. It doesn’t work like that because for humour you have to bounce it off people. A stand up isn’t funny if they’re standing in a room doing their sketch and the room is empty, they’re not funny at all. They’re only funny when you’ve got an audience. And in that sense humour means a reaction. Humour is a bit like an echo chamber in that sense. So it completely depends on the circumstances and the surroundings.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:39:01]:

Is there a conflict between being authentic and being funny?

Max Schurer [00:39:09]:

I think there possibly is. I actually might. I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of comedians and I think they are genuinely authentic. What I mean by that is that they do the kind of sets that they want to do that they believe in. So because of course most live comedians are writing their own material. It’s maybe slightly different when you’re talking about television comedy in general, when it’s not live, when it’s not stand up because they’re realistically, they’re comedic actors. They may not even find it funny themselves. They’re essentially just reading scripts and they are doing this in a very good way. But I think for a comedian who writes their material and performs their own material, there has to be a certain authenticity. That said, and again, I’m not going to name names. I remember having a conversation with a well known comedian once who said I don’t want to be this type of comedian. I always wanted to be this type of comedian and I tried for years being that type of comedian and nobody was laughing.

And then suddenly I realised they were laughing at my one-liners so I just focused on one-liners. That’s not what I ever wanted to do. But I do that because that’s what pay the bills. That’s what people find funny. And to a certain point, there will be that compromise. It may be that certain stand up comedians will not go in certain directions and will not cross certain boundaries because they know it won’t work. Even though that in inwardly speaking they might find this incredibly funny. And I know this having written some of my own material, I think, oh that’s, that’s just hilarious. But there’s no way I’m going to say that on stage because. But yeah, so generally, yes, long answer your question, generally, yes, I think people are authentic, particularly if they are writing their own material. But there are limits to that authenticity.

David Jones [00:41:50]:

Quite a well trodden path, isn’t there, for comedians who want to be serious actors and some succeed and some, like Tony Hancock for example, sadly don’t.

Max Schurer [00:42:05]:

Yeah, yeah, indeed. You know, it ain’t easy trying to make people laugh, particularly with your own material. It’s a constant struggle. And as I say, partly because what you may find funny, it’s just simply not shared by the audiences to whom you are performing, which is why you have this constant recalibration, if you like.

David Jones [00:42:42]:

Thank you. You mentioned earlier that some people walked out of a particular show saying that they’d found it terribly offensive. Do you think there’s a balance to be struck for comedians between having something which is acceptable and works and yet has something of a raw edge which borders on being offensive?

Max Schurer [00:43:11]:

Yeah, there are always boundaries to all comedy. Certain things that we may find funny doesn’t necessarily make them acceptable in a broader world and a kind of liberal world in which we live with, issues to do with, you know, certain boundaries. There are certain boundaries that we wouldn’t cross. And in that sense, comedy has to evolve and it has to change because society’s acceptance of certain things is also changing. If you put for example, a television series on now that was similar to the Benny Hill show shown in, whatever it was, the 1970s, I guess it would be totally unacceptable. Totally and utterly unacceptable. Even though it was a big television hit in that period. Curiously, some people might still find it funny, but that doesn’t make it acceptable within societal norms. Another example, again, we’re old enough to remember Alf Garnet in I Can’t even remember what it’s called now. Do you remember the show?

David Jones [00:44:46]:

Till Death to Us Part?

Max Schurer [00:44:48]:

Yeah, yeah. That again, at the time it had top people writing on the script, had top actors within it. You could not show that program today, not because it’s not funny, but it’s not actually politically acceptable. It’s actually quite insulting to certain members of our society and community. So things are clearly going to evolve. You have to always realise that the boundaries are shifting and they might go out, but they might go back in again as well. So in that sense, I mentioned before about comedy being a mirror on society. And in that sense it is a reflection not only about what society thinks about itself, but also about where the boundaries of acceptability are.

One of the things that I myself, I often joke about is that only gays can make jokes about homosexuals or lesbians. Only people of colour can make jokes about racism. You know, only old people can make jokes about aging. My point is that if you’re telling it from the inside out, it somehow is acceptable and funny. You know, there are certain comedians, whether they be gay, lesbian, whatever, doesn’t really matter, but they can tell jokes about their sexuality and get away with it in a way that somebody who is heterosexual simply can’t do because there’s a difference between making fun of yourself and making fun of others, even though the joke might be the same. Do you see what I mean? It’s the direction of travel of that joke.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:47:05]:

And I think that links back to the theme of power again, that if you’ve got a group that have more power and social currency than another group, if they’re making jokes at the expense of groups who are more marginalised, you know, powers being misused in that way, isn’t it? It also brings me really to the next point of, you know, whether comedy sometimes creates societal division, but also, whether it can also be used to contribute to societal healing.

Max Schurer [00:47:35]:

Well, I think both realistically and this is where, you know, the same joke can be received by different people in different ways. So again, going back to this imagery about comedy being a reflection of the society in which we live, you can use comedy to try and build bridges within those within that society. So that would be your point about societal healing and also pointing to division and making those divisions look stupid. You know, like what? Why do we think that, you know, X and Y, in reality, we can bring those together. So comedy can be used to point to the absurdity of certain divisions within society. But the other flip side of that, comedy is by definition cultural, and there are cultural norms. One of the things that I am struck by is I talked. Well, you talked right at the beginning about the Big Difference Company who organised Leicester Comedy Festival. Leicester as a city, as you may well know, Naomi, is, I think, the first city in the UK which has a non white majority population, has a very large Asian, both Hindu, Sikh and Muslim population from what is now Pakistan and India in particular, but also East Africa. Very vibrant communities. One of the great things about living in Leicester, as I did some years ago, is the multicultural aspect of it. Yet we have this comedy festival.

The reality is the vast majority of people who go to that comedy festival are white, Caucasian. They’re not after this important vibrant Asian community. Yes, Lester Comedy festival puts on Asian comics. Wow. When it does, they flood it. So what I always find quite interesting is that Asian comedians in Leicester will attract an Asian audience plus some non Asian. But it’s not reversible, if you see what I mean. And I just don’t understand it because I’m sitting there thinking but this is great, you know, this is funny. I don’t have to be an Asian to understand this. I don’t have to be an Asian to find this funny. But it’s clearly an example to me that there are clearly cultural boundaries and I maybe just simply don’t understand those cultural boundaries. But you certainly see it where audiences differ according to the cultural background of the individual who is performing. Rightly or wrongly, it’s just a fact. So there are cultural boundaries. So in that sense, again I’m saying both things. Comedy can be helpful in breaking down societal barriers but at the same time sometimes works within those barriers.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:51:28]:

Thanks Max. And so just as we’re coming towards a close, I just want to give a little plug for something. The reason I ended up having a conversation with Max is because I’m organising a wellbeing festival in Oundle on Sunday 18th October and I ended up having a conversation with Max as part of that process. But I wondered, Max, just as we wrap up, whether you’d like to tell us a bit about your work to help people benefit from comedy. I mean, is there anything we’ve not asked you that you’d like to say a bit more about?

Max Schurer [00:52:07]:

Well, I guess my work goes right back to the first question about my relationship to comedy. My work is partly bringing comedy to people in an affordable way. What we can’t do in Oundle is put on big comedians because we A, don’t have a venue and B, the ticket prices would be so high, we’d probably not get an audience. You have to be realistic in trying to bring comedians who are going to fit your audience but at the same time trying to nudge that audience along a bit, if you see what I mean in terms of where those boundaries of acceptability are. So part of this is about bringing benefit through simply having live comedy shows there. What I would like to do, and again I think we talked about this one of the times we first met and it goes to this very heart of wellbeing and societal divisions, etc. And that is one of the things that concerns me about bringing comedy to Oundle and I mentioned this before is the demographic. The reality is there are very few people who are probably less than 40 that go to those shows. And generally it is the case. It’s not just here in Oundle, you look at the Leicester Comedy Festival, it’s true there. I would like to try and reach out to younger people more, A, try and find comics that will attract an audience in their 20s, but also work with children.

Let me define what I mean by that. I don’t know, somewhere between the ages of 8 and 16 maybe and try and get some aspect to them about first of all trying to teach them how to be comedic, to give them confidence, the confidence to stand up on a stage in front of their peers, in front of their friends, in front of their family. So this is partly about confidence but also understanding where some of the boundaries may lie. Why it’s actually not fun to point. Why it’s not funny to point or try and make, you know, point out someone’s disability or ethnicity or whatever it might be to actually make them understand. No, actually this isn’t funny and it’s not funny for those reasons. You may find it funny, but you’re only doing it by offending other people and that is not really that acceptable. So trying to engage with young people where you’re using comedy partly as a confidence builder, partly as an awareness around about their own culture and society in which they live and it’s about respecting others as well about comedy has to respect its audience, if you see what I mean. So I think you can use comedy as a vehicle to help others in terms of benefiting in a number of ways, not just around just simply making people laugh.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:55:45]:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for giving us your time today, Max. Been really interesting.

Max Schurer [00:55:49]:

Okay, thank you very much.

David Jones [00:55:51]:

Thanks very much indeed. Real pleasure meeting you. And I didn’t know I was going to be talking to a mayor, so there we go.

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So today’s guest is Simon Scott, who’s actually joined us once before. Simon is now Director of Development at the Koestler Arts and has worked in criminal justice for over a decade, including with Samaritans, Use A Voice, and he was a trustee of the Prisoners Education Trust. He spent 16 years in custody and is now serving the post custody element of a mandatory life sentence. Simon has submitted his PhD at Nottingham Trent University and the PhD is focused on examining life after long sentences, including for the family members of people serving mandatory life sentences. Really glad you could join us today to talk about this, Simon. Welcome.

Simon Scott (01:06)

Thanks for having me. Nice to see you.

David Jones (01:09)

Hello there, Simon. So nice to see you again. And you’ve joined us previously to talk about what it’s like to re-join society after serving a life sentence. But you’re here today to tell us about how release affects the loved ones of prisoners. Why did you choose to look at this?

Simon Scott (01:10)

I think there’s probably a few reasons and possibly the first because I think that if you look at people that are doing long periods of imprisonment and they haven’t got any contact with the outside world so no family, it’s really visible, it’s very obvious and visible that those people have a different experience to someone that gets visits at the weekend and gets private cash sent in or you know, has someone to stay in contact with. So the importance of family for people serving in prison has always struck me. But then after in the community and looking at things like people making parole board applications or risk assessments or working with probation, it seemed to me kind of obvious how important family were or people that take on the role of family to anybody kind of trying to go through those processes, but it didn’t seem to be something that I mean, certainly if you go back a few years ago, it’s six years since I started my PhD. I think even back then it wasn’t something that seemed to be acknowledged, you know, that where family were supportive then, then that was great. Where family were seen as a risk, then that was kind of dealt with. But no one ever really looked at the needs of family members, I don’t think. I guess including my own perspective, although bluntly this doesn’t really come from, you know, the experiences that I had or thinking about my own family. It comes much more from kind of looking at families of other people.

David Jones (02:52)

Thanks very much. How did you go about this research and who were your participants?

Simon Scott (03:00)

So this is part of my PhD research in NTU. So it was the second empirical study. So the first one being with people serving the sentences directly and I’d always I kind of wanted to do this other perspective to kind of look at a different perspective, not just the person serving the sentence, but to kind of widen out the question of what is the experience of a life sentence. And so I got approval to do a study with family members and then I basically did I think what is I probably call purposive snowball sampling, which basically means that I knew some people and asked them to find more people for me via them and via the contacts. And because I had a decent network of people that were kind of around people serving mandatory life sentences, I was able to reach out and ended up with it’s a very small study, but ended up with a group of all women all who are in a relationship not the same relationship but a relationship with someone serving a mandatory life sentence. So I then did a series of interviews and and then followed that up by analysis obviously and then it’s only in the last few months that I’ve actually submitted the whole of the PhD and I should have a viva coming up in in a few weeks, which I’m sure I’ll have more work to do afterwards.

Dr Naomi Murphy (04:13)

Simon, were they all in romantic relationships or did you include sisters, mothers?

Simon Scott (04:19)

I mean the first thing I would say is this is quite a difficult population to kind of get access to and to kind of try and understand the experience. So I use family in a broad sense in my PhD. So some of the participants are mothers or partners, others are people who relationships maybe don’t kind of fit into official categories, but what kind of mattered was the closeness of the relationship and if you like the kind of care they provided in the experience they had of the sentence. So there are people whose lives are sort of emotionally and practically bound up with a life sentence, even though there’s no suggestion, obviously, that they’ve committed or contributed to the offence anyway, and they haven’t been sentenced by the court. And so the key thing for me in my PhD was the closeness between the person and the person serving the sentence. Whether or not that person was serving the sentence in prison or in the community wasn’t one of the criteria. So yeah, people close. So the other thing that I’m quite aware of is to maintain the confidentiality of the participants. So yeah, some people were mothers, some people were partners, but I wouldn’t in my PhD, I try and avoid kind of giving information to sort of triangulate it. And because I see an awful lot of studies where it’s quite easy to identify people and I really want to avoid that.

David Jones (05:40)

Thank you, Simon. And from what you were saying earlier, it sounds as if your own personal and unique experience was able to facilitate and contribute to the way in which you were able to make contact with people and generally speaking undertake the research in a way that perhaps a kind of neophyte researcher may have struggled with.

Simon Scott (06:08)

So I think that I had access to a network. I think that my conviction essentially and the fact that I’d served a long time and been released from prison and had been under probation supervision for a number of years, meant that I could speak the same language as the you know as people in prison, the family members. I think that I understood to an extent, although I was kind of blown away when I actually did the interviews, because the extent of the impact of the prison sentence was a lot more than I’d imagined. So I was sort of blown away by that. But I think that I had access to a network and perhaps some form of credibility or I kind of I’m not sure if it’s credibility or trust, but I think in some ways, if you get an introduction to someone and they kind of say, yeah, no, they’re okay, they kind of understand this world, that in this kind of world that that sort of means a lot. Although, you know, it doesn’t really particularly speak to my trust and my credibility or my you know, to my research methods or effectiveness. It’s just that I could get in there where actually other people probably couldn’t. I also think that if you speak to someone who’s subject to the same sort of system that you’re subject to, then there can be a connection there. Whereas it’s an obvious thing with someone speaking to probation, there’s a huge power difference which causes the kind of problem. So I suppose the fact that I’m subject to those rules in the same way that their family member is makes a difference as well.

David Jones (07:31)

Thanks a lot. I think trust counts for a lot in many of these kinds of settings. Thinking about the research itself, you identified four themes in your interviews. The first is playing the role of emotional punch bag. What did you mean by this?

Simon Scott (07:53)

So I was a little bit nervous about choosing the words for this thing because obviously it’s kind of got violence associated with it. But it’s kind of I guess it’s deliberately trying to illustrate how family members absorb this sort of emotional, social, institutional blows from kind of multiple directions at the same time. And I guess also have to take those blows on behalf of the person convicted, right? On behalf of the person who’s serving the sentence directly. I would say that often people described finding ways to contain distress, anger, panic, shame or a mental health crisis of the man serving the life sentence. So in this case, the family members were all women. The people serving the sentence were all men. So they were kind of fielding these punches, if you like, on behalf of the man serving the sentence, or maybe sometimes coming from the man serving the sentence in their distress. But the family members were also exposed to suspicion and judgment from other people, from colleagues, from professionals, from the general public sometimes, sometimes probation.

And and so in effect they can become the place where other people’s fear and anxiety and stigma kind of lands, like it lands on the family. And the point isn’t that they they were being deliberately kind of badly used. It’s just that these relationships at times are often difficult and the sentence and people’s understanding of the sentence, wider public kind of creates a set of pressures that to me people describe it being displaced onto the family member. So they kind of become the people that are in dealing with crises, kind of becoming formal mental health workers almost, or, you know, containers of emotions, or they were the people that had to advocate on behalf of the person serving the sentence. They often felt like they had to protect them or kind of absorb the shock of the sentence. And often without training, often without any recognition and often without any support. yeah, so that’s the theme of being an emotional punch bag.

Dr Naomi Murphy (10:07)

I found that use of the phrase displacement quite interesting actually, Simon, because as you know, I worked in Whitemoor and when a prisoner was distressed, the person who was the therapist would often find themselves advocating for the prisoner, providing an alternative perspective, providing a bit more information about why the person might be vulnerable at that point in time. But it could feel sometimes in the briefings as though you were that you might be punished yourself for the fact that you had the relationship of being the therapist for that patient for that prisoner. And in the briefing, if there was a lot of anger towards the prisoner that because you were the person that acted as their therapist, that you would end up on the receiving end of some of the punitive intent towards the prisoner, so it’s quite interesting to hear you describing that also happening in the community with the loved ones of prisoners.

Simon Scott (11:05)

Yeah, and I think realistically in my PhD chapters, two chapters in my PhD that kind of relate to this and that I think I probably don’t get to the real depth of it. I think some other people’s work is done more work around specific times where people say are arrested at first and there’s a kind of really invasive, intrusion into people’s lives. And so I think some of that work is probably kind of got the more stark emphasis on at these points life is kind of broken open by this arrest or conviction. But I guess it kind of surprised me that years down the line that this still comes out is a really strong theme when speaking to family members of people convicted of these offences, that they’re still kind of containing all this heart from various ways and from various sources over the years. It’s interesting what I can imagine what you’re saying about someone in prison advocating for someone and essentially getting a pretty hard time from the other staff advocating on behalf of this person that in some senses doesn’t seem to appear to deserve it, right?

David Jones (12:08)

Thank you Simon. You use terms like Kafkaesque and liken your participants’ to something out of Alice in Wonderland. Can you tell us a bit more about some of those experiences?

Simon Scott (12:22)

Yeah so this study is a phenomenological study, so in good practice these words come from the words of the participants. So it was one of the participants that started talking about feeling like Alice in Wonderland. So I guess I could kind of give you a couple of examples. So one of the participants was told that she wasn’t allowed to be inside. So her and her partner lived separately after he was released from prison. But she was told she wasn’t allowed to be in his house after midnight because he had a condition where to kind of stay away from home he had to get permission from probation and she was then told, well you’re not allowed to stay at his house either. So she had to leave his house before midnight because of license restrictions. So one night she’d ordered a taxi and the taxi didn’t turn up. So she’s discussing with the partner what they have to do to kind of be safe in this situation. And they concluded that the biggest risk was probation finding out that she’d been there after midnight and therefore recalling him, which they threatened to do if he breached this rule.

So he then kind of shut the front door and she was left outside in the sort of, you know, fairly dark, fairly dodgy part of town, kind of standing waiting for a taxi because this is the rule that probation said would make her safe, right? So to make her safe, she’s standing on her own in the middle of a town, on a dark road, and her partner has locked the door against her effectively because they’re both terrified that even if he leaves the door open that he’ll be recalled to prison because he’s been directly told that she can’t be there after midnight. So she said that’s kind of, you know, that the rule was so powerful and it was so clear, but there was no logic behind it. Another thing that someone shared was where probation regarded her partner as a risk to her, but they kind of forced her back into a previous situation where she was going back into she was sharing a house with the ex partner at the time. And so probation kind of viewed that as a much safer place for her to be rather than the new partner only because the new partner has a conviction and they really didn’t care whether the old partner did anything to because he had no conviction they had no responsibility.

So what they really cared about, although they were kind of framing it in terms of her safety, they kind of cared about if she suffered harm, was it by someone on license or was it someone who wasn’t on license? And so I don’t think it’s too much to imagine that things like, you know, a probation officer who’s desperately trying to avoid a serious further offence review who would kind of like try and manufacture the situation so that they’re minimising what they see is at risk of harm by someone on license, but from this family member’s perspective, kind of forcing her into a position where she actually felt more uncomfortable or potentially more at harm, which again was kind of described as Kafkaesque. There are very firm rules in place which you have to follow. They’re not explained and you can’t really follow the logic of it. You can’t just apply logic and understand what to do.

David Jones (15:29)

Do you think, for example, probation officers, but not any probation officers, have a tendency to overwrite rules and conditions?

Simon Scott (15:39)

Well, I think there’s an assumption that the more conditions there are, the safer the person is to be released. And the more supervision there is, the safer the person is. It might be that someone knows some evidence to support that notion, but I certainly don’t know any evidence to support that notion. And not in my study, but I know of instances, for example, when people have been convicted of an offence, say which they committed on their own, is that what they’re then told to do is that between the hours of kind of eight PM and six AM, they have to be at home on their own. And for example, you can imagine someone convicted of an solitary internet media offence. It’s told that they have to be on their own from eight o’clock at night till six in the morning every night. I don’t see how that’s protecting against that person, you know, being in an environment where he’s actually the same environment where he committed the offence. It doesn’t make it safe.

Yeah, so I think there’s a tendency for people to think that more conditions are better. I think there’s also a tendency to oversell the notion of supervision and that when we look at some serious further refinance reviews and people, you know, the sort of expectation of what supervision provides. Whereas for most people, you know, say having a life sentence, it provides an interview of an hour, maybe once a month. And that’s about it. And that if you comply with the conditions, yes, the person will be seeking permission to stay away from home overnight. But, you know, I think probably there’s not really a mechanism to check that. Although I kind of hesitate to say that because there’s obviously mechanisms which could be put in place to check that which wouldn’t necessarily be protective either.

David Jones (17:09)

Yeah, I have a certain amount of, if not sympathy, I think perhaps understanding because I certainly remember how much earlier in my career, which was mainly in the mental health field, I did kind of think that if I wrote down the plan, which was either for me or for some client, that that was the task, that was the achievement. And of course, usually these things ended up in a draw being unused.

Simon Scott (17:36)

Yeah, exactly. And I mean I think there’s a whole kind of real world aspect of this that’s really not taken into account. So one of the other family members had told how her son had wanted to be able to see an elderly relative with dementia and so medical evidence had been kind of provided, but probation wanted to see evidence from the the GP, not from this specialist. And the kind of catch was that the only person that could request the evidence from the GP was the person with dementia who was unable to request the evidence because they didn’t understand the need to make this request to the GP to get this evidence to be able to see this person. And so they were kind of being asked to satisfy a condition that was just impossible to make true and yet, you know, in a certain sense this kind of absurdity of that is heartbreaking and it it is so difficult to deal with and so often there’s no sense in which, you know, that was going to be a a risky situation. But the absurdity of the demands of the system sometimes just increase isolation, they increase frustration and they increase harm. And they don’t I mean we know the thing that protects people the best is social connections and relationships, right? Essentially family. And we know actually a lot of harm takes place within families. But probation seem to struggle to figure out the difference between those.

Dr Naomi Murphy (19:04)

Well, I think you’re alluding really to the sort of blame culture within society. So people do somehow feel like the risk, if the risk looks managed because somebody has supervision with a really tight plan with lots of rules in it. But of course, if you’re having an hour meeting once a week or once a fortnight, you can’t possibly know what the person is doing the rest of the time. And yet it all feels a bit like a back covering exercise rather than genuinely intended to be supportive as you say but what struck me about reading your research Simon was they were really highly emotional the, you know, there’s a real sense of the emotionally evocative nature of the accounts what kind of difficult emotions were your participants dealing with?

Simon Scott (19:50)

I think in some ways people had to deal with the sort of frustration sometimes and occasionally the anger or the difficulties that the person had in the sentence including frustration at kind of the systems that they lived under. I think there was a huge amount of kind of grief and sadness and a kind of sense of bereavement with some of the family members for what had been what had been lost and maybe not just by them in the situation. I think that there is a kind of sense of isolation where people might have a desire to you know family members had a desire to have their own support networks effectively, but often they found that difficult. They could be judged by people, they could be judged by association. They may feel kind of, you know, shunned or effectively I don’t want to trivialise it, but kind of not invited to parties, not invited to social events, through their association with someone with this conviction and really in a lot of cases kind of struggle to find a place to talk about this stuff. How do these people then deal with these difficult emotions? And it was shocking to me when I realised the extent of what can be asked of family members and how supportive they can be seen.

And yet they’re still subject to the punishment of the sentence in quite a similar way to the person that’s actually serving it. Particularly when the person’s been released, right? You know if you’re the partner of someone on probation supervision on life license, your holiday choices or what you do in life or which job you have are all driven by your connection to that person. Your social life might be driven by your connection to that person. And I think it can be quite shocking, especially when people have waited so long for release, to then realise that actually, although it was really difficult when the partner wasn’t there, that actually there’s a lot of things which are difficult when the partner is there. And it did seem to catch most people who were in that situation by surprise really. And another thing that caught them by surprise was not only the kind of lack of an offer from probation, but it became quite quickly clear that probation wasn’t a place to look to for support.

Dr Naomi Murphy (22:02)

You know sounds like lot of shame and stigma and you’re naming the fact that there wasn’t really emotional support even though it would make sense to have the family supported given they’re providing support that would create better more robust risk management plans surely, but how did your participants cope with these difficult emotions?

Simon Scott (22:26)

I mean I think some of the time they cope with them on their own, they cope with them in an isolated way, they cope with them kind of in silence. I think there were a small number of people that had one or two people they could rely on, you know, and speak to. One or two of them talked about sharing it with their partner and kind of, you know feeling almost closer to the partner because they were suffering this. There were some women that got support through I guess I’d call them peer groups, you know, of finding other people, typically women, not always women, but typically women, that were supporting people in prison or serving these kind of sentences and getting support there. And then I think there’s also perhaps more widely there’s a group of women that advocate publicly on behalf of people and serving sentences, isn’t there? Not people in my study associated with this, but I think about the IPP protests outside prisons and the kind of campaigning that took place there. So I think that could be an avenue as well. Although that particular people in my set participants were also having mandatory life sentences, they weren’t serving IPP sentences.

Dr Naomi Murphy (23:35)

Thank you. You use the phrase dark sentence in your thesis. What did you mean by this?

Simon Scott (23:41)

I guess I meant a sentence that hasn’t been handed down by the court, which isn’t statutory, which isn’t visible, which that although I guess I was looking for a way to describe what is it that these people experience and more and more it seems to me that what these people experience is serving a sentence, but it’s a sentence that kind of doesn’t come with support, it doesn’t come with recognition, it does come with rules, but it doesn’t come with a kind of clear structure or clear way to navigate it. And it’s also kind of not recognised. I think I can think of a small number of women that talk about serving a sentence kind of publicly when they often, it’s mothers of people serving life sentences. And they talk openly about the impact. And I just think about starting to sort of change the language around this is quite important because to me talking about the language like stigma just doesn’t really sum up the whole experience of what people find in this situation. So then thinking about someone serving a dark sentence to me feels kind of, you know, a bit more evocative, a bit more meaningful than saying stigma. But that maybe it’s just my view of stigma always seems to me to be a thing that it’s not that far from people saying, sticks and stones can break your bones but words will never hurt you kind of thing. You know, it to me stigma kind of feels like words, it feels like something that people should often say, don’t be affected by stigma but actually what I find was people serving a real sentence that it just isn’t really documented.

Dr Naomi Murphy (25:22)

Especially when you think about the human need for cooperation and to be in a group and we know that ostracism, which is quite closely related, can be devastating for people and so if they are experiencing that level of isolation as a consequence of a friend or their partner’s actions and period in custody, that must be really, really painful to deal with.

Simon Scott (25:44)

Yeah, I mean I think the thing for me is that although the experience is different to being imprisoned, I think there’s something uniquely strange about being physically imprisoned, which you know, makes it different. But it’s a recognition that the punishment of that sentence radiates outwards. And that the sentence, although the sentence is formal and statutory for one person, the effects of that sentence are relational. And that maybe that the key thing is that it’s only I think really through recognition from peers that you can kind of bring that dark sentence into the light because the experiences of people in the situation is that if they talk to say employers or friends or you know other people in other institutions about this that actually they then suffer loss, they suffer exclusion, they suffer from people’s fears and surveillance, rather than getting support, which is only available from people that kind of understand how to do this.

Dr Naomi Murphy (26:47)

So Simon, you’ve already touched a little bit on probation, but I wondered whether you had anything more to say about the kind of relationships participants had with probation. Did they get anything useful from that?

Simon Scott (26:58)

I think there weren’t really a lot of positive stories about probation. There’s a fairly sort of absurd story where a woman was having a visit from probation prior to her partner being released and actually a couple of people reported this kind of visit where in that kind of home visit, you’d think that probation would be talking about how the family are going to be supported, the change that’s going to happen, what it’s going to be like when someone that’s been away for so long comes home again and that essentially that seemed to just be kind of summed up to you know, is there a bedroom and kind of just looking at the house and going, this is big enough or this seems quite a nice size, it must be okay here. But not offering any support at all. So not even like a leaflet going, well, if you struggle then these are the places to go. It just seemed that the experience of probation was there was no offer, right? And yet often in release plans or in parole applications, it will be strict how support of the family will be. But it doesn’t seem I don’t think probation is the place to get support, by the way, for these families.

I think the place to get support is probably the third sector or peer support networks or maybe healthcare if we kind of saw things in that way. But it just seems like the state effectively relies so much on families to provide accommodation, to provide support, to provide employment and you know, a place. If someone on a life sentence is gonna form a place in the local community and, you know, follow the sort of steps that are kind of sought by probation. The fact is most of the time they are either going to have a family or they’re going to develop a family in doing that and it’s completely essential to, you know, to that path and yet the needs of that family are never recognised. And I must say the state of fortune, right? And it just seems a bit like a missed opportunity.

David Jones (28:54)

Simon, why do you think it’s so hard, given what you’ve just been saying, why is it so hard for society to be compassionate for the relatives and loved ones of former prisoners?

Simon Scott (29:08)

This is where my well, I think Murder is a powerful moral stigma and I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t and that stigma spreads to people who are in some way associated with or remain connected to the person convicted. I mean, we know that this stigma spreads to buildings, right? You know, we know certain buildings that have been knocked down because of things that happened there and that the stigma kind of almost like seeps into the ground in these places and these places are kind of seen as evil. So I think with murder there is a particularly powerful stigma that spreads out and I think that people struggle to separate out the person convicted from someone who loves them. I think that I don’t want to make too many assumptions about this. I mean, it seems to me like there’s a kind of implied judgment there that people are making that you know, what kind of person stays with someone like that, they kind of think of partners or I think there’s a sense in which if you are the mother of someone with a conviction like that, that there’s a part of society that blames a mother for the actions of the child. I think that partners can be seen as kind of naïve, as deviant, as being manipulated, as being kind of morally compromised, you know and so I think that there’s a lot of how society feels about murder that’s again kind of projected onto onto the family member. Yeah. I mean people are not compassionate about people who’ve been convicted of this. And that lack of compassion is transferred onto the family, I would say. And there’s a sort of moral contamination by association perhaps.

David Jones (30:51)

Yes, but I mean in some respects it’s a kind of prejudice and hopefully the way that we cope or deal with prejudice is to learn and understand more about the subject and to provide knowledge and education for people but it’s always a struggle, isn’t it?

Simon Scott (31:18)

Yeah, but I mean especially if it’s an irrational fear, right? You can’t tell someone not to have an irrational fear and they’re being silly and look, here’s the evidence that you shouldn’t have this irrational fear and that you should actually have compassion. Yeah, we don’t work like that. So I think it’s quite a difficult one. I mean how many people convicted of murder are convicted of causing further harm? It’s a really horrendously small number. But there’s, to me, I guess and I haven’t written much about this but I’ve done a lot of thinking and wondering about it. I wonder to what extent the way that the government and the media coverage of the criminal justice system is kind of driven by high profile offences. So a lot of space will be taken up with high profile offences over long periods and then policy changes will be made and road changes will be made. I wonder somehow well, I think the problem with that is that that’s kind of failing the reality of the system, isn’t it? That’s not showing the reality of the system, which is the system doesn’t work very well for most people, and it’s a big sink of a lot of money that doesn’t do very much good and there are still just you know, there are eighty five thousand people or so in prison and you know, responding to single cases worth months of legislation doesn’t tend to do much very good. But it does distract from the fact that the system’s failing. And I think maybe a result of kind of creating these necessary cases that can kind of divert attention might be that the public then have attitudes which are lacking compassion to people associated with people with convictions, but maybe that’s a bit nuts.

David Jones (32:55)

Well you’ve highlighted that change in this area is always going to be difficult. Nevertheless, what changes would you like to see?

Simon Scott (33:06)

Wouldn’t it be good if families were recognised as the amazing resource that they are for the criminal justice system and often is an amazing sort of source of good, a source of support, as kind of legitimate participants in the process of release from prison, and not booted on afterwards and not assumed to be or relied on, assumed to be either supportive or risky. I mean the fact is I suppose a lot of the time family members are both, right? That they can be associated with a risk of harm and they can be associated with support. So I think the role families play should be recognised. I went back and looked at the sort of farmer report and you kind of read about the golden thread and then you go back to how old that report is and what’s been done since. And you know, it’s kind of shocking in a way that there is so little support for families given. And so I’m not just talking about support for families. I’m not just talking about story about dads or support for families in prison. I’m talking about the criminal justice system as a whole and after prison recognising families as the resource they are. And I don’t think the phrase the golden thread in that report is worth anything because I think overall that families are not recognised.

I think there should be much more kind of clear, compassionate information for families around prison. There should be independent support for families of people who’s having life sentences, especially around I don’t know, finding ways to deal with anxieties about release and recall. This is something that came up a lot that if you’re a family member and you’re worried about recall, what do you do? Because you know, family support, given the Kafkaesque nature of how they see the system, the last thing you’re gonna do is reach out to that system and say, I’m a bit worried about so and so’s mental health because you’re gonna fear recall more than anything and you’re not gonna view the system as a place of support. So pragmatic and realistic, you know, support for maybe peer support spaces where the family can speak without fear of judgment and also a kind of clear route into families been able to raise concerns or to be able to input into finding ways for help that don’t automatically trigger a PNF response I think.

Dr Naomi Murphy (35:25)

That was one of the things that really stood out in your research actually was people being caught between a rock and a hard place. If there were difficulties that reaching out came at the risk of a recall rather than recognising it’s naturally going to be quite hard to readjust to reintegration and so actually is there a more commensurate response to difficulty rather than just something tripping a recall back to the prison.

Simon Scott (36:01)

Yeah. I mean the organisation that I guess I know a little bit would be POPs, Partners of Prisoners, based in Manchester and you know, one thing is they were built by women who have this experience personally. So I think that those kind of peer led networks feel like the place that people can go much more easily and sort of community based support. But it’d also be nice if community based organisations maybe had a look around and thought, who don’t we get through the door, you know? And thought about different I mean, this is only one group of people that’s isolated in communities, right? And they can’t access support because of a lack of compassion, say. And we can think very easily of lots of others. But yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy (36:50)

Yeah. Simon, how did conducting this research affect you?

Simon Scott (36:57)

So there’s two bits to it. This was the hardest bit of the whole thing, really. So the interviews are really emotionally difficult and I felt like I always been trusted with painful but often hidden experiences and more than one of the participants said thank you for listening and sadly hadn’t said whatever it was they just said to anybody else, which is a bit shocking, right? That’s pretty difficult. And so I didn’t claim it, all the participants knew that I had had a conviction. They didn’t really know very much about me, but I disclosed that I had this conviction. And so they knew I wasn’t a detached researcher and that I would have experience of some of the things that they were talking about so it was really important to create a space to kind of allow people to talk. But then it was very difficult to think about how I could then accurately and respectfully put that together and represent it. And even coming on today, I was really kind of worrying about effectively talking about experiences of other people in a very different situation to me and it feels like a huge sense of responsibility.

And I think trying to do this was the thing that ended up turning my PhD from a three year project to a six year project. But also it was one of the things that meant I didn’t give up really. I did towards the end of it, on one of the chapters, I shared it with two participants. and the feedback I got was that what I was talking about, the themes that I’d identified were things which they recognised. And so it kind of felt pretty satisfying that after quite a long time that I’d got something that at least in essence had something that related to what they understood. But also they said that they didn’t see a lot of people writing or talking about their stuff. So yeah, it was the toughest but I mean the other aspect to it as well is that I’ve had lots of support from, you know, my family but also people that became my family and people that you know, I had a lot of support in the community. And so then to kind of think about their experiences was pretty difficult as well and yeah, so not detached basically. So pretty tough.

Dr Naomi Murphy (39:11)

And how did you cope with that? What did you do to cope with that?

Simon Scott (39:17)

I guess I went through kind of phases. I stuck my head under a pillow for a bit and kind of like, you know, at the point where I’d got the data, it took me a long time to then transcribe it and do the analysis and there was part of that where I just couldn’t kind of really face up to it. So then I was learning how to bake bread or do gardening or anything else because this data was just too difficult to face up to. But in the end, my supervision team really encouraged me and helped me reflecting on it, writing some of the stuff down, support from people close to me and kind of like coming back to what it was I was trying to do. I have to say, I mean, I know this isn’t particularly honourable, but I think unless there’d been like a hard deadline that this might you know, if I’d had forever to do this, I might never have been able to do it. And the fact that there was a kind of hard deadline, there was an expectation if I didn’t do it by this point, then, you know, it probably wasn’t gonna go forward. So yeah, it was I eventually got wrangled into doing it and organising it and containing the material. And actually it’s my favourite part, not favourite part, I think it’s the better part of my PhD. Although it could probably do with some work. But I did ultimately try and take it on and try and say what I could in a way that I thought made sense and treat the participants and the material with respect.

Dr Naomi Murphy (40:40)

Thank you. I think we’re really glad that you shared it with us and have come on today to talk about it. I think it is really important. And I think you’re right. The fact that you have lived experience of that world probably made it easier for people to trust you, to open up and share their accounts with you in a way that would have been quite difficult from somebody who’s coming at it purely from an academic position. So thanks very much for coming on and talking about something that’s really quite difficult.

Simon Scott (41:08)

Yeah, no, I just think that you know, families do so much in life for people, but particularly in this scenario, families do so much and that they shouldn’t have to stumble along trying to find help or finding a peer support network by accident. They should be recognised and their needs should be considered as part of all of this.

Dr Naomi Murphy (41:28)

Thank you.

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Today we’re joined by Dr. Coral Westaway. Coral is a clinical psychologist and energy psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience bridging the worlds of clinical psychology, spirituality and holistic health. Known as the Energy Psychologist on social media platforms, she integrates doctoral level psychological training with energy work, conscious connected breath work and body practice to support people in moving beyond intellectual understanding into change that is felt, lived and lasting. Really nice to have you join us today, Coral. Welcome.

Coral Westaway [00:01:00]:

Thank you. Thank you, Naomi. Thank you, David.

David Jones [00:01:02]:

Hello there, Coral. So nice to meet you. Thanks a lot for coming along. Can you begin by telling us what is energy psychology?

Coral Westaway [00:01:13]:

Yeah, absolutely. So energy psychology is an umbrella term that incorporates lots of different techniques, working with the subtle energy and bringing the energy work in with psychology or psychotherapy. So there’s a number of different ways of doing it, but it is moving from the more traditional kind of talking therapies, maybe more cognitive based therapies, to include the whole body and the energy system. And so some of the techniques might work on the meridian channels, for example, or the chakra centres. So the most well known energy psychology technique is EFT, or emotional freedom technique, which is also known as tapping. And EFT is a standardised version of an energy psychology practice that taps at the end points of meridians, names an issue and offers a kind of a counter statement, and then taps on meridians to reduce the charge, the emotional or physical charge in the body.

David Jones [00:02:22]:

So for something of an ignoramus like me, can you say a bit more specifically what you mean by energy in this context?

Coral Westaway [00:02:34]:

Yeah. So in lots of spheres in physics and different science realms, we recognise everything is energy, everything is in motion and is energy in motion. And so when we think of the human system, we might think of different aspects of that. So the physical body, the emotional body, the mental or cognitive body, and incorporating it all, we might think of an energetic body. And the energy system incorporates lots of different aspects. The most well known are the meridian channels, which go back to ancient Chinese thinking, and the chakra centres that go back to ancient Indian thinking. And so in lots of cultures across the world, we think of energy or qi, as life force. So there’s often, but not necessarily a spiritual component. We might think about connection to something that is bigger than us.

But at a basic level we’re thinking that we are electrical or energetic beings and we are in flow when we’re working optimally. But when things happen to us that get in the way of that, that block or limit us, we might think that there are blocks or limits to our energy flow. So energy psychology is working at that level to clear out any blocks to flow, much like acupuncture and acupressure works with the flow of the energy through the meridian systems and targeting blocks to return to balance. Energy psychology is working at that level, incorporating physical body, emotional body, mental body, but recognising that moving beyond those to think of more the holistic system and working at that level is deeper and quicker, whilst also, I would say being much gentler as well.

Naomi Murphy [00:04:36]:

I wonder whether I was just thinking about, you know, for people who are not used to thinking about the energy of the body, I wonder whether an example of how it actually comes into all practice really is the idea that, sometimes when, David, when you walk into a forensic unit, you can feel the atmosphere within there. You know, you can pick up on tensions that are there even before perhaps anyone’s even had a conversation with you. Or when we sit in a room alongside somebody, we have a sense of their energetic presence. We can feel that they’re really, really anxious. Sometimes we might be picking up those cues from the visible things that we see. But quite often you’d be able to detect something even if you had your eyes shut. There’s a sense that there’s something going on within the individual that’s almost, it’s hard to put your finger on, and yet somehow it is quite discernible, I think.

David Jones [00:05:31]:

Yeah, absolutely. I used to get that impression every day when I walked in and out of Grendon Prison.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:38]:

Yeah. I think perhaps the most well known in terms of psychology, energy psychology, I think maybe, I don’t know, you’ll agree, Coral, but I think Phil Mullen is probably the individual who’s probably most, his name is probably most widely known in terms of thinking about energy psychology in the UK.

Coral Westaway [00:05:58]:

Yeah, in the UK and people like Donna Eden and David Feinstein are the most kind of well known American ones. And then, yeah, some people have brought tapping more to the mainstream and done research and clinical trials around EFT tends to lead the way in that.

David Jones [00:06:18]:

Thank you. So how did you come to be interested in energy medicine?

Coral Westaway [00:06:23]:

I grew up with my dad getting ill fairly early on in my life. And so he had ME or chronic fatigue and he developed that very severely from when I was quite young. And they accessed, they being my parents, accessed mainstream Western medicine and had a lot of good support from our family GP, but the support available did not bring about change. And so they embarked on a quest to find something that would work and explored through all different modalities and different ways of thinking, from more traditional to a more unusual or spiritual or esoteric. And so I grew up in that environment of different ways of making sense of things and the bridging of kind of more Eastern wisdom with more Western traditional or medical science. And so it’s always been kind of part of my world view and a dear friend of mine has always been on the other side and kind of receiving psychological and therapeutic help. And as she’s one of the reasons I pursued certain aspects of my career. And she introduced me to energy psychology and thought I would really get a lot from it and value it. And she had herself. So she was my introduction and weigh in. And then Phil Mullen actually taught not energy psychology, but some psychodynamic stuff on my doctoral training. Spoke to him afterwards and said, I think you’re in this world. And he offered me a free session to experience it personally. And I found it very profound and knew it was something I wanted to pursue.

David Jones [00:08:09]:

Well, that’s a very interesting pathway you’re describing there, Coral. And so thinking about your background and training, did the scientist practitioner focus of clinical psychology training conflict then with your understanding of mental health?

Coral Westaway [00:08:29]:

I’ve never found it conflicting and I know I’ve spoken to some people and some practitioners who, they haven’t found a place for their spiritual beliefs within the world of psychology, which I think is really sad because what psychology and the scientist practitioner taught me was to question everything, to look at the biases inherent in most of the dominant narratives and the research to see who’s invested in what, and also to explore myself and ask other people about their experience and the value of lived experience. And I think it also really invited me to broaden my worldview from mainstream psychology and science to different areas. So, you know, physics kind of really leads on thinking about energy and the interplay of energy in our wider world and universe. And there can be lots of really valuable aspects from that. We can draw from different modalities. So I personally have found the invitation to question everything and to not be convinced by the loudest voices, to really kind of explore and look at alternative narratives, that’s all part of what I do.

Naomi Murphy [00:09:54]:

I found it really interesting to hear your answer, Coral, because I think my experience of clinical psychology was really, it felt very A spiritual with spirituality feeling like a bit of a token nod and a real emphasis, I suppose, on atheism. And yeah, I think what I found quite interesting in recent years has been watching all the physicists on YouTube, as you mentioned, talking about quantum mechanics and consciousness. And for me, that piqued my interest and made me much more interested in this kind of thing, hence, you know, inviting you on the podcast in the first place. So I think there is a real interesting thing around science and energy and consciousness.

Coral Westaway [00:10:40]:

And on my doctoral training we had modules on epistemology which at the time blew all of our minds, but exploring science of knowledge and how do we know what we know and why do we believe what we believe. And I think, you know, loosening some of that rigid thinking around truth and whose truth. And also on my course, diversity was really valued and looking at and being with the whole person and no aspect of self being unwelcome in the room, so that includes our faith, our spirituality and different aspects of belief and in many different cultures faces such a more prevalent and important part of identity. And you know, we’re looking quite narrowly in a Western focused psychological mindset if we ignore the aspect of spirituality and faith. And I recognise speaking a bit like the energy work and spirituality is interchangeable and yet I work with lots of people with energy work where faith or spirituality is not a part of their belief system or their identity, but they recognise our bodies as energetic beings and that they find value in the work we do and that things move through. So whilst for me the two are strongly connected, I need to make it clear that they don’t have to be. And that’s kind of my personal leaning with this.

David Jones [00:12:18]:

Thank you. And has spirituality always been important to you? You described, I think very well, how your parents had this capacity to be exploratory. Was that something that influenced you greatly?

Coral Westaway [00:12:35]:

Yes, and I’ve realised how much at different times. I went to a Church of England school and did grow up with some exposure to Christian and Church of England beliefs and values. And I identify with some of that. And also there have been times where I’ve fallen out of love with that and have moved away from religious institutions and frameworks into a more, well, these are laden, judgment laden terms, but a more loose or expansive relationship with spirituality and I think that’s why I speak about the energy and the spirituality so kind of interwoven, because they are for me and it’s such a strong part of my belief system that it’s hard to kind of disentangle. You know, it runs very deeply. But my relationship with it, of course, has evolved and changed over time. And of course I can hold space for people. I shouldn’t say of course, but I strongly believe I can hold space for people whose views of all aspects of life differ from mine and be alongside them in their beliefs and draw on whatever resources them in the work.

David Jones [00:13:54]:

Thank you. I mean, it’s lovely talking to you and talking with somebody who’s monitoring so closely what they’re saying and what they’re thinking and correcting themselves as they go along. As you do.

Naomi Murphy [00:14:05]:

Yeah.

Coral Westaway [00:14:06]:

Language has power, doesn’t it, David? We know the power of language. So, yeah. Thank you. I was introduced to narrative therapy many years ago and found it so powerful. So I try and be, you know, I get it wrong, but I try and be considered in my choice of language.

David Jones [00:14:22]:

Good. So you offer a program called Receiving Revolution. What is this?

Coral Westaway [00:14:31]:

So, yeah, I don’t know where you want to begin with it. So I am running a course for therapists, psychologists and other helping professionals. I self identify as someone who has got a lot of my value through helping other people. And I recognise that that is located in my early life growing up with an ill father and a maxed out system and wanting to be helpful and useful and those things being rewarded. And I found that that has been dominant through my life. I have not gone into this career for no reason and I care deeply. I got to a point where out of the blue, I had colon cancer suddenly, out of the blue, and I was very, very ill and things were very serious. You know, there’s a whole story there. But once I was happily on the other side of that, reflecting on the lessons in this and the invitations of what this was inviting me to do more or less of, I drilled down into this chronic pattern of over giving, of prioritising the other to my detriment. Now, I am always a big advocate for care and for generosity, but I think so many of us even very unconsciously give from a place of depletion or obligation or habit even, you know, and actually through the next years after the cancer, I drill deeper and deeper into my patterns around this. And I am still on a process with this, but I’ve learned to come back to nourishing myself. First resourcing myself first and giving more from a place of fullness and conscious mindful choice rather than from those old patterns from an unhealthy place.

The Receiving Revolution has come out of my deep work and learning around this. It incorporates lots of the aspects of psychology and psychological practice that I find powerful and valuable, such as the energy work, such as conscious connected breath work, such as movement based practice. As someone who’s trained to doctoral level, I’ve been very comfortable being in my head and I’ve not always been so comfortable in my body. And I think for many of us that those early experiences of prioritising others moves us out of our body into our head, but also into the space with the other and disconnects us from our body. So a lot of the work is about coming back in and our body as our source of wisdom and that being a place at which we feel into something and feel into the choices that we’re making. So it’s bringing in a lot of what I’ve learned and what I continue to do that I find resources me, working also with ancestral patterns and the conditioning from all the different angles to be in a group, a small group with lovely therapists and helping professionals to really start breaking through some of this old conditioning, bring it into our conscious awareness, use some of these techniques to move this old stuff through and make different choices and show up in the world differently, be with our body differently, so that life can be more joyful, easeful, resourced, and so that our practice can be more sustainable.

David Jones [00:18:13]:

Thank you.

Naomi Murphy [00:18:14]:

Thank you, Coral. I mean, you alluded to some of the factors that might have contributed to you developing that pattern of over giving. What are some of the other kind of contributory causes do you see in the kinds of people who attend your course?

Coral Westaway [00:18:30]:

So I think it all, well, nothing starts with us. I will really kind of labour the point of the intergenerational nature of this didn’t start with our parents either. There’s a lot of conditioning that there’s value placed on caregiving. There’s not much money placed on caregiving, but there’s value placed on caregiving, particularly for women and also a lot of our early life experiences. There has been a need in the system that has invited us as children to step into roles that utilised our caregiving challenges in early family life, whether that’s physical health, mental health challenges, or, you know, all the different early life challenges that have invited us to step into those roles and then have kind of rewarded and supported that. And as I say, within that, that real moving out of denying of and disconnection of our wants and needs and this whole thing around being selfish. I think we’re, yeah, I’m really working to rebrand this and yeah, to build a new relationship with how we tend to ourselves.

Naomi Murphy [00:19:54]:

It does often seem, doesn’t it, that when people are, I suppose, compulsively caring, taking a step towards prioritising themselves often feels, brings up fear of being narcissistic, selfish, they’re right at the opposite end of the spectrum probably in a way that would be very hard to actually make, you know, create circumstances in which the person became selfish or narcissistic because so often they’re right at the other end of the spectrum.

Coral Westaway [00:20:25]:

Yeah any shuffling would take them heading towards some healthy relationship rather than into, and I’m sure that, you know, this dominance of very self important and narcissistic and presentations, has made many of us retreat into ourself and feel reluctant in that. But yeah, I agree. I think anyone who’s considering that is so far away from being that. Yeah.

Naomi Murphy [00:20:51]:

Do we talk enough about energy in psychology?

Coral Westaway [00:20:54]:

Well, I talk about it a lot, and I am finding more and more people, more and more psychologists coming to me and wanting to think about how they can bring energy and, or spirituality into their work, how they feel. And as we kind of spoke about earlier, that psychology training has not always made space for all of us, you know, and that there are acceptable parts of what a psychologist is and unacceptable parts. And so I’m sure there are many spheres in which it’s not considered at all, and even some people are just still working with thoughts, and that amazes me because, you know, we’re one whole system and that’s so basic, isn’t it, that we work with the body as well as the thoughts and yet thinking and cognitive based psychology approaches still dominate. So yeah, of course I think we have a long way to go with this and yet there’s a lot of interest. People often ask me, how do you bring it in and is it okay? Is it okay? As if there’s a way to be a psychologist and someone will catch us out. Now of course there are ethical guidelines and there are things that we can’t do ethically, but bringing different aspects of self generally does not pose a risk to any kind of ethical framework. And so this question of is it okay to bring these parts of myself suggests that we have a limited perception of who we can be as a psychologist.

Naomi Murphy [00:22:37]:

Thank you. Why is it so important that we attend to our physical body when we’re thinking about our mental health. You know, people might wonder why we’re talking so much about the body when we’re thinking about how people are doing emotionally.

Coral Westaway [00:22:52]:

Because we are our body, you know, and this sense of splitting off and only being with certain aspects of self, like how can we be with our emotions if we’re not feeling them in our body? For me, our body has been underutilised in all of mental health historically and has been fragmented and separated out in physical health. And so I look to more kind of Eastern or yeah, Eastern ways of thinking around kind of holistic health and everything joining up. I believe that our body is incredibly wise and knowledgeable and that we’ve been disconnected from a lot of that inner wisdom. I believe that our body is designed to work towards returning to flow and that it’s only that things get in the way of that and once we remove them, it will return as much to flow as possible. For me, it’s imperative that we notice and tend to and start to listen more and more. And I guess, my own personal experience, I was relatively mindful of my body and still, I woke up one day and had a major blockage and had colon cancer. And so the listening. And as I say that, I realise everyone gets fearful about being disconnected from their body and illness coming. And of course there is a lot of kind of fear mongering about illness, but it’s about bringing harmony to our whole system. And how on earth can we bring harmony to our whole system when we’re only working with parts of our system?

Naomi Murphy [00:24:52]:

Yeah, I’m reminded of doing sensory motor psychotherapy training and where there was a huge emphasis on interoception. And I thought I was quite good at noticing what was going on in my body and then realised I missed so much information and using that modality in therapy, notice how very difficult it is for most people to connect and describe what’s going in their body in any kind of visceral sense of the word. But actually the more that people develop those skills, how much more rich the information is that comes up and how people can start to use their bodies as a guide to recognising when a decision’s good for them, when it’s not, when there’s anxiety about something that they were oblivious to because they weren’t actually listening to what’s going on. And as you were talking it just really reminded me of that experience. But I also was drawn to, we had a conversation about a year ago, didn’t we, David, with Mitch Abrams, who’s I think he was a cardiologist or anaesthetist who had a heart attack. And that made him then start thinking about his heart and heart energy. And I think it seems like it’s quite impossible to talk about energy psychology without talking about heart energy and love. And there’s been a big, I think, a lot of attention given to things like the concept of heart coherence and how engaging with the expansiveness that comes from our hearts and some of the study around the heart can bring something more powerful and that’s more nourishing for people. Why do you think we’re so resistant to talking about things like love in psychology?

Coral Westaway [00:26:33]:

I think one aspect is the distorted use of love and sexuality and power relationships. And so we’ve moved away from that. And there’s this whole identity bit about professional and scientist. And so I think that has also moved us away from our heart. But, of course, so many of us, if not all of us, I’m sure, have got into this because we deeply care. And so, yeah, I think it’s a really missed opportunity. And I’m sure that so many more of us bring deep warmth and care and love to our clinical work than we generally speak about because of these fears of being seen to be abusing power or stretching boundaries or these things.

David Jones [00:27:20]:

So I’m just thinking about what you’re describing now because as I remember from when I used to do lots of clinical work, it was fairly difficult to raise the issue of love in the clinical setting, in the clinical room. And that was, I’m sure, because of the conflating of love and sexuality and the anxiety that that provokes. Of course, it was even more alarming to think about it or raise it or talk about it in the prison setting where everyone became very alarmed. So do you think that’s beginning to change now, Coral?

Coral Westaway [00:28:06]:

Yes. And as you were speaking, David, I think we also, all of us, have a lot of pain around love and a lot of hurt around when love has not been provided or unconditional or communicated or felt. And so, you know, we lock down where my mind goes. This is a slightly divergent, but, you know, all the young boys in particular that were sent off to boarding school and the protection of self in those environments and with that abandonment and loss and having to kind of shut down and present a front or a false self. And so it’s risky because if we can’t and haven’t been with our own hurt around love and parental love and intimate love, then it’s not safe to then be with another professionally as well. So, yes, I think we are. Our language is changing and our capacity to be with and share and communicate love in a clean and clear way and disentangle it from, you know, toxic abuse. We’re getting there. And yet we still see all the scandals and the gurus who are still showing up in the Epstein files and all the conflation of intimacy with power distortion. And so I understand why it’s a risky place to be, and I believe we have to do a certain amount of our own work and look at our own, particularly early life pains to really be cleanly with another and do our shadow work, because attraction and intimacy shows up in all areas. And so being braver in the conversations we have and in supervision and in our own therapy to really kind of unpack some of this. We’re at a time when a light is being shone in these murky corners, and we all need to take responsibility for looking in our own murky corners, to be able to know what we’re bringing with the other.

David Jones [00:30:23]:

Thank you. What do you think about AI therapy, which seems to be a bit of a growth area? Do you think that feels safer to people?

Coral Westaway [00:30:32]:

Safer and cheaper and yeah, and lots of things very available. Yeah. I know a lot of people are worried, and with everything, there are benefits and there are struggles, you know, and there are useful bits and shadow bits. I think we don’t know where it’s going to go. And a lot of good things is coming from the rapid development of technology. And also there’s a lot of worrying things. But when we project into the future and into worry, I believe it lowers our frequency, makes us feel awful, and it also takes us out of any kind of active or proactive state. We feel hopeless and helpless and worried and we go to tricky places. And so I try and bring myself back to this moment and holding that everything has its gifts and its shadows and that we will continue to work with both of them. And I think for a lot of people, accessing something that can respond to them. I know lots of people I work with also ask AI things and find it supportive and reassuring, and yet they still find our work supportive and deeply and profoundly powerful. And these are the bits that are doing the shift. So I don’t see that there’s not a role for all of us moving forward.

David Jones [00:32:07]:

Thank you. And how does talking about energy go down with your clients? Do you get a variety of responses?

Coral Westaway [00:32:15]:

Kind of yes. But mostly I really believe that the mainstream perception of energy has come so far in the last 10 years and most people don’t bat an eyelid. I more and more and more attract people who want to work in this way and kind of pitch myself like that. But I do have some clients who, it just doesn’t resonate for them. It’s not their worldview and we find different ways of working and that’s fine. They don’t say it’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. Maybe they think that, but they more say it just doesn’t feel right for me, wonderful that you can not struggle through something that doesn’t feel right for you and you can communicate your needs. I am an integrative practitioner. I trained as a person centred counsellor 20 years ago. And so there are so many ways of working with people, and we’re all trying to bring this good stuff and support people to move through some of their hard stuff. Whilst I more and more only work in this way because I think for me it’s me at my best self and it’s the most powerful work I can do. If I’m working with someone and it doesn’t work for them, I’m not pushing it, but I would say it’s pretty normal. I don’t think I’m normal for most people but the concept of energy and bringing energy into this work is pretty normal. Lots of people have heard of tapping now and yeah, things are really shifting I think.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:54]:

In many ways, sort of energy psychology is ahead of the zeitgeist, isn’t it? In terms of, we see increasingly conversations about this on social media. For instance, what do you think’s next for this field?

Coral Westaway [00:34:06]:

Yeah, I agree. I think it’s out there in all different ways. And what I have seen is, and I’ll own it. You know, where I was kind of pre cancer was a more polarised view of Eastern and holistic and of more traditional or mainstream Western. And the cancer, one of the many things it invited me into was to embrace both. Western medicine saved my life and that was very much supported by all the other practices I believe. And so my strong belief and hope is that we will converge and we will unite, you know, mind and body and energy and across mental and physical health. These things are not separate. Holistic well being is what we’re all working towards and trying to facilitate in all the different settings. So it’s my belief that working at an energetic level will really facilitate that and bringing more of that holistic thinking, because the energy work really supports that if there’s something out here could be connected to something over here, you know. And so, yeah, I believe that’s where we’re heading, and I strongly hope that’s where we’re headed.

Naomi Murphy [00:35:24]:

Thanks very much, Coral. Been really lovely to talk to you this afternoon. Very thought provoking.

Coral Westaway [00:35:29]:

Thank you both. Thank you for having me.

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Access the action page for Mr. Lee here.

So today we’re meeting with Laurel Haddix, who’s assistant Federal Defender of the Capital Habeas Unit in the District of Alabama. And we’re talking about the situation of Jeffrey Lee. So Jeffrey is a 50 year old Alabama man who was found guilty of the murder of two shop assistants in December 1998. The jury recommended that he serve life without the possibility of release, but the trial judge overruled the jury and imposed the death sentence. Jeffrey Lee has thus spent half his life in prison on death row. But the execution date has now been set for 11 June, and through the unusual method of nitrogen hypoxia. So today we’re meeting with a representative of Jeffrey to talk about his urgent situation and the circumstances surrounding it. Hello.

Laurel Hattix [00:01:35]:

Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Naomi Murphy [00:01:38]:

Hi Laurel, really nice to meet you. Could we start with you telling us briefly about the offences and what happened in the initial trial?

Laurel Hattix [00:01:47]:

Absolutely. So In December of 1998, Mr. Lee made a tragic and terribly uncharacteristic mistake in which during a pawn shop robbery, his gun accidentally discharged shooting someone, and then he proceeded to discharge the gun multiple times, leading to the death of two individuals in the serious injury of his third. Mr. Lee has taken full responsibility from the beginning for this horrific tragedy. There’s never been a moment where he has denied responsibility or wrongdoing and he’s lived with the grief of his actions for over 26 years. When Mr. Lee went to trial, he could not afford an attorney and so an attorney was appointed to him. And in Alabama, we have a system where we do not have a state-wide state funded public defence system. And so attorneys of all backgrounds with different levels of training may be appointed to represent someone, even if they’re facing the harshest criminal penalty of death. In this case, Mr. Lee was appointed an attorney who had never tried a capital murder case before. It was his first time. Leading up to the trial, he only spoke to Mr. Lee two or three times. And up until 1999 in Alabama, an attorney that was appointed by the court was only paid $40 an hour for in court work and $20 an hour for out of court work.

And that compensation was capped for out of court work at $1,000. And in a capital case where you have so much investigation, so many witnesses, where the stakes are so high, that’s just woefully inadequate to ensure that some has their constitutional rights protected. In fact, today, nearly half of the people on death row in Alabama were convicted under this compensation cap. And so, without the resources, without the training, without the experience, Mr. Lee’s attorney relied on one single piece of evidence to defend him, and that was his IQ score. He didn’t call witnesses, he didn’t bring in records. He talked nothing about Mr. Lee’s childhood mental illness, head trauma, medical history just gave no background and no context to the court or to the jurors. But even without the full story, this jury that came from Mr. Lee’s own community in Dallas county decided that the appropriate sentence in this case was life without the possibility of parole.

Naomi Murphy [00:04:28]:

It’s quite shocking to a British person to hear that big, long catalogue of, you know, somebody’s life’s in balance and the fact that so little thought and resources is given to enabling somebody to defend themselves with that kind of complexity of picture. So, yeah, it’s really quite shocking to hear that. And I heard you say that the jury recommended life without parole, but why is he now facing the death penalty?

Laurel Hattix [00:05:00]:

So, an excellent question. So prior to 2017, in Alabama, there was a system called judicial override. And what judicial override meant was even though a jury was tasked with finding guilt and innocence and then determining the appropriate punishment, a judge could unilaterally overrule that jury’s decision and impose a different sentence. And so, six months after the jury recommended a life without parole sentence, a single judge overruled that and sentenced Mr. Lee to death. And what’s really shocking about this practice is there’s only two other states in the United States who ever use this practice besides Alabama. That would be Delaware and Florida. But even in those other states that use this practice, they were distinct from Alabama in a couple of important ways. First of all, Alabama elects its judges in partisan elections. And so you have judges who have this power to impose these harsh sentences, who are possibly running for re-election based on these ideas of being tough on crime. And so the jury’s sentence, and ultimately the judge’s sentence, are then vulnerable to political factors that have nothing to do with the facts of the case, have nothing to do with the appropriate punishment.

In fact, there was some studies done several years ago that showed that during judicial election years, judicial override was used four times as much as it was used during non election years. And it just shows the sort of vulnerability that these decisions had to partisan interest. And so that is exactly what happened. In Mr. Lee’s case, a single judge was able to override the jury’s verdict. But what’s so interesting is Alabama recognised in 2017 the problem with the system of judicial override. They recognised that it was an undemocratic way of operating our capital punishment system, that it was, as I said earlier, vulnerable to political pressures, and that in the United States, our system of criminal justice has said the 12 minds of a jury is better than the single mind of a judge to decide what the appropriate sentence is. And judicial override really undermined that pinnacle of the American legal system. And so a bipartisan group of legislators, they passed a bill that abolished judicial override. And actually, our current governor in Alabama, she signed that bill on her very first day in office. So there was this sort of universal recognition, even among those who support the death penalty, that the system of judicial override was an unjust system. Unfortunately, that bill did not make judicial override retroactive, meaning that anybody who had their sentence overturned by a judge prior to 2017 remained on death row. And that includes Mr. Lee and 25 other individuals who are still waiting execution today, despite the fact that their jury thought the appropriate sentence was life in prison.

Naomi Murphy [00:08:22]:

Do you know why it wasn’t passed in a way that would be applicable to retrospective cases?

Laurel Hattix [00:08:31]:

It was a decision made by the legislator, but it’s one that we don’t understand because it’s not consistent with their own guidance. A state that has decided that a procedure that was unjust should no longer be used. It follows logically, again, for even those who support the death penalty, that you would want to correct and right that historical wrong. And so our continued ask, not just for Mr. Lee, but for all of those individuals, is that the state of Alabama, the governor and the legislator not do anything that they haven’t already recognised, but just make sure that all people who were affected by the practice that they themselves have said is unjust and unfair or receive the correction.

Naomi Murphy [00:09:20]:

And is this current ban on the 2017 ban on judicial override affecting a lot of your current appeals, the work that you’re doing now?

Laurel Hattix [00:09:30]:

It’s affecting our appeals in an interesting way, which is that there are not the same opportunities to bring these challenges through the official court system. But in Alabama, the governor has the power to grant what we call clemency. And so while there are simultaneous legal appeals working through the court system, in Mr. Lee’s case, most of those actually have to do with his method of execution, nitrogen hypoxia. But while those are working through the court system, we are simultaneously making appeals for clemency, which mean that the governor in her power has the executive power to convert Mr. Lee’s death sentence to life. And our argument or our plea is really rooted in this idea of your first day in office. You set out to correct a wrong, and we are just asking you to finish that job in making sure that everybody receives the benefit of your recognition that judicial override was and remains an unjust practice.

David Jones [00:10:38]:

Following up from what you said, Laurel, are there any further avenues that you can explore?

Laurel Hattix [00:10:46]:

So there’s a couple avenues that we can explore, and we have been exploring along with a coalition of, like I said, bipartisan supporters, bipartisan legislators. So the first is that the Alabama legislator could enact a new law that would apply the 2017 law retroactively so we could go through the legislative process and they could fix this through a new bill, a new law that just applied what they already did retroactively. The courts, unfortunately, have not been a viable avenue for us. And so a lot of this is turning on the activism, the advocacy, the investment of everyday Alabamians to reach out to both the governor, their legislators, other lawmakers to ask that this practice be corrected either through clemency or through the law. And so those are really the avenues that we continue to explore today. Because the practice was abolished, there seems to be a limited, there are limited opportunities for us in courts to raise challenges to this. So we’ve really been focused on the advocacy that can occur outside of courts.

David Jones [00:12:05]:

And what kind of response are you getting from the populace of Alabama?

Laurel Hattix [00:12:11]:

You know, I think to most people, it’s incredibly shocking that if they spent the time to serve on a jury, if they listened to all the evidence, if they heard from all the witnesses, and then they made a thoughtful judgment about what the appropriate sentence is, that that judgment could be stripped away by a single decision maker. In fact, we’ve been talking to several jurors, not just on Mr. Lee’s case, but other cases, who were unaware that when they sat on a jury, that their decision could be taken away from them. And the most common response from those jurors is, well, why did I sit for several weeks on a jury and thoughtfully comb through this evidence and thoughtfully come to an appropriate conclusion of what I thought the sentence was, if the power was never really in my hands in the first place? And so I think there’s a level of shock both for the jurors and then for the general public. Again, like I’ve said, even for those who are supporters of the death penalty, there is a lot of confusion around why a judge has the power to override the decision of a jury, especially in our American legal system that really values the voice of a jury that has determined, like I said earlier, that 12 voices, 12 decision makers are less likely to make a mistake than the single voice of one person.

Additionally, I think it’s important to note that in the system of jury selection in the United States, the jury is actually selected from the community that the defendant is coming from. And that seems to me to be the appropriate decision makers. It’s not people who are outside the context of where this person lived. It is people who may in fact be feeling the reverberations of the crime if the individual is guilty. And they seem to be the best situated individuals to determine what does justice look like for our community, what does being safe look like for our community. And so, again, it’s just this extra layer of confusion when that decision made by the community that is closest to the people involved in these circumstances is stripped away from them. I think there’s real shock and real confusion. And I have found that many people, even those who are politically engaged, who are politically active, were unaware that this is an ongoing practice in terms of there are still individuals sitting on death row today whose juries decided that the appropriate sentence was life.

Naomi Murphy [00:14:50]:

Seems quite contemptuous of the trial of the jury, doesn’t it? And I was also thinking about how we’ve seen with the Epstein files, so much corruption amongst people who have power. And I’m not suggesting that this particular judge is corrupt, but there’s always that possibility, isn’t there? When people are misusing their power in this way.

Laurel Hattix [00:15:11]:

There’s absolutely always possibility for corruption. I think what’s interesting with regard to the judge in this case, in giving him the benefit of the doubt, is he did not have the appropriate information in front of him due to the inadequacies and incompetencies of the trial lawyer. So he had none of this mitigating information, none of the full circumstances of the life of Mr. Lee prior to this happening, of providing context. And so I really think that there are multiple layers of both individual and structural failures that have led to a situation in which Mr. Lee is facing execution on June 11th.

David Jones [00:15:59]:

Thank you. I wanted to ask you about the jury because reading through the detailed appeal report, I could see that jurors could be, or potential jurors could be deselected if they were not supporters of the death penalty. Doesn’t that lead to a somewhat biased jury?

Laurel Hattix [00:16:25]:

It’s a great question and an odd feature of the capital punishment scheme, not just in Alabama, but in multiple states in the United States. And so, for those who are unfamiliar, when a jury goes in for questioning, which happens in all criminal cases, to make sure that they are not biased, potentially by being related to a victim or a prosecutor or defendant, there’s also additional questions. When it is a capital trial, and we call this death qualifying the jury. And what that means is, under Alabama law, if a juror says, there is no circumstance in which I can oppose the death penalty, they are allowed to be removed from the jury pool by the prosecutor, by the judge. And this, like you said, leads to a situation in which you have 12 jury members who are already predisposed in the sense that they have said they can impose the death penalty. And you removed a cross section of the community who has a different ideological stance. And so it is a, in my most generous terms, interesting feature of our capital punishment system, but one that I think most people are unaware of in that it results in a jury that automatically has no opposition to imposing the death penalty and removing those who may have hesitations, may have moral or religious objections to it. And so it leads to a question of, is an individual really getting a fair cross section of their community to serve on their jury if this entire portion of individuals is removed?

David Jones [00:18:25]:

Thank you. That’s a bit shocking, really, given that Mr. Lee has been in prison for 25 years. Have there been developments which suggest he should not face execution?

Laurel Hattix [00:18:40]:

Absolutely. So Mr. Lee is known to those who love him in the prison as J. Love. And I think that that nickname sort of encompasses and embodies who Mr. Lee has grown to be. So Mr. Lee was experiencing psychosis and mental health symptoms prior to the commission of this crime, including hallucinations and other things due to extreme poverty and the lack of medical access and mental health access. The very first time that Mr. Lee ever got treated for his mental health was when he was in prison. And unfortunately, this is not uncommon in the United States. In Alabama, the Alabama department of corrections is the largest mental health provider in the entire state. And so, even though Mr. Lee is confined in what is a chaotic, hostile, what I don’t think anybody would consider a therapeutic environment, being able to access mental health treatment has been transformative for him. His neurocognitive profile is completely different from when he first entered prison. And I think that speaks to something really devastating of what potential Mr. Lee was robbed of.

If Mr. Lee as a child had access to that mental health services, if mental health services were not reserved for incarceration, if there was money, effort, tax dollars, resources being poured into mental health, would we even have individuals on death row? And so I think it’s a real testament both to Mr. Lee in terms of his resilience, his strength, but I also think it’s a sad commentary on the state of the social resources that don’t exist for many people until they go to prison. The other thing that’s just been incredible about Mr. Lee is when he went to prison, his son was two months old. And despite the fact that that his son was so young, Mr. Lee was committed to having a relationship with him. And even though he had graduated from high school, he could only read and write on an elementary school level. But when Mr. Lee entered death row, he decided that he needed to be able to communicate with his son. And so he took classes to be able to learn to write and communicate with his son. One thing that I was just deeply moved by when I met Mr. Lee was the fact that he would call his son every single morning from death row as his son was waiting for the bus to pray over his son.

And his son has been incredibly successful in life, has been in the military, graduated. And I think that’s a testament to Mr. Lee’s ongoing commitment to be a family father, despite the fact that he is literally behind prison bars. And the last thing I’ll say about Mr. Lee’s sort of transformation is Mr. Lee is a man of deep, deep faith, which, again, is remarkable, considering that most people consider death row to be a place that is hopeless. And Mr. Lee has really created an environment and an atmosphere not just for himself, but for other men, particularly young men who come on the row to find hope, to find faith. He opened his Bible 26 years ago when he was in prison and found a verse in second Corinthians. And through that, found a sense that he could be made to be a new man, even if it was behind bars, that he could commit to rehabilitation, to hope, to love. And so today he is a pastor. He’s a leader in multiple ministries, Kairos. He’s a leader in Project Hope to abolish the death penalty, which is an organisation that is run by men on Alabama’s death row. And so he has really decided that even though he is facing death and has been facing death for 26 years, that he is going to live a life of hope, of faith, of love, while he is behind the walls of Holman Correctional Facility.

David Jones [00:23:06]:

Thank you, Laurel. The execution date is fixed for the 11th of June, which is just a few days away. What’s the primary focus of your final drive?

Laurel Hattix [00:23:25]:

Our final drive is really, at this point to ask the governor of Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey, to grant clemency. Mr. Lee does still have some appeals pending in the appellate courts, but right now, we are asking Governor Ivey, who at any point, any day, any moment, could grant clemency to Mr. Lee. And I want to be really clear about what granting clemency means. It doesn’t mean Mr. Lee will walk outside of those Holman doors. All it means is that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. And that was the decision that the jury made. And so all we are asking is for Governor Ivey to reinstate the verdict that the jury found appropriate to be consistent with the job that she started when she got into office in 2017 of saying Judge judicial override is an unjust practice and making sure that Mr. Lee is not executed because of a procedure that she, the legislator, and the state of Alabama decided was a practice that was not consistent with a fair justice system. And so we are asking people to sign our petitions. There are multiple petitions. If you look at www.lifeforjeffrieslee.com, you can find an action section that has links to those petitions. You can find Governor Ivey’s phone number where you can call and leave a message with her staff, her email address, where you can write and ask again that she just do what the jury had originally asked 26 years ago, which was to let Mr. Lee live the rest of his life in prison.

David Jones [00:25:07]:

Thank you. I think you had some questions you wanted to raise.

Naomi Murphy [00:25:13]:

Yeah, well, I was thinking about, you know, what’s it like to spend decades living on death row and having that hanging over you.

Laurel Hattix [00:25:21]:

You know, it’s one of those things that’s very interesting for me as an attorney, because I go to death row on a consistent basis, but even my interactions are limited. I go to a legal visiting room. I’m able to have contact visits with my clients, but at the end of my visits, I’m able to walk out those front doors, I’m able to leave. And so even as an attorney who exclusively represents individuals on death row, my own understanding, my own experience is limited. And I have to rely on my clients and what they share with me to understand that. And I think this is, again, where Mr. Lee is just an incredible example of hope, of faith and of resilience. Because on death row, you are confined to a very small cell where you live as a single individual. You do not share your cell with others. And so the majority of your day is spent in abject isolation. You do not have control over your movements, including when you shower, what time you’re able to get out, when you eat. So all of that is in the hands of somebody else. But despite these really harsh conditions of isolation, Mr. Lee has really been a champion for community, for solidarity. As I said, he’s part of Project HOPE to abolish the death penalty. It’s an incredible organisation because it is led and founded by men on Alabama’s death row.

And so you have men who are on the inside who have all had that experience of walking into death row your very first day. And they are able to provide mentorship, guidance, hope to those who join what is really a brotherhood and what is really a community. I hope that this does not happen next week, but one of the most beautiful displays of solidarity amongst the men on death row is the week of an execution. They do not participate in going out on the yard to exercise or play basketball. They wear their prison whites, which are their most formal uniforms while they are incarcerated. And as the individual who’s being executed is walked down to the death chamber, the men bang on the doors to let them know, we are walking with you. We see you and we love you. And it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the ability to have that sort of love and hope and community, despite the circumstances of what they’re facing. And I really think it is a lesson for all of us on the outside. What can we be doing to be in community with others? What can we be doing to suffer and to hold others as they are suffering? Because these men have created a way where it seems like there is no way to have created hope, have created love, where it seems like there’s none there. And there’s no excuse for the rest of us not to be engaged in those practices if they have found a way.

Naomi Murphy [00:28:46]:

Yeah, I mean, I’m finding this conversation very difficult. And I suppose I wonder what it’s like for you to be doing this work.

Laurel Hattix [00:28:55]:

I tell people all the time that this work is community work. I’m not just an attorney. I’m a citizen of Alabama. And so it is my taxpayer dollars, it is my name that is being used to execute these individuals. And so I’m incredibly, I find my motivation in the fact that I do not want this done in my name. I’m an Alabamian too, and this does not represent what I want. And so I consider it a gift and a privilege that these individuals would trust me in moments of extreme vulnerability, where everything is on the line. And I’m doing this not just as an attorney, but as somebody who is part of this community in Alabama, who lives here, who loves this state, who loves this place and wants it to be better. And I think that there’s really a balance. There’s a balance between recognising that this is difficult work, and also recognising it pales in comparison to being the individual who is facing that execution chamber. And so I take a lot of inspiration from Mariame Kaba, one of my favourite organisers, who talks about everything worthwhile is done together. Everything worthwhile is done in community. And I have the opportunity to do something about this. And I would feel all my same feelings even if I wasn’t engaged in this work. So I might as well spend my time on this earth contributing to what I hope is not just the clemency of Mr. Lee, but ultimately the abolition of the death penalty.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:43]:

I’m really glad that you are, obviously are passionate about the work you’re doing. And, you know, in Europe, there’s only one country that has the death penalty. That’s Belarus. How common is it for people to be executed in Alabama? And what proportion of those people are people of colour?

Laurel Hattix [00:31:00]:

It’s a great question. So, you know, it’s really interesting in Alabama because we have a relatively small population compared to other states like Texas, and yet we execute individuals on one of the highest per capita rates in the entire country. And so in Alabama, just to give you an idea of our prison population in general, the black population in Alabama is 26%, but yet 53% of our prison population is African American. And so you can see that those disparities don’t just exist on death row, but in our prison population. In total, the population of black individuals on death row in Alabama is 49%. So again, almost double what the population is. One thing that I find really interesting, though, is sort of the racial disparities that we see in the death penalty system. A lot of advocates are familiar with the racial disparities in terms of the individuals who are on death row, but those racial disparities actually infect the entire system.

So there was a study several years ago that was published in Harvard Laws Civil Rights and Liberties Review that found the overall execution rate is 17 times higher if your victim is white than if they are a person of colour. And so even in recognising the value of victims lives, there are racial disparities that are driving differences in who’s being executed. The same thing happens in Alabama in terms of composition on juries. So analysis of all of the death row cases leading up to 2024 found that 39% of death penalty cases in Alabama were decided by juries with one or less black individuals on them. And so there’s really this infusion of racial disparities, of racial prejudice, of racial animus throughout our entire criminal justice system. And it impacts all of these outcomes again, at every stage of these procedures, starting from jury selection to who is charged, all the way up to who is ultimately executed.

David Jones [00:33:25]:

Thank you. Jeffrey is due to be executed using nitrogen. Now, I wasn’t familiar with that. I know that states had been struggling to find an acceptable method of execution, but can you say a bit about nitrogen hypoxia?

Laurel Hattix [00:33:50]:

Absolutely. So in 2017, ironically, the same year that judicial override was abolished in Alabama, the Alabama legislator adopted a new method of execution which is termed nitrogen hypoxia. That really gives it a sanitised, seemingly scientific understanding, when in reality, the idea of executing somebody through the use of nitrogen was developed in a 14 page unpublished white paper. And so there was no scientific basis, there was no testing done in terms of what this method would look like. But the idea was based on, again, a completely different scenario of pilots losing consciousness when they reached high oxygen deprivation levels. That an individual could be fitted with a mask that would pump pure nitrogen, displacing the oxygen and eventually killing them. Because, as you know, humans are required to breathe oxygen in order to live. This untested, unproven, never before used method of execution was passed by the Alabama legislature later in 2017.

Despite the fact that they had no protocol, no idea, no evidence that an execution could actually be done this way. If you fast forward to 2024, the state of Alabama was the first place in the entire world to carry out a execution by nitrogen suffocation, when it executed for the second time. Because Mr. Kenny Smith had actually survived his first execution of lethal injection. And the state brought him back to execute him by nitrogen suffocation. When the mask was placed on Mr. Smith, he struggled against the restraints for over 10 minutes as he was gasping for air. And despite the fact that by all accounts, witnesses were horrified by what they saw, which was essential, a man suffocating to death, drowning to death, gasping for air, the state of Alabama has since executed seven other individuals by this method and other States in the United States have adopted this either on the books or in practice. Louisiana has now carried out their first execution by nitrogen hypoxia. And so again, you have this untested, unproven method of execution that is truly the suffocation of somebody to death.

David Jones [00:36:31]:

Thank you. I’m glad you used the word suffocation because that’s what it was sounding like to me. And most of us know what an unpleasant, frightening experience that is. So, I mean, is there anything else that we’ve missed that you’d like to say Laurel?

Laurel Hattix [00:36:54]:

On behalf of Mr. Lee, who is again, a man of faith and hope, I think that he would want me to say that he remains hopeful. Even though we are just days away from his execution, he remains hopeful that those empowers, those decision makers who have the opportunity, will do the right thing, will grant him clemency and allow him to live. And so I just ask for all listeners that you remain hopeful. And hope is an action. It’s a verb. And there’s multiple ways that you can get involved with fighting for Mr. Lee, fighting for those on Alabama’s death row. Again, if you go to www.lifeforjeffreylee.com, you can learn more about Mr. Lee’s story. You can hear some of the sermons that he has preached. You can hear about his transformation in his life. You can also see action items you can take signing the petition asking the governor to grant clemency, phone numbers and email addresses that you can call. Doesn’t matter where you are from.

We are all citizens of the world and we all have a responsibility to each individual. And so it takes five minutes of your time to take a single action for Mr. Lee. You can also follow the campaign for his clemency on social media, on Instagram, and on Facebook. And through those platforms, you’re able to witness some of the events and actions that we have going on in Alabama. On Monday, we’ll be having a petition delivery and rally at the Alabama State Capitol that will be live streamed. No matter where you are in the world, you can tune in and show love and support, not just for Mr. Lee, not just for his family, but for those who are boots on the ground doing the work to fight for him. So thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. And I’m just really hopeful that people will hear and elevate and lift up the story of Mr. Lee.

David Jones [00:39:02]:

Thank you very much. Laurel, thanks so much for coming along today.

Laurel Hattix [00:39:07]:

It’s been my pleasure.

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With more than two decades spent investigating sudden unexplained and controversial suspicious deaths, Steph Davies, today’s guest, has worked at the sharp edge of the coronial and forensic world. A former senior coroner’s officer with a background in forensic science and forensic psychology, Steph has built a reputation for asking difficult questions, challenging assumptions and pursuing answers in some of the most complex death investigations in the UK. Steph is now studying for a doctorate and she consults on complex cases on behalf of families and lawyers. Really lovely to see you again today, Steph. Welcome.

Stephanie Davies (00:59)

Thank you, nice to see you too.

David Jones (01:02)

Hello there, thanks very much for coming along. That’s quite some bio. Is it okay for me to call you Steph?

Stephanie Davies (01:13)

Yeah, no problem. Steph’s quicker.

David Jones (01:15)

Right, great. So we’ll begin. So can you tell us what is a coroner’s officer and how does that role differ from a coroner?

Stephanie Davies (01:26)

So I’ll start with explaining about a coroner. So a coroner is someone who has usually got a background, like a legal background, a lawyer, a solicitor, barrister. And they are independent judicial officers. And their role is to ascertain who a deceased was, where they died, when they died, and how they died. So they determine the manner of death. And primarily, they will investigate non-deaths and the police will investigate suspicious deaths. But they can’t do that by themselves. They need their own team of investigators and that’s what a coroner’s officer is. So they will gather evidence on behalf of the coroner. They work to the direction of the coroner. Even if they’re employed by the police, they have to work to the direction of the coroner. And they will gather information from witnesses through statements or medical background from doctors and they will produce their own report and they’ll submit that to the coroner and then the coroner can make an informed judicial decision as to how a person has died and what needs to happen next to investigate that death. So it could be that a doctor is able to issue a medical cause of death certificate or a post-mortem examination is needed or even an inquest hearing is needed and the coroner’s officer will put together the full file so that the coroner can then have a court hearing into a person’s death.

David Jones (03:02)

That’s fascinating, I must say, that’s really interesting. So what kind of route did you take yourself to that position?

Stephanie Davies (03:14)

So I spent about seven years in university. I guess I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I started by studying psychology and getting a master’s in forensic behavioural science. But then by the time I finished my master’s, forensic science was being offered as a standalone degree course. So I thought, I really want to study that. So I was going to become a psychologist, but I just thought, no, there’s something about forensic science that I really want to explore. So I ended up doing another bachelor’s degree. And I went to New York and I did some work experience with NYPD. So I attended murder scenes in Manhattan. And I really had first-hand experience in how they investigate suspicious deaths over in America. And I also did some short courses such as blood stain pattern analysis and I was fascinated by it and how something so simple as the shedding of blood could tell you the story as to what happened before somebody died. So that really piqued my interest and when it came to looking for jobs I wanted to be a detective and join the police but because of my hearing loss, I was born deaf, so because my hearing loss was so severe, I couldn’t join as a standard police officer. It would have been a public order risk. Say I was trying to deal with a public order incident, my hearing aids may just fall out, and I wouldn’t be able to hear, wouldn’t be able to hear on the radio, wouldn’t be able to call for help. It could put my colleagues at risk. So I realised that that wasn’t a path for me.

But I wanted to have control over my own cases and a coroner’s office’s job came up and I thought, well, I can be a civilian so I can probably pass the medical to be a civilian in the police. And it meant I could use my forensic science and forensic psychology background to try and establish how people had died. So in a very long-winded way, I ended up working in the coroner’s office. And I found that I loved the job, I was passionate about the job and I was good at the job. So I ended up doing that job for almost 20 years.

David Jones (05:36)

Gosh, that is some story. I’ve got a very distractible and simple mind, Steph, and I’m curious about your time in New York because we all think we know everything about the police service in New York through numerous TV programs and films. Was it really like that?

Stephanie Davies (05:59)

When I did my work experience, I couldn’t watch CSI anymore because it was so inaccurate. They were all telling me, they even had CSI in the background in the break rooms in NYPD. And I realised, I thought, God, I feel like I was so global watching this program, which I really enjoyed. And then experiencing the real life version. And that department that I shadowed, they’d actually consulted on the CSI New York edition. They had consulted and given their expertise, but because it’s drama, they have to make it so that forensic analysis is done within minutes rather than days or weeks. The crime scene investigators would not be interviewing potential suspects because of the conflicts of interest. So I found that there were lots of errors and thought things that I’ve been watching on TV is not like real life but real life has its own very challenging cases. I remember the very first crime scene photos that I saw on my work experience and I still find them troubling. I won’t describe them because it’s so graphic, but it’s the stuff of nightmares almost. It’s the things that a human being can do to another human being is quite horrific but the scientist and the analyst within me found it so, I was so curious about it and I thought I want to establish why are people doing this and I want to establish how a person’s died and what’s happened in those last moments of their life and try and get answers for people so it’s something I became very passionate about but I also realised that how TV depicts things is not very accurate unfortunately.

David Jones (07:50)

No, I suppose they go for the drama, don’t they? Anyway, so you mentioned you’ve got a hearing impairment. What’s it been like for you living your life with this impairment?

Stephanie Davies (08:05)

It has been challenging. So I wasn’t diagnosed until I was four. I was born deaf. I have congenital, bilateral, moderately severe hearing loss due to nerve damage. But my parents knew something wasn’t right with me. I wasn’t talking at all. But I seemed to understand what was going on. And my mom said to me when I did hearing tests, I worked out what I had to do. So I worked out I had to put the little men in the boat. And I was reading the body language of the people that were assessing my hearing. And I thought, ah, now I do it this time and this time. And I used to pass those hearing tests because I worked out what I had to do. I don’t think it would be as easy to do that nowadays. But back then, you’re looking at the late 70s, early 80s. And it was only at Manchester University where I think it’s a professor who said, no, she is deaf. She can’t hear. Despite her understanding things, she cannot hear. And I did have mental health vulnerability as a result of that because I always felt like I was outside looking in. I always felt like I was observing people, but I wasn’t part of the community.

I always felt like I couldn’t quite follow the conversation because humans are so reliant on verbal communication whereas I was reliant on non-verbal communication. So I found it really, really challenging and I found it really hard to work out my own identity, what’s the purpose of me being on this planet. And it was only later on in my career when I was investigating death that I realised that actually my ability to interpret my environment and interpret photographs and crime scenes. That’s actually, I have a talent for doing that and I think that’s down to being born deaf and not being able to hear for the first four years of my life. So I almost, I term it as a superpower because I think there are things that I spot that other people may not spot. But I still have those challenges, I still have the issues with my identity and I’m very, very open about my mental health challenges. But I do believe I was put on this planet for a reason and I do believe that the work that I’m doing now, I’m doing it for a reason. And this disability I’ve got has given me a fresh new ability that a lot of people may not have.

David Jones (10:41)

Yes, I can see that’s the case. you obviously do hear now. How is that?

Stephanie Davies (10:48)

Yeah. I wear really good hearing aids, so post-aural hearing aids, so behind the ear. So as soon as I take those out, I go completely mute because I can’t hear my own voice. So I live with cats, so when I’ve got my hearing aids in, I will talk to them. They talk back, they meow back at me, and we have like conversations. I know I sound a bit crazy, but that’s how I do. But as soon as I take them out I don’t do that verbal communication anymore and I don’t know if it confuses them, I’ve got no idea but as soon as I take them out I can’t hear my own voice so I don’t speak at all. But as soon as I started wearing hearing aids when I was four years old I started talking straight away and I picked up language extremely quickly and so I didn’t have to go behind in school, I was able to keep up with other children my own age because I caught up really really quickly. I learned how to speak. So yeah, I can’t remember your question now.

David Jones (11:54)

I think you’ve explained how you manage to hear and the striking difference for you between when you’ve got the hearing aids in and when they’re not in. So do you wear them all the time?

Stephanie Davies (11:55)

Yeah, yes exactly. I take them out at night and it may take a while before I put them in first thing in the morning. It can be quite overbearing almost when you’ve had several hours of complete silence and then you put them in and then there’s like lots of things that you’re hearing and it can be a bit overwhelming. But yeah, generally whilst I’m awake I wear them, whilst I’m asleep I don’t.

David Jones (12:32)

Thank you very much and thanks very much for being so open about that. I’m sure people find that very helpful. So I’m getting back to the work, the work you did or do as a coroner’s officer. Can you say a bit more about what that entails and what areas of forensic practice you were most specialised in?

Stephanie Davies (12:56)

Yes, when I started as a coroner’s officer, that was 20 years ago, just over 20 years ago in 2006. And I was working for Thames Valley Police. And that was very, very hands on. So I went to scenes, I was on call. I went to post-mortem examinations every day. I would visit families and get statements on them. I would get statements from witnesses. And I would put together my own inquest files. And then I would give evidence in court at the inquest. And then when I went to Cheshire Police, because I grew up in Cheshire anyway, and I joined Cheshire Police in 2007, that was more office-based and I found that quite frustrating because I thought I’m quite limited to how I can investigate these suspicious deaths and I can’t attend the scenes. And there was a drive to try and get Coroner’s Officers out to scenes in Cheshire but it just never happened. So we were relying on police officers to investigate suspicious deaths at the scene and then their interpretation of what happened would be given to us and then we would try and fill in the gaps and we would get medical history from the GP, we would speak to the family, get some further information and we put together the inquest files.

But Cheshire Police, while some of the coroner’s offices did have quite an administrative role, they gave me permission to have more ownership over my own files so I did investigate my own cases, go out to visit families, would take photographs, like if a fall had happened, I’d take photographs of where that was and then I’d put that in the file. So they gave me quite a lot of flexibility to take almost that burden off police officers and then I would then inquest hearings and give evidence. So I was quite unique as part of my team, I was quite a unique coroners officer. Later on in my career, so I was promoted a couple of times, I ended up as head of department as the senior coroner’s officer, then eventually my team would have more hands-on role because that’s what the coroner requested, to have more of hands-on investigative role. For some that was quite challenging for them because I think it meant they had to utilise their brain a lot more than they had been. But for others they thrived and they did really well.

But it got to the point where I did sometimes have contact from senior investigating police officers to ask for my help because they knew about my background in bloodstain pattern analysis and interpreting scenes. So they would send me photographs of death scenes and say, Steph, could you interpret this bloodstain pattern for us? We’re not sure if we need to have a forensic post-mortem. We’re thinking not, but we’re not too sure. We just want to see what you think. And so they did consult with me possibly going beyond my remit as a senior coroner’s officer but I had that skill set and they utilised that. But generally coroner’s officers they wouldn’t be expected to have training in blood stain pattern analysis but ideally they would have some kind of a medical or legal background. So we had retired nurses or former nurses joining our team, we had people that former forensic scientists joining our team people with degrees in law. We’ve had former lawyers wanting to join our team and former police officers as well. So a mixed skill set within our team.

But I think I was quite unique because I did specialist courses in America. And later in my career, I did a course in staged crime scenes, which isn’t offered as a course in UK. I could only find a course in the US and also advanced homicide investigation I did in America, as well as psychological autopsy investigation. I kind of built, and following those training courses, I was then asked by Cheshire Police to train their detectives and police officers on this additional learning I had. And so I was teaching them how to spot, that a scene had been staged, how to spot those red flags. As far as I know, police officers in the UK are still not getting trained in staged crime scenes or critical suspicious deaths. So that was quite a unique service I was providing, but not typical for a coroners officer in the UK to provide that service.

David Jones (17:28)

Thank you. You obviously developed the skill set and the team quite a lot. Did you work as a team? Did you sit down and discuss cases and things?

Stephanie Davies (17:38)

Yes, so complex cases, I would have coroner’s officers asking for my advice and sometimes they’d have to consult directly with the coroner on how to proceed. There’s been a couple of times where I’ve had to refer cases back to the police and say, actually this is suspicious. You need to go back and re-investigate. So I’ve had to do that. And then that evidence is then used at the inquest hearing for the coroner’s come back with a, you know, informed manner of death for the deceased. So yeah, we did work well as a team. Before my career ended with them, we were granted a commendation for the services we provided to Cheshire, how we investigated suspicious deaths, how we worked together during COVID. So that was quite an honour and were nominated for prizes and things like that for awards. I was really proud to lead that team and from a national viewpoint, I think the team were doing really well.

David Jones (18:48)

Thanks very much. I’ve got to say, Steph, that what you’re describing probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. So what was it that you found so intriguing?

Stephanie Davies (19:00)

I’m naturally inquisitive. I remember my mum said when I was a child, saw me lying down in the garden watching something and apparently it was a woodlouse giving birth or something. She said you were just so fascinated in it, Steph, you know, were just so intrigued as to what was going on. And I think that’s what it is. I was one of those annoying kids that used to always ask why. Why is this? And often it would be questions that my parents did not know the answer to. But I’d always be querying, why is this? Why is this? And then that extended to human psychology and, I guess, forensic pathology and murders and serial killers. And why? Why do they do this? Why are some people born differently? Not necessarily born evil, because I think some people are born maybe broken or they become broken and something is not wired right in their psychology and then they do things that other people would never consider doing. But I always thought, why? So when it came to investigating a death, I’d be like, okay, so what was the sequence of events that led to this person’s death? Because you can’t, it’s not as simple as just have a post-mortem and find the cause of death.

We need to know exactly what happened, what was the sequence of events, what was the manner of death, did that person intend to permanently end their life or was it an accidental thing or was it misadventure, so was it an unintended outcome as a result of an intended action? And so I had all these questions and every day I would talk to doctors about the deceased and I would ask questions and then they might say oh this person they worked as a joiner in their occupation and if the person had died from lung cancer I’d be like, well okay, that occupation is a bit of a red flag for me. Were they exposed to asbestos? Or they might have been and that’s when I know right I need to speak to the family, I need to get the work history from the DWP and establish have they been exposed to asbestos? Because if so they’ll need a post-mortem and potentially an inquest hearing.

So we specialised in investigating non-suspicious suspicious deaths. So we knew exactly what a typical suicide would look like or misadventure or an accidental death. So if something was problematic, like a potentially staged scene, we’d be like, that’s not consistent with a standard suicide. There’s something not right here. We need to look. And it could be the bloodstain patterns aren’t consistent. That’s why we’d have to either ask those further questions ourselves or ask the police to look further into it.

David Jones (21:50)

Thank you. I mean, you’re describing really the way in which every person’s life’s ending is considered thoughtfully and in detail.

Stephanie Davies (22:03)

Absolutely. It’s a privilege and an honour to investigate a death, but it’s so much more important to get it right. So if you don’t have that critical eye, you don’t have that ability to spot the red flags, and if they’ve been missed at the scene and then that erroneous narrative can then be carried through to the coroner’s inquest, and then justice is not done. If that death was actually meant to be suspicious someone could get away with murder. Or you can get suspicious deaths that are treated as murders and they never were. They’re not murders. And I can think of quite a few cases, I won’t name those, but I can think of cases where that’s happened and someone innocent has gone to prison because the death and the death scene has been misinterpreted. So it’s so important to get it right. And it’s something I’m so passionate about.

Dr Naomi Murphy (22:58)

So Steph, you recently featured in an ITV documentary just last month actually about the Wilmslow murders. What were these and how did you come to get involved in them?

Stephanie Davies (23:08)

Yeah, so these are two historic Cheshire cases and they both happened in Wilmslow, so a small town. And they were elderly couples, married couples. They were found lying side by side on the marital bed, wearing their nightwear. And the suspicious deaths were three years apart and within two miles of each other. But what was so striking about these suspicious deaths was that there was so much violence involved. And I have investigated murder-suicides in the past and they are probably more common than the public realises but there was something about these suspicious deaths that was not usual. And it was my predecessor, the former senior coroners officer, Christine Hurst, who highlighted these cases to me and she knew about my forensic background and she said to me, Steph, would you mind just looking at these cases? I think she just wanted to know if her concerns were valid or not because she had to raise concerns that got nowhere because she was the coroner’s officer for these two cases.

And so I agreed and my expectation because we always have an expectation I think whether you want that or not almost like an unconscious bias but my expectation was that I would potentially agree with her for the first case being a double murder but not the second case because the first case was not a very good death investigation. The second case was, it was very, very detailed. Lots of specialists involved, so I thought if there’s anything, you know, untoward here it may well be the first case, because I saw within minutes from the crime scene photos that the bloodstained pattern on the male for the first case was not consistent with him having committed the murder of his wife. The bloodstained patterns demonstrated to me that he was lying down when his wife was attacked. So I believe that he was already dead, lying on the marital bed. But I expected for the second case to not agree with Christine. And I was expecting to say to her, the first case I have an issue with, the second case, no. And I don’t think the public are at risk. So I say, leave it alone. We leave it alone. We don’t do anything with it.

But it was when I saw the photographs of the second case and I had red flags popping up everywhere and again it’s mainly the blood stains and so the second case and whilst it’s not as obvious you can see for the second case that the blood distribution on the male was consistent with him having been lying down on his front when his wife was attacked. So the first case the male was lying on his back, the blood distribution indicated he was lying on the bed. And then the second case, the male was lying prone, lying face down on the bed whilst his wife was attacked. And that was consistent with the blood distribution. And there were also crime scene factors that I could see that showed that the bodies of the males had been moved after death by a third party. So I thought the sequence of events is wrong. So the official narrative, that was accepted by the coroner for both cases was that they were murder suicides, that the males committed the murders of their wives and then they killed themselves. But what I was seeing in these photographs was not that and I thought no, the order of events is completely wrong.

And I almost desperately did not want to see any red flags in the second case. I thought no, they did such a detailed investigation. The inquest file was incredibly thick. There’s so many photographs and I thought no, they’ve not made a mistake but unfortunately I found that they had because I found two and then I did a freedom of information search across the whole of the UK, I thought, you know, I could see psychological factors at both of these scenes and I thought this is somebody carrying out a fantasy. This is just not, not just murder. This is not like a functional straightforward killing. This is someone who’s carried out their deepest darkest fantasy at both of these scenes and I thought this has got the hallmarks of a serial killer. And I thought I wonder if there’s any other cases in the UK. So I did a search and out of all the murder-suicides that I found there were three more that were consistent with the quite strict criteria that I had applied.

And to my horror, they were all in the north west of England. And I thought, wow, ok, that could be a coincidence, you know. But I thought this could be a serial offender. And I then realised I’ve got a duty to inform the police to reopen these cases. And so Christine never asked me to do a report. She just wanted an informal discussion with me. But when I saw this and then I found other potentially linked cases. I thought I’ve got a duty here, I’ve got a duty, now I know this, I can’t unknow it. And so I wrote a very detailed report for Cheshire Police. I thought, least if I write it down and I formally submit a formal report, they can then give me a formal response, you know, written, I’d expect there to be a written response. But unfortunately that’s never happened. I still haven’t had any feedback whatsoever from Cheshire Police about my concerns. I’m still waiting and that was years ago now.

Dr Naomi Murphy (28:48)

Steph, can I just ask what were the things that you were seeing that made you think that somebody was doing this possibly as a serial killer, you know, but there was a pattern of acting for psychological reasons. What were the things that you saw?

Stephanie Davies (29:03)

So it was all in the scene photograph. So there was extreme violence being used by a knife. Extreme violence being used by, well, the first case, definitely a hammer. And I suspect a hammer was used for the second case, but there was no hammer left at the scene. The narrative was that it was a broken ceramic pot that was used to inflict blunt force trauma on the female. But I found that the broken pot pieces have been placed after the female had been tucked into bed. So I thought, why? Why get broken pot pieces and place them after you’ve tucked somebody into bed? That makes no sense. Unless you’re trying to stage a scene and you’re trying to present a narrative to the police, this ceramic pot was used as a weapon and the police, in my opinion, fell for it. But that’s not what I was seeing. If the ceramic pot was causing blunt force trauma on the female and it was a ceramic hot water bottle, water was splashed on the female, but that only happened after she was stabbed with a knife multiple times in her neck.

So I thought, hang on, that makes no sense when you’ve got the blunt force trauma, then so did the sharp force trauma happen first? But the defence marks on her hands showed that she was still conscious and very much alive when the blunt force trauma happened. But the sharp force trauma, it breached her carotid artery, so she’d been dead within seconds. So again, the order was all wrong. The order was not right. But also, when the bedding for the second one was carefully taken off, her night dress was in exactly the same position as the night dress of the first female. So they were both, and you can see in the photographs for the first case that the night dress has been pulled like this. You can see the shape of the night dress and it’s been pulled up and exposing their genitalia. The second case, it’s not as obvious it’s been pulled up. It could well have rolled up. It could be a coincidence. But when you look at the two scenes, they’re identical. And I also saw with the second case that the blood patterning on the bed showed that her arm had been very slightly moved.

In both cases, the females had their left arm resting on their torso in exactly the same position with the wedding ring on show. And I could see in the second case that her arm had been moved to fit the position of the first one and I thought this is a replication of the first case. And also, the extent of the violence, there was a penetrating sharp force injury using a knife for both cases. And I felt that it was almost like a pathological, paraphilic, maybe paraphilic on the part of the offender. And it made me think, you know, with the night dresses rolled up and, you know, with the amount of sharp force injury, I just thought, this is a fantasy being played out. And generally, for the first case, can be slightly different to subsequent cases. I came across a case in South Manchester in Didsbury and whilst I’ve not reviewed that file and I’ve not seen the photographs, I have had quite an in-depth discussion with one of the detectives that attended that scene.

And I’m aware that the first attending police officer that saw that scene was very much traumatised, so much so that it is believed that he took his own life a few months after attending that scene. And again, the female was tucked into bed. The face was, I don’t want to go too graphic because it is so disturbing and out of respect to the families, really want to try and avoid going into too much graphic detail. But for all the cases, for those three cases, the female faces were obscured, either a pillow on them or something on their face or their face beaten beyond recognition. So it’s like their identity had to be removed for all of the women. There is a theory that their eyes had recovered so that they couldn’t see the offender leaving which is another psychological factor I also saw at these scenes potential signs of exaggeration which is where somebody who doesn’t know what a typical suicide looks like they overdo it so that they want to make sure, make it obvious to the police this is a suicide you’re looking at.

And I found that in a number of ways. So for example, the Didsbury case, there was sharp force trauma to the male, but apparently he’d scattered a whole pot of pills on the floor. And that is apparently a classic indicator from someone trying to stage a scene to look like suicide. For the first case, the suicide note was addressed to the coroner. I’ve never come across a suicide note being addressed to the coroner before. I have, you know, there have been notes addressed that said don’t let the police in, for example, instructional. And it’s not impossible, it can happen, but I’ve never come across it in the hundreds and hundreds of suicide notes that I’ve seen. I’ve never come across that. And it was almost like, you know, the coroner had to be made aware that this was a suicide. And I thought, again, is that a sign of exaggeration? And for the second case, there were superficial marks sharp force wounds to the wrist, to the groin, almost like they were pretend, well, superficial suicide attempts, but the blood flow was so minimal that I suspect that the male was already dead by the time they were inflicted.

And then the final, the male for the second case had a knife wound to his heart, and so he was stabbed in the heart. But what I could see at the scene was that he’d clearly died lying face down after his neck had been cut and then he was moved onto his back after the wife had been attacked because of the blood distribution on his face and I thought there’s no way he stabbed himself, he was already dead. So yeah, it’s so unusual and I think it’s not just one motive, I think it might have been several motives but the key thing I’m seeing is fantasy-led behaviour, a fascination with these penetrating sharp wounds maybe a fascination with seeing the blood flow, the replication of the marital bed in their pyjamas and I think the first couple are the main focus and I think the second couple were a replication of the first couple. I mean I know this is all interpretation, I know it’s subjective, my reports were mainly based on the science, on the bloodstain pattern analysis, on the wounds, on what I was seeing at the scene, the clear indicates is that the males have been moved after death, like for example the first case, the male had his left hand trapped under his body and his head was unnaturally resting against the headboard and in a typical suicide you would make yourself a bit more comfortable.

I mean you can try and restrict the use of your hands by maybe tying up your hands and I thought maybe that’s what’s happened, maybe he’s trapped his hand on purpose to stop self-rescue. But it was his left hand and the dominant hand, I believe he was right handed, the dominant hand was still free. So I thought, well, that doesn’t really make sense. So shouldn’t he have trapped both hands? And that’s when I thought, actually, it’s more likely than not he’s been moved across the bed and his hand has got trapped and the offender’s not realised that the hand is trapped. So there’s so many things I could go on all day about, because I can still see the images in my mind, they’re so clear. But there were so many conflicting factors and I thought the police have got the official narrative wrong, the order of events doesn’t make sense. And this is a very, very dangerous, very strong young male carrying out a fantasy and potentially done others. So I answered that in a very long-winded way.

Dr Naomi Murphy (37:35)

No, not at all. It’s really fascinating to hear how much information you could get from the scene that might lead to other explanations. And I was also struck when you were talking about thinking about the families that actually if you believe that you’re, I believe these were older couples, how awful to be led to believe that your dad has killed your mum before killing himself, you know, whilst it’s awful to think that your loved ones have been murdered, actually that feels more bearable than to think that one parent has murdered the other before committing suicide. So absolutely essential for the families to understand, all loved ones to understand what exactly has happened. I know that there was some controversy about your findings, wasn’t there? Are you able to help us understand why, what the controversy was?

Stephanie Davies (38:34)

Yeah, I think because my findings basically went against what the police had determined and I know and I can say that the first death investigation was very short and in my opinion flawed investigation. As soon as they saw the suicide note they were like, that was a murder-suicide and no forensic scrutiny took place and it was just closed very very quickly, no further investigation. They washed down the scene before the post-mortem started. Now had they preserved that scene they would have been told at the post-mortem by the pathologist why it’s the male. So the male he had a plastic bag over his head and the ligature but the male had injuries to the inside of his lip, his top lip. And that’s consistent with someone pushing down and smothering somebody. That’s a major red flag. But all pathologists, should know that is a red flag that someone has murdered this person. But by then, it was too late. And I know it did appear in the post-mortem report that these lip injuries were not consistent with suicide at all. But by then, it was too late. The police had washed down the scene. So they couldn’t do anything.

They’re like, well, let’s just pretend that never happened and let’s just still call it a murder-suicide. And it’s so frustrating. But I do respect that the second case was a much more detailed investigation. I do respect that. And they had multiple experts involved in that investigation. But again, there were errors. I could see that there were errors. And the police became very, very defensive. I think, I really do think there had been a degree of ageism involved as well and I think had these couples been younger I think the police might have taken it, especially for the first case, think the police may have exercised more forensic scrutiny. But when I actually submitted two reports to the police, so the first one was in 2018 and after six months I still hadn’t had any feedback, I was still being given empty promises, I will read it Steph, yeah just a bit busy, I will read it. And then I decided, because I had advised the police in my first report, you need to speak to experts, a multidisciplinary panel of experts to have a look at my concerns. And they can either say I’m wrong or I’m right. But that never happened.

So I realised I need to find experts myself. And I couldn’t find any experts in the UK in staged crime scenes, but I found one in the US. And so I thought, well, I’ve got my own knowledge gaps. If I’m saying these things are staged, I need to make sure I’ve had relevant training. So I decided to fly out to America, get this training done, and get some expert input. And I got permission from the senior detective that I originally submitted my report to. I said, I’m going to go to America. I’m going to do this course. I’m going to speak to experts. I want to update my report and resubmit it. Is that OK? And he said, yes that’s absolutely fine. And I think he was relieved because he didn’t want the burden of going through my first report. And so that’s what I did. But that is what was eventually used against me. Because my updated report got leaked not by any experts in America, it was a separate expert from the UK, a policing expert. That got leaked to the media. And that is when Cheshire Police turned on me.

Dr Naomi Murphy (42:12)

Just to clarify Steph, that wasn’t you that leaked that report, was it?

Stephanie Davies (42:16)

No, no it wasn’t and I actually handed Cheshire Police the evidence of who had leaked that report but they ignored that and they just decided to put me under a criminal and gross misconduct investigation. The person, the senior detective that ordered that investigation was also a detective on the first Wilmslow case. So major conflicts of interest that he did not declare but he put in the order for my house to be searched and during that house search my private diaries were taken, private diaries that were not covered by the search warrant and those were used against me in my interview under caution so they read out extracts, very very personal, embarrassing extracts and because of my deafness I don’t find it easy to open up about my inner private thoughts, I find it easier to write it down because if it just gets stored in my head, it gets a bit overwhelming. So I found this as a method to cope with whatever was going on in my mind. But then to have these detectives read them out to me at a recorded interview under caution, and then to even threaten to read out all the entries, I find that so unethical.

You know, even if I was guilty of gross misconduct, if I had done absolutely the wrong thing, that’s still unethical to do that to an individual. But that’s what they did because they didn’t find any evidence of criminality against me. But they wanted to find evidence that they could use to discredit me. So they’d read out these very personal entries that I put in my diary. And then they say, we’ve concluded that you were not thinking rationally when you wrote that report on the Wilmslow cases. And I thought, you know, are they now suddenly qualified as forensic clinical psychologists that they can make that sort of judgment? No, they were, you know, DCs, Detective Constables. They were in quite a low-ranking role within the police. And their primary objective was to discredit me. That was their primary objective. To make out that I was a nobody, I wasn’t an investigator, that I was just an administrator, that I didn’t know what I talking about. But they had all the evidence there that proved that senior investigators were consulting with me about blood stains, about the death scenes. And I was being asked to go beyond my own remit in my job.

So it was hell for quite a few years, I was suspended and then eventually I did resign but I did it because I knew that they would sack me. I did go through an employment tribunal as well but that was also really traumatic and my very first case management hearing the judge asked me, what are you doing now? And I said well I’m currently suspended but I’m volunteering at an animal shelter that’s local to me. And she said, well, I do hope that there are no files of elderly couples at the shelter that you might have access to. And I thought, well, that was a very judgmental remark from a judge that’s meant to be impartial and fair. But that was my very first case management hearing. And I thought, this doesn’t feel right. And I thought, I started the process. I feel like I’ve been treated horrendously. I’m facing losing my job for doing the right thing for being a whistleblower. But when it came to a natural public hearing to see if I had whistleblower status, when I was being cross-examined and I was giving my oral evidence, the judge made me hold up a pen.

She said, Miss Davis, you are speaking far too fast and I have to write down everything, so please hold up that pen. And I had to hold up this pen whilst I was being cross-examined by a barrister on behalf of the police. I was so humiliated. And then when a senior detective, when it was his turn to give all evidence, he spoke a lot faster than I did. He was very waffly. His eyes were darting all over the place. He couldn’t have eye contact with the judge, with me, with nobody. Very, very waffly. And what did the judge do with him? Well, she didn’t make him hold up a pen. She giggled and she laughed and said, I’m writing very fast. And she just giggled and laughed it off. And I thought, why is it that he’s been given that treatment and I’m being treated the way I am? And in my view, the judge was very biased in favour of the police and it was incredibly traumatic and the judge essentially castigated me in court and just said I was wholly irresponsibly, recklessly irresponsible by sharing my concerns with experts, with forensic experts and she refused to give me whistleblower status for the second report but she did give it to me for the first report.

But by then I was mentally a mess. I was completely broken. I was incredibly psychologically vulnerable. So I decided even though we had a very strong appeal because my legal team felt that the judge may have made a few mistakes in whistleblowing law. So that was put into the appeal but by then I thought I don’t have it in me anymore, I can’t do it. And so I decided to withdraw from that and resign from the police and slowly I’ve been trying to pick myself back up again. But I’m still passionate about investigating suspicious deaths, so that’s what I’m still doing.

Dr Naomi Murphy (48:01)

Sounds really horrendous Steph.

David Jones (48:07)

Thanks very much for telling us all about that, Steph. I have to say, I don’t think we’ve come across anyone who’s had a good experience of employment tribunals. Almost invariably, I can’t think of an alternative described as being unbalanced and biased. Anyway, it’s not why you were talking earlier. You were describing the shocking misuse of your personal diaries, which reminded me, didn’t something similar happen in the Lucy Letby case? Are you aware of that?

Stephanie Davies (48:51)

Yeah, I’m very familiar with the Lucy Letby case. In fact, I was the first person in Cheshire Police to review the baby suspicious deaths. They gave me that instruction to review 13 suspicious deaths to determine whether or not they should investigate. And I was told by the senior investigating officer that my review was one of the key factors to launch Operation Hummingbird. But because of evidence that has been handed to me inadvertently by the police, I found that this looked to be a major miscarriage of justice. But I did also learn about the diaries that they see from Lucy Letby, and they, in my view, misinterpreted those diaries and what she’d written in her diaries. And so they claim that she had put initials next to the babies that she had attacked. But in actual fact, the initials were LD and they stood for long day which was quite a typical thing for those working in the medical profession would put in a diary.

They also in my view misinterpreted handover sheets that she’d stored at home and it’s quite usual for nurses to have handover sheets on their person and accidentally take them home with them and the majority of these handover sheets had nothing to do with the babies that ended up on the indictment. But that was misinterpreted. They were like, well, she’s an evil serial killer and these are trophies. Well, really? And they also, in my view, misinterpreted the so-called confession where Lucy had written, I am evil, I did this. But she was also under investigation and she was told as part of writing therapy, similar to the therapy that I did, she did that to try and process how people were making her feel. There are also many entries, I am innocent, I am being victimised. So it’s taken out of context. And again, it almost seemed like a confirmation bias. You know, we believe she’s a murderer, so let’s build our case to make it look like she’s definitely murdered these babies.

And I had a similar experience where, you know, Steph did the wrong thing. She’s made up lies about these investigations. So let’s build our case to make her look as bad as possible. And the final report about me was so biased, I wrote my own report completely shredding their report to pieces because I saw so many errors in it and I thought it’s just the calibre of defectives that they have at Chester Police, they just can’t get things right. And the Lucy Letby case, I mean I had a duty to speak out, in effect became whistleblower again, I had a duty to speak out because my review has potentially contributed to a serious miscarriage of justice and I thought I can’t sit back and say nothing when I’m aware that this isn’t right. So yeah, I see a lot of parallels with how Lucy Letby has been treated and how I’ve been treated and I find it really concerning because it makes you question other investigations that Cheshire Police has carried out. Sally Clark is another example.

David Jones (52:10)

Thank you. Thank you very much. Steph, you’re clearly not someone who shirks challenging authority. Where does that come from, do think?

Stephanie Davies (52:21)

I’m not sure, it may be there’s a little fighter in me ever since I was born deaf and I’ve kind of had to fight to get to where I’m at and it could be that I was born this way with this moral compass and I hate seeing any kind of injustice. I think that there are traits within my family where we do stand up to things that we believe in so it could be a trait that I’ve inherited from my parents. I really don’t know, but I’ve always felt like I’ve been a little bit different and I’ve always hated inequality or people being picked on or animals being hurt. I still volunteer at the animal shelter. It’s just something I feel very strongly about and I just feel it would have been so easy, for example, going back to the Wilmslow cases, it would have been so easy to just turn my back on them, say, you know, my job’s going really well and gets on really well with everybody. I might as well leave this alone, but I just couldn’t. I was going to not update my report. I was going to leave it, and it was during COVID. And I remember looking at the scene photographs again, thinking that I have one last look, and then I’m going to make the decision. I’m not going to pursue this anymore.

I’m going to leave it. And I looked at the photos of both scenes, and I spotted an additional factor for both scenes that I hadn’t spotted before and I thought no way these are clearly double murders I’m concerned they’re done by the same person I’ve got a duty I can’t turn my back on them and I knew that there would be a risk that I would get into trouble I didn’t predict that I would end up losing my job and that the police would behave the way they did I didn’t predict that but I don’t regret writing my report I know I’m right about this and world experts have confirmed that I am right to be concerned about these cases. It’s just something that’s inbuilt and now I’m seeing the injustice of the Lucy Letby case and I thought, I contributed to that. I might as well hold my hands up and say, yeah, my review has contributed but I believe that mistakes have been made and I’m going to stand up. But bearing in mind, had I still had my job with Cheshire Police I would not have spoken out about the Lucy Letby case, I don’t think.

I don’t think I would have. I would have been scared about losing my job. But I’ve already lost my job. So in effect, I didn’t have that much more to lose. I was worried I’d be targeted again by Cheshire Police that they’d find some reason to search my house again. And that would trigger a lot of psychological trauma for me. Because I do have PTSD from how I was treated. But thankfully, so far, they’ve not done that. All they’ve done is to spread misinformation about my professionalism in public so I do have to complain against the police at the moment unfortunately.

David Jones (55:22)

Thank you, thank you very much indeed. But you’ve returned to studying since those cases. What is it you’re studying?

Stephanie Davies (55:26)

Yes. So I’m studying a professional doctorate and it’s in Coronial Manner of Death Determination in Equivocal Deaths and Staged Crime Scenes. So in terms of the literature there is a gap. There’s barely any, I only found one paper to do the staged crime scene in the UK and the majority of papers I found were in the US and followed by Australia. So that’s where the research is quite strong. Well, there’s still a gap in the research in my view but in the UK there’s a massive gap and to my knowledge police officers are still not getting any training in staged crime scenes or critical suspicious deaths. Coroner’s officers are becoming more administrative, they’re becoming more office bound, they’re in effect just putting papers together, they’re not investigating properly like a death investigator should. So if you’ve got police officers that don’t go to many suicides and they go to a scene that could be a murder staged of the suicide, they’re in naivety, they’ll be like, well this is a suicide, they won’t have that knowledge to spot those red flags.

So it is my view that I think those that investigate suspicious deaths every day should be going to scenes, they should be up skilled, they should be trained in blood stain pattern analysis, they should be trained in how to spot a staged crime scene and they should be open-minded enough on how to determine the difference between an accident, a suicide and a murder. So my research is looking at the differences that what we’re doing in England and Wales compared to what they’re doing in the US. So in the US you have medical examiners, so they carry out the post-mortems, they determine the manner of death and they have specially trained medico-legal death investigators that attend scenes and whilst America don’t get it right, they have their own mistakes as well. It’s to see if there’s any learning that we can share with America and likewise it may well be that we’re doing things really good here in one aspect that they’re not doing so well in America. So I’m doing a bit of a comparison to see if there could be a scope for improvement to prevent future miscarriages of justice.

Dr Naomi Murphy (57:44)

Thank you, Steph. And you’ve also set up an independent practice alongside your studies. What kind of work are you doing?

Stephanie Davies (57:51)

Yeah, so I’m doing the doctorate full time at the moment, but part time I’m working on complex and ambiguous cases. I’ve reviewed about 10 now. one of my reports is now with the CCRC for a potentially wrong conviction. I found evidence that the scene was not consistent with what was given in a false confession. So that’s now with the CCRC. There are others that have been submitted to the relevant police forces, a request from either the family or the legal team, please look at this case again. You might want to take into account this report that’s been written. So I do have a bit of a waiting list at the moment for current reports, so I have put that on my website. But after my doctorate, I’ll be looking at doing that full time. And it’s quite concerning as to how many cases that families and lawyers are having difficulty with potentially from mistakes that may have been made at the beginning.

Now half of the cases I’ve reviewed, I’ve reviewed that I agree with the police. I agree that it’s a suicide or an accident and I’m not finding evidence of a murder. But it may well be that my report helps them to understand better as to why that person may have taken their own life. So a bit like a psychological autopsy almost. Because there things that may not be covered at the inquest hearing and coroners don’t cover why a person took their own life, they just determine if they intended to take their own life. So often families are left with why did they take their own life and that’s something I can help with. So I do that and also I’ve done some media work as well, I’ve done podcasts similar to this, I’ve done some documentaries and I give guest lectures as well to quite a few universities. So that’s keeping me quite busy as well. After my doctorate I’ll be launching into my next career full-time and I’m really excited about it.

Dr Naomi Murphy (59:58)

That’s great, thank you. And we will share a link to your website in our show notes if anybody’s interested to check out what you’re doing. But finally, Steph, we’re nearly at the end of time, but spending your life around death must sharpen your perspective on living. What do you value differently now and how have you coped with brushing so close to, you know, looking at death so closely over 20 years?

Stephanie Davies (1:00:21)

It’s something I originally was only going to do for about a year and then I thought I’ll move on, I’ll probably do something more related to blood spatter or crime scenes. But I just fell in love with the job, there’s something so unique about it. And every day I was learning something new, a new cause of death and something I hadn’t considered before. So every day I was learning something new and it’s not something, it’s not like a job where you think I’ve learned everything now, it’s time to move on. It’s one of those, but as I was getting promoted, I was becoming more of a manager and I thought my heart’s not really, I really want to investigate, but I don’t want to just investigate limited suspicious deaths. I want to investigate complex, equivocal, potentially staged scenes. That’s what I really want to do. And the only way to do that is to be self-employed and to work as an independent consultant. But I also keep myself, safe in the respects of the downtime, like avoiding the news, finding too much news, after dealing with trauma all the time and then you turn on the news, more trauma across the world, it’s a bit overwhelming.

Staying close to nature, spending time with my cats, even watching things that are nothing to do with death, something really light hearted and you know, that kind of balances things out. But it does help me to value life and see how important life is and crucially getting those answers for families and that is what’s rewarding about it. To get into the truth and it’s not about getting results, it’s about being inquisitorial and just working out the sequence of events. every death is like a puzzle, you know, and it’s like making sure where do the puzzle pieces go and are the pieces missing? Is there evidence that’s not been found yet? So that’s something, yeah, it’s my life goal now is to keep doing that until I retire.

Dr Naomi Murphy (1:02:21)

Lovely, really fascinating to talk to you today, Steph. Thanks very much for coming along.

Stephanie Davies (1:02:26)

Thank you.

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So today’s guest, Keith Grounsell, has spent nearly 30 years in law enforcement and his achievements include spending six years deep undercover in narcotics. He led a 36 county gang violent crime task force in Kansas and he’s worked with national police forces from over 85 countries. He founded The Institute of Global Integrity and Leadership and is an author of many books related to leadership in law enforcement. And we’re really pleased you could join us, Keith. Thanks so much.

Keith Grounsell (00:54)

Thank you so much for having me.

David Jones (00:55)

Hi Keith, it seems that a major part of your story really started 20 years ago when you were hired as an undercover police officer. What did your work entail then?

Keith Grounsell (01:07)

Yeah, that’s correct. It actually started 25 years ago. So my first deep undercover assignment was after I spent three years as a police officer for another agency. And at the time I decided to go work for a largest agent, one of a largest municipal police departments in a state of South Carolina. And when I did, I walked in, it was around the first or second day of orientation where they yanked me out of orientation and said, from now on, you’re assigned to vice narcotics unit. You’re going to be working deep undercover. You’re not allowed to associate with police officers. We’re to have to push out an image that you were fired. You failed a drug test and use excessive force. And we want you to work with these guys. And they assigned me to a group of guys. And it was kind of shocking, to be honest with you. I’ve been a cop for three years and thoroughly enjoyed it and enjoyed wearing a badge and a uniform and things like that. Then all of a sudden I’m thrust in this undercover position that I didn’t even know was coming. And, I went deep undercover. It was only supposed to be initially maybe a four month assignment. Did the first four month assignment. I went deep undercover what they call all night dance parties called raves. And it was techno music, poly drugs, just an experimental atmosphere of an assortment of different drugs. But it predominantly focused around ecstasy, MDMA, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine. And so that was my focus. I went in, I was younger. And so I looked like a cop though. I didn’t have any facial hair, had short hair. So I pierced my ears immediately. I bleached my hair blonde. I got the clothing to fit into the dance parties. And I started studying. I was not a guy who was raised around a bunch of drugs. And I never really experimented much, you know, early in my teenage years or anything like that, other minor peer pressure stuff. But so I was thrust into this atmosphere with zero training and I made plenty of mistakes. And for me, it was a trial by fire and I survived it. It ended up being 47 drug dealers we arrested in the first operation with hand to hand transactions and many of them, two, three transactions each.

So it just wasn’t one deal and then walk away or anything like that. And the interesting thing about that whole entire undercover operation called Operation Lights Out was 47 times I bought ecstasy from different drug dealers. 47 different drug dealers. Only one time was it actual pure MDMA ecstasy. Every time it was presented as that, but every other time it was something else, a concoction of different drugs. And that’s a scary thing that we see nowadays you know, with fentanyl and different drugs that are laced inside of what you believe you’re getting and you’re seeing many overdoses. And they even had people at large raves that were field testing and drug testing the drugs you would buy to determine what it was actually. Cause a lot of times it was methamphetamines back then, occasionally heroin, very rarely was it fentanyl cause fentanyl 25 years ago, you know, it was around, but it was more under pharmaceutical names. Like they called them Actiq suckers and you would buy small micrograms, like 750 micrograms of one of those. And it was pretty potent. And then, you know, a Mexican cartels got involved and they started perfecting it and making it in bathtubs or in labs and things like that. And then it’s just mass produced and the overdoses are just through the roof right now. So I did that about four months went pretty good. They asked me to go undercover on street level deals. So I went from kind of clean cut in these nightclubs, dance atmosphere to posing as a drug addict. And I had to pose as a crackhead, a crack cocaine user and a heroin addict. So I was like, well, I don’t really look like one because I’m athletic. I work out all a time. So I started doing a lot more cardio, lost about 10 pounds, wore a lot of baggy clothes, withdrawal track marks on my arms, you know, before I go out and started using what I call second skin, using a lot of props to give burn marks on my face from smoking a crack pipe and different things like that, just to make me more believable. And that operation went really well as the first one did. And I can’t remember a exact number. I think we arrested 88, 87 different drug dealers in that operation. And a crazy part was two cop killers, two guys that had been convicted of killing police officers in my area. The only reason they didn’t go to prison for life was they took a plea deal to testify against somebody else who was involved because there were no witnesses and there weren’t body cams back then.

And so they went to prison for like five years or eight years. They got out. They got involved in drug activity and just so happened one of them pulled a gun on me on an undercover deal. And thank God I just, I played like I was high and was real focused on getting the drugs and not, I didn’t panic or anything like that. And he just put it away. It was kind of intimidation thing to see how you’re going to react. That’s a lot of times, you know, if you’re a drug addict, you want to get high. That’s all you care about. So you have to put across that image that you just want to get high. And he ended up getting 20, I think it was 25 years for a drug transactions. But only got eight years or less for killing a cop, which is absolutely crazy. But that was the atmosphere that I was in, very dangerous dealing with those individuals. And I stayed about another four months plus undercover. And at the time, my chief of police said, you know, this is too dangerous for somebody to be deep undercover for more than a year. And he believed the psychological effects were too much. There was no testing. Nobody took me in, polygraphed me, took me to a psychologist, anything like that. Nobody even asked me any questions. They pulled me out of undercover. Well, I was pretty upset. You know, I had devoted my life and dedicated it to this role where I disassociated with all my friends. The rumour mill was all around and it sabotaged my reputation and things like that. So I was upset. So I got recruited by a sheriff’s office, which is the largest in the state of South Carolina. And I went to go work for them and pretty quickly they put me deep undercover. I spent another three years with them deep undercover. Then I wanted to reach what I call a pinnacle of drug enforcement. Then I became a special agent with a US Drug Enforcement Administration and they transferred me from the East Coast to the Midwest. And we work cases all around a United States and into Mexico, Canada. And there were lot of international cases in Europe, Africa, you name it. I mean, the drug nexus is all tied together. All criminal organisations, not all, but a vast majority of them get their funding through the drug nexus. And now human trafficking is probably the bigger one, because you can sell a person multiple times, but you can only sell drugs once in order to make your profit. So yeah, I spent six years doing that. And honestly, it was a lot. And I started, I got married. I wasn’t married. I got married. I had two boys. I have four children now, at a time. And it started to change for me when I started dealing with the cartels. The cartels were different. They were business oriented. They would run my driver’s license. They wanted to check my DOT stickers on my truck.

They wanted to inspect my background. So I had to have a squeaky clean background. And this image that I created with this criminal history of this bad guy was okay, but they wanted a kind of a clean slate, somebody that would go underneath the radar. And I started doing that and I realised, you know, these guys won’t necessarily, like a street dealer shoot you in a face during a middle of a deal because they’re high and they’re wanting to get, you know, rob you to go get money to go buy drugs. They’ll actually kill your family. They’ll stalk you, they’ll do different things to make your life miserable. So that was something that was ingrained in my head. Early on, I had some informants that got beheaded after one of my cases involving the cartels. And so for me, it made me think a lot about my kids and the consequences. And I decided, my wife at a time, had her second child, she was going through a very deep postpartum depression and I couldn’t be there. I was working over 100 to 110 hours a week and I, a lot of times I just didn’t even come home because I would be out in a city that was six hours away and I’d have a hotel room and I’d be doing transactions and meeting with my handler, they call him another DEA agent, we’d be running wiretaps, there’d be so much going on that I didn’t want to bring the attention home. So for me, it was more important to protect my family. Well, I did that by disassociation, you know, to a degree. I didn’t wear a wedding band. Nobody knew I had a family. My family became recluse like me. When we’re off duty, like when I’m off duty, I didn’t go anywhere. I isolated myself just because of a protection thing. I knew that if I just didn’t put myself in situations, I could protect myself and my family. But if we’re out there out and about when we run into some of these cartel members, which is bound to happen, especially at a federal level, when you’re in a smaller town and it’s loaded down with drug cartels, it was very tough mentally for me to go through something like that.

Dr Naomi Murphy (10:26)

Keith, can I ask, did you actually volunteer for it in the first instance?

Keith Grounsell (10:31)

No, I didn’t actually, but I’ll tell you, I didn’t volunteer for it. I didn’t even know I was going to be selected for it. I didn’t even know that was an opportunity. I thought I was just going to a bigger, more diverse agency, more action, things that I was looking for. I enjoyed being a cop, being a police officer on the street. But I will say though, I worked some hit and miss part-time undercover in my previous agency because I was a young face at a time. I was 22 years old, 23 years old, I could fit in and we bust somebody and they say, I can bring you with me to go to this house. And we do things like that. And I led my department my last two of three years in drug arrest. So I had a knack for doing that. And I think maybe that’s what they looked at and they picked me and I was just lucky enough to get selected. I had some really good mentors that were much older than me and much wiser than me. And they kind of like, hey, young buck, don’t do that. I go this direction and then they pull me in and it was to me the coolest thing in a world, but you couldn’t tell anybody. It was the most exciting time of my career, but I couldn’t tell anybody and that part of it had an effect on me a little bit.

David Jones (11:44)

Keith, when you got selected for this particularly challenging role early on, it sounds as if you went into it with real gusto. You prepared, you learned things. Is that the kind of aspect of your character that you would have recognised before?

Keith Grounsell (12:04)

Yeah, I’ve always been, from dating back to my younger years, I played soccer my whole entire life. I played soccer through college on a scholarship. I played some internationally on different policing missions. So for me, I’ve always been a go-getter, a hard charger, you know, a guy that always finds a way. What I lacked in skills, I made up for in work ethic. And that was always something I knew that I could control my work ethic. I couldn’t necessarily control my skillset. I could fine tune it and make it better, but nobody was going to outwork me. And that was kind of, that was my mind. That’s always actually been my mindset. It’s still my mindset to this day. That’s why I’ve published over 15 books, because I’m always just trying to do something better. And I don’t have a, I make goals consistently in my life. I’m always like, my goal this week is this, next week is this. I have a long-term goal for this, but I’m always boom, boom, boom. It’s important to have small goals, so you’re constantly having wins. But it’s also important to have a long-term goals as well. And that’s just been something that drive and grained into me. My father was a United States Marine. He worked three jobs growing up. He was an enlisted man. He wasn’t an officer so he wouldn’t make in the big dollars. And I saw, hey, that’s what you do as a man. You step up and you work. I think that visually seeing that, and then being a overachiever. I’m a middle child. So I feel like you don’t feel like you fit in. Sometimes you’re like, well, I’m not the oldest and I’m not a baby, but who am I? My identity was be the best and be the best at whatever you chose to be the best at. I believe that’s always been my approach and I’ve found great success. But when you are an overachiever, you will ruffle feathers. I mean, you will have people that are instantly, I don’t want to say necessarily jealous of you, but it’s to a degree it is. Like, wow, this guy is always coming in here trying to do so much, you know, but I’m smart enough to realise when I went into a brand new narcotics unit, I shut up for like the first couple of months. I was very quiet. All I did was support every other agent or every other narcotics investigator. And I realised that’s how you gain their trust. So I’m pretty savvy when it comes to my leadership abilities, cause I have an ability to like read body language.

And I think that’s what helped me a lot. My dad was in the Marines, so we moved every four years. So I was constantly changing my friend group and having to overcome and adapt and then make new friends. So I don’t really get really, really close to people, but I have really good relationships with the ones I am close to and they trust me. And that’s kind of how narcotics was. You had to go in, you know, gain their trust quickly enough for them to actually sell you something that’s illegal that could put them in prison and then slowly like withdraw yourself. So before they get busted, because you don’t want to be anywhere in sight, it’s very difficult working undercover if you’re involved in what we call by bust, you better go to jail with them because if not, your identity is burned. And I hated doing that. That was even more difficult. You had to do, falsify all the paperwork and then you had to have a judge do a bond hearing that was false. It was just a lot of stuff. It was better for me to go in do a deal, do two or three deals, not stack many charters beyond two or three. Just make sure you have at least one solid case. And then slowly say, I’m moving or I’m doing my stuff with this guy now. Hey man, something happened. I’m gonna lay low. And then just disappear and withdraw yourself. And then move on to a next person and they go on. And that was something that I did for myself to where I didn’t feel like I was picking on one person. Like, cause there were guys that would sell me 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times. But then I just be putting them in prison for life and really they’re going to plea bargain all the cases. And the reality is they’re a drug dealer and I wanted them to be punished for it or get help. Whatever the situation was. I don’t know if they’re an addict or, you know, a straight up trafficker, you know, the straight up traffickers, they go to prison in my opinion, but somebody who’s a drug addict, who’s selling to support a habit. I would love to see them go to rehab, get better and get clean. Cause I’ve seen really good people that I’ve busted that turned into informants and I dismissed all their charges and they’ve been very successful business people in a military and other things. So a drug addiction doesn’t totally define them, but it makes them into what I call a monster temporarily because all they care about is one track mind. I want to get high. I want to get high. I want to get high and nothing will stop them. And some people will resort to extreme violence because of that. And you got to understand that environment. This isn’t acting. You don’t get take one, take two, take three. You go in there and if you get discovered and you’re not good at presenting yourself, that’s it. You can be killed, you know, and go ahead.

David Jones (16:53)

Do you worry about the past catching up with you?

Keith Grounsell (16:58)

So I did for a long time. I’ve had two incidents where I ran into people that I put in prison for over a decade. And because I’ve been in this, you know, almost 30 years now and most recent one was in my second time as chief of police. I’m with my family. I’m in full uniform. I’m presenting myself to a community and I see a guy I recognise, but I don’t quite, it doesn’t tell me where I recognise this guy from. And he’s pretty big, he’s jacked up, like prison big I call, you know, strong. And he approaches me, he’s like, yo, hey, you remember me? And he shakes my hand and I’m a public figure. So, you know, I’m right there with him. And he squeezed my hand pretty hard. So I’m squeezing back and trying to do a masculine thing, but I don’t love this guy. And he’s like, man, you put me in prison. And I instantly, when he said something about his facial features, I recognised him. I said, yeah, man, I remember those days. I said, how you been? And he looked down at his child. He had a special needs child. And then he looked at his wife. He goes, man, you saved my life. He goes, I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. So those type of stories are really, really impacting. I’ve had a couple of those, but I had one on the flip side that got out and somewhat stalked me. And this was an individual that didn’t want to take responsibility for their actions. You know, they went 10 years in prison and got out and I was chief of police. My first go round where I was actually fighting corruption and it was a very public saga and I was immediately terminated when I tried to stand up and whistleblow on some corruption involving some police and politicians and I was terminated in 14 months. I fought to get my job back. After 14 months they determined I was a whistleblower gave my job back, gave me back pay for 14 months. And when I came in, I was hard charging. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew if you went after drug traffickers, like a top 5 % of criminals, you’re going to curtail crime in your area. And sure enough, in a short two year window, we went from number 28 safest city in a state to number one in a entire state of South Carolina. And during that time period, a mayor was exposed for public corruption and convicted in a three-day trial of two of three crimes against moral turpitude, removed from office by our governor of our state, and can no longer ever hold political office again the rest of his life. And then a head of investigations before my time had covered up a racially motivated rape and murder case. And I didn’t know quite the details of it, but my first act as a chief of police was I audited my property and evidence.

And I was given some of that advice by somebody that I really respected. I said, when you walk in as a new chief, as an outsider, get accountability of your organisation, but make sure that when you inherit 150, 200 years of evidence, that you make sure that from that day forward, you’re accountable. But from that day back, you better have an audit. And I mean a full blown audit. They brought in a team of seven people from the state and they audited my department for seven days. And I took a lot of political backlash. Like, why are you bringing in outsiders coming in? And I didn’t know why I was taking a backlash. Then two years later, about a year and a half later, or two years actually, I discovered it was because this person had signed out the evidence, said he’s taken it to the state crime lab to be processed for DNA and actually destroyed it to cover up a white suspects. And he pled guilty to his charges. He was convicted and shortly after they died of a massive heart attack. But the reality is there was corruption and I was fighting it and when you’re in that position and you’re known as that guy that fights stuff like that, man, people think you’re a problem child and it’s really disheartening for me. When I got into law enforcement, I got in to help people and I never second guessed. I was a little naive as a brand new top cop and I thought, okay, always do the right thing. They can never get anything on you. You’ll be okay no matter what. Well, I didn’t, I underestimated the fact that people would flat out lie. And I don’t know why I underestimated that. I’m a cop. I’ve been around a long time, but I did. I underestimated that. And I was very rigid when I was point blank asked by a mayor to overlook some stuff. And I was like, I’m a top cop in this town, a highest ranking law enforcement official. If I overlook this, who will handle it? And he looked at me, he said, exactly, boy. And it was just something ding ding like, am I being set up? Because I’ve been undercover for years. So I’m like, is this guy really asking me to do something straight up dirty? And I just flat out refused. And that’s what cost me. That was a trickle down effect. So still to this day, I have a black eye on my career. Because there is a group of people that only read a first story that comes out in a news. And Google is forever. I always tell people. When a story comes out on Google and it’s really bad because you’re not allowed to talk because you’re an employee and you can’t talk about personnel matters and things like that, well, a politicians can say what they want. And when a politicians put a narrative out, the media jumps all over it and they go with this narrative. And here I am like I’m the guy who actually blew the whistle on this. Why am I being treated like I’m a bad guy here?

Dr Naomi Murphy (22:23)

What is that like for you, Keith? Because I’m conscious of the fact that when you went undercover, your reputation was tarnished in order to justify you going undercover. And then here you are again after exposing corruption in the police. I mean, we’ve interviewed a lot of whistleblowers who’ve had their reputations trashed in that kind of way. You’re obviously someone with a lot of integrity, so it can’t be very comfortable to be trashed in this kind of public way.

Keith Grounsell (22:55)

No, it honestly was the hardest thing I’ve ever done mentally. And I felt like I was backed into a corner because everything I’d always worked for my whole life was, hey, I’m a man of integrity. I’m doing the right thing. I’m taking out the worst of the worst criminals. I felt like I was contributing in a positive way. And then all of a sudden, I’m a criminal. I’m a bad guy. I’m a problem. It’s like, wow, like, what do you do in this situation? And me, I felt like the only way to clear my name was to fight the injustice. And some people are like, why don’t you just walk away? Why don’t you just move on and go work somewhere else? You know, because chiefs get ousted all the time politically. I said, because I didn’t do anything wrong. And the people are like, well, that’s stupid. You’re going to lose everything. And literally it bankrupt me almost. I lost everything. I was very financially stable. I spent years overseas working. I had no mortgage payment, cars paid for, and I had to refinance my house, get money for my cars, and it was just to finance a legal battle. And for me, it was principal. It wasn’t about anything else. It was about clearing my name, and I cleared my name, but they still, there’s 50 % of the people out there think I was the problem. And it just hurts, you know, it hurts so bad and there’s no way to explain it to someone who’s never been there. All you can do is stay the course. And I believed over time it would show people. So I went overseas and fighting corruption overseas for a federal government as a contractor, they loved it. Cause I was going into some of a most corrupt nations in the world, you know, and advising up the presidential appointee levels of inspector generals over national police forces. So my integrity was something they loved. Well, back home, they didn’t love it so much. The local politicians didn’t know if I was like a problem or if I was a solution to a problem or if I was a troublemaker or what I was. So eventually I had an opportunity and became the chief of police a second time. So I had a six hour session with the city administrator and the mayor where I had to explain everything that occurred specifically just my previous terminations. It was really nice to have a opportunity where they actually listened to me.

And they said, alright, well, we want you to be our chief. We believe what you stand for, but we want you to come in and clean up our agency. It’s been lacking good leadership and the staffing is under 35%. They’re not very proactive and all of these things that I’m really good at. I was like, okay, this is great. So we did it. And all of sudden the haters came back out. Oh, Grouse was back and all these troubles. So for about a year and a half, things went really good. The city was ranked 151st safest city. It was a very dangerous, violent city with lots of gangs and different things. Poverty stricken about 95 % of the population there, very diverse. And I just, the people were actually decent people. So I really enjoyed that. So we dropped from 151st safest city to the top 40 in nine months. And it was just going hardcore. And we probably tripled our drug arrest and really started training the department and holding them to a higher standard. In six months, we were 100 % staffed with a waiting list of people. So then I started targeting paedophiles. And I had a young female officer that came in and she had a passion for human trafficking. And that was her thing. And I was like, okay, we have an opportunity here. She’s a fresh face. Nobody knows her. She looks super young. And that’s just an opportunity for us. So we presented her undercover online and man, the trolls, they came. And we started arresting, I think we arrested maybe like 24 paedophiles. And it started to get a lot of traction, because I believe in huge level of transparency. I believe we work for the people, we should tell them everything we’re doing, unless it’s a covert op-sys behind the scenes going on, and we’ll tell them at the end. Well, the mayor didn’t seem to like that. And he kind of hinted to me like, hey, focus somewhere else. And then it was like, hey, this is costing us a little bit of extra money because all the overtime. And then I was like, well, there’s zero overtime because all my command staff, are lieutenants and above are volunteering to do this and they’re salaried. I said, as a matter of fact, we seized, I think, eight or nine vehicles and a bunch of cash. So we’ve actually made about $9,000 already on this operation. So it’s a money-maker, which is not why we got into it, but it’s making cash. But it was kind of that focus. Well, during this time period, I had found out there was an internal affairs investigation. I found out there were three officers or one predominantly that had done some criminal acts.

And I asked administratively to focus on what he violated administratively and led an outside entity do the investigation from a criminal perspective. So I left that alone. We discovered quickly there was a lot more to it. And then we had two officers that covered up and lied, refused to take polygraphs. So I went to terminate three officers. So this is literally a week before I’m about to go get married. I’m divorced, remarried. OK, and we’ll talk about that later, but so I was about to get married and I was leaving the next day. They stopped my investigation, my internal affairs. They have no authority to come in from the outside and stop an internal investigation like that. And they did. And then they told me, we’ll deal with it when you get back. Well, I was leaving to go out of a country. So I had no choice but to just deal with it. So I went out, got married, had the honeymoon, came back. I came back at like 1:30 in the morning at 7:30 in the morning, I get a call says, come to the mayor’s office to meet with the mayor and city administrator. And I tried to log in. My email was blocked. I was like, this is very odd, you know, that whatever happened happened when I was gone. There was a lot of stuff going on. And so I came in and they forced me out. I say, you’re out of here. You got to go. And I talked with them and they eventually, you know, let me resign. And they gave me a severance to go, you know, move on and stuff. I tried to, I’ve learned like, I fought last time very rigidly, you when I was fighting against corruption and this time I was like, alright, I’m just going to go away. But I know the truth is going to come out because I know some officers are going to be very upset. And sure enough, they were. They tried to go to the mayor and talk to the mayor and they all got fired. Every one of them got ousted. So they lost over probably a dozen officers in a short period of time. And so for me, I just kind of went away. I was trying to, you know, save my career because you can get fired once and come back, but you can’t get fired twice and come back.

And so for me, I was able to resign and I moved on and man, it started to come out in the media. Some stuff hit the press, but there was so much going on in the world that it died out and it’s hit and miss here and there. And the stuff that actually happened never fully got exposed. And I’m sure it will. If I ever get called by the state law enforcement, I’m ready, you know, testify, have evidence, whatever they need. But the reality for me is two out of two times as the chief of police, I ran in this. And then people think, Grounsell left because he’s dirty or wow, it’s unbelievable to me that there are people that think that way, but they’re just ignorant. They don’t know what they don’t know. And politicians, you know, criminals wear like a mask and they do bad things and stuff like that. Politicians wear a suit and they have a title. That’s a dangerous concoction and they present themselves as something that they’re not a lot of times, not all of them. I’m not saying that there’s true public servants within, but a lot of them. And for me, it’s been a hundred percent of a time. And it’s very difficult to, you know, decide what I’m going to do next. I’m back overseas again, contracting. I’ve been eight years internationally, leadership roles, more than 20 something years and master’s degree, all these books, all this, but people are scared of me. And that hurts because I never once looked for anything. I don’t go digging to find stuff, but by God, if it comes at me, I feel I have a duty and a responsibility to act. And I do that. And I’m not afraid. I’ve always been the one like I address the problem in front of me. That’s just who I am. Because if you put on blinders, people aren’t going to trust you. It’s like, is he willing to tolerate? I don’t allow that to be a factor for me. I can be hard to work for because I demand excellence. I truly will push an officer to the highest level they’ve ever expected. And some people that are lazy don’t like that. But some people look back and say, chief, man, bro, I didn’t even think we could accomplish all these things in such a short period of time. I appreciate you pushing me. Those people I appreciate and the ones, haters are going to hate, if you don’t do anything great in your life, you never take a stand on anything in your life, you’re going to have zero enemies. But if you actually take a stand and do something in your life, you’re going to have a ton of enemies.

Dr Naomi Murphy (31:45)

So Keith, can I just ask, obviously, I think a lot of people have been really shocked by the Epstein files and seeing what’s in them. I’m guessing that’s not, that wasn’t your reaction.

Keith Grounsell (31:59)

Not at all. I’ve been involved in sex, human trafficking investigations. That case has disappeared after I did my initial. I know it’s everywhere. I mean, sex is the oldest profession, selling sex. This is the oldest profession in the world. And there’s always going to be people with that temptation, you know, that are going to move in that direction. But the problem is really, truly in my opinion, it starts out with little minor stuff like, Oh, I’m out of town away from my wife. Let me look at this porn site so I don’t go cheat on my wife and do, you know, watch this. And then it gets a little more extreme with porn. It’s like, instead of just basic porn, it goes like, let me look for like force, or let me look for, you say 18 and then it’s like teenager and then it’s like young looking. And then it starts going down that paedophiliac path and it trains your brain. Like this is normal. That’s not normal. You know, lot of the women in porn were forced into porn and it may not look like it. They may have been brought in on a modelling contract to take photos and while they’re taking photos, like, hey, go have a drink. We’re going to take a break. And they spiked the drink. And next thing you know they’re taking provocative photos. And then you realise and it triggers something in your brain and you’re like, this ain’t right. And they’re like, well, we’re going to release all these photos in these videos if you don’t do this. And then next thing you know is escalating more and more. They’re not letting them leave. They’re captivated in a hotel room for a week. And then it’s recording and recording. They tell them, hey, if you don’t smile in these scenes and make it look like you enjoy it, then we’re gonna keep doing it. So it’s like to a woman psychologically, do I want to continue to be raped or do I want to act like I’m enjoying it just to stop being raped? Imagine, I couldn’t even imagine that decision. That’s worse than getting killed. You know, death is instant that is psychological destruction. And that’s what they do. And then they hold that and say, we’ll release it to your family, to anybody. Meanwhile, it’s released on the black web. It’s released on porn sites and the generations now are younger and younger looking at porn. I mean, the average person looking at porn now is probably five years younger than it was, you know, 10 years ago, on an average amount. That’s grooming people for expectations in relationships and expectations and what sex is. People are being taught by the internet instead of being taught, you know, by the parents. That’s why I started writing children’s books. I have three children’s books and I try and teach the basics and it sparks conversations with parents to have with their kids and talk about some of these tough subjects because if you don’t teach your kids, somebody is going to teach your kids. It’s just like if you don’t go to the media and tell them a story, they’re going to find someone who wants to tell the story and that narrative is going to go.

Dr Naomi Murphy (34:47)

So Keith, you’ve obviously been exposed to lots of things, a really unpleasant side of society. It sounds like you’ve been in really dangerous situations, which must be frightening. And then also you’ve seen these really unsavoury, abhorrent practices. What kind of toll do you think that’s taken on you to live life so immersed in that kind of culture?

Keith Grounsell (34:53)

So you have to as a parent have those conversations. For me, I’m hyper vigilant. Like I’m always like, I don’t appear that way. I used to teach a technique. I had an undercover school that I built and it’s a technique that I coined a phrase of relaxed intensity on the outside. As an undercover, you always should appear relaxed because you know, you just kind of chill and stuff like that. You don’t want to be confrontational, but on a inside, I’m as intense as any human being on a planet earth. I’m ready to fight for my life at any second. I’m ready to dive out a window. I’m ready to do whatever I got to do to survive. So doing that, it’s like up, down, up, down. I live with a ton of stress, but you will not see it. But my stress is all inside. I have stomach issues. You know what I’m saying? So I’ve been able to process it internally, but a problem with your, that type of thinking in normal life is, I don’t get excited outwardly about things I should get excited outwardly about. And for me, sometimes that lack of excitement shows a lack of interest. And if your children are at a sporting event, there’ll be occasions where you’ll get excited. And I’m a very high speed guy. But I’ve just learned when things are crazy, I kind of get a smirk on my face and I’m in my element. The crazier it is, the more things weirdly slow down in my brain. Like I’m seeing everything slow motion and everybody else is seeing it fast. And it’s just the oddest thing. And I don’t know how to explain it. And I think it’s just from repetition, doing it so many times and you’re processing things at a different level. But the hardest part about doing the undercover work or being a police officer in general is you’re so Monday morning quarterback. You’re so scrutinised by every single thing you do and nobody’s considering a human factor. You know, we’re emotional beings, we have anger issues at the same time as anybody else. We respond when somebody assaults us or attacks us and training yourself to try not to do those messes you up internally. Here, stomach, everything and then it trickles down to your family. So your family’s drastically affected by it. They will never really say it, but your family sees you going from you know, a Keith in high school, you know, Mr. Popular athlete, all this, you know, fun outgoing for everything to reserved, focused, serious, driven, nothing gets in my way. I’m, you know, getting this done. That’s not truly who I am, but it’s who I had to become and I can’t shake it. So it’s like when you’re working undercover, you get in this role so you don’t get killed and when you’re at home, you’re at home for only a few hours with your family before you go to bed and you wake up and do it all over again. So if you turn it off and forget to turn it back on, you get killed. So it’s kind of like when you’re at home, you’re practicing another role in your head. So you’re mentally not even home. You’re physically home, but you’re not there. And that’s why I started writing my undercover books back, you know, 19 plus years ago, I started writing. So you have a police report and then you have an undercover report that tells the details. Like I bought this beer with undercover money and I drank this many beers and I did this and this is why I did this. And it’s very detailed, not in a police report.

It’s something that, so it sparks your brain two years later at a trial, what you actually did, how many beers you had, how much money you spend on what and so on and so forth. So I took those and I started writing my own notes in them. Like, yeah, this made me feel this way, you know? And for me, that was like really impactful. It was almost like, you know, somebody sends you a message or does something to you and you type up a nasty response and you never send it. It’s kind of processing in the brain. And then you’re like, I’m glad I didn’t send that. And that’s kind of how it became for me. And I did that for years undercover. And then afterwards I went back to the stories and wrote a little more detail in them. And then I started saying, I told one of my stories to a guy who’s a does a movies. And he created a film on a human trafficking. It’s called Bound to Human Trafficking Story, it won 13 International Film Festivals. And he created a story out of it, a movie. And my buddies are like, dude, you need to tell your stories. So then I wrote my book series, it was going to be one book. It ended up being four books called A Narc’s Tale. And it’s about my life working undercover at a city level, a county level, a federal level. And I took off from there. And then I got a TV show on A &E. We had one season on that, didn’t get another season. It’s politics behind the scenes with that. And so it’s just been really an adventure. And then I realised I can tell a story the way I want to tell it with the real details if I write it. I don’t forget. When I’m speaking to you guys, sometimes I may forget a minute detail. But when I write it, I can proofread it 10 times. And I’ll make sure I get the detail and tell the story the way it needs to be told. And that’s why I self-published. I had, in California and New York publishing companies that were like, hey, we want you to do this, but we want to commercialise it. We want to take out the psychological effects. We want to put more action and do, I’m like, no, that’s not my story. My story is different. So I told my story the way I wanted. It’s primitive. It’s how I write. And now I’ve evolved as a writer. I’ve done a lot of different things since then, but that, my series of Narc’s tale is raw. And it’s straight up about me getting in trouble growing up to almost not becoming a cop, to becoming a cop, to getting robbed on my first undercover deal, to you know, buying from cop killers to doing murders for hire to infiltrating cartels to having, you know, seeing kids murder to just you name it. And then how all that correlated to the rest of my career and finding great success internationally as the chief of police finding the drug nexus because all crimes are linked to drugs. About 95 % of them in some way, shape or form, there’s the drug nexus, whether it’s addiction, whether it’s trafficking, whether it’s just sheer violence from a drug deal gone bad or gang activity, they’re all linked. So as police, if we focus on drugs, high level drugs, low, low, low level, get them rehab, get them treatment and stuff, but high level drugs, you’re containing all your crime. I’ve done it twice, I know it works. And so many chiefs and sheriffs don’t do it. I just don’t understand.

David Jones (41:43)

Keith, can I just take you back a bit because you clearly had something of a whirlwind career where you’ve encountered many challenges and overcome most of them. Although I recognise that being sacked is a terribly traumatic event as is being threatened with a sack, so it’s not been that easy for you all a time. What kind of effect has that had on your relationships?

Keith Grounsell (42:16)

I think it makes me defensive quickly in situations. Makes me feel like I have to over explain everything. I’m very detail oriented. So not only at home and at work, you know, I feel like I’m always, I’m doing something to cover something else, you know? So it creates, I always had a perfectionist mindset. Like I want to perfect, perfect, perfect. But I’ve realised over a years you can’t do that. That’s actually a negative thing. So just present what you have and go with it. It’s made me reluctant to develop friendships and relationships with people. I’m very lucky. My wife now, she’s wonderful. She appreciates every little thing I do and thinks I’m the greatest man in the world, which I’m not, but I appreciate the fact that whatever she came from wasn’t what she deserved. And now because of that, both of us are appreciative of one another. And I have a good relationship with my ex-wife. We just grew apart. When you go through, the undercover is not what hurt our relationship. Let me just be honest with you. It’s fighting corruption. My family got destroyed. Like I was on a front page of a newspaper 15 plus times. They founded a newspaper to destroy me, compared me to Hitler, mob bosses, you name it, everything they could do to destroy you, they did it to me. I had cartoon characters about me. I had everything. And then they would attack my wife. They would attack my children. And it was just a constant attack, attack, attack. And now it’s even to this day, I’ve had 25 times I’ve had my identity stolen, or more than 25 actually. People harass, people using my identity online. I mean, I’ve even had cases in the UK, two or three women where somebody’s been using my identity and trying to get money out of and it’s just like, man, like, I don’t know if it’s because I’m so public now, or if it’s some of the past people just holding vendettas because people are evil and mean, and they don’t give up and nobody likes to be held responsible. So if you can’t like defend your platform and life from corruption or something you’ve done wrong, what’s the only way you get out of it? Discredit a source. Discredit a whistleblower.

So if you attack a whistleblower and discredit them, then nobody’s going to believe anything, even if you’re guilty of sin. And that’s what I’ve experienced. I’ve seen that repeatedly. And I’ve talked to, I can’t even count how many, dozens and dozens of other chiefs who’ve experienced it. Most of them do not fight. They take their severance package and they walk away and they go live to see another day. Cause they’ve seen what happens to guys like me. When you fight, you get destroyed. So for me, I write, I put it out there. I’m not afraid because you can’t be sued for defamation for facts. Especially when you’ve had convictions in court. I mean, that is what it is. These people are found guilty by a trial, a jury of their peers. So for me, that’s been the hardest thing, but it has definitely affected my relationships and things like that. It takes a special woman to be with somebody like me. And then my kids are amazing. My kids have been affected by it. My oldest son’s 21. He’s in a US Army now, so I don’t know if he’s following somewhat in my footsteps. And then I have one about to graduate high school in a week. And then my daughter is 16. She wants to be an orthodontist. And she’s like my studious one, very driven, very much like me when it comes to that. And then I have my youngest son, Hunter, who’s nine, who right before I got divorced, we adopted him. And he was born a drug addicted baby. And in all my whole career, I’ve always stood against drug trafficking, done all these things. And I felt like when this opportunity came, God presented like this little child. And it was like, man, put your money where your mouth is. You always talk and all this stuff, here’s an opportunity. We knew his mother. She suffered from addiction. His dad was a gang member. Wasn’t friends with him by any means. So he was a week old. He was prematurely born. And he was four pounds. They tested him. He tested positive for methamphetamine or opioids and crack cocaine. So he’s considered what they call a crack baby in America. And so it came and honestly, he’s been a blessing. You never think you can love another child that’s not your blood the same and you can. I can tell you that I can testify to that. He helped my daughter, who was a baby, grow up. He just brought a different light to a family.

And unfortunately, we went through the divorce afterwards, but I paid child support, still get custody, all that stuff, because he’s my son. That’s all I know. And that’s way it’s always going to be. But in life, you get tested a lot of times and you resolve. And for me, I’m very committed. I run fast, and I do things fast. But I also understand I’m running in a marathon. This is a long race. And it’s about consistency. And one person told me one time, a politician who I actually respect, he said, no press is bad press in the long run. And I said, what do you mean? He said, it’s name recognition. People see your name repeatedly. And in the press, you see this in politics around the world, you got some idiots. You got some people that have done some hideous stuff. But people recognise their name. Like, I recognise him. They don’t know why they recognise you. And then I’m going for him because I know that name. It’s that level and that’s showing a level of lack of intelligence for some of the population, but that’s a reality. And so for me, but I don’t like politics. I’ve been asked to run for mayor. I’ve been asked to run for political office and do things. And at one time I put my name in the hat to run for sheriff in the largest county in the state of South Carolina. And I went through my divorce and I just felt like I couldn’t commit emotionally and everything to a citizens and I withdrew from the process and endorsed the guy who’s the sheriff now. But for me, it’s everything’s about the commitment. And because I can’t, here’s something funny about working the years undercover. So I role played for six years and I don’t say lie. I don’t like to say lie. I role played because lying is something that’s sacred to me. Like, so for my life now, I cannot lie about anything. I will get nervous. I will shake. It’s a weird, it’s some response that I can’t even explain to people. Like I cannot lie. And I don’t know if it’s just all psychological or something that was ingrained in me. I role played for so many years and I made sure when I testified, I always said I role played is like acting. So isn’t it true? You lied for a living? No, I never lie. I always role play. And for me, because my integrity is the most important foundation and character and discipline. I can’t lie. And that’s actually a good thing, but it’s a curse at times, kind of little white lies for your kids to teach them a right direction. No, daddy didn’t do that, you know, but it’s just something that’s happened to me and I can’t say why. I think it’s from all my experiences and I despise liars. I despise them with everything inside of me. And I really can’t stand people who don’t do their homework and attack, a whistleblower or attack a person that’s trying to fix things because they don’t like their personality. They don’t like their spunk, their fight, their tenacity, their steadfastness. They don’t like that. And I understand not everybody has to like me, but you have to look deeper and is this person trying to do the right thing? And people are like, your ego this because you’re writing all these books. Well, how else am I going to market my books if I self publish? If I don’t tell my story, I don’t have a choice in this.

Dr Naomi Murphy (49:51)

So Keith, sounds like writing’s been really therapeutic for you. It sounds like writing’s helped you cope. Are there other things that you’d like to have seen be in place to make some of the positions you’ve had be less psychologically impactful?

Keith Grounsell (49:56)

Yeah, I believe if there was some level of, so I always say this and I’ve said a million times is so the chief of police in the United States is appointed by a group of politicians on City Council or some county police forces. There’s pretty rare, but they’re appointed by elected officials and they’re not guaranteed tomorrow. We don’t have where I’m from unions. We don’t have anything like that is straight up at will employee. If they want you going tomorrow, you’re gone. They have a disagreement, you have the majority go against you, you’re gone. Well, a sheriff is elected by the people. They’re guaranteed their term unless they’re criminally convicted of a certain level of crime and they’re removed by the governor of that state, at least in South Carolina. So for me, it would be nice to see some contracts written for police chiefs on a consistent basis. They have them in unionised states, but I’m talking on a consistent basis to guarantee that political interference with bad intentions cannot happen. You know, if you have a, I asked for a contract and oh no, no, no, no. I paid an attorney $5,000 to negotiate a contract for me and they pushed out my contract demands during attorney negotiations and said, look at Grounsell trying to strong arm us. When I was coming back after being reinstated, I was just trying to get some stabilities, but they destroyed me. And my attorney said, Keith, it’s better that you just walk away from that. So I lost $5,000 trying to get a contract so I had some stability level. Sure enough, two years later, the people that I indicted and convicted, the mayor, hired a bunch of people, committed ethics violations, all convicted of that. It’s only a fine in my state. Get me removed. And they got elected and they came into the house to me again. And it’s just like, wow, there’s no protections for chiefs of police and you can be the most ethical, honest person and you’re going to get destroyed. But if you put on your blinders and you don’t look at this because the mayor doesn’t want you to see this or this council member doesn’t want you to see this, you’ll last a long time.

Dr Naomi Murphy (52:02)

You’re obviously a really strong person, Keith, to have coped with all of these experiences. I’m just conscious of the time and clearly you’ve used writing as a way of coping and we will share links to your books in our show notes as well. Is there anything else that’s been important in terms of supporting your wellbeing, you’ve been living in a very threatening situation for a very long time.

Keith Grounsell (52:18)

Yeah, for me, it’s been my faith and faith has to be blind. So there’s a lot of things that happened to me that I’ll never quite understand. And there’s people out there that are presenting themselves as Christians and good people. And they’re the ones who are evilly attacking for the most part, a lot of them. And for me, I had to come to a realisation through my faith that vengeance is not mine. Revenge is not mine. It’s God’s. And my time on earth here, is to get into heaven. That’s all I’m here for. And the more I can contribute, the better my chances when I get to those pearly gates of being questioned, hey, why did you do this? Or what happened on this date? I don’t want that question. I’d rather just be like, listen, I may not have done it right, but I had good intentions along a process. So my faith is my biggest thing. My fitness, I work out seven days a week. I’m 51 years old. I do everything in my power to stay active. I’m not trying to be a bodybuilder. I don’t care about all that crap, the beach muscles. I’m just trying to keep my heart healthy. And that’s what’s important. And me feeling confident, like I can handle my business in case somebody does come back and try and challenge me or I’m in pretty nasty environments. Like right now where I’m at, you know, you can’t even go grocery shopping without armed security. You’re in an armoured vehicle everywhere you go. And I’m fixing to leave here and go shopping after this. So that’s my reality that I live in. So I got to stay fit. But also, you have your spiritual, your physical, and then your mental. For me, my mindset is do your best all the time. Never compromise your integrity. As long as you maintain that character and that discipline, no matter what they say about you or do to try and destroy you, it doesn’t matter. Because in a end, you know who you are. I sleep really, I do sleep really good at night. Like I don’t worry about like, somebody’s going to say Grounsell did this. And they try. I’ve had one weeks ago try and say blame me for something years ago that went wrong in that department.

And they try to bring it up again. I just, I laugh about it because I’m like, the devil’s always trying to get you if you’re doing good. But if the devil’s not trying to get you, you better watch out. That means you joined his forces. So for me, you know, healthy mind, body and spirit. If I maintain those three and it’s hard, it’s ups and downs and you have to be resilient and just process. My wife knows like when I go quiet, I’m processing, she knows it’s nothing personal. And if I get into writer zones, I’ll spend three days straight. I’ll stay up till 2 a.m. sleep for three hours, get up and write and I’ll write literally hundreds of pages in a weekend. Because I can text to talk, or I can type really fast as well. And I don’t worry about typos, and I wrote a book on how to write books. I figured out a system of putting it down on paper and getting books out. That’s why, about how do you publish so many books? Well, number one, I’m overseas. In the evenings, I have nothing to do. I don’t have cable. I don’t have a TV. I don’t have all that stuff. So when I’m here, I’m literally focused, hyper-focused. And I have two other books pending right now. I wrote a sociological and criminological theory book for universities. And I’m just still doing a lot of research, has hundreds of references in it. And for me, that’s my background, sociology, and then also my master’s degrees in criminal justice. So I love the theory of crime and how it affects societies and people, and then the psychological aspects of being labelled as a criminal versus someone who never got caught, and the factors of the environment. To me, that’s fascinating. I believe every chief should study that. And if you don’t understand that, you’re not going to understand your population. That’s the only reason I’ve been able to be very successful in curtailing crime, making cities safer is because I listen to a people. I don’t know anything when I walk into these communities, but I do know, shut up and listen to the community and they’re going to tell you exactly what they want. It’s very simple. Like, what do y’all need? Oh, you want me to deal with a speeding problem in your neighbourhood? Or you’re worried about your kids’ safety? You’re worried about paedophiles? Or you’re worried about drug traffic? Okay, deal with those sites. And if you do that, you’ll find great success. It’s not rocket science. It really isn’t. I write all about it in my books.

David Jones (56:49)

Keith, I’ve got to ask you something before we come to the end because it’s been fascinating listening to you, but I want to ask you, do you ever slow down?

Keith Grounsell (57:00)

I’ll be honest with you, no. Early in my career, I think I was one year on, it was 1999. I had a sergeant tell me you’re going to get burned out. You need to slow down. You’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to catch yourself. And I told him, I said, this is my personality. I’m a workhorse. This is what I do. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m a team player. You’ll see that when you work with me. It’s rubbed a lot of people wrong because I don’t slow down. They’re like, slow down with publishing books, or you should stack them every six months, or you should do this. I’m like, no, I’m going to be me. I’m going to do my thing. And I know one day I’m going to slow down. Like when I go back home and I go whatever career choice I decide to go next, I’m going to focus on that. So I’m writing as many books as I can in my downtime right now, because every experience I have, negative or positive, I try and share. And I’m hoping somebody doesn’t have to go through the crap I went through because I’m showing them. I have many chiefs reach out to me from around the world. I helped in Africa. I helped them found a federal witness protection agency. I’ve helped guys write their first books in remote villages in Africa too, you name it. I’m always trying to help somebody because I feel like I wish I would have had some of this help and I didn’t necessarily, but I did have good mentors along the way that checked on me when I needed to be checked. They told me things or they demonstrated like my father demonstrated what a real leader does. So yeah, I don’t slow down. I’ve never slowed down. And I actually get a really huge dopamine release when I see an injustice. Like I’m going to tell you, it fires me up. It’s like when I was a narcotics investigator, I was a dog, man. You didn’t want me on your trail. I promise you. Like if I thought you were a drug trafficker, I’m gonna do everything in my power day and night. I’m gonna catch you.

You have to get lucky every single day. I have to get lucky once to put you in prison. And I always tell people, the chances are I’m going to get you. And I have many people I put in prison that had zero record. I put them away for decades. Had zero, not even a speeding ticket. And they were straight up drug traffickers. So for me, I’m not afraid to go after those people. I think that lack of fear helps, not ignorance. I’m ready to fight when I need to. I’m ready to lose my wife if I have to. But it’s fearless to a degree, but cautiously optimistic about everything. I’m not jaded at all. All of the stuff I’ve been through, I still believe, mainly, pretty much 95 % of the people are decent. But that 5 % is very loud and vocal, and they’re evil. They’re flat out. They don’t even need to be in society. They’re like a worst people on earth. And I want to go out. That’s kind of my focus and it’s always been my passion. So I’ve tried to get out of law enforcement and I just, can’t. It’s ingrained in me as who I am. I’ll die doing it. I’ll die educating people, you know, and hopefully I’ll leave some legacy even to people that hate me and maybe respect me. The mayor that got indicted and convicted said, I never said Grounsell was a bad law enforcement officer, a bad cop. He’s a hell of an investigator I just don’t think he’s a good chief. And then somebody else was like, well, I think he should be the chief in a major metropolitan. He’s not made for a small town. Is that really a negative? Not really. But you have to look at those things. I try to find the positive in everything. And that’s probably why I get burned a lot, because I have to extend a little bit of trust in order to get something in life. I get my hands chopped off a lot. But I still believe in people. I believe in helping. I believe it’s my mission.

Dr Naomi Murphy (1:00:43)

It’s been a terrific conversation, Keith. You’re full of interesting stories, but we need to be wrapping up round now. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of that information. Really fascinating career you’ve had.

Keith Grounsell (1:00:45)

Thank you all.

Thank you. It’s truly been a pleasure and I appreciate platforms like this to be able to have these candid discussions and the fact that y’all are digging into the psychological side of things is very important. I think it’s something that the cop culture hasn’t talked about enough. I believe modern day we’re doing more, but we have it for many years. We’ve shunned it like, if you ask for help, they’re going to take your badging gun because you’re mentally unstable.

Dr Naomi Murphy (1:01:22)

Yeah. Thank you.

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Today we are joined by Jean Trounstine. Hi, Jean. Really glad to meet you today. Glad you could join us.

Jean Trounstine [00:00:30]:

Thank you. I’m really happy to be with you both.

David Jones [00:00:34]:

Jean, you’ve had a remarkable career as an academic teaching English literature at the Middlesex County College in Massachusetts. And of course, that’s only part of the story because you’ve also worked actively in supporting women in prison and you believe in the transformative power of literature. Can you tell us how you got into that path? What was it that interested you in that line?

Jean Trounstine [00:01:02]:

Okay, I’m going to try not to be as long as I possibly could be, David. But I will say that two things happened. One is that I had an epiphany when I saw a play in California done by a formerly incarcerated prison group. That was way before I started teaching at Middlesex Community College. But that stuck inside me because I had never seen or even considered the idea that people behind bars could take a piece of literature and turn it into a production. That’s one thing. The second thing is that when I was teaching at Middlesex, I was also actually taking a poetry class from a now friend of mine, wonderful woman, who was offered a job teaching at Framingham, and she couldn’t do it. She had too many things to do.

Jean Trounstine [00:02:03]:

And I thought this would be an incredible opportunity. It never occurred to me what it would be like to teach people behind bars. I hadn’t thought of people behind bars, but I thought this would be interesting. So actually I began teaching behind bars before I began directing plays of the women in one of my classes said to me, Jean, the men get to do theatre. Why don’t we? And that was putting those two things together, the impetus for me to start actually working with theatre behind bars.

David Jones [00:02:40]:

That’s very interesting. I think we’ve noticed this before, haven’t we, Naomi? How good ideas in one prison can be picked up by another one through interests, envy and emulation.

Naomi Murphy [00:02:52]:

But I was also reminded, Jean, of a conversation that we had with Baz Dreisinger. I don’t know if you know her, she works in New York State.

Jean Trounstine [00:03:03]:

Sorry, say the name again.

Naomi Murphy [00:03:07]:

So she’s a professor of English as well and done a lot of work with people who are incarcerated and she visited various prisons across the world. Kind of like looking at how different countries approach justice. So more of a sort of non fiction focus, perhaps. But it’s really interesting, I think, to see how the arts get into prisons and how it offers something nourishing to people inside.

Jean Trounstine [00:03:35]:

I think that so many things happen with prisons that are maybe serendipity or by happenstance, because prisons don’t really want education behind bars. It goes against the goals of the prison, which is to, in my mind, get people to be conformists in our society and follow laws, which is not a bad thing. But being conformists can have its drawbacks in other ways. And in terms of art, you really have to take risks to do creative things. And I think using the risk taker nature of somebody who might get in trouble with the law in a positive way is what I always felt was what I wanted to do.

David Jones [00:04:32]:

Thank you. Jean, you’ve already mentioned Framingham Prison. So I don’t know anything about Framingham Prison. Can you say a bit about it?

Jean Trounstine [00:04:44]:

Framingham is the women’s prison in Massachusetts. There really is only one in our state. And some states across the country have more than one, but most have only one because the number of women incarcerated is so small, even though they’re more harshly incarcerated in many ways than men. But Framingham is the women’s prison, and it’s really medium security, but it has many maximum security features, certainly not minimum. It doesn’t have that many women in it anymore compared to when I was teaching and working there, because I was there in the 1990s and it was a different situation. It would be almost unheard of to have a theatre program behind bars now. But then there were maybe 500 women incarcerated at Framingham for all different kinds of crimes. And as I say, I began teaching community college classes at the prison. So I was doing writing, I was doing literature before I actually began directing plays.

David Jones [00:06:01]:

So I didn’t quite understand, Jean, why do you think it would be unlikely to have a theatre activity there now. Is it just due to decline in numbers?

Jean Trounstine [00:06:12]:

No, I think that we have in our country a much harsher, much more punitive attitude toward people behind bars. Even more so than, I mean, it was pretty bad when I was there, but it’s worse now. And so the punitive nature doesn’t think people deserve to have programmes. One of the things that fascinated me when I went into prisons in England. I’ve been into prisons in different places around the world. Not as a researcher, but more as a practitioner doing programmes.

Jean Trounstine [00:06:47]:

And what I discovered is that other countries, England, I went in with this wonderful woman who I don’t know if you know her, her name will come to me in a minute. And I noticed that people in prison in England, some of the guys were getting guard help to apply to colleges outside the prison, which just blew my mind. You would never have that in this country. Such an adversarial relationship of guards to prisoners. The attitude here is that if you are incarcerated, you should be more punished because you’re incarcerated, not add to the punishment. So we have a very punitive attitude toward people behind bars in this country. And we don’t think of them as let’s get them better, healthier, smarter.

Jean Trounstine [00:07:47]:

So when they get out, they’re going to be better, healthier, smarter citizens. We think, you know, they did something wrong, let’s treat them as such. That’s what I say. It would be worse now.

David Jones [00:08:03]:

Right. I’m interested to hear about your experience in this country, which I suppose is probably a bit.

Jean Trounstine [00:08:10]:

Mary Stephenson. That’s her name, Mary Stephenson. It’s like I put it in a file drawer that wouldn’t come back, but here it is.

David Jones [00:08:18]:

Yeah. Well, that’s the kind of thing that happens to me all the time.

Jean Trounstine [00:08:22]:

I want to say that Mary Stephenson was an artist in residence in a prison in England. And that also blew my mind that there were artists in residence. You know, I had to scrape and, I mean, I can’t even tell you the things I went to to get theatre behind bars. And I directed eight plays. I really managed to stay there over a substantial period of time and not be ousted.

David Jones [00:08:52]:

What sort of plays were you creating?

Jean Trounstine [00:08:55]:

Well, I believe very strongly the first play I did was an adaptation of Merchant of Venice. I had come to England, I had seen Shakespeare doing Merchant of Venice. I had gotten a grant to, my idea of fun is to go to 23 plays in six weeks. And I did so in Stratford and in London. And I saw a very wonderful production of Merchant of Venice. But it wasn’t my idea of Merchant of Venice. So when I got back to the States, I had gotten this grant to direct a play in prison.

Jean Trounstine [00:09:29]:

And I decided to do Merchant. And it was really interesting because the women were like, are you kidding? And I said, if you can understand Shakespeare, if Shakespeare becomes accessible to you, you can understand many other things in life. And that was always my attitude, to make something accessible. And so I did class classic texts. And when I say classic, I mean Shakespeare, Lysistrata. You know, from the Greeks, Madwoman of Chaillot. I did an adaptation of the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I really believe that the classics were things that the women that I taught didn’t have access to and should have access to, just like the rest of us.

Jean Trounstine [00:10:18]:

So that’s why I did those plays. I mean, many other people were creating theatre from text, but no one, I mean, I was the first person to direct a Shakespeare play in prison worldwide. I don’t know if you know that, but I didn’t know it till this year because I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think, oh, I’m directing a play. You know, I thought, I’m just doing some work here. And many people in England had done Shakespeare, but there was not a directorial experience before mine. So fantastic.

Jean Trounstine [00:10:54]:

It was very interesting to do Shakespeare with the women because they loved the stories and they ended up adapting the text and they would use pieces of Shakespeare and the same with other texts. They would use pieces of the language and adapt to their own circumstances. And that became our method of working.

Naomi Murphy [00:11:16]:

I was just looking up because I was trying to remember we had somebody on who was doing Shakespeare in a prison. Her name was Rowan Mackenzie. Her name had escaped me in the same way that that had. But again, I think it’s important that we don’t dumb down for people in prison, you know, and so exposing people to the classics. We’ve also had somebody on talking about teaching philosophy in prisons as well, for instance. And I think, giving people access to parts of what is part of our ordinary cultural heritage that people should have access to feels really important. So it’s really brilliant to hear about the kind of work that you’ve been doing Jean.

Jean Trounstine [00:11:55]:

Thank you. It was interesting because I did not start writing until I, really writing I mean, I had written a lot of things, but I didn’t really start writing a book until I started working at Framingham. Because I was so alone at that period of time in my life. I didn’t have people to talk to. There weren’t other people doing this work then. I was really a pioneer. Curt Tofteland, who has a wonderful programme, you might have heard of him, he has a Shakespeare Behind Bars programme.

Jean Trounstine [00:12:27]:

He started it also, but with men. And now there are many people doing theatre in prisons across the world. And many, you know, there’s a theatre in Shakespeare, there’s Shakespeare in prison and theatre in prison and so much. But I was alone. And that’s what drove me to write and to tell the story of the women in my first book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison was written because of that isolation I had. And so here I am, eight books later, talking to you. But I had no recourse, really, except to go to the page. There was no Internet. We didn’t know who was doing anything anywhere else.

David Jones [00:13:15]:

Yeah, you’ve written some terrific books. I haven’t read them all, but I’m thinking of one I was looking through earlier today about the experience of parents of mothers when their children have committed crimes, which, of course, is an extremely powerful area to be writing about.

Jean Trounstine [00:13:39]:

Yeah, Mother Love was my first fiction. And now I’ll just make a little plug for my new book out on 12th May, Sounds Like Trouble to Me, but my first book really was a memoir, even though I didn’t know that it was a memoir because I wrote about the women, not about myself, but it was from my point of view. I mean, I don’t think we had the word creative nonfiction too much in our vocabulary then, but that’s what that book was. But Mother Love was my first fiction, and it was a book of short stories. And that’s what kind of got me to do Sounds Like Trouble to Me. I had not considered fiction.

Jean Trounstine [00:14:22]:

I’ve always been a nonfiction. I thought of myself as a nonfiction writer.

David Jones [00:14:27]:

Right. So that was the genesis of Sounds Like Trouble to Me. So was it your experience at Framingham prison that led you to write your latest book?

Jean Trounstine [00:14:44]:

Well, I want to say that the genesis was becoming knowledgeable about women in prison, first of all. And that happened over a long period of time. And I talked, read, listened, learned from the women I talked to. But then I also did a lot of exploration on my own that got me into understanding women, research, going to places like I went to a conference with Angela Davis in Australia on women in prison. I went around this country talking about women in prison, learning about women in prison. And then I got to know a lot of women.

Jean Trounstine [00:15:32]:

And that led me for many years writing about them. And I’d say that I couldn’t have written a novel if I hadn’t spent 30 years really understanding the criminal legal system and knowing people I never would have. I mean, the novel came out of two true stories. One is a correction officer. A real correction officer. Well, she was a warden in this country who killed her abusive husband and had to go, was sent to the awaiting trial unit. And I thought, wow, what it would be like for someone who was on one side of the law to then be on the other side of the law. That was one story and then the other story.

Jean Trounstine [00:16:13]:

And I don’t know if you’ve heard of this one, but it might have happened in other countries and other places not quite so prevalent as in our country, I think, because of the amount of abuse. But a very important uprising took place at a federal prison in Dublin, California, where the women, 300 women, filed complaints against the people in power. And it included a chaplain, the warden of the prison, and many, many correction officers. Because of the sexual and verbal and physical abuse of the women. That story inspired me also. And so in my fictional prison, the women, the correction officer, without giving away too much, becomes an instigator, eventually gets to be friends. Very unusual, but gets to be friends with the women behind bar, some of them. And because of her own experience with abuse, understands other people’s experience with abuse.

Jean Trounstine [00:17:16]:

And they create a MeToo movement behind bars. And that could never have happened without my knowing, without my, I talked to one woman every Sunday night who helped remind me of the smells and sounds of Framingham. So I could use them in my fictional prison, which takes place in Massachusetts. But without that, I wouldn’t have been able to, I don’t know, create fiction. It wasn’t on my agenda, fiction, but it works.

Jean Trounstine [00:17:51]:

And it turns out to be, in a funny way, more truthful than truth.

Naomi Murphy [00:17:57]:

Yes, I think we interviewed the journalist who covered that story, actually. Cause we saw it in an American media, didn’t we, David? Again, my memory.

Jean Trounstine [00:18:11]:

Oh, I’m so happy it happens to someone else, Naomi. So that’s great. I’m glad to hear that.

David Jones [00:18:21]:

That wasn’t Eyal Press say, was it? I don’t know if you come across Eyal Press. He writes for the New York Times, and he’d written a book called Dirty Work, which included the last chapter on work in prisons, which came across as being extremely challenging. So in your book, the kind of main character is Nettie, and she’s quite a complex character. So I think you mentioned that you identified with one of the women that you’d met in Framingham. How did you develop her personality and the story around her?

Jean Trounstine [00:19:15]:

Nettie’s story?

David Jones [00:19:17]:

Yeah.

Jean Trounstine [00:19:18]:

Well, Nettie, again, Nettie was based on the warden, who I didn’t know, who killed her abusive husband and went to a waiting trial unit. I couldn’t find any information about that warden. I didn’t know if she actually got sentenced. Because in our country, I need to say awaiting trial is a different kind of restriction than being sentenced. However, it can happen in the same prison. You could be in the awaiting trial unit at Framingham, in the real Framingham, and not be sentenced. So I created a fictional prison, the Merrimack Correctional Institute, I call, where there was an awaiting trial unit. And my officer went there.

Jean Trounstine [00:20:08]:

She was a correction officer, not a warden. Now, she was not based on any one character. She was based on a sort of an amalgam of my understanding and knowledge of correction officers and my understanding and knowledge of women and the kind. I mean, I work in many programmes with people who are probation officers, correction officers, and I feel like I know some of that mentality. I also have seen them change to have some different sympathies toward the people who are sentenced. So that kind of came into where I got Nettie. Nettie also has some of me in her, I would say, some of what I imagine I would feel like if I were sentenced and went behind bars. How could that not be? Because I have never exactly experienced that.

Jean Trounstine [00:21:10]:

But Nettie is the person who thinks she never will go to prison and will be a guard and will be representing that point of view. And that is a hard point of view to change in some cases. So I had to work very hard to create other people behind bars. And how I found them, I would say, was very much based on the women I knew at Framingham, women I’d seen in programmes around, and people and things I made up.

David Jones [00:21:47]:

Thank you. So that sounds like quite a complicated task for a first novel.

Jean Trounstine [00:21:53]:

It was really complicated because I think Joan Didion said it really the best. She said, I write, and I’m going to paraphrase her here, because I’m not going to get it right. I write to entirely find out what I’m thinking. And that is how I had no knowing. I didn’t know where I was going. I wrote and something would happen. Like, I wrote the first lines of the book, which are.

Jean Trounstine [00:22:26]:

And I can tell you that Nettie was just as still as her husband. The difference was she had a gun in her hand. And I thought, oh, okay, and how did she get the gun? Oh, okay, what is she doing with the gun? So that is how my mind worked. And some novelists, of course, would know where the gun is, how it happened. But this was my first book. So I think as a writer, it wasn’t my first book. It was my first novel.

Jean Trounstine [00:23:01]:

It was my eighth book. And I trusted myself. I trust myself enough to go where I needed to go. And so the fact that I created her lawyer as an African American woman, the fact that I create her best friend in prison as part Native American, Molly, you know, those things happened not because I thought, oh, let’s do that. And I do think it’s layered. The book is layered. I mean, I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t have help.

Jean Trounstine [00:23:33]:

I hired people to help me rewrite in the sense of developmental novel people. But I had to write without knowing where I was going, if that makes sense to the two of you.

David Jones [00:23:50]:

Yes. So the book was a voyage of discovery for you as well. Very interesting. What message do you hope readers take away?

Jean Trounstine [00:24:03]:

I wish my book had the cover correct so you could see this. But I want to say one thing I love about this. You can see this, and it relates to what you just said. There’s light here. There’s a sense of people being confined. And here is the wire, people being confined. And there is, of course, the word trouble, which is in red. Sounds Like Trouble to Me.

Jean Trounstine [00:24:31]:

So the trouble, it has two meanings. As John Lewis said, good trouble. We have good trouble. We have awful trouble, and we have light. And I think what I hope is for people to see many things, that prison is a place of horror, trouble, darkness. Darkness, you know, darkness around it. And yet the community of women that conform in prison, the community behind bars, brings an incredible grace and an incredible hope, and that people don’t realise how powerful women behind bars can be when they speak out. Of course, there are repercussions, and the Dublin women would tell you that every second of the way.

Jean Trounstine [00:25:19]:

Of course there are repercussions, but is it worth it? The Dublin women close the prison now, they got transferred all over the country in the United States, but they closed that facility and they took people to trial. And there is power in this. I want people to understand that. I also want them to understand that abuse, which we now have so prevalent in our Jeffrey Epstein era, happens behind bars. I don’t think people in the world think about that, what it would be like to have an abuse situation in another. I mean, where you’re already held and kept and silenced and then to be abused.

David Jones [00:26:11]:

Thank you.

Jean Trounstine [00:26:11]:

I want those messages to get out.

Naomi Murphy [00:26:15]:

So, Jean, you’re obviously touching on very sensitive issues like domestic violence and trauma, sexual abuse within your novel. How do you approach writing about such sensitive topics and getting the balance right about the amount of detail? How do you cover these stories as an author in a way that delivers a message but is sensitive enough to the, you know, to stop people switching off. Because that can be one of the problems with darker material, can’t it? That people don’t want to listen. So how do you balance that?

Jean Trounstine [00:26:47]:

Well, I think the first thing is you don’t think about the message. You think about the development of the characters. Now, because I am me, and what is in my mind is in my mind, I think that plays into who the characters are and what they become. But it wasn’t like I thought, oh, I want. I mean, okay, I’ll be honest. There were moments when I might have thought, I think it’s very important for the lawyer who is a black woman and the person who’s the main person in prison is a white woman, that there is a power dynamic that we often don’t see switched. I think, of course, there are millions of black lawyers who are incredibly powerful, and my character Isabel is modelled on them.

Jean Trounstine [00:27:35]:

But that is a message to some degree. And I do think, in some cases, yes, I had some of that in my head. But most of the time, honestly, the message came out of the writing. The message came out of the character creation. And then I would say, yes, that’s right. Let’s shape that. What am I saying about Damasce? I mean, it would delight me when I found one of my characters did something that was the right thing for her to do. But it wasn’t like I said, oh, she has to do that.

Jean Trounstine [00:28:14]:

It was more like I discovered her doing that, and I was happy she was doing it. So that’s one answer to your question. The other thing is, I did enormous amount of research, just literally on the side. And I think this is what happens with many writers, novelists. You do your research. You do. Like I talk to people who were forensic psychologists about memory. I did work on memory.

Jean Trounstine [00:28:43]:

I had to think about memory. I couldn’t just have, my main character forgets a lot of what happened to her, which is about trauma, is what happens with trauma. I know women, many women who’ve had trauma. I’ve had some trauma. I don’t think that we kind of get through this life without trauma. What do we remember? What do we forget? So I did a lot of research on trauma, on memory, on domestic violence. And then I had my characters just be.

Jean Trounstine [00:29:19]:

So those two things kind of came together, if that makes sense to you.

Naomi Murphy [00:29:23]:

Yeah, it was interesting as you were talking, actually, it reminded me. I’ve watched Madonna being interviewed by Jay Shetty just last year, and she was talking about how her music just kind of like flows, almost like, she’s just a conduit for that to happen with her music. And in a way, that sounds like that’s what’s happening to you with your story, that the story’s flowing almost like you don’t know where it’s going next, but you’re just allowing this story to be delivered. But I was interested in what you hoped your readers would learn about the issues that are covered in the book, including themes like abuse and corruption. What do you hope your readers will learn, and what action do you think? What are you hoping they’ll do about it?

Jean Trounstine [00:30:07]:

Well, I’ve written enough books that I can’t honestly say that too many people take action after reading books. I think maybe with nonfiction, that can happen somewhat. I don’t think that’s what’s in my mind action per se, but understanding is in my mind. I do want people to see, to have a broader view about women in prison, that they really are just people that are many cases poor, have terrible circumstances, are in situations like Nettie even, who is a very normal, average person, except what happened to her in her past wasn’t normal and average. And so she gets subject to an abusive relationship. I mean, it takes a woman, I’ve learned, over seven years to get out of an abusive relationship in a domestic violence situation. And I’ve learned a lot about domestic violence.

Jean Trounstine [00:31:17]:

And I want other people to understand more about women behind bars than they do now. And really, that translates into people behind bars, because men also deserve some consideration. No offense. It’s a little different. Women are, I think we romanticise men behind bars to some degree, and we sort of throw away women behind bars. I’ve often thought about that, that women are thought of as, and it’s not in our consciousness, it’s in our subconsciousness culturally. We dismiss women as prostitutes or whores or they’re trashy if they go to prison. I used to ask my students, would you go out with a woman who was sentenced to prison? And they were like, nah. But a woman, would you go out with a guy who was sentenced to prison? You know, there’s this sort of romantic, dangerous guy thing of trouble, sort of appealing to a certain kind of female sensibility. And I think culturally that stands. If you see movies, men are romanticised that get in trouble with the law. Women are not. There is nothing romantic.

Jean Trounstine [00:32:39]:

So I think we have to get rid of some of those stereotypes, those cultural myths. And one of the big myths is about women being worthless. I mean, many women who go to prison do have low self esteem. That’s a true truism because they’ve been treated so harshly and abusively. But their self esteem can be heightened, too. They don’t have to live like that forever.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:15]:

So it sounds like your book’s a bit of a plea for a more compassionate outlook on those behind bars.

Jean Trounstine [00:33:23]:

I think that’s true.

Naomi Murphy [00:33:36]:

Your novel touches on the MeToo movement and its impact on incarcerated women. Why was it important for you to include that theme?

Jean Trounstine [00:33:47]:

Well, again, it didn’t become important until it became important until the women had. The reality of women behind bars is that they are abused. That is the reality. Even though one group of women rose up at Dublin, that doesn’t mean there aren’t women across the country. And I read about a group recently in a Texas prison that also spoke out. I mean, it’s incredibly hard to speak out about this. So I never really thought of MeToo until it became a big story in the press. So I realised that that abuse that is happening in the world is really not that different than the abuse that is happening behind bars.

Jean Trounstine [00:34:43]:

It was more my realisation that led to making it important than that I wanted to make it important just because I realised that women have been going through this who have been sentenced to, I mean, they certainly were, when I was teaching at Framingham, it might not have been as open or spoken of, but there were always women I heard about who were ambushed by somebody in a broom closet. You know, it was a secret. That was not a secret.

Naomi Murphy [00:35:20]:

Thank you. And, Jean, how do you ensure the authenticity of the legal and prison related details in the book?

Jean Trounstine [00:35:27]:

That’s a really good question. I’m so glad you asked that, because no one has asked me that yet for any book I write. And I did this with nonfiction and with Mother Love. I did it with Mother Love, and I did it with Sounds Like Trouble to Me. I have a friend in some cases, I’ve hired him to go through the book legally and chapter by chapter and correct things, help me figure out things, all of that. So the book was vetted by a lawyer, by an attorney, very carefully. Now, he might have made some mistakes, too.

Jean Trounstine [00:36:08]:

I don’t want to pretend that I’m perfect. And that I won’t have some mistakes. I read other novels, and I have to be honest, I go like, oh, my God, how can you put that in the book? Oh, my God, that’s so terrible. And I try really hard not to do that. But I’m sure there’ll be some attorneys that read my book and say, Jean, you didn’t get this right. I did have one person that read one of the stories in Mother Love, a judge who contacted me and said, I think you did a fabulous job on the book, legally, but no, this one thing, he should have been in prison for life.

Jean Trounstine [00:36:41]:

He never would have gotten out. And I said, okay, okay, Jay. You know, so there may be some things like that, but I’m hoping that I got enough close to the bone that it’s not going to be a problem. It was hard in terms of the trial, because there is a trial, and really getting a trial right is a big deal. So that took a lot of work, and I had to study a lot of trials, and I did. I mean, I’ve read trial transcripts, which really helped me. And trial transcripts are fun to read. They’re very dramatic, from my point of view, much more dramatic than people think.

Jean Trounstine [00:37:23]:

They’re kind of exciting. Even though the lawyers are not trying to make them dramatic. They are.

Naomi Murphy [00:37:30]:

It’s interesting that you go to so much length to ensure the sort of integrity of what’s happening in the book, because it is quite irritating. I think, as a forensic specialist, when you see things happening, you just think, you roll your eyes because you think that wouldn’t happen in real life.

Jean Trounstine [00:37:46]:

So, Naomi, is that something I can guarantee that you’ll help me with when you’re going to tell me if there’s anything wrong with my book?

David Jones [00:37:54]:

She’s a great expert.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:02]:

So, what role does friendship and solidarity among the women play in your story?

Jean Trounstine [00:38:08]:

Well, I’ve touched on that a little bit, but I’ll add to it, which is two things. One is I try to get across the barbs and arrows that women sling at each other. I try to get across both the antagonism. I mean, one of the things just to go sideways a little bit on something that happened when I was at Framingham, that always affected me. One of the women at Framingham, I used to say, you know, men stab each other when they’re mad at each other. They get a knife, they stab, you know, directly. You know, that kind of thing. Women.

Jean Trounstine [00:38:48]:

One of the women at Framingham took another. They were allowed perfume at that time, if you can believe it. But this woman took another person’s perfume bottle and peed in it. And that is the kind of violence that I saw that women sort of beget against other women. So I wanted to be truthful that there can be a real, a real anger, jealousy, hatred. There is that, you know, women can be hostile and horrible. And yet on the other side of that is a kind of bond that doesn’t happen with men. A bond of telling each other their secrets, crying with each other.

Jean Trounstine [00:39:43]:

It takes time. It doesn’t happen. I mean, the level of trust is horrible at first. But I’ve learned from some of the people that I know outside of prison how much people connect. One of the women who I taught in prison is now outside and she, her name is Angie Jefferson and she’s coming with me to my debut at Porter Square Books on the 13th of May, she will be there with me. She was a student of mine at Framingham and now she’s there to be able to talk about Sounds Like Trouble to Me with me.

Jean Trounstine [00:40:22]:

Which is amazing because she has the experience of understanding what went on behind bars. And another woman who I talked to every week was in prison at Framingham and created community with women and vowed when she got out of prison to start a re entry programme, which she has done. But it began because she had connections with the women behind bars. So I think the connection of women is both soulful and spirited and filled with what we have in the outside world, but even more so because they are locked up and the attempt is to silence them.

David Jones [00:41:12]:

Thank you, Jean. I don’t like the word activist, so I’m not going to describe you as an activist because certainly in this country that word has been co opted by the right wing and given the kind of disparaging flavour, as in activist lawyers implies that people are perverting the course of justice. But I think it’s true to say that you’ve been an active campaigner for much of your life. What is it that’s particularly attracted you to prisons and the justice system?

Jean Trounstine [00:41:50]:

Okay, well, I know it’s very British not to cry, so I’m definitely not going to cry when I tell you this, but I could cry because it’s very moving to me. I think my experience teaching behind bars changed me, just changed me, made me understand what women go through who are locked up. I didn’t know one small story. I am a storyteller, after all, so I relate with stories. When my mother died and I was teaching. I had to go do my class behind bars. It was within a couple of weeks after my mother had died and I went into prison. And I was directing Merchant at that time and working on Merchant, and we were going to do something.

Jean Trounstine [00:42:51]:

I can’t remember exactly what I had planned for that evening, but I got into the room and I told them, you know, not really with emotion or anything, but I felt like I needed to tell them why I had missed a class or something. And I told them. And they immediately formed a circle around me and began doing, you know, some sort of comforting motions and sounds and talking to me and something like out of the creative things that I had taught them, but about me, as if it was a funeral for my mother. And I was. I wept and I was touched. And I hugged them all. You’re not allowed to hug people in prison. And I hugged each one of them.

Jean Trounstine [00:43:53]:

I mean, we were in a room, nobody was observing us. And for a moment, we had that privacy. And for a moment, we were just women together. It changed me.

Naomi Murphy [00:44:14]:

You can hear you’re really moved as you share that anecdote, Jean. And I’m reminded also of something you said earlier on in the conversation, which was about risk taking and how you were kind of doing a more positive perspective on risk taking, you know, looking at risk taking from more positive perspective, which I think one of the themes that have come across many times on this podcast has been the importance of belief, you know, the importance of seeing the human in somebody rather than seeing them just as the worst thing that they’ve ever done. And, you know, it’s quite clear that you were able to give them that gift. But equally, there’s a reciprocity in that relationship, isn’t there, that actually you see the human rather than see each other as foes or person of power and person of no power.

Jean Trounstine [00:45:09]:

Well, you know, I’ve been a risk taker. I was a risk taker. I was lucky. I was a product of the 60s, a hippie. I lived in California. I lived in a commune. I did all sorts of crazy things that I’m glad I did them in my youth.

Jean Trounstine [00:45:27]:

But I wasn’t poor to the degree that these women are poor. I wasn’t black. I had always had educational opportunities. I always had parents who somehow were there for me, were always there for me, even through my hippie crazy days. And it’s not like they abandoned me. I had financial security. If something horrible had happened to me, I could have gone to live at home.

Jean Trounstine [00:45:57]:

I didn’t have what so many people have who go to prison do. So I think that risk taking. I don’t think that people take risk necessarily when they start out. I’m not speaking of myself. I’m speaking of people who commit crimes. I think they may take risks because they are desperate. They take risks because they don’t have choices, because they’re stealing for their child.

Jean Trounstine [00:46:29]:

You know, they’re living in a situation, some guy is abusing them and they have to be a drug mule or they’re going to be more abused or, you know, terrible things can happen. But the taking risk in a theatre production becomes an enlightening way for people to see that there is a risk. They’ve developed something in their personality from this life that is all of a sudden, an amazing payoff. They are brilliant on the stage, they are creative, they are good. There are other women behind bars say, oh, my God, you changed my life. This one woman, Dolly and who played Bassanio in Merchant, said, I was a star for a week, I was a star. And so, yes, the community becomes fulfilling for them and therefore for the teacher.

David Jones [00:47:45]:

Thank you. Those are very powerful accounts there. Jean, now that you’ve been describing things which I’m sure Naomi and I both recognise that some of the transformational incidents in the lives of the people we’ve been working with are those kinds of humans contacts, which may not last very long or they may be quite extensive. But an example is often given for the men who go to a prison, I worked at Grendon, is that when they arrived, the officer approached them and said, hello, you must be Ray, my name’s Bill. And just that is so different from their previous experience that it makes a difference.

Jean Trounstine [00:48:40]:

So I want to say I have had some experience working with men since you brought up men, but not with theatre. I have had experience with this other programme I do, Changing Lives Through Literature, which I think it’s worth talking about a bit because I think it’s right up your alleys. So Changing Lives Through Literature. I got into that when I was teaching in prison, inside prison. I’d heard about a judge and a professor who had, well, the professor, this is a very boys clubby kind of thing that I thought was funny, but now I think it’s a good story.

Jean Trounstine [00:49:29]:

The professor said to the judge, I think I can do better than you do, keeping out of prison, having people read books. He said to the judge, you don’t do a very good job of keeping people from recidivating, and they go back to crime. But I think I could do better with literature. And so they started this at the time. It always seems to have a very grandiose title, Changing Lives Through Literature. But it makes sense in a way. They started, they got eight, I think 12 guys at the time with terrible quote rap sheets.

Jean Trounstine [00:50:02]:

They all had done awful things, but they were out of prison, they were on probation. In this country, on probation means a little different perhaps than in other countries, which is you usually have not yet gone to prison, although sometimes you have and have been out. Mostly when you’ve been to prison and you get out, it’s parole. When you’re out in the community with a chance of serving the rest of your sentence in the community under very strict supervision, that’s parole. If you’ve earned that. If you get out, it’s not a free pass or anything, but you get some time outside. Probation is something you get sort of before you go to prison, often where you get it because the judge says, or a probation officer says, let’s give you a chance to do these things right before we give you a prison sentence, seeing if you could do this and that, get drug tested, blah, blah, blah, stay out of trouble, stop doing drugs, stop dealing drugs, whatever the issue is. So they took people on probation, and the idea was they would meet every two weeks, read a book and talk about the books.

Jean Trounstine [00:51:21]:

And the professor chose the books. And after they got done with the programme, at some point, they did some recidivism and discovered that with this group meeting over a period of time, yes, indeed, they had stayed out of crime more or less more often than the other group. And I heard about this with men, and I said, wow, I have to do this. But at the time, it was with women. And I did it, and I have done it since 1993 with women. And then at one point, I’ve also started doing it with men. And I do it now with men on probation. I did it with actually men in prison.

Jean Trounstine [00:52:13]:

And I have a programme, the Changing Lives Through Leadership programme. We have about maybe 20 programmes in different courts throughout the state. The people meet outside, they meet at colleges or universities. The people go on campus. We read books, we quote, discuss. Here’s the phenomenal thing. So in this group, a judge, a probation officer, a professor, and a group of people who are on probation and all ideas are equal, no idea is more important than the next. And I’m sure you understand this.

Jean Trounstine [00:52:55]:

I’m sure you’ve heard about things like this. But Changing Lives Through Literature is a Massachusetts programme, basically. And we used to be all over the country, but we’ve really sort of honed in on Massachusetts now because we’re through the trial court in Massachusetts, and we have people are paid and the professors are paid, and we have phenomenal, interesting conversations in a, quote, Democratic reading group. So I wanted to tell you about that.

Naomi Murphy [00:53:28]:

I’m really glad you did. What a lovely initiative. Really, really lovely to hear about that. So, Jean, we’re coming to the end of Time, and I wondered, what’s next for you as an author? Are you working on another book or another project?

Jean Trounstine [00:53:42]:

Well, it’s very hard for me to work on another book while I have a book coming out, like, right in the middle of this. I think some of my friends are much better at that than I am. What I am doing right now is I’m writing small pieces, trying to get them published in things like. Well, for example, I wrote a piece on why fiction versus nonfiction, something like that, and getting those kinds of pieces published because I have so much to say on this subject, and I have things and I can get them published. And it’s so interesting to be having a novel versus having been a nonfiction writer. So I have those kinds of things to say. I’m hoping maybe I’ll gather them into a book, but not for sure. I have an idea of something I want to write, but I never want to talk about it before I do.

Jean Trounstine [00:54:44]:

I hate to even say the word. It does have some fiction to it, though, but I don’t know. We’ll see. It has to always be based on a true story, and this one is.

Naomi Murphy [00:54:58]:

Thank you. It’s been really great to talk to you today, Jean, and hear about your experiences. Fantastic. Thank you.

Jean Trounstine [00:55:04]:

Thank you so much for being interested, and I appreciate it enormously.

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So today we’re meeting with Nujoji Calvocoressi and Sophie Crilly, who have both worked at HMP Send, which is a women’s prison in the UK, and they both worked on the therapeutic community at HMP SEND. Nujoji has since moved on, but Sophie is still working there and they both did an interesting piece of research, which is what I’m mainly going to touch upon today.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:01:41]:

So really good to meet you both. Thanks for coming on today to talk about your research. Could you tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you’ve ended up being connected to HMP Send and its democratic therapeutic community?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:01:54]:

Well, I could start. Well, my name’s Nujoji Calvocoressi. I ended up at HMP Send very actively, actually, and I sought out the opportunity when I was training to be a psychotherapist. I was working in a male men’s prison and I thought that was very interesting. It was an interesting place to train, an interesting place to understand something about people’s minds and when they do things that they wish they hadn’t. And I spent a lot of time sat with men complaining about women and sort of putting a lot of blame on mothers and girlfriends and wives. And I thought it might be quite interesting and quite important to go and see what women had to say. And so off I went to apply for a job at the democratic therapeutic community at HMP Send, and I think it’s important to say when I was working in the male estate, everyone said, don’t go and work in the female estate.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:02:46]:

There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of rumour about what it was like to work with women in prison. And I think most of it was very untrue, if not all of it, actually, from what I was told in those early days. And so I ended up at HMP Send as a psychotherapist, working with Sophie quite closely. There I stayed for three years.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:03:10]:

Thank you, Sophie, how about you?

Sophie Crilly [00:03:14]:

Hi. Yeah, so I ended up at the TC as a group facilitator about seven years ago now. Well, I mean, my background was in forensic psychology. I did a degree and a master’s and as part of that, actually went to Grendon on sort of a day of seeing what TCs were like. And, and I thought, wow, you know, there’s something, this is not what I expected prisons to be like. And, we were just having normal conversations with the men and I thought, that’s somewhere I’d really like to work.

Sophie Crilly [00:03:50]:

And interestingly though, when I was doing my Masters and we were talking lots about working in the field, working in prisons, the same narrative about working with women was definitely an undercurrent in sort of like, that’s a hard place to, that’s a hard group to work with. So when the opportunity came up in the women’s TC, I thought, oh, interesting, I wonder if it’ll be like that. And seven years later I’m still there. And yeah, me and Nujoji worked in group together and yeah, we sort of came up with the idea of doing this research and the rest was history.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:04:28]:

Thank you. And it’s interesting to hear you both reflecting on that reputation of working with women, which I think get a similar reputation. You know, the Young Offenders Institute often have a similar reputation as well, don’t they? So good to hear that you both had a positive experience of working in that environment. I wonder if there’s something different about you both as well, in that you were drawn to working in a setting where there’s more unstructured work, because traditionally forensic psychologists deliver quite manualised approaches. Tends to be what’s available within prison establishments, isn’t it? And you’re both, I assume, from your background, also Nujoji, that you’ve, you know, more used to working in an unstructured way. So that might say something about both of your willingness to tolerate a little bit more ambiguity and uncertainty in your work environment.

Sophie Crilly [00:05:24]:

And I think there’s something about. I think one of the things that I’ve learned about myself in kind of my way of working. I mean, I’m now training as a psychotherapist, so I have kind of moved away. But I guess what I didn’t really know or have words for is kind of like the relational working. I think that’s the part that I guess unconsciously drew me to the TC and that way of kind of being with people as human beings and kind of figuring something out together. But through the ruptures and the repairs and the learnings and that kind of way of working, which I suppose can feel really contrary to the environment, the prison environment as you might know it or think it might be really.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:06:08]:

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s my experience as well. And I think if you want to work in a TC or you want to work in prisons generally, you have to discover a way within your training and within the boundaries where you can be nimble. Because very little ever goes to plan in prisons, often more so in therapeutic communities because they have a bit more control over their structure, but they’re still impacted by security. They’re still impacted by when prisoners have been counted incorrectly. And that can throw the program. And so you have to be able to adapt and work on what do we do now? Or how do we continue doing something therapeutic and considered within our new environment?

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:06:51]:

I love that phrase you used, be nimble. Because I think that’s so apt for working in any therapeutic modality in prisons, actually, because it’s very difficult to offer a very rigid approach of any form, isn’t it? When you’re having to work with so much uncertainty and where security often trumps what you might like to do clinically in terms of doing your research. What was it about the democratic therapeutic community that made it distinctive and under researched? Why did you want to focus on women convicted of murder?

Sophie Crilly [00:07:25]:

I mean, going back to even when I was applying to work at the TC and I was interested in finding out a bit more information about it as an outsider, you know, no contacts within the prison, it was very difficult to find any information about it, really. And I think that’s true of prisons as what they represent, as a kind of, an environment which most people outside of which don’t know much about. But I think, like I said, I’d heard about Grendon, I’d heard about TCs within the male estate. But I think even in the literature it’s still disproportionate what’s written about the male TCs. And then, you know, the fact that we’re the only women’s TC in a prison in the world that we know of, it feels a shame, but also kind of really important that there’s stuff written about it and that the experiences of the people that live it are understood really.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:08:34]:

I think to add to that, I think that the prison service is a largely male dominated organisation, possibly in terms of staff, but also certainly I think the women’s estate is only about 5%. So there’s a danger and it’s perhaps likely that a lot of stuff that’s being applied to women, whether that be interventions, whether that be just day to day regime, is firstly thought about for men and then either just sent over to the female estate as is, or transposed in some adaptive way that might not be ideal. And I think another thing that I think we thought was interesting about working with women is that I think women who are violent are thought about structurally very differently to men who are violent. And I think we were quite interested in that about can you be a mother and kill someone? And what does that do to your identity as a woman? What does that do to your identity as a mother?

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:09:32]:

So Nujoji, could you explain to us why you chose interpretive phenomenological analysis for the study? And for anyone listening, there may be people who haven’t conducted research. If you’re able to make it slightly simple for people to have an understanding of what was appealing about that?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:09:49]:

So interpretive phenomenological analysis IPA is a qualitative type of research. So we’re interested in doing interviews, we’re interested in talking to people rather than say looking at some data or some numbers that have been gathered. And so what our task was to go to, think about what it was we wanted to understand, which was about the process of change in women who’ve been convicted of murder and to go away and find those people and ask them some questions about what that was like. So we’re not necessarily looking to make broad statements, we’re not looking to create a theory, we’re looking to understand a particular experience. And on this occasion it was what it was like to be on a TC after you’ve been convicted of murder and what was that experience of change like that largely focused around identity. And then we went away, looked at all the interviews and discovered themes that were apparent, not necessarily the most common themes, sometimes just interesting themes, and then presented them against the existing literature and do some comparisons, contrasts and occasionally make comparisons with the male estate.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:11:07]:

Lovely. And you managed to make something that’s more quite complicated sound much more simplistic and understandable. So thank you for that because I’m sure that that would be helpful. Sophie, in what ways did participants describe the label murderer affecting their identity?

Sophie Crilly [00:11:24]:

Nujoji kind of touched on it when he sort of spoke about how these women have multiple identities really and whether that have been ascribed to them or labels that were ascribed to them and what being a murderer or someone that’s killed someone does to your perception of yourself and also the perception of others, of you. And I think we used one of the quotes from one of the participants in the title, which was no one will want to be my friend because I’m a murderer. And we thought that really summed up the dilemma that I think the participants described and a lot of the women face around how do I create a new life for myself and how do I move forward in life with this thing that I’ve done? But is it part of me? Is it all of me? And one of the things we talked about when we were doing the research is kind of like how a lot of the literature refers to sort of ex offenders or ex something. And whether you can ever be an ex murderer and whether that is the same for the experience of people. Yeah, where it feels so heavy, it feels so weighted. I don’t know if you’d add anything to that, Nujoji.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:12:49]:

Well, I think most people have never met someone who’s killed someone. And so the identity, I think helps the general public in various ways. But I think what it does for the person who’s got the conviction and is now in prison is that they get referred to implicitly and explicitly in that way and possibly for life because they can, although they’ll be released at some point, generally they can be recalled. And so I think they become a sort of a fear based category. So they become scared of themselves and people become scared of them. And I think in the TC that has to be addressed because I think when people are frightened, they become frightening again. And so there’s a danger that a cycle repeats if some of these labels aren’t unpicked. And kind of understood.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:13:39]:

But also I think Sophie and I certainly experienced in group together, people who, various stages of their progression would adopt the label because the label sort of abdicated any need on some level to think further than, I am a monster. I did this because I’m a monster. That’s the end of the story. We can stop there. So I think there’s a danger that the label stops the conversation at the point where it should really begin. And actually, well, this is far more complicated than that. And this is something you did and it’s a part of you and how do you understand it so that perhaps you won’t do it again? So I think there’s a dynamic relationship with labels at various points in people’s progression.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:14:23]:

Thank you. And you’re highlighting a theme that’s come up quite a lot in conversations that we’ve had with certainly people with lived experience of prison, where the language that’s used becomes so important in terms of allowing people the possibility of change and moving forward in their lives, not to abdicate responsibility, but to be free to have other identities beyond the identity of someone who’s committed a heinous act. So thank you.

Sophie Crilly [00:14:52]:

And, just to add to that, I think one of the participants really beautifully described that when she spoke about a process for her and coming in, realising, I’ve done bad things, but I’m not a bad person. And I think that was, that’s something that a lot of the women have to kind of reconcile and work through is, yeah, you know, am I fundamentally a bad person at the core, or have I just done something that’s bad and can I move past this and embrace and integrate all the other parts of me through understanding themselves differently and the relationships that come with that?

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:15:35]:

Which is interesting, because society doesn’t really manage to do that, does it? You know, society is very keen to label people and condemn people for one act without really allowing scope for change to be reflected. And, you know, if we want a safer society, then surely we have to allow people to make that just part of their identity, not their full identity, as we often find as depicted in the media certainly.

David Jones [00:16:01]:

Thank you very much. That’s so thought provoking, what you’ve been describing. It’s taking me right back to the first time I met somebody who’d murdered somebody else, which was when I was working at a counselling service in Oxford and it was a woman and she’d been released from prison. And in retrospect, and looking back, I realised I didn’t really engage with that part of which she had described as Feodor love. And so she really only came for a few sessions and then didn’t turn up again. But I can see, looking back that she was weighed down by extremely heavy feelings of concern and doubt about herself and who she could be in the world. So you use this phrase, you use lots of lovely phrases in the paper. Feared or loved. What do you think that captures about somebody’s survival or belonging or power in prison relationships?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:17:08]:

I mean, my sense is about whether people can get their head round that they’re in a different environment. So certainly some of the participants that took part in the research would sort of describe violence as strategic and necessary because they were with violent people, people who were violent. And it was a survival strategy within that environment. And I think one of the difficulties that we faced and one of the participants described is the idea, can you detect that your environment has changed and that your environment might be less fear based and more love based or certainly more relationship based and vulnerability and intimacy based? And I think that takes a long time for that person to trust that they’re in a different environment and remember they’re in a prison as well. So they will see and hear things day to day that arise out of fear and violence. But there’s something about helping people understand that there is some benefit in being in positive relationships, that most of them are probably never going to lose their skills of survival or their ability to protect themselves or to use violence when it’s appropriate. But actually to add something that actually if you try adopting some of these new things, you might find that you attract a different type of person. You might find that your life is more fulfilling in some way.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:18:30]:

But I think that takes a lot of testing, takes a lot of testing of the members in the community, it takes a lot of testing of the staff. And also in some environments, having that reputation of being feared has social currency and you have to be prepared, risking to give that up before you’ve actually got anything necessarily to replace it. So I think there’s a lot of risk. And not everyone’s being loved as well. I don’t think all the women that we worked with had a, had an experience of sort of unconditional love. And so again, you’re asking someone to sort of buy into something that they may not have a sense of and they may not intuitively want it. So I think as staff you have to really broaden your understanding about the lives that some of the people that we’ve worked with, have had. And I was always quite stunned that half of them were still alive. You know, the number of scrapes with death that they’d had in various different ways, I think was quite staggering. You know, it was a miracle they were still alive, a lot of them.

David Jones [00:19:34]:

To those who haven’t been loved, as you describe it so beautifully, in essence, perhaps you’re asking them to construct an idea of what it is to be loved?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:19:45]:

Which is a hard thing to do in a prison. I don’t know if that is what we are doing. It might be an aim. I don’t know if we get there within a sort of a maximum of three years on a TC. But I think certainly some people would leave with real feelings of fondness towards the staff and some of the other people that they had shared this experience with. And I suppose there’s always the opportunity for people to go on and build onto something. But I think it was also my experience that some people throughout their time were resistant to that idea and things like power and control had a significant value to them.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:20:32]:

What you’re talking about resonates in terms of, you know, just thinking about working with men in prison. The idea of, as a staff, I think it is our job to communicate agape the idea of love for fellow man, if you like. And you’re asking people who haven’t felt loved by their parents quite often to accept that people who are paid staff members might be offering them something that’s really positive. And that’s a big ask, isn’t it, for people who’ve been really badly treated, possibly even felt hated by their parents.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:21:06]:

And negative experiences of professionals in the past.

David Jones [00:21:09]:

Sophie, were you wanting to say something about that?

Sophie Crilly [00:21:12]:

I was just going to say also, as human beings, we’re wired for connection. Right. But I think obviously circumstances, like you’re saying, mean that that becomes more complicated and also feared at the same time and I guess, yeah, it makes me think of something one of the participants said around kind of reflecting on her previous sort of identity as somebody that kind of wanted to generate a bit of fear in others to sort of keep them at a distance because that felt safer. And then actually, as things progressed and she started to realise people didn’t run away from her so quickly. And actually that, on reflection, something that was quite meaningful to her.

Sophie Crilly [00:22:02]:

But at one point she was kind of recognising she was intentionally wanting to keep people away through various different strategies. But I guess underneath all of that is a wish to connect. And I think that’s a big dilemma for a lot of the women that we work with, really.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:22:23]:

And I think what works well alongside what Sophie’s saying in a TC is that even if they want to hold onto the identity of being feared, they have a persistent example of what belonging to a community looks like. So they can always keep reassessing and re-evaluating. Do I want to be part of this or not? And how do I do that? And that might be absent in a kind of a normal location environment in the prison where it may not be community orientated or structured in that way.

David Jones [00:22:53]:

Thank you. So what stood out to you, either of you or both of you, as the key moments of profound insight? How did those moments become turning points for change?

Sophie Crilly [00:23:12]:

I think it was a kind of combination because I remember this theme came up along the sort of, like what allowed people to really reach psychological depth, but also alongside the kind of challenge of being in groups. And one of the things part of the TC is the kind of reality confrontation and hearing things about yourself or getting feedback about yourself, some of which might not be even consciously known to you at that point, or you might not be ready to hear. And so the defences can be quite live for people. But I think people described a point in which they kind of let go of their defences kind of in conjunction with sort of having been able to trust that the feedback from the other person might not actually be malicious, but it might actually be designed to try and help them in some way.

Sophie Crilly [00:24:12]:

And yeah, I guess the group setting really provides great opportunities for mirroring and being able to see yourself through somebody else that I think really sort of allowed those moments of, I think somebody described it as like an epiphany of realising something that either hasn’t been conscious or has been denied or, yeah, there’s been various different strategies used to try and defend against it for a while and seeing themselves in that way and how difficult that is. But then I guess a sense of relief in some way that they’ve uncovered something about themselves that they perhaps, yeah, and the support and the containment that really allows that to be. I guess.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:25:00]:

I don’t think I can necessarily think of a sort of a specific example that conveys profound insight because I think it’s deeply personal to the person rather than necessarily significant to staff. I think it’s the experience that is significant rather than the actual insight. Possibly, but I suppose my sense from talking to the participants was that the kind of, the insight helps remove any ambivalence in that moment, maybe not long term. And I think it’s a moment that takes the person by surprise and they’re a bit flawed by it because it’s taken them by surprise. Their defences don’t work. Maybe they’re in an environment that feels safe enough or contained enough to try something new and that on some level the insight has more value. Knowing something might be more useful or interesting than not knowing or denying something. I think that’s my sense of it.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:25:57]:

But ultimately I think it built confidence in the person that they could gain something from this experience. And I think that’s what we mean by in that it increased their sense that the group might be useful, the staff might be useful, the intervention might be useful because it is very easy for people in prison to denigrate, for group members to denigrate each other, saying, how are you going to help me? You know, you’re the same as me, we’re all in prison. But actually, what better resource, you know, to be trying to understand something very complicated.

Sophie Crilly [00:26:37]:

I would just also add to that as well because I think there were some people that described that experience happening for them whilst they were on the TC. But I think, you know, we spoke to people that stayed for at least the minimum sort of 18 months in therapy and beyond, but we also spoke to people that had left prematurely. They described sometimes kind of the feedback that was being given to them at the time actually being too much to really acknowledge at the time as actually their experience. And it wasn’t until they left and could reflect back. I think one participant described it as they couldn’t see the wood from the trees and what people were telling them versus what was happening for them at the time. They weren’t able to actually kind of let their defences down in that moment. And it felt too much. And, actually doing the work at the time felt too much, hence why for whatever reason they left.

Sophie Crilly [00:27:38]:

But actually even reflecting afterwards, they could see that actually maybe on reflection there was some benefit in what people were saying, but at the time it just felt too much.

David Jones [00:27:49]:

That’s a very interesting point, isn’t it? Message of growth and development, of realisation. So you were acting in the position of participant observers, I suppose, weren’t you? Did you hear things in the course of the interviews you conducted which surprised you about, for example, your participants describing insights they’ve developed in a way that you may not have expected.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:28:18]:

I think perhaps what I was left sort of thinking about maybe a couple of things after we perhaps have completed the research rather than done the research. And one of them is that it’s not the right intervention and it’s not the right time for everybody. Lots of things, you know, it almost has to be a perfect storm, I think. And I think looking back, there was at least one person I think who, I think now this wasn’t the right intervention and that that’s okay, that the defences are necessary and it’s the right thing to do. But I think the thing that sort of, in terms of a process that I thought was interesting was that I think I learned that you have to deal with the shame first. And the shame has to sort of turn into guilt because the shame is very disabling. It means everyone wants to hide.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:29:08]:

They can’t talk about the unspeakable things. And it can lead to sort of either people coming off the intervention, people using substances. But I think when it can turn to guilt, I think that’s a bit more mobilising and the idea of repairing something in some way, in whatever way is in that person’s mind. And I don’t think I’d grasped that actually just from working in the service, because it’s just, we go to group, this is what we do. But it helped me sort of formulate a bit more about what might be happening, which I thought was a useful bit of information for me.

David Jones [00:29:43]:

And of course, I had the same realisation about the woman I was referring to earlier, except it was me caring or being aware of my guilt and not picking up the terry of her shame.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:29:58]:

It’s hard to have a conversation with someone about why you killed someone. You know, it takes stamina for everyone and you have to develop your vocabulary. These aren’t conversations we have day to day. They’re hard for everybody, I think.

Sophie Crilly [00:30:11]:

And in a group, I think, it can be hard one on one, but I think there’s something about the group as well. I think that’s what I was thinking about when. I mean, it wasn’t necessarily a surprising thing that came out for me about how hard it was, but I think talking to women who have come away from the TC and were reflecting on their experience, I was thinking there was something about that, like retrospective perspective that, you know, you don’t often hear in such detail because, you might see people, after they’ve left in passing, oh, how are you? How are you getting on? But to actually sit down and have really in depth conversations about what was that experience like for you? How do you articulate it? And really kind of, yeah. The difficulty of the work, and the courage and the resilience that it takes to be in groups and to be in groups with people. I think one of the participants sort of described how, you know, we’re also ashamed of our crimes.

Sophie Crilly [00:31:20]:

And so we want to think the other person’s worse. And it’s like that, it’s that classic kind of projection, but it’s just flying around all over the place. And sometimes when, as staff, when we’re in it as well, it’s hard to see the wood from the trees. So I think, yeah, for me, it was something really valuable about seeing, sitting down and just talking about what was that experience like for you? How have you understood it? Having had time to digest it. And also we could have some time to digest it as well.

David Jones [00:31:54]:

Yeah. Thanks very much. So your study highlights honesty and discomfort. Why do you think those two things are so important for psychological growth?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:32:06]:

I mean, I could start with maybe discomfort, I think, which perhaps feeds into the idea of the turbulence that some of the participants talked about. That I think there has to be a distinction between when we’re working and having a conversation and when we’re just talking. And I think there’s something about the tension. The minute you put 10 people in a circle, it does something, it does something to everybody and how they talk. And when talking becomes structured, we meet at this time. There are a lot of reasons why people in the group struggle to look at themselves or to look at other people. And I think turbulence was necessary on some level because it creates tension, it builds feeling where some people then are compelled to talk because their feelings have got so high. And also in a service where we’re thinking about risk reduction and protection of the public, a little bit of tension lets you see how people are going to respond to uncomfortable, unfamiliar, or unwanted circumstances that they might be put in.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:33:11]:

And I think it’s only when there’s a little bit of tension and you have to be careful with how you pitch that too much is a problem and too little is a problem as well, I think. But you want to, you want to create an environment where you can really see who this person is when they’re under strain. And what is that? Is their recourse? Is it relational? Are they going to start using substances? Are they going to be getting in a fight with somebody? But, that has to be managed. One of the participants said, you can’t say boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, and then not have boundaries. I mean, her expression was, you can’t let the lunatics run the asylum. And so if you are going to let people’s behaviour sort of play out maybe a little bit longer than you might in another setting, that is going to create discomfort. That’s going to create discomfort for staff as well as participants.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:33:58]:

But you have to be confident in your boundaries, your capacity to contain if you are going to. If you are going to allow something to develop, to see where it goes, you know, so there’s a lot of containment and regulation that needs to happen within the disruption or the turbulence. But we are trying to disrupt people’s thinking on some level, to hear what their ideas are.

Sophie Crilly [00:34:21]:

I was also thinking about with honesty. I think it was interesting speaking to people after they kind of left, and that was their, that was something that they valued, because I think there’s an ambivalence about it when the women are in it and whether they want it, whether they don’t. You know, some people say, just tell me, tell me honestly. I want that honesty. But then when it comes, it’s really hard to hear. And I think any one of us would probably struggle with that, constantly hearing the parts of you that you feel ashamed of or you want to hide. But I think it was interesting. Like, that came out as such a strong theme for people having left. And actually what they took from that is actually people telling me directly is what stuck. But I think it was directness with the idea that it wasn’t malicious and that it was trying to help. And I think all of the kind of mechanisms really need each other in order to work is what they were sort of articulating, and we would certainly say that you would, you need the relationship. You need the relationship and the relationships with each other and everyone in the community is so important in order for that challenge and that honesty to be received in a way that can be thought about.

David Jones [00:35:48]:

Thank you. And following on from that, given that part of the expectation is discomfort and turbulence, how do staff support women to tolerate discomfort?

Sophie Crilly [00:36:05]:

Well, I think I would probably say it’s how we all kind of work together as a community to kind of, what are the boundaries? What are the boundaries? Because I think the boundaries help contain like the distress and the disturbance to some extent. An example that comes to my mind which is something that when people come and they’re new, they sort of get told is a boundary, but eventually adopt it as something that they then pass on to kind of newer members, which is about staying in the room when there’s distress and how, what we often see is when somebody’s in distress or there’s difficulty and somebody, the urge is to flee, to get out. And the women will quite often encourage that person to try and stay in the room and the staff will as well. And that’s just an example. But, I guess something about the boundaries of, there has to be those boundaries to contain the difficulty that I think we’re trying to do and the work that we’re trying to do.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:37:17]:

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest things we’re always trying to do on a TC is to help everyone regulate, to emotionally regulate and to bring thinking on board. You know, I think my experience of a lot of the women that were in the TC was that they felt a lot, they felt very deeply. Things felt very personal. But sometimes it was difficult to bring on any evidence that was sort of external to themselves and to say, well, that might be what you think, but have you checked with that person? And I think what’s important as well is to help the participants to regulate and think things through in a structured, slowed down rather than an impulsive way, is that staff have to be able to regulate. They have to have the resources.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:38:09]:

You know, our old boss was, or my old boss would say, have you had your Weetabix? Have you had your breakfast? And I think there’s some truth to that because our boundary management, our patience and our tolerance of what we can take the women on on that day, in that moment is going to be driven by the individual and collective resources of the staff team as well. And certainly I can think there are times when I went into group not fully resourced, and I would have to think about where we could go today, you know, where the women could go today against the backdrop of what else has been going on. And so it’s a very dynamic and relational environment where I think we do have to accept sometimes we have limitations and that we can’t go somewhere today because we don’t have the resources to get out of it if it goes wrong. And that could be the psychological resources, or it could be that there aren’t many officers and that we have to do something differently. So, you know, I think the rule was we need two officers in a community meeting. And if that isn’t possible, then we have to think about something else. So I think it’s about accepting that if we’re working relationally, we have to acknowledge the limitations of being in relationships.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:39:22]:

And that is, sometimes we don’t like a person, sometimes we might not be getting on very well with a team member, and that’s going to impact an interaction with someone else. So thinking about the group and the individual, I think, and the realities of what we bring each day to work.

David Jones [00:39:40]:

Thank you. And, of course, what you’re describing is an extremely complex, dynamic entity with the group of residents and a group of staff and subgroups within each of those larger groups, so always in ebb and flow, but dependent, from what you’re saying, on boundaries and establishing consistency as far as possible. But sometimes things, I imagine, do go off track. Sometimes a TC isn’t as healthy as you want it to be. What are the kinds of things that help it get back on track, do you think?

Sophie Crilly [00:40:22]:

I think something that’s interestingly my experience, compared to when I first started sort of seven years ago to sort of now has really kind of become embedded in the culture is the benefit of large groups and coming together. And we have, you know, there’s something called an emergency meeting, which usually happens when there’s been a serious boundary break or a kind of, there might have been something more widely happening in the prison that we feel it’s really necessary that everybody comes together. But I think, even the title emergency meeting, it kind of generates that initial sort of fear of like, what’s this going to be? Conflict, panic. And that that kind of was the sort of culture attached to it.

Sophie Crilly [00:41:13]:

And something that I feel has really evolved in the way in which the women can use those large groups of coming together to actually talk and work through something that sometimes we might have a week of emergency meetings where we just come and we talk about a specific issue that is impacting the ability to do the therapeutic work and the small groups and the other little bits that make the program work in a way, but actually in some way, those large groups work because it’s the whole community. It’s all the staff team that are in that day. So it’s evolved from something that I think was quite feared and elicited a lot of panic. And to some extent it raises an alarm to something. But I think there’s been that element of buy in, in terms of that as a process to really resolving conflict and resolving, and interruptions to the therapeutic milieu of the service really from everyone involved is my experience.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:42:20]:

I mean, I don’t think I’d add much to that. I think that there’s always a danger when things go wrong that everybody reverts to some sort of role and I think a staff team can do that as well. You know, I’m this, I’m that I can use this psychological theory to explain why I’m not part of this. And this is your work. And I think if you really want to work relationally and you really want to build a community, I think there has to be acknowledgement about when staff get blown off course. When staff use language carelessly, they say something they regret or they misunderstood something. And I think that builds a huge amount of respect actually in participants when they do that.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:43:01]:

And certainly one of the participants was describing actually the importance of having good relationships with staff and that being significant, this feeling of being backed. Someone was, you know, looking out for her. I think we all need that. Certainly when I was in the prison full time, I spent more time with 20 people convicted of very serious offenses than I did with anyone else in my life. And that has to have an impact on me. And, we like people more than others. And so I think we have to be transparent and honest about how we’re doing and what we’re bringing and our ability to navigate and understand what’s happening. You know, how do we think through, how do we understand what’s going on? But like Sophie says, it requires teamwork.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:43:47]:

You can’t do it alone and you can’t do it using power. That just drives you deeper into something that’s going to go on for days.

David Jones [00:43:58]:

Yeah, that’s a very interesting phrase. You can’t do it using power because often the temptation is for self to use power and to clamp down on things. So from the research, one participant mentioned a racist undertone in the TC. How did you interpret that and what do you think services should do in response in that kind of situation?

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:44:31]:

We had a conversation about this the other day, didn’t we? I think it’s very complicated and difficult. Do you want to go first. Sophie, were you going to say something?

Sophie Crilly [00:44:39]:

Yeah, I think the participant talked about something that I think is a kind of an example of a wider kind of dynamic that happens in groups and particularly when the groups represent wider society in terms of difference and race and unconscious biases and processes get acted out in groups and particularly when there’s not kind of attention paid to it really, and where it might be difficult to also voice that and where it might, unfortunately fall to the black members or the black members of that group to voice something like that. And I guess, yeah, it’s something that I think is really important that sort of services, because we sort of looked at the literature as well around more widely services and, you know, whether they do meet the needs of all client groups and all people of all different backgrounds and ethnicities and especially when the team is made up of predominantly white people. And I think that’s a really difficult dynamic. And I think it really requires work from the team and the people involved to sort of be reflective and reflexive and for race and difference to be part of the conversations and the dynamics in the same way that we would reflect on transference and the different, the kind of things that are elicited in our deeply relational work with people. So I think that was a really important. It was really important that the participant could say that and speak about that experience with us because it really highlighted something that hopefully kind of draws attention to what can happen in, particularly in environments where, yeah, black people are, you know, overrepresented as well and where assumptions and differential treatment can take place really. And you know, sometimes it’s conscious and sometimes it’s unconscious, but where that really needs to be thought about.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:47:03]:

I remember when we did that interview and I think it felt very risky for that participant to raise it. And they were also very hopeful that we would include it in the write up, which we did. And the sense I got from that experience was that there’s the racist undertone sort of impacts their sense that anybody’s on their team, anybody’s backing them, that they’re understood. And I think it led to sort of a feeling of alienation. And so I suppose you could read this piece of research and say, well, it’s an exceptional case. And only one participant described this, but only one participant was black. And I think that’s the risk that we always have when people bring such occasions or experiences to our attention, that we treat them as exceptional or that it’s somehow localised rather than actually we all were raised in a world where we have certain beliefs about things and that that might impact us.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:48:02]:

So I think this work is active work rather than something that’s passive. I think there’s a danger that it never gets the priority that it needs because there’s always something else, particularly in prisons, that is taking place. But I think there’s lots of research out there. I think the prison service conducted their own research about the experience. I think of Black Star and then possibly prisoners as well, you know, that raised similar issues. The question is in a TC, we have to hold on to what we know, what we do best to be able to have some of these conversations in a way that doesn’t feel lethal. And I think that’s the fear that having difficult conversations brings about some catastrophe rather than actually we might learn, we might develop, we might grow. So, I think when you’re working on a group intervention as well, when you’re in a group, you want to see someone who reflects you in the group, whether that be a staff member or fellow participant. Otherwise, it’s a very lonely experience.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:49:03]:

I think also wondering as you were talking, Nujoji, about your experience of being a male therapist in the service, because my assumption is that probably most of the staff, the psychological staff team, were probably female. If it’s like other parts of the prison system. And of course, to be in a service where the clients are all women and you’re potentially representing, the male abuser within the you know. I imagine that was quite a difficult position for you personally to be in within that circle.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:49:39]:

Yeah. I think running a group where the participants are women and they’re often talking about rape, talking about child sexual abuse, talking about being mothers, you know, and at one point we had two men facilitating a group, which created a lot of conversation as far as I’ve got with it. Certainly some of the women would see me as some sort of perpetrator. Some of them might like me to be a perpetrator of some sort. Other people saw me as all sorts of different things I think is the bottom line.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:50:11]:

As a man. What do I think about that? It’s a long time since I’ve thought about this from being in a woman’s prison. I think I had an easier time in some respects and a harder time in others. And I’m not quite sure when that was and when that wasn’t. I would say the most psychologically frightening experience I’ve had in a prison was with a woman. So I certainly learned a lot about how powerful women can be as well. But I think there were times when I said, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be pregnant. Like, I just can’t.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:50:49]:

In the same way, I can’t necessarily imagine what it’s like to kill someone. And I think there were occasions where there was another woman in the group which was helpful, you know, another facilitator, Sophie, or another officer that we had. But I think it’s about accepting that I have some limitations. I don’t know necessarily know what it’s like to be a woman or to have some of their experiences and that being okay. And I suppose what I was struck by when I left the TC, I thought, given the kind of the time we’d spent together, that there might be some, maybe I was hoping there’d be some nugget that they’d taken from me. And actually what they said was, you were the first, well, what one of them said was, you were the first man who didn’t, I think she said, actually, you were the first man who didn’t abuse us and also didn’t run away. You came back each week, each day to the group. And I think that had some value. And I think perhaps what I tried to do was model being a man who wasn’t going to beat anybody up or rape anybody. And that’s not a straightforward task because there are lots of complex dynamics going on about who men are, who women are.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:52:01]:

I suppose, just to be clear, as well, women, as you know, women are perpetrators also. And I think certainly in staff groups, I think men coming into forensic services often have thought more about their representation as perpetrators. That I think women can often find it hard to think of themselves as potentially taking the projections of being a perpetrator, because society doesn’t really tolerate that in reflection, does it, Sophie?

Sophie Crilly [00:52:30]:

Yeah, it’s really, really complicated. I was just thinking also. So what’s really important, like, with any kind of, working with difference in any way in this kind of work, in this really relational work, that it’s on the table to be talked about, like, who do I represent to you as, you know, a white woman in a position of power, authority. But also we’re here doing this work where we’re trying to reduce that power dynamic to some extent, and what does that bring up? And I think, that’s where some of the difficulties and difference of what it is in a group where we all relate to each other in a different way and whether that be with gender or other aspects of our identities, is that we can talk about it and that it’s on the table to be talked about. And I do think that’s something that we try and do in relation to, like, the examples that Nujoji were talking about, you know, what is it like that it’s going to be two men facilitating the group today, and how does that leave you feeling? And so there’s opportunity to voice what it might feel like.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:53:49]:

And it’s important that I think that group members get practice saying what they want and what they don’t want and that they can protest with words if there’s something they don’t like.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:53:59]:

You know, it’s been really lovely to hear the thoughtfulness about the work and to hear about that kind of work going on, because it’s obviously their pockets within what happens in prison. So it’s been lovely to hear about the work that you’ve been doing. Just, you know, conscious of the time and it’s almost time to wrap up. And it’s really very personally emotionally challenging for staff to do this kind of work, isn’t it? I wonder whether you’ve any insights to share in terms of how you two protected your wellbeing whilst doing this kind of work.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:54:33]:

I think it’s really difficult, actually, I can certainly think of times where I got home and all I wanted to do was just sort of zone out, you know, it’s intense, it’s hard work. You spend all day listening to horrible things. And I don’t think I’ve mastered it about how you process things like that. I certainly think things like therapy and supervision help. I think having a framework to think some of these things through is helpful, whatever that is, whether that be psychology or religion or, I don’t know, philosophy or something.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:55:05]:

I think a good sense of humour goes a long way in this type of work, you know, appropriately used. But we spend a lot of time immersed in the horror of humanity, so I’ve not mastered it, I’m afraid.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:55:19]:

How about you, Sophie? Any further?

Sophie Crilly [00:55:21]:

Well, I think it’s interesting because, the last couple of years I’ve been studying alongside, working at the TC and I’ve noticed at times finding it more challenging and, you know, part of that is just juggling lots of things. But also I think there was something about where I had to study on my weekends, where I had to spend the precious free time that I had doing assignments or whatever. The absence of that meant I had very little time to just be down and doing things that, you know, just, I don’t know, socialising. And it sounds really boring, but just like normal things outside of that, really intense work. Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve mastered it either, but it’s a work in progress. But it’s interesting. I remember when we were doing the research and like there was something about even the intensity for us, I think, because we were in group together. We were, you know, pretty much at work together Monday to Friday and then doing the research outside of work time. And I think it both tested and strengthened our relationship, because actually and you know, we learned to communicate with each other.

Sophie Crilly [00:56:42]:

So yeah, there was things from that that I think were really important in terms of just learning how to manage a lot of things all at once and different roles and yeah, we were wearing different hats with each other a lot of the time. And that, you know, at times really great, but at times really challenging as well.

Dr Naomi Murphy [00:57:01]:

Yeah, really lovely to have you both on. Thank you very much.

Nujoji Calvocoressi [00:57:05]:

Yeah, really, it’s been a lovely conversation. Made me think a lot. Made me realise, as if I didn’t know it already, that all of these profound experience you’ve had and described, they never leave you, they’ll always be in your mind, just as the memory of that woman I referred to earlier on still in my memory. And the job of work I think we all have to do is to detoxify as far as possible those memories and to relieve ourselves of the burden of self recrimination as far as we can. Anyway, lovely to see the two of you. Thanks very much indeed.

David Jones [00:57:48]:

Thank you.

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We are meeting today to talk about two things, one of which leads into the other. Firstly, the TC Therapeutic Community Elders and then the PETT, that’s P-E-T-T, the PETT archive, which had been housed in Toddington, Gloucestershire. First though, can we have a brief round of introductions? If we just quickly go around, starting with you, Tom.

Tom Harrison (01:29)

I’m Tom Harrison, I was a psychiatrist and I worked in the therapeutic community in the 1970s. I’m now a historian for therapeutic communities and psychiatrists.

David Jones (01:40)

Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Paget (01:42)

Okay, hi, I’m Sarah Paget I’m a director at the Mulberry Bush and I have the honour and privilege of supporting the Elders to come together and to help coordinate all of our activities.

David Jones (01:56)

Thank you, Vicky or Victoria.

Vicky (02:00)

You can call me either Vicky or Victoria. And I used to work at The Retreat. That was the first therapeutic community I worked in at the Acorn program for many years, starting early, I know, at the end of the last century. And then I worked managing the therapeutic community at HMP Send in the criminal justice system, which was the only therapeutic community for women at the time, I mean possibly still is, I don’t know. And yes I’m one of the TC Elders now, gosh heavens. And that’s me and I’m really an old artist as well, I should just say that. David Kennard, what about you? Do you want to introduce yourself?

David Kennard (02:39)

Hello, yes, I’m David Kennard. I’ve got various connections with the therapeutic community world. I first joined it, my first job as a clinical psychologist in Littlemore at Phoenix Unit where I met David Jones too, and got involved with the development of the Association of Therapeutic Communities there. And through that link I got involved in writing about them and wrote an introduction to therapeutic communities and I was then editor of the therapeutic community journal for some time. I left Littlemore, went to work at Rampton which was a crazy thing to do for quite a while and then went to The Retreat where I met Vicky and it turns out I also met Naomi because I did some staff support groups at Stockton Hall which is where she was working so I kind of veered in various directions connecting with therapy communities.

David Jones (03:30)

Thank you. I’m David Jones and Naomi.

Dr Naomi Murphy (03:34)

Yeah, I’m Naomi Murphy. Glad to have you all with us today. It’s really nice to meet those of you who I have not met before. I wonder if one of you could explain to us what the Therapeutic Community Elders are. I don’t know if there’s somebody who naturally could take that question.

Sarah Paget (03:51)

I could start it off, so the idea was born sort of in 2020, around that time. I think John Turberville, who is the CEO of the Mulberry Bush, but also the chair of communities at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and involved in the therapeutic community more widely, was sort of struck by the number of people who were retiring at the time and about that, the wisdom that was sort of leaving the therapeutic community spectrum at that time and thinking really about, and came across the global Elders, which is something sort of set up by Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama and others as an idea of how people who’ve been in leadership roles, senior leadership roles might help to kind of think about the future and hold something of their experience and bring that to that. So I think that’s where the idea was born and then the TC Elders just sort of got together at the Mulberry Bush third space and that then will be over to you Vicky. I think you were probably involved sort of early on or Tom was earlier.

Vicky (05:05)

Yeah I retired in 2021, so I think I was invited to join when I was early retired. And so I wasn’t in right from the very beginning. But I know I invited Tom to join. So I was obviously part of it before Tom. And I think David predates me. Anyway, David Jones, that is. In the early days, my memories of the early days when I joined was endless, endless discussions about how difficult it was to be called a TC Elder and how being compared to such people as Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela was somewhat cringe making. And we really wanted to be called something else like the old fossils or something. But anyway, yeah.

However, we have sort of developed and a little bit and new things have happened and we have a monthly Zoom with people working in therapeutic communities or want to know more about making their practice more therapeutic community minded in some way now, so that’s really a super sort of connection to the here and now and makes us feel less like old fossils, I think. And also one of the things I’ve done and we’ve been thinking about developing, maybe talk a bit more about when we’re talking about the archive is a kind of living archive aspect of the TC Elders. And I have an aid, sort of show and tell aid that I can demonstrate, which is an alphabet. There’s letter A, you can see letter A right beside me, but we want to do an online kind of way of developing therapeutic ideas and making it a real living thing that people out there can contribute to in here and now. So I’m very, very interested in that aspect of what we’re doing. But David and Tom will have different perspectives on that as well. So quite like to their ideas about the TC Elders.

David Kennard (07:03)

For me, it’s sort of quite simple. It’s a way for retired Tate Bridge community people to stay in touch with each other, which is quite nice. I mean, like the people on this call here, people I wouldn’t otherwise be in regular contact with. And it’s a way of keeping in touch with the struggles that people now who work in various kinds of settings, not just say, communities, but it’s actually where they want to use, say, community ideas, keeping in touch with what they’re doing through this Zoom call that we’ll probably talk about a bit more. And where we can, offering ideas that we hope will be helpful to the difficulties that they might be facing.

Tom Harrison (07:51)

Yes, I think the Zoom call for me has become the most important thing of what we’re doing in the sense that it’s very evident that people really value it. I mean, they come from America, they come from India, they come from Sweden. And these people have really told us how much they value the connections that we give them. And I think I’m also extremely excited by the idea of the ABC that Vic is talking about. I think this is a way of collecting material that perhaps otherwise will be lost in its, I can’t think of the right word, but it’s convenient, it’s not the right word, but it’s happening when the PETT Archive is closing. It perhaps makes up a little bit for that tragedy.

Sarah Paget (08:43)

If I was just to add something to everything that everyone said is that I think that in many ways the Elders provides a space where people who are working with very difficult people and in very difficult circumstances can find a space to think. And one of the things we’ve talked about is the idea that negative capability, the idea that people can sit with not knowing is becoming very rare within the public sector and within life generally. And I think what the Elders provide is a space to feel okay about not having all of the answers and a space to just think together and that something might emerge. So for me, that’s the most poignant message and what we role model more than what we say, I suppose.

David Kennard (09:34)

As a TC Elder yourself, are you going to contribute your view or just leave it or not?

David Jones (09:40)

I wasn’t going to say very much, no, but I am thinking while you’re talking about the group, because it is in effect not just a Zoom group of which there is a proliferation, but an online community meeting which provides exactly the opportunities that you’ve been talking about.

Sarah Paget (09:58)

Yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy (10:03)

So sounds like Elder is exactly the right word for what you’re doing in the sense of all having had extensive experience within the therapeutic community world and wishing to share your knowledge and experience and offer that up for people to be able to draw on for guidance, advice, mentorship maybe, am I picking up from there? And how would somebody access this as a resource?

Sarah Paget (10:27)

Well we have a presence online, so at the moment we have a presence on the Mulberry Bush website, the Mulberry Bush hosts the Elders, but we’re looking to broaden that out and for the artwork that’s being described being sort based within a journal setting and that people would be able to access through that, so it’ll be online and directly through our email address.

David Kennard (10:57)

An email invitation goes quite widely to various groups for each Zoom session. And I’ve sometimes been surprised at the people who join us. I think, yeah, it does get quite a wide distribution, the invitations to the Zoom sessions. We call them the open forums.

Dr Naomi Murphy (11:15)

How many people tend to join those forums?

Tom Harrison (11:18)

There is between maybe 6 to about 12. A lot more people sign up for the forums, but they don’t, obviously due to difficulties of trying to attend that I’ve demonstrated today, affect people who come.

Dr Naomi Murphy (11:34)

And do people pay a membership or do they just have to have an interest in it and it’s a very generous service to be offered up?

Sarah Paget (11:43)

Yes, there’s no fee, is in a sense what the Elders are offering to communities in the present, to be able to, as you say, mentorship. I think that’s a really useful word for much of what we do.

Tom Harrison (11:43)

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Dr Naomi Murphy (11:57)

A really lovely offering. I suppose I was thinking even beyond therapeutic communities, there are large group meetings that happen in all sorts of places which people might not recognise as being a therapeutic community origin, but actually maybe there are other people beyond the traditional therapeutic community setting that might benefit from what you’re offering up to people. So are the people running services within the prison service for instance, who might not be in a TC, it sounds like they could get some benefits from the knowledge that you’re sharing in these forums.

Vicky (12:30)

Well, I think it’s not just us sharing the knowledge. In fact, I’m sure I learn as much as anybody on those meetings because there’s an international group of people who talk about, what is it like in Portugal to be working in a public service, trying to work therapeutically, or what’s it like in Sweden or whatever. So there’s a lot to share from the members of the group. And I would encourage anybody who’s interested to join that group because it is free. It is what you make it. And it’s lovely to be with like-minded people. And with everything going on in the world, it’s a way of helping one another cope with all the modern world and the challenges of working in a relational way in a modern world that’s so fragmented, that fragments relationships and where there’s so much that’s anti-therapeutic that being banded about. So yeah, it’s a good thing to join. And I don’t think most of us would want to be part of something like that, that people could only join if they were in a privileged position and could pay for it. I don’t think.

David Kennard (13:39)

And it’s at a fixed time. It’s the same Thursday of the month, the third Thursday of the month, two to three. So we only more recently made it like that so that it becomes a kind of very predictable event that people can relate to. And I think there’s something quite important about it being predictable like that, given what Vicky was saying.

Sarah Paget (14:02)

I do think it provides an anchor for people. I’ve had emails from people who say that they’re comforted by the very thought that it’s happening even when they can’t come. So I think it does provide something of a safe space and you know it really isn’t a group of Elders telling people or giving advice or anything of that nature. It is genuinely a space that’s held by the Elders, many of whom aren’t here actually, so we have got other Elders that are not present with us, think it’s worth noting.

Dr Naomi Murphy (14:31)

I will follow up on that in a moment Sarah, I suppose I was just thinking as you were talking I was reminded of recently watching, is it Cory Doctorow talking to Aaron Bastani about enshitification and about how everything has become so monopolised with the idea, taken over with the idea of making money and fragmented as a consequence of that and it seems to me that you guys are trying to do the exact opposite of that, of offering something that’s very community focused that it’s about giving something back rather than taking away and just trying to strip assets out of everything. It sounds like a really beautiful project, but yeah, it’d be really great to know who does join as an Elder. So we’ve heard that it’s open to anyone who wants to come and attend and benefit and we can share the links to what you’re doing in the show notes, but it’d be really good to hear how people end up joining as an Elder.

Tom Harrison (15:26)

We spend quite a lot of time on this subject trying to think about people who we would like to join. And obviously it’s open to people who would like to join us. But we do spend a lot of time thinking about those people who are close to retirement or who have retired that we know of, and we’d like to invite, not everybody wants to because they’ve frankly had enough of therapeutic communities. It’s those of us who continued are still passionate about it.

Vicky (15:57)

I think some people have other conflicting commitments and stuff as well. I don’t think it’s just that they’re not so passionate about TC’s anyway, they can express that through various different outlets.

David Kennard (16:08)

One or two people do come onto the Zoom session to consider themselves to be Elders, although we haven’t actually invited them. There’s a certain blurring there about what constitutes an Elder, and we haven’t quite resolved if we want to clarify the boundary or leave it bit blurred.

Vicky (16:25)

I think there’s a sort of sweet spot where you’ve still got some energy and you want to give something and you can do it. It physically works for you, you know, it works out. It’s not an inconvenience. It doesn’t clash with anything else you’re doing. And you’re not so elderly that it’s actually just, you know, gets impossible, too difficult. It just has to suit you, doesn’t it? And work out. That’s how it is.

Sarah Paget (16:51)

We do have a lot of people on an Elders, you know, TC Elders distribution list who don’t actually participate. So I think it’s interesting that when you say about who can be an Elder, we have many people who subscribe to being part of something, but not everyone is contributing all of the time consistently. So there is a small group, sort of almost self-chosen group, who become those that are delivering the open meetings, the open forums and such. But I think personally that the process of actually going through this and wrestling with who is an Elder, who shouldn’t be an Elder, it’s very therapeutic community, I think at some point an answer will emerge and I trust the process really.

David Kennard (17:39)

There has been a turnover, I mean people have left the elders group.

Vicky (17:43)

Quite funny, my husband just walked out the door then, who’s another elderly gentleman, deciding he’s leaving the Elders group.

Tom Harrison (17:49)

I have to also say that as a group of people, I found the Elders to be people I trust and love and work together very comfortably with and learn lot from.

David Jones (18:00)

Can I just refer to the online group again? Because as we’re talking, I realise I’m not absolutely clear whether it’s for anybody who’s kind of involved in therapeutic work or whether it’s specifically for people who work in therapeutic communities. What would you say?

Tom Harrison (18:01)

I think people self-choose themselves. They’re interested in what lies behind the therapeutic community approach rather than necessarily all working in therapeutic communities. Certainly one person very much finds us a support system because of the environment that he’s working in feels so antagonistic to how he would like to work. On the other hand, there are people who are flirting with the idea, well, not flirting, who wish to set up a therapeutic community and have used the group to listen to the ideas. So it’s a range of people. It’s just people working in therapeutic communities. It’s about the feeling behind it, the emotional approach to people listening and hearing people.

David Kennard (19:05)

I don’t think we’ve yet faced a situation of somebody joining that we thought shouldn’t be in the room. But I suppose it could happen.

Tom Harrison (19:12)

That’s true.

Vicky (19:14)

But I can think of two people at least who come from different parts of the world. One of whom has worked in therapeutic communities and probably would be an Elder if she was in this country, but she isn’t. So she can’t join us for our in-face meetings, for example, but clearly enjoys some of the like-mindedness in the group having worked in a therapeutic way in the past. And I think that serves a perfectly good function for her and she shares things that are useful. And somebody else who works very much with trauma in communities and the aftermath of traumatic events, who’s never been a therapist and doesn’t work in a therapeutic community, but nevertheless again, there’s a like-mindedness, something really valuable about being able to think in this special TC way, even though, you know, she hasn’t ever worked in a TC and never will, but it’s still useful in thinking about the aftermath of mass casualty events. So actually, you never know how someone’s going to attach or what’s going to be relevant. But I don’t think it’s in any way an exclusive group. I think the nature of therapeutic communities is that they’re almost relevant to everybody because we’re all human.

David Jones (20:40)

So it sounds as if it’s for people who wish to think about the therapeutic work they are doing or would wish to do and who will reflect upon the feelings that are evoked in the work, which is perhaps a bit more of a general kind of definition.

Tom Harrison (21:00)

And also developing a friendship group in a sense of adversity. People working in America at the present time in this particular way feel very isolated. So it’s that sort of emotional attachment as much as anything else.

David Kennard (21:15)

I’ve been struck by people who joined who are in management roles in an organisation and struggle with the issues within the staff team and would like to be able to introduce more with therapeutic community ethos. But meanwhile, feeling perhaps rather isolated or up against it in their management role. And so we provide that support and for people like minded people who understand the issues that they are experiencing.

David Jones (21:44)

Thank you. Can I ask Vicky whether your alphabet is available online.

Vicky (21:51)

I don’t know, Sarah would know. It is available online. Sarah, can you say, I don’t know whether it’d be available right now, but I’ve got the original artwork with me right now. Is there a way of getting it online or can I just show people pictures?

David Jones (22:06)

Well, I was asking really because I think it’s a masterly work of art. It truly is a magnificent piece of work. And yet, as we know, it’s a work in progress.

Vicky (22:21)

Yes. I mean, the idea online to go back to the online thing is that people will contribute to it. So it’s just the beginning of something. And it’s to elicit responses from people. And I think the grand plan, as it were, is to issue a letter every so often in an online access, open access kind of way that people can respond to with their own it could be memories of being in therapeutic communities. I’m showing it to the person I was staying with last night who said, I used to work in a therapeutic way with a man called David Clark at Fulbourn Hospital. And I said to her, well, actually, that’s in my A to Z of therapeutic communities on C for Clark. And I showed her the page and she told me, yes, I sat at the feet of Maxwell Jones and I learned all this about nursing and I’ve used all my years nursing with young women with eating disorders. I always worked in a therapeutic community where I didn’t even know any of that. I’ve known this woman for 30 years and didn’t know any of this. So it’s to elicit these kinds of responses from people so that it isn’t in itself an end in itself.

It’s just a beginning and it’s a way of eliciting the kind of things that could be in an archive, but actually might always have been missed because they’re not grand studies or papers that have been poured over and peer reviewed. They’re just people’s cherished memories, thoughts, recollections, photographs, poems they wrote, whatever, about these kinds of ways of working, therapeutic communities and like-minded ways of working that have influenced people throughout their lives. So yeah, so just saying that and I’ll actually show you the bit. This one, this page, which I think shows up a bit, that’s B, it’s probably backwards, isn’t it? That was that was letter B. Now I’m going to show you David Clarke of Fulbourn. He’s in that corner somewhere. You might not, but this is letter C. And also on letter C is culture of inquiry and community of communities and collective and courage and Craig Fees, children, compassion, columbine, connect, cooking and eating together.

Yeah, so lots of stuff, culture of curiosity, cup of tea or coffee. So it’s about a multifarious collection of things which people can relate to and perhaps share their own recollections or that triggers something. Because this is important. And I suppose even with the archive closing, what we’re saying is the urge to create you know, an archive, which is then the means of finding evidence for doing what we do and going, yes, someone’s done this before. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is how the people who have been in therapeutic communities in the past, in a different kind of world with less regulation, which is a, you know, a mixed thing, but less regulation and developing the culture inquiry and developing the therapeutic community impulse and so on. Our inspiration for the future and this A to Z is a kind of another way of providing inspiration for the future by reminiscing on what’s gone before and sharing knowledge.

David Jones (26:11)

Well, we’ll have to find a way of getting it online, Vicky, so that people can see it, because what you did just then was throw out the whole contrast between the list of things and names that you gave us and the piece of artwork which shows how they’re all linked together in a creative mess.

Vicky (26:29)

Yeah. I just hope it sort of elicits something and that I wish to see this artwork more, which is good, because there will be a way might not be ever so easy right now, but there will be a way and it is coming in your direction. So look out for it.

Sarah Paget (26:46)

The intention is very much for it to be online and I’m working on it as we speak.

David Jones (26:53)

Excellent. So who can be an Elder? Is there a way of somebody who might view this podcast, for example, who can they email and say, I’m here, I’m interested?

Sarah Paget (27:04)

Yes, I mean, at the moment, best person to email would be me, I suppose, at spaget@mulberrybush.org.uk And then what I do is any question that would come through to me about the TC Elders, I would then pass on to the group and we would have a conversation about that and yeah, invite them for a conversation.

David Kennard (27:25)

We should say that an important aspect of the Elders is we meet in person twice a year. And if somebody wants to be an Elder, they really need to be able to access that. It’s quite an important part of keeping us together. So that’s why it would be difficult for somebody, say from another country, unless they could manage it, to join. Up to now, we have always met at the Planned Environment Therapy Trust archive. But that we have to go on tour now because it’s closing and that’s quite important thing for us.

Tom Harrison (28:06)

We may come to a place near you.

David Jones (28:09)

So, well that’s interesting David because Vicky is currently at MB3 which is at Toddington in deepest Gloucestershire I think. Is that right? Gloucestershire. And so we can now I think move on briefly to the Planned Environment Therapy archives, the PETT archives. So what is or what has been the PETT archive?

Tom Harrison (28:43)

It was set up by Craig Fees. Probably, I don’t actually know the date when it was started, but it must be the mid-80s, something like that, and to a large extent, certainly in the early years, it circulated around Craig who went out to collect archives of individuals, communities, and anything that was clearly relevant to therapeutic communities.

David Kennard (28:50)

It wasn’t just a personal project, was it? It was part of the sequence of New Barns Therapy Community closing and funds being created into this organisation called the Planned Environment Therapy Trust. Am I right?

Tom Harrison (29:24)

Yes. And he created, I mean, although it wasn’t just him, I have to say, he was sort of the pivot around which everything else has gone. He collected a huge number of archives. I didn’t know this, but I believe he even collected them off skips where people were throwing them out. I worked with the archive on my first project, which was looking at the Northfield experiments. And that’s where I met Craig back in, I think, the early 90s, 1990s, and I’ve known and worked with him ever since. Subsequently, I did my PhD on Richard Crockett and the Ingeborg Centre, which was all the material, most of material for that came from the archive, was able to collect it from other archives as well, interviews. But Craig was extraordinarily helpful in that.

David Jones (30:25)

So it’s been gathering together all kinds of information, personal papers by the sounds of it, official materials as well from a whole range of settings, including NHS settings. I don’t know what that is, Vicky.

Vicky (30:41)

The Northfield experiments. Actually there’s my drawing of Tom there lecturing about the Northfield experiment. I mean obviously it’d be much better online but I just couldn’t resist that.

David Jones (30:54)

So places like the prison service presumably as well and NHS settings. So across the whole range of therapeutic community and therapeutic community related organisations.

Sarah Paget (31:10)

Yeah.

David Kennard (31:10)

There’s about 500, is it about 500 collections, I think.

Tom Harrison (31:17)

Something like that, yeah.

Sarah Paget (31:19)

So I think the archive has had a number of changes over the years and the Planned Environment Therapy Trust came to a situation where they were unable to continue to maintain the archive and it was suggested that potentially the Mulberry Bush take over the archive and take on responsibility for enabling the archive to be more available to a wider number of people. And so I think the Mulberry Bush which took it over in 2021, something like that, 2020. And there was a view that they would spend about five years or so working out what it would take to kind of enable the archive and the study centre at at Toddington to thrive. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, it’s proven very difficult for that to happen. The archive is an extraordinary environment that is very difficult to maintain. It’s come to the point where the Mulberry Bush had to decide that they could no longer support it and so it’s announced its closure towards the end of last year and it will close on May 31st this year.

Tom Harrison (32:54)

One of the things that struck me over the last, on reflecting all about this, which has been seen by many people as a tragedy really, is the weight of archive, a weight of memories. Literally, in the sense that paper and books are heavy and there are cracks actually in the floor of the archives. And I think that sort of signifies perhaps we didn’t realise as a therapeutic community group, the wide group, we really didn’t realise the weight that people were taking. People like Craig and the PETT organisation, and subsequently the Mulberry Bush. We actually didn’t realise the heaviness of the task. And they’ve, to a degree, I think we’ve allowed them to carry that burden without really reflecting on how much we could have contributed as a much wider group in therapeutic communities.

Dr Naomi Murphy (33:59)

The two projects that you’re involved in, so this archive and also this group of Elders, and it feels like you’re trying to preserve something that sounds, you know, maybe a therapeutic way of being that might feel quite under threat at the moment, you know, again, back to that process of intensification and the prevalence of sort of short-term interventions being what people get offered when they approach the NHS for help. And I wonder if there’s a kind of fear of all this extensive knowledge and experience being allowed to wither away and disappear in some way, rather than being able to be held onto and sustained and be treated with some kind of reverence or value.

Sarah Paget (34:44)

You know, I think that Tom’s description of the heavy book sort of breaking the floor is quite a really useful imagery for the kind of weight of responsibility that sits around the archive. And I think you’re right. I think there is something there about how the responsibility that we have for this amazing history that the archive holds. And I think it’s really important that we point out the amazing work of Deb’s Doggett and Gareth Beynon who have brought that archive back from the brink, really, and enabled people to access it over the last few years. I think with the decision that’s been made, which has been heartbreaking for everyone involved, there is still a sense that those archives can now go on and into other spaces and be used. So there’s a positive in that respect. But I think that, yeah, there is that what goes along with this is, again, the sense that therapeutic community work isn’t valued and that in order to maintain the incredible collections that are there, there is a cost associated with it that people are not prepared to pay. And I think that’s a very sad state of affairs that reflects therapeutic communities in general across the public and private sector. The therapeutic communities are very hard to find outside of the prison service, interestingly, the prison service therapeutic communities are still part of very important rehabilitation processes within prisons. But outside of that, think children’s therapeutic communities are probably the most prevalent, whereas for adults, it would be very hard push to find them. There’s some day services in Thames Valley and Kent, aside from that. So I think the therapeutic community ideas and principles are under threat and continue to be. And yet the ideas are so attractive to so many people that join our group.

Tom Harrison (36:59)

We live in a neoliberal society that promotes the individual as opposed to understanding that we depend on each other and we have responsibilities to each other and we only exist in groups, but that doesn’t fit with the economic way of looking at things which looks at basically the individual greedy person.

Vicky (37:23)

Well, I think you’re right about the neoliberal thing. Because I mean, at The Retreat, we did a cost offset study. And actually, after four years, our patients who were very, very expensive to treat 100,000 pounds for a year at The Retreat, but after four years, they were cost neutral and going forward, were cost effective, because police services and ambulance services and inpatient ordinary standard hospital admissions and so on. After four years, it was cost neutral. But I don’t think it’s about effectiveness or cost. It is about this neoliberal thing. They’re not fashionable and nobody wants to say that actually they’re jolly effective. Steve Pierce did, you know, randomised controlled trial of therapeutic communities, for goodness sake, and found that on two counts, they were actually better than treatment as usual, including patient satisfaction and the very important issue of outwardly and inwardly expressed aggression. I mean, that’s why they’re in prisons. They’re in prisons because they’re effective. Prisons actually don’t care that much about what’s fashionable. They have to exist. They carry on existing. The hotel services in the prison are paid for. So, you know, the therapeutic community, although it’s expensive, actually is a good way of rehabilitating people in an institution where they’ve got no choice but to live in an institution. So, where they work, they work really, really well. But I think, this neoliberal business and the individualism and so on is a real problem. But it’s very interesting just driving here sorry, I don’t mean to go on, but there was a lovely critique by the man on Desert Island Discs who’s a heart surgeon, who was saying that actually it’s difficult to be a heart surgeon because a lot of patients die. People, doctors don’t want to have high mortality rates anymore, all that’s measured. So it actually puts people off doing innovative things that really work for very ill people. And I think therapeutic communities have struggled for exactly the same reason. The people who they serve best are really, really struggling massively and are very risky people to treat. And nobody wants to have those, oh they might have committed suicide or something. So they’re just really not being served well.

David Jones (40:04)

Thank you, Vicky. We’ve just got a couple of minutes left. I wonder what we could say to sum up this conversation.

Tom Harrison (40:12)

I just wanted to say that these ideas go broader than in therapeutic communities. Some years ago, Sarah invited me to join a group about enabling environments. And I’m involved in a group of people in our little village here about how we can provide proper housing for local people. And that is run by a group. And I’m using the material that I’m gaining from all the people around here, how to get that group functioning so the group itself is able to contain the feelings that are going to be aroused.

Sarah Paget (40:46)

I wonder David whether you could say something that you said to me before we came on to this call about that you were talking about how therapeutic communities are common sense and in many ways and I think that would be a good way of summing it up really.

David Kennard (41:02)

Well, I just meant that the idea that, unless you’re a hermit, we live with other people and we often are engaged with doing things, working with them. And when we do that, tensions and disagreements are bound to arise. And the therapeutic community approach is to offer that as a situation that people who have really not done well in group situations can re-experience the problems but with an opportunity to reflect, to take time out from the activities that are causing problems, to reflect on what’s gone wrong, on what to try differently and then to try it out. So it’s kind of an ongoing process which makes sense because they’re using the material, the events that occur between people anyway to try and understand them and learn from them.

David Jones (41:53)

Great. Well, thank you everybody. I’m going to stop us there because we’ve run out of time and thanks very much indeed to everybody.

Dr Naomi Murphy (41:58)

Thank you.

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You can watch this conversation here or listen here.

Keith Hinchliffe is joining us today. Keith is a survivor of Grafton Close and is campaigning for Richmond Council to take accountability of the events that happened there.

Hello Keith, very nice to meet you and thanks very much for coming along. So Grafton Close is a place many people may have heard of, but many may not as well. Can you give us a summary of what happened there for anyone who can’t quite recall it appearing in the news?

Keith Hinchliffe (00:03)

Yeah sure, Grafton Close was a children’s home based in Hanworth stroke Hounslow but it came under the Richmond borough. It was just a general council-run children’s home that catered for 11 to 16 year olds. Initially it was boys. Opened in 1972 and it was advertised as a children’s home with all the mod cons. That was the headline in 1972 when it came forward. What happened along the way, we now know, back in 2012, 2013, 2014, there was a lot of press coverage about child abuse in that children’s home. And it revolved around the manager then called John Stingemore and his sort of come colleague, didn’t actually work for the council, but he was there in the home and his name was Tony McSweeney and he was a Catholic priest. So all this was associated with, the reason it really came about was with the Elm Guest House scandal and it was associated with the Westminster Parliament situation.

So that kind of came up out of a police operation which was initially Operation Fern Bridge, I believe. That’s how this all came about and why it was all in the media. However, there is a lot more to the story than simply just John Stingemore and Tony McSweeney, although their abuse and what they were doing there was extraordinary. But that’s generally how it got into the media and that’s why it became notorious and the public might know about Grafton Close children’s home.

Dr Naomi Murphy (02:13)

Can I just ask Keith, because you mentioned the link with Elm House, were children being taken from Grafton House to Elm House to be abused?

Keith Hinchliffe (02:22)

Well, there was lots of conspiracy around this at the time. But I’ve investigated it myself out of interest because I was there myself, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But when I looked at it, I ended up speaking to survivors and actually investigating a lot of it myself. And I’ve read hundreds of newspaper documents about the situation and done some other background stuff, checks. And it seems that there were children trafficked to Elm Guest House. We don’t know how many, but there certainly were, and I think one of them in particular was named, and I think his name was Peter Hatton-Bornshin and think he was one of the survivors from that situation that was publicly named. But I know that there were others.

Dr Naomi Murphy (03:23)

And sorry as well, but am I right in thinking there was also a relationship between Kincora Children’s Home in Northern Ireland?

Keith Hinchliffe (03:32)

It was said to be that there were also children trafficked from Kincora to the same guest house in Barnes.

Dr Naomi Murphy (03:41)

Thank you.

David Jones (03:42)

That in itself is shocking isn’t it, because it shows there were linkages to all these several establishments. Keith, can you tell us something about what happened to you while you were there?

Keith Hinchliffe (03:51)

Yeah, I arrived at Grafton Close in September of 1984. The reason I was there was because I was already being abused outside the home by a gentleman called Philip John Saunders. I was also being abused at home as well by my sister. So my abuse started at the age of 11. And the reason I ended up in Grafton Close, because education welfare picked up on the fact that I wasn’t attending school anymore because of the abuse. So education welfare contacted social services. Social services got involved from Richmond probably about, I think about a year prior to me ending up going to Grafton.

And ultimately they were visiting the house, they knew what was going on, they knew what the situation was. And then I was pushed towards going into Grafton Close. And I remember the education welfare officer was pushing that far more than maybe the social worker was. And I eventually ended up inside Grafton Close children’s home. Whilst I was there, Saunders still had access to me and was able to get in and have open access to me and take me out of the children’s home whilst I was there to carry on his abuse. When I was there, I was allocated a link worker. And that link worker, while she was there, groomed me into a position where eventually I was asked for, she asked me to have sex with her basically, in a one-on-one meeting that we would have on a weekly basis. And that came about because, well, afterwards, it seemed that this was kind of the thing that had been going on. When I reflect back, when I look back at it as an adult, it seems that this had been going on quite a lot, but actually at the time I just, I was singled out, I felt like I was the only one. Now to get me to agree to go ahead and have this encounter with her, I was offered an early exit of the children’s home. So in other words, she would write a favourable report for me and get a meeting together where there’s a meeting with the head and everybody else, head of the children’s home, etc. And they say, yeah, okay, well, it’s all good, everything and he can go back home. Well, that’s exactly what happened. And I did go back home.

But I didn’t actually end up in the situation where I was having sex with her. That didn’t happen because I went back home and I didn’t have to see her again. But Saunders carried on his abuse afterwards. He continued that. So that was my encounter with Grafton Close. But I’d carried all of this with me for probably 40 years. So when I decided to come forward with it and speak out, I think my recollection of what had been going on, what had been happening as an adult, when you look back at it as an adult, you tend to realise and see a lot more scenarios than you would have done when you were that age. So yeah, that’s what happened to me whilst I was there.

David Jones (07:45)

How was it that Saunders was able to continue to have such access to you?

Keith Hinchliffe (07:53)

You mean get into the children’s home? It was an open house. I mean, anybody could come to that children’s home and come to the door and just be let in, either by a child or by a staff member. There was not really any questionable, what we call now safeguarding. There was no locked door policy, if you like. It was simply a Yale latch. Open the door, come in, stand in the corridor or go upstairs to the room. There was nothing there to stop anybody coming into the home should they want to.

David Jones (08:22)

Right.

Dr Naomi Murphy (08:33)

It’s so awful to hear that sort of lack of protect, going from out of the frying pan into the fire essentially in the sense of being more vulnerable to a broader range of people by the sound of it.

Keith Hinchliffe (08:44)

Yeah, I think on the whole, you know, you would think when you look back, you think Richmond probably was an exception, but actually, now we know that actually it wasn’t. I mean, there were many more examples of this level of poor safeguarding for children back then. Not that that takes away any of the responsibility for Richmond at all. It’s not an excuse, but, you know, that’s kind of the level of how it was. We all just looked upon as outcast society if you like. We weren’t individuals that were really bothered about or cared about. That being said at the time, I remember being at school, in an all-boys school at Grafton Boys, and some of the policies there really were not dissimilar. Corporal punishment still existed, that level of attitude towards children still existed. Yeah, was extraordinary time really when you look back at it.

Dr Naomi Murphy (09:43)

I remember when I was qualifying in the late 1990s and it just seemed that anyone who’d had experience of being in the care system, you kind of made the assumption that that probably had been part of their experience because it was so.

Keith Hinchliffe (09:57)

So prolific.

Dr Naomi Murphy (09:59)

Right. Yes, it was. It was. And I suppose the other thing that’s interesting about your account, because it, you know, we’ve heard this a few times from people, but it kind of bucks against what the public think. You know, the fact that you were groomed by a female, and your sister also, there is a tendency to assume that female staff will be safer figures than males and yet your story shows that that really isn’t the case.

Keith Hinchliffe (10:13)

Indeed. No, not the case at all, makes no difference. Paedophiles, as we know, are not just male. There’s been this sort of a picture, or a thought process, I think probably born from the 70s when we remember seeing those adverts as children with the man in the car in the suites outside the school. I mean, that’s a very rare occurrence. Usually paedophilias are enacted by people that you know or around you that you know or you’re aware of, or someone that should be trusted. That’s generally how it comes about. It’s a very low percentage that you would find it you know, stranger activity.

David Jones (11:02)

So, looking back now, do you think the staff in the children’s home were ignorant or were they complicit?

Keith Hinchliffe (11:17)

That’s a really good question and I will answer it because I am aware of some of the staff activity at the time. I’ve spoken to some of those staff members since I’ve come forward and yes there was awareness, people were aware, fully aware of what was going on certainly around the John Stingemore situation and I’m fairly certain about other scenarios as well that was happening in the home as we’ve touched on other cases too. Prior and mine, which was posted John Stingemore’s time with a new manager that was there. And I found it extraordinary really that even though some of these staff are highlighting these issues to the council at time and at a high level, the level of ignorance to this was just brushed aside. It was almost like, let’s not talk about that. We don’t want to deal with it. Or if we do want to deal with it, there’s not lot we can do because the particular people that are involved in this, we can’t touch anyway, for whatever reasons. And that was kind of the mantra. That was how it kind of, it didn’t go any further than that. And I do recall speaking to one particular member of staff who found it was very difficult to highlight the issues with John Stingemore. I think their words were to me, they found that he was untouchable. And there was reasons for that because he was protected by others that were further up in the council and that was coming from a staff member.

David Jones (12:56)

Thank you. Well, we know, of course, from later events that some of the worst offenders were, well, they weren’t hidden. They were hidden in plain sight, of course. I suppose I had a similar question. I should say, really, for massive transparency, that I was a social worker in the 70s and before I went into psychiatric social worker, I was an ordinary local authority social worker. So I was in and out of children’s home with young children and it never occurred to me they would be at any kind of risk at that time. I looking back of course I feel I could have seen much more had I looked and I could have done much more.

Keith Hinchliffe (13:28)

Yeah, hindsight obviously, the more we know now, hindsight is always one of those things where we say, well, could we have done more? Could we have done this? Could we have done that? But I think at the time, with the practice that was in place and the fact that this was hidden to such a level, there are people that wouldn’t have known. So we can’t say that individuals that might have been there and involved in the time or around that were in the home were complicit to any of this. This would have been a, this is hidden agenda. This is not something that was prolific out in the open abuse. This was always done behind closed scenes. But I think if you knew about it and you were aware of it and you knew that the abuse was going on, you probably would have noticed a lot more in terms of grooming outside of the abuse environments. But if you weren’t looking for it and you thought that that wasn’t the case, you probably wouldn’t have seen it.

David Jones (14:50)

Thank you.

Keith Hinchliffe (14:50)

Because I mean, because child abuse is something that is literally even in society today, something that’s very much alien to a lot of people. And it’s too hard to actually contemplate. So to actually sit there and have that thought process to think that that child may be being physically or sexually abused by that particular adult is far from the psyche of most people. So you’re not really looking for it. So the reason for the highlighting of it and the reason that survivors do speak out is to say, look, you know, this does actually happen. It is real. I’m just a normal Joe Blogs, and it happened to me. So if my case was 40 odd years ago, you absolutely bet, I mean, I know there are millions out there that it’s happened to. So yeah, it’s very much a learning curve. And I think the establishment and lots of other institutions need to catch up with that pretty quickly.

Dr Naomi Murphy (15:47)

I think that’s such a good point because it’s only in 1970s that we started recognising that some people were physically abusing their children, before that it was kind of like anything went really. And then, people wouldn’t have been talking about sexual abuse in the way they are now, but I think you’re right, you can see from the reaction to say like the Epstein files and Pizzagate, which previously looked like a mad conspiracy theory and then now...

Keith Hinchliffe (15:56)

Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr Naomi Murphy (16:15)

The Epstein files, you can see how much evidence there is there of some really dark activities of sexually abusing children being quite rampant. And so actually it’s really important to have these stories aired and that people do try to listen because even though it’s really painful, it’s heartbreaking to think about that being children’s lives. But actually, if we can’t listen, then we can’t do anything to try and change and make things safer for children, can we?

Keith Hinchliffe (16:44)

Absolutely, I think one key point just to add on top of that is that even though you’ve heard maybe one child or my story just as one instance, it’s absolutely 100% guaranteed that we’re going to be far more underneath it. And that has always been proved to be the case. We’ve seen files and all the high profile ones we’ve seen, Savile et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we know there are more. We know that there are, but we just haven’t heard from them. And we may never hear from them. And that’s obviously the right of the individual. But it is really important for society to understand that it’s prolific to the point of where it wasn’t just the one occasion, it was multiple occasions. And that’s something I discovered along the way in my own personal case with Philip John Saunders.

David Jones (17:35)

Thank you, Keith. Can you tell us how you came to be seeking accountability from Richmond Council?

Keith Hinchliffe (17:43)

Yeah, sure. Well, when I disclosed back to the police back in 2019, 2020, I felt the need to disclose to the council as well and see what they had to say and where they were at that time with survivors coming forward about Grafton Close in particular, but I’m also aware of other children homes that they ran too. And whether there was any kind of pathway or support or some level of acceptance or apology for what had gone on for children in those children’s homes at that time. And what I found was a rebuff really, an extraordinary rebuff of very much of denial and a real lack of empathy or understanding or aptitude towards the scenario for the individual when they were coming forward. And I wasn’t really fully aware of how many there were at that time. So the letters I was receiving were coming back from what they now call Achieving for Children, which is now, they’re kind of children’s services. And I had to operate with that service because children’s services as a social services children service for Richmond upon Thames no longer exists. In 2014 they had this flagship children’s services called Achieving for Children launched which is I guess if you want to call it kind of side business to the council although they say they’re not for profit business it’s kind of it’s separated from the council. And the individuals that were running that, I tried to emphasise just how I was feeling and what I felt about their response. And I wanted to do more in that and to try and get my records and try to get them to understand that actually this did go on. At that time, I didn’t have a conviction in place for Philip John Saunders.

And even though I was giving them the information and all the details in exactly the same way as I gave to the police, two police forces in fact, because this covered Thames Valley and the Met Police. There was very much, there was just a reluctance to really, there was lots of letters that I was given just to push me away really and have nothing more to do with me. But I was frustrated by that, so I persisted. So in the end, what happened was I was filtered through to their insurance solicitors, which they would have been their public liability at the time. And their public liability insurers were called municipal insurance. They were kind of like an insurance body that looked after lots of council properties and public liability at the time, I think probably across the country, if I’m being honest, from what I know of them anyway. And they employed solicitors to prevent me speaking to the council really much more, or the council talking to me. They told the council to not talk to me anymore in any way and I had to go through one particular person if I wanted to communicate, which was in fact the director Ian Dodds of Achieving for Children. And they basically said that you don’t have a case against us anyway, even if you wanted one. And then we’re going down this whole address route, the civil case, et cetera. And here’s the reasons why you don’t have a case, because we don’t have any records. There’s no conviction. It’s basically just saying that this kind of didn’t happen and you can’t prove it. And then he started citing case law, like the Paul case, the Bolam test. And if nobody’s familiar with them, go out and Google them. They’re out there. That kind of approach towards me. And I felt that this was extraordinary way to deal with an individual that was coming forward with a really sensitive situation in their life. There was no, there was nothing there from them, literally nothing, no support. There was absolutely zero. And I felt given that they were an achievement of children’s service, even though I was an adult, it was extraordinary.

Keith Hinchliffe (22:23)

So I felt that it was time to consider what I was going to do. So fast forward quite a few years to when I got the conviction of Philip John Saunders, I was able then to waive my anonymity and come forward and speak out, even though I was being quite active anyway behind the scenes up to that point. I waived my amenity because I felt that it needed to be spoken, that it needed to be said and exposed. And once I’d done that, I found that lots of other survivors had experienced the same thing from the council and they treated us all like an individual, like we were an individual case and there weren’t any others to kind of separate you up, to isolate you away from each other. And again, this mindset was all about vanity and for them not to have exposure to the problem that existed and for them not to give written apologies to these survivors and give them any kind of level of empathy for what happened to them. And I’m just one case. I mean, there are multiple cases and there are many out there that have waived anonymity. And I can mention David Harris because he has waived his anonymity. His story alone is extraordinary. And I’ve spoken to David on many occasions. And when he told me his story and he told me who the abuser was.

Keith Hinchliffe (23:46)

I mean, I literally, I was just in shock. I just fell off my chair because what he described to me was the exact environment in which I was in, I’d found myself in with the same staff and people that were in this children’s home at the time when I was there. And yeah, I was just floored by what he telling me. But now that I know this and I’ve heard from others, I’ve found myself understanding more about what was happening in that children’s home even after John Stingemore and McSweeney, a slot in time, because that’s all that is, it’s just that slot in time. We know now that abuse happened prior and post there was prolific abuse of children in this children’s home, spanning at least a decade or more that I’m aware of.

Dr Naomi Murphy (24:38)

We know from research into institutional culture by Rudolf Moos that actually institutional culture doesn’t change even though the staff might change, the culture will stay the same unless there’s a concerted effort to try to proactively try to address the culture so it’s not really any surprise, but I have to say there’s something really sickeningly disgusting about that kind of response from the council it’s like no sense of compassion in people, you know, you’ve already been harmed and to then not take you seriously or have the, you know, just being on the defensive, it’s a further layer of harm caused by being that kind of response.

Keith Hinchliffe (25:21)

Yeah, initially that’s what it was. It really was that. And then I thought, well, okay, look, you know, I don’t have any convictions here. So fair enough. I mean, it’s me saying this, so there is no real conviction. These are allegations. And I guess then look at it, anybody could come along and say these things, and then I didn’t have any proof that I was actually in that children’s home and they were reluctant to give it to me. So I ended up making, I think, eight FOI requests for the same paperwork. And I was denied every single time. But I think on the eighth one, they found some documents, suddenly found some documents. But they denied that there was anything else. They had no archives at all, apparently. It had all been burned or had gone missing or whatever. But ultimately, subsequently, back last year, it might have been that they did admit that they did have an archive for all of these children’s homes, it does exist. But unfortunately, the particular years that I was looking for have gone missing. But yeah, yeah, of course they have. So I found it extraordinary because they told other survivors that these particular files had gone missing. They didn’t have an archive. But actually the years that they did give me, they said they do have, are the years that other survivors have asked for that they told them they didn’t have.

Keith Hinchliffe (26:44)

So, you know, it plays out really in everything. I’ve said it was from the start. And I just couldn’t believe we were still in that situation years on. I’ve been chasing this now for probably six years now. And I’ve become more and more prolific about what I’m doing for good reason, because I feel that these other survivors that are out there don’t have the, sometimes the fire to keep going, you know, it isn’t easy. It can damage you, it is tough going because you’re up against an entity that is like a brick wall and it won’t budge or you believe that it won’t or that’s what they want you to believe. And that’s how they play you to kind of grind you down.

David Jones (27:31)

Well, as Naomi says, it’s disgraceful and disgusting to hear about these kinds of institutional responses. But in fact, we’ve interviewed dozens of people, Naomi, who’ve experienced the same, encountered the same response, which is invariably fight like mad, total absence of any kind of reflexivity, belittle the complainant. These are all common features. And it is shocking, you’re quite right. You’re telling us so much here, Keith, that I’m going to just raise something that you mentioned. You mentioned having got Saunders convicted, which I must have missed when you saying it earlier. How did that happen?

Keith Hinchliffe (28:28)

Okay, what happened was when I disclosed my abuse, because my abuse happened in different scenarios and different situations, I had to disclose the Saunders case to Thames Valley Police because the majority of the abuse that happened to me was in the, he lived in Slough, so it was in that area and I was taken to his house where a lot of abuse happened. So it was deemed that Thames Valley would deal with that. Because Grafton Close fell under the Met Police situation and so did the abuse from my sister, I had to then take two different other cases with the Met Police and do two other VRIs with them. I did about six hours of VRI with the Met Police and the Thames Valley actually came to my house and I did a two hour VRI with them over Philip Saunders.

So that’s when that ball started to get rolling. Initially, what happened with Thames Valley is another institutional issue here coming up was 12 months after I’d given that VRI, they told me that they couldn’t find Philip John Saunders. He didn’t exist. As far as they were concerned, they couldn’t find him. And that was that. And they just filed the case. Obviously I was not happy about that. And I felt again that I’d been let down significantly. And I just thought, this is extraordinary. What are we going to do about this? So I thought, okay, well, if the police can’t do anything about this and they can’t find him, I’m certainly going to do something about it. Because I felt I had the skillsets and the ability to do it. Subsequently, I did get out there and do a lot more research and I had some help with that. And I can’t name the person that I had help from because it wouldn’t be fair on them. However, I did have some help from another skilled person in this field that enabled us to locate, not only locate him, but enabled us to find his birth ticket, certificate, place him at the address that I was being abused at and prove that he was there, find him and locate him where he was in the UK anyway and some other bits of information.

And forwarded it back to the police and that happened within about two or three hours flat on the internet. Forwarded that to the SEMS police and I think about a week later subsequently they reopened the case, put another detective on it. And that process to get from that point to get into Crown Court took five years, around about that amount of time. I found that extraordinary long time to get to a court. But I think a lot of it was all about evidence-based fact-finding and interviewing of individuals, because historic abuse cases are really difficult to get into court anyway. So you have to get past this sort of CPS threshold. Anyway, I subsequently found out after the court case that Saunders had been on the sexual offenders register anyway, and the police should have known that. He was known to the National Crime Agency on the NCA. And it also, because he’d been prosecuted in the UK anyway of similar offence with a young girl. And also he’d been prosecuted out in The Hague in Holland with two young boys. I’m certain without question, there are a lot more. But he hasn’t been prosecuted for those. But I would say that there are a lot more that haven’t come forward.

Dr Naomi Murphy (32:16)

I’d like to say we were shocked by that but we recently had Jon Wedger on who was talking about police cover-ups of this kind of story so you know again, you beggars belief you wonder how the police manage to catch anybody for anything.

Keith Hinchliffe (32:29)

Well, yeah, I mean, obvious questions were when I found out that information. And obviously, I didn’t know that until after the court case, and it’s something that couldn’t divulge to me, because in case it interfered with my view or evidence of the case or anybody else’s, I found this out during or right at the very end of my evidence giving at that time. And my first question was in my head. I mean, he was on the sexual offender’s register and he was known to the NCA. How is it that Thames Valley Police had this detective on the case for a year that couldn’t locate him? It was extraordinary. So obviously I asked a lot of questions, made a complaint, and there was various excuses made. And rather than waste my energy too much on any of that, I just sort of let it go because I just thought, okay, well, you know, we’re in this position. I’d rather spend my energy and time on advocating for others than chasing a dead end, basically.

David Jones (33:26)

Thank you.

Dr Naomi Murphy (33:31)

So Keith, it sounds like when you first contacted the council, what you were really wanting was an apology and acknowledgement of what had happened.

Keith Hinchliffe (33:39)

Yeah, initially, obviously, when you first come forward with these things, the point of me contacting the council was to, as I said already, find out what was happening for survivors. There must have been some kind of, well, I thought there must have been some protocol or some pathway that they’d already established because I’d known others had come forward anyway. I was completely naive to the fact, but you would presume that that would be the case. So yeah, initially that’s what I was asking was, look, I just want my records and I want to know what happened and can you give me some sort of insight into what gone on and why I found myself in this position? Again, probably being naive at that time, but you know, maybe expecting some sort of admission from the council, but it certainly wasn’t, weren’t any questions in terms of, dealing with redress at that time. But I think, in the end it became that way because the way that I was channelled to this insurance company and incidentally those solicitors are paid for by the insurance company not by the council so I imagine that’s probably a lot of the reason why you’re channelled down that route.

Dr Naomi Murphy (34:55)

Yeah. And you did explain about waiving your right to anonymity. Can you say something about how that strengthened your power to challenge when you did do that?

Keith Hinchliffe (35:07)

I think once you’ve waived your anonymity and you’ve spoken out, it is an incredibly hard decision to make because it affects so many other things in your life. When you speak out about something like this, you have to come to terms with how’s it going to be received by people that probably haven’t seen you for many years, or how’s it going to be received by other people that don’t know that you’ve gone through this but knew you at some point. Or even know me now that don’t know about what happened to me. For instance, even doing this, if they see this, you know, and they know me and they’re not aware, how does it affect their view? So there’s all of those things to consider. It did cause issues within my own personal family environment for all sorts of reasons. I’m pretty much cut off from most of them now because of it. I wasn’t really expecting that, but that is part and parcel of it. I think for me personally, has it empowered me? Yeah, absolutely.

As I feel far more empowered by being able to now speak out and talk about this passionately in a way that I find that I can use that negative energy for a positive reason, simply because I’ve come across something that is not right and incorrect to the individual that doesn’t have a voice or can’t speak up for themselves or may not be able to articulate completely what they want to say. So hopefully I can be a voice for them. And if I am not doing that, then maybe someone can tell me I’m not doing it and I’m more than happy to change the remit. But from what I can see, yeah, there’s just been an institutional cover up and that has to end. We cannot have this continuing to go on for all sorts of reasons. It is just mindful ignorance for the sake of vanity and what seems to be money really. I can’t see anything further than that. Why would you want to shut down an individual that’s been through such a bad experience?

Dr Naomi Murphy (37:14)

I was reminded when you were talking of Gisele Pelicot, she waived her right to anonymity at the trial against her husband, didn’t she?

Keith Hinchliffe (37:29)

Extremely brave thing to do at that time. I mean, I was in awe of that really to do that at trial period. Very brave given what was going on. But I think she had a really strong case and knew that actually by doing it would help individuals understand what actually goes on in a real life case. What are the pitfalls and what is really when we’re told to come forward and speak out some of the things that are still reality for many survivors even today when they speak out. But when I say that, I don’t want to discourage people from speaking out, but I do want people to, the society to still see how difficult it is for individuals, even though we’ve seen a lot of higher profile cases and society accepts the fact a lot more that it is what it is. And not accepts it, but knows that this level of abuse goes on.

The truth is we still are not in a position in this country even today after many inquiries and one of the biggest ones that we’re aware of the IICSA (The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) that we’re not in a position to support survivors at all. There isn’t an institution even with the NSPCC or NAPAC or any of those to really, really help survivors come forward. And I think we’re going to be in a big boatload of trouble ten years down the line unless we do something about it because we’ve got another generation.

Dr Naomi Murphy (39:01)

Well, I think people like yourself, Keith, when you’ve got visibility attached to speaking out, as with Gisele Pelicot, there is a courage there in speaking out and being highly visible when you’re doing so. But I think people don’t have to be on social media speaking up. I think being anonymous and keeping a secret, we associate that with shame, don’t we? So actually, if you’re able to speak up.

Keith Hinchliffe (39:27)

Yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to waive anonymity to speak out. And the shame part of it is something I’ve always tried to advocate is the fact that the shame part of it comes from the trauma and the abuse in the first place. And I would always say to any survivor that you have nothing to be ashamed of. That was what you were groomed for. And that was part of the grooming. And that still exists in your trauma. Therefore, if you can find it within yourself to speak to anybody, a trusted friend, a member of the family, a GP, any of those individuals that you know that you’re safe with in a safe environment to have that discussion with, if you start at that level, and you don’t have to speak to about the whole process or everything that’s gone on. You can simply have the discussion to say, I was abused. And once you’ve done that and you shared that for the first time, the empowerment that you feel and the level of relief that you feel after a while encourages you to speak a little bit more about it. And that is the start, the path, the journey of healing from that trauma, that journey forward. And not to underestimate what you have done once you’ve done that I think is really important but I would always advocate that you have support around you when you do do it absolutely you need it, you can’t do it alone

David Jones (41:09)

Thank you, Keith. So, I mean, this has been a really full conversation, Keith. Very grateful to you for that. But in the doing so, I got distracted somewhere because I kind of am left wondering where it’s actually got to in your case with the council. Can you just remind me of that?

Keith Hinchliffe (41:33)

With the council, well, the case of the council at the moment is in a stagnant. We’re in a dormant state at the moment. The reason we’re in that dormant state is because I personally haven’t taken them to a civil court. And the reason for that is because I feel that I shouldn’t have to. I don’t think any survivors should have to go to a civil court to receive an apology or redress or whatever you want to bundle it up as. We’re talking about the acknowledgement actually of the individual that survived this trauma and this abuse, sexual abuse and rape of a child is what we’re talking about, prolific and ongoing rape of a child. And I don’t think any survivor having gone through maybe police interviews, gone through the CPS process, either whether they’ve got a prosecution or haven’t got a prosecution, that process alone is a long and arduous one. And I’m already fully aware of it because I’ve been through it on three different separate cases. So having then to come off the back of that and then go to the institution where you were and speak to them about that and ask them, you know, what’s happened? What’s gone on? What have you done about this? And then to be led down this situation with like Richmond council, for example, to be put in a position where I’ve been put in now where we are all.

Basically unless I take them into a civil court and either spend my own money or find a no-win no-fee solicitor to go through this court process with them to prove my case because they’ve cited these cases at me, it’s going nowhere. And that is the reason for me stepping up, speaking out and doing what I’m doing and making people aware of that situation. It is so important to understand that. That I’m doing it because I want to make people aware of what these institutions actually do, the reality of it, you know, for an individual. And I felt that that was far more powerful to do that than any level of redress that I might get or going down the route of going into a civil court to prove actually what I was saying was right, because I’ve already done that. I think I’ve done that far more than I would have to ever need to again, the world is aware, you know, so I don’t see any need to go any further with it.

There are some that might have a different opinion, but for me, I felt that it was right to do this for not just myself, for other survivors too, have got often close because I want to highlight this and make sure that they don’t have to go through that process because they’ve all been pushed in that position. But also really to highlight the issue. So I’m in a loggerheads with the council. They’re in a lock-down position, but really my brief is to expose them and what they’ve done. And I’m happy to do that with all of my own paperwork. And if anybody else wanted to sort of say, okay, well, you can use mine too. I’m happy for you to put it out there, which David Harris incidentally has. Then that’s exactly what I’ve done to show people that this is what they do. This is what a council will do now.

In 2026, if you come forward and say to them, I experienced child abuse in the 1980s or 70s inside your children’s home, and what are you doing about it? This is what they will do. So yeah, that’s in brief where I’m at with it really. And I’m continually fighting that process of awareness and to make people hear and listen that even though we’ve come so far with sexual child abuse, historic or current, I still find that there are so many hurdles to justice and it is extraordinary that they exist, let alone the way that they do, you know, and how it affects the individual. Someone has to go to this level and this effort and use this level of energy to achieve notoriety or apology of some kind. And I think that’s really what I’m trying to do. That’s what I’m trying to show.

David Jones (46:01)

Thank you. That’s somewhat dispiriting really, because hurdles for justice are, in somebody else’s terms, obstacles to, I suppose, unfair challenges. They might put it that way, I suppose. So do you think that the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse, IICSA, made any improvements to the situation for survivors.

Keith Hinchliffe (46:38)

I’m going to be honest, my honest personal opinion this is, and there might be other people that disagree with me, I feel that IICSA didn’t go far enough. I felt that it was shut down and wasn’t operated quite correctly to really fully investigate all these institutions to the fullest. And I felt there was many missed opportunities that could have taken place had they been allowed to. There are lots of issues in it that I could pinpoint, but we’d be here forever. In terms of 20 recommendations, yes, I always advocate the 20 recommendations because anything that’s put in place that will support survivor of abuse is always a good thing. And if anybody’s listening that don’t know what those 20 recommendations are, basically they all set there to interlink like a gearbox to work together all as one. Unfortunately, we’ve had successive governments that have cherry picked the ones that they want to or not implement. And some of those have been watered down. So we haven’t even got there. And this was, I don’t know, what will be back in 2022 when these things were released and put out there. So it hasn’t really got to where it should be, that’s extraordinary in itself.

That being said, even if these things were in place, there are still hurdles for individuals like me and I’d still be in the same position that I am now, even if these recommendations were in place apart from bar one. And that would be the three-year bar that exists. And that is coming into law. I think it’s still in the law in this final reading at the moment. It hasn’t actually been produced. It’s in the Crime and Policing Bill, I believe. So once that comes into place, that will help survivors. But again, what happens, the fight will be where we have insurance solicitors citing the Paul case and the Bolam test and all of those things along the way. There still is issues there. The redress scheme that would be set up, I will advocate for that because just briefly I’ll touch on it. CICA, the criminal…

Dr Naomi Murphy (48:49)

Injuries Compensation Board.

Keith Hinchliffe (48:50)

Yeah, exactly that. Thank you. Isn’t sufficient or fit for purpose in terms of individuals like myself. It is totally flawed. I’ve been through the process. There are all sorts of issues involved with that where it doesn’t account for historical abuse survivors. There is so much that can be changed with that. Even though we were reassured earlier in the year by the then Home Secretary of Ivette Cooper that they had trauma informed individuals in that department and in that body, I’ve seen no sign of it. And I’ve actually been through a tribunal process. So I’m aware of just how poor it is and my tribunal process. Incidentally, even though I have got psychiatrist’s report about me and what my mental health issues are, I failed. I couldn’t take any further. I did get a payout, but I opened it up again to take it to the tribunal when it failed and to just touch briefly on it. The level of complacency that was given was extraordinary. I can’t say anything now about it because I’m pretty much barred from saying any more about what happened inside it. But yeah, it was an extraordinary process and yeah, it’s utterly flawed.

Dr Naomi Murphy (50:03)

I thought it was really interesting. Channel 4 covered Professor Alexis Jay Doing a presentation in Westminster very recently in the last few months and not a single MP turned up to that discussion, which is, that’s really dispiriting, isn’t it? When you think about really a will to actually change things and make things better for survivors. But, Keith, you’ve been challenging this for a long time, you know, working very hard with activism, but how are you coping with the emotional burden of doing this work? You’ve spoken about the fact it can take a toll. How do you cope with that?

Keith Hinchliffe (50:48)

Yeah, it’s tough going. I won’t lie. I mean, it impacts my mental health massively. You know, this whole process is tiring. It’s a burden. It’s a job of work. And it’s full on to do it. I won’t lie. And sometimes I wonder, you know, there are days where you just don’t want to do it anymore. You want to give up and quit. I won’t lie. That’s the truth, but I know. And the thing that keeps bringing me back to this is the failure for individuals and I cannot allow that to happen. I mean that’s a human nature principle if you like. There’s a fundamental wrong there and it’s an obvious one and anybody that doesn’t see it really needs some help because I mean. Yeah, for me, it’s tough. It’s really hard and it takes its toll. I’m not going to lie. It does. And I have to take time out. I can’t, it’s not a thing that I can continually do day after day after day after day. Even after today’s interview, I will need to take some time out and level off. I’m medicated for CPTSD, I deal with anxiety and all those issues that come along with being part of my trauma process, you know, in terms of sexual abuse. But I think, yeah, I mean, I’ve got to keep doing it. I’m not going to stop, never going to quit. I never, ever, ever will ever quit until we get some level of success because it’s only right that I do this, and that’s how I feel about it.

Dr Naomi Murphy (52:26)

We’re really grateful to you for coming on and sharing your story because all that you know, from talking to other survivors as well as yourself, just hearing then the emotional toll that takes to do that. So we’re really grateful to you for coming on and sharing your story.

Keith Hinchliffe (52:42)

Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for allowing me to have the time here to talk about this. It’s not every day that you get that opportunity. So, thank you for having me. You know, that’s more to the point. It’s good that we have people like yourselves to listen to survivors like me. We need more of it.

Dr Naomi Murphy (53:06)

Definitely. So, yeah, thank you very much for coming on.

David Jones (53:11)

Thanks a lot, Keith, great to meet you.

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Today we’re joined by Dr Mariana Brussoni who’s a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine and also a scientist with British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital where she leads the Outside Play lab. And I’m really delighted to get you on Mariana because I became really interested in play after reading a book by Stuart Brown who was a forensic psychiatrist and he’d observed that in the histories of people who killed that they had had very limited opportunities to play. And certainly when working in the prison system, it was really obvious that the men could not describe play in their histories. But your research has won awards and it reimagines how outdoor and risky play can be integrated into everyday life to help children thrive. So I think it was going to be so fascinating to have a conversation with you today. Welcome.

Mariana Brussoni (00:52)

I’m delighted to be here and to explore it from this new angle. Thanks for having me, Naomi.

David Jones (00:58)

Hello there Mariana, very nice to meet you and thanks a lot for coming on. So, how did you come to be researching risky play?

Mariana Brussoni (01:04)

It’s my pleasure, David. Well, it was not intentional. I just kind of fell into it in many ways. I am a developmental psychologist by training. And when I came out of my graduate degree, I went into injury prevention, you know, wanting to do some very applied research that could make a difference to people’s lives and influence policy and all of those kinds of things. The challenge came when thinking about, you know, the approach to injury prevention is certainly at the time was very much one of risk is equivalent to a danger or hazard and something that must be eliminated as much as possible. And that works really well for car crashes, workplace injuries, those kinds of things. But when you’re thinking about leisure time for really anybody, but absolutely when it applies to children and play, then it all kind of falls down.

And nobody at the time was talking about it. And I myself didn’t really understand very much about it at the time, but it just seemed to me like something was off and I needed to do something about it. So around that time, Ellen Sandseter, who’s a Norwegian researcher, started publishing her work on risky play. And when I saw that, it just clicked for me in terms of this was the approach that made sense, from a developmental perspective, but also in thinking about injury prevention. And so at that point, I just shifted everything and threw it all into risky play.

David Jones (02:44)

Fascinating. So how would you define risky play though?

Mariana Brussoni (02:48)

Everybody does risky play. So the definition that we use in the academic literature is thrilling and exciting forms of play where children engage with uncertainty and there’s a chance of physical injury. And so I’ll break down each element of that definition for you, because it’s important, but if you think about kind of your own play background or history, you might resonate. It’s usually things like climbing higher than you have in the past or say riding your bike down a hill faster or wandering the neighbourhood with your friends without adult supervision. Those are the kinds of things that are part of risky play. And so the thrill and excitement comes from kids kind of pushing themselves beyond what they’ve done in the past, whether that is climbing a bit higher or going a bit farther in the neighbourhood or things like that.

Kids are engaging with uncertainty. And so they don’t know what’s going to happen. Could be good, could be bad. And that’s really kind of the point. And so through that experience, you can get the thrill of, okay, well, we don’t know what’s going to happen here. And it’s also quite important for children in terms of exposing them to like micro dosing of uncertainty so that they get kind of gradual exposure to those kinds of experiences where they don’t know the outcome, where they might have to pivot, where things might go wrong, et cetera, in what is actually ends up being a relatively safe environment. And so that gets us to the last part of the definition, which is where there’s a chance of physical injury. And that’s where my research has really delved deep in terms of how likely is it that kids will get injured? What do we really need to worry about? And what don’t we need to worry about? What’s kind of overly hyped in terms of our fears for kids? So yeah, that’s the general gist of the definition.

Dr Naomi Murphy (04:49)

Can I just ask, Mariana, is there other sex differences in terms of risky play, but in terms of need and how that’s expressed?

Mariana Brussoni (04:57)

Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, really anybody needs risky play, whether girls or boys, whether kids with developmental disabilities or other challenges or whatever, everybody needs it. What it looks like can vary quite a bit between kids. And so, for example, if you take the climbing a tree example, you know, a child could have two kids of the same age. Same or different genders and one of them really wants to climb to the top. They have the experience for that and that’s their version of risky play. Another is making it to the first branch and that’s plenty for them. And that’s totally fine. You know, it’s really about providing the environment and then figuring it out for themselves. So we don’t, what we see in terms of differences, you know, the research kind of varies in that some finds differences, some doesn’t.

What we do find is quite a difference in socialisation around risk and risky play from a very young age. And so girls held back a bit more, maybe helped more in playground or risk situations. Boys having more of an expectation that boys will be boys and they’ll engage in this kind of risk taking.

David Jones (06:19)

So I feel you’re kind of talking about me here, Mariana. I grew up after the Second World War, so a risky life was, and I’ve got the scars to show it really. There was virtually no control of the children, including myself, who lived on the big, new estate where I grew up. And it’s fascinating to hear you talking about it now in your research terms. So do you think there’s an evolutionary need for risk taking?

Mariana Brussoni (07:02)

Yes, absolutely. And before I get to that, the post-war era was actually a fantastic time for risky play because you had kind of those kind of bombed out sites that ended up actually turning into adventure playgrounds for kids. So you were very lucky in terms of the era you grew up in, in many ways.

David Jones (07:23)

Well, my older brother grew up in the centre of London and did play in those bomb sites that you’re referring to, whereas I grew up in the 50s in a large, newly built estate with lots of grassland around.

Mariana Brussoni (07:41)

Right? Yeah, yeah, lots of opportunities either way. And interestingly, those bomb sites drew the attention of folks who were interested in this area and realising how kids were playing in these places and what they got out of them, ended up developing adventure playgrounds in different parts of England. And they still have them today. There’s a lot less of them. But where they are, they become such a central part of those communities. So the evolutionary purpose, sorry I veered us off, but the evolutionary purpose is very clear. So first of all, we have evolved to learn through play. If you think about kind of for millennia, kids were outside, they were with each other, they were with older kids or with adults who were learning and playing together on the land and figuring out how things worked through these embodied experiences. With respect to risky play in particular, there is quite a lot of evidence that it is evolutionarily necessary. I mean, if you think about it, why would we do something with a greater chance of injury? So the evolutionary benefit must outweigh the challenges or risks involved. And in fact, that is the case.

And you can think about it a few different ways. So for example, there’s natural fears that evolve in children’s lives. So a common one is fear of separation from caregivers, which kind of peaks at 12 months. And then it gets extinguished naturally, as many of these fears do, through exposure to kind of positive experiences. And that’s a very evolutionary fear in the sense that, you know, if there’s a tiger outside the cave, you want the little kid close so that parents can scoop them up. But it’s not a very adaptive fear when you get older and you do need more of that separation. And so normally kids would have had those experiences and they would have naturally extinguished those fears. But what you have is a situation where kids aren’t having those experiences and those fears are developing into phobias and becoming problematic. And then if we return to the concept of uncertainty that I spoke of earlier, another thing that’s happening is because kids aren’t having these experiences of kind of leaning in, of thrill and excitement from kind of micro doses of uncertainty, then any new kind of stimuli, uncertain situation is more likely to be interpreted as a threat, a danger, a hazard, something to be kind of pushed away from rather than leaned into, you know, in a kind of an exploratory frame of mind. And in fact, that’s what we’re seeing now is we’re seeing a huge increase in anxiety and other mental health symptoms, part of which we think is a result of the fact that kids have lost these experiences in their lives.

David Jones (10:57)

But it sounds also as if becoming fearful of risky play is also an adaptive response, do you think?

Mariana Brussoni (11:09)

Hmm, can you say more?

David Jones (11:12)

Well, you’re mentioning the tiger outside the cave and the mother gathering up the child and that’s obviously a protective response and it may be that this has developed further within the mother to be over concerned as we term it but fearful of what might happen to their child.

Mariana Brussoni (11:38)

Yeah, sorry Naomi, did you want to add to that? Yeah.

Dr Naomi Murphy (11:41)

Well, I’m just thinking about millennials have this reputation for not being able to tolerate anxiety as well as other people, which it sounds like that’s what you were speaking to, you know, the idea that the lack of risky play means they haven’t become inoculated against stress in the way that people who do, who have had those experiences will have been. I suppose it also sounded like, the way you spoke about play made it sound like experiments, you know, like primitive form of experimentation if you like rather than a research experiment.

Mariana Brussoni (12:15)

Exactly, yeah. So to unpack some of that. First of all, you’re experimenting with the world, you’re learning about the world, things like gravity, wet surfaces are slippery, you know, those kinds of things that allow you to understand the world and kind of develop risk management skills that you can take into other situations. You’re also learning about your own comfort and tolerance level for how far you can push yourself, which is really important. And with respect to the uncertainty, I mean, the world is uncertain. We engage with uncertainty. We have to every single day. And so if we’re treating that as something negative, then that’s a problem. And David, to return to your point about fear, yes, so taking the example of the fear of separation from caregivers, that is a really adaptive response when you’re kind of very young and helpless. It’s not an adaptive response as you get older.

But in terms of parents’ fears, that’s a really important point. Like, it is quite natural for us as parents to feel fear for our children’s safety. Absolutely. And we want to make sure, when we talk to parents, we don’t want them to feel blame or shame for what might be called overprotective parenting tendencies. This is actually, it’s normal. And in the current society, it’s actually very, very much encouraged. But what we want to do is kind of measure that response to give parents a bit of kind of head space to rethink that, to understand at what point does that response stray into the harmful rather than the adaptive.

David Jones (13:56)

So why have we become so frightened as a society? Or at least in, I suppose, what we call the first world societies, why have we become so frightened of risky play?

Mariana Brussoni (14:10)

Hmm, yeah, and that’s pretty fascinating actually. There’s not just one thing that happened. There’s kind of a combination of things that kind of led us down this path. And so David, you talked about your post-war childhood in many Western countries, certainly in Canada and the US. The post-war era was kind of a magical era in the sense of peace and prosperity, a minimum amount of kind of inequity in society. It was the point at which we had the lowest amount of inequity in society. But as you saw, for example, the 80s and the 70s energy crisis, the 80s, the 90s, all of those saw kind of big upheaval in the world that increased inequities in society. And so, in response to that, there was, and many other factors, there was a change in approach to parenting and what was seen as as kind of quote unquote good parenting. And so, you know, at the same time as that, what you had building in many universities is requirement and meritocracy around how they decide about admissions to university, which emphasised academic achievement over everything else.

And so parents are first of all realising, boy, my child needs to work harder than I did to have the same lifestyle that I have. And they need to make sure that grades are top of the list in terms of their achievement. And you spoke of moving to an estate. So there was, the way that we were designing cities was changing, becoming more urbanised, but also more car centric, you know, and moving more, prioritising the movement of cars over the movement of people. And so all of that, so it becomes more dangerous to be out and we see a huge increase in car-related, mostly car passenger deaths. And we see that people are less likely to know their neighbours because they’re living in more densely packed urban environments and so social capital goes down. You don’t have that feeling of, if something goes wrong, there’s eyes on the street, there’s people around who can help my child. And in fact, with time, it’s become like strangers are seen as bad or evil. And so people would even hesitate to help a child in distress. So you have all of those kind of factors that play together to result in the situation that we’re in now and that we have to kind of unravel a bit.

And so all of that was happening and then you add screens on top of that, right? And so kids were losing their kind of real life experiences already and then screens came along and really caused a greater upheaval which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Jones (17:24)

Thank you. Gosh, talking with you is really kind of provoking all these memories. Because, of course, what I can remember is that gangs of children from five upwards would go off around the estate playing, and they wouldn’t see a grown-up until it was dinner time. Sort of absence. It wasn’t that adults were afraid of being accused of doing something wrong if they interacted with a child, it’s just that they were doing something else all the time.

Mariana Brussoni (18:06)

Yeah. And also people were less likely to judge each other’s parenting, right? So that’s an important distinction as well.

David Jones (18:11)

Yes. Yeah, thank you. So do you think a reduction in risky play has a relationship with the huge increase in structured activities? You’ve mentioned screens already.

Mariana Brussoni (18:29)

Yeah, well, there’s actually some UK data looking at children and how they spend their time on a daily basis. Really interesting data comparing 1976 all the way to 2015. And what they find is that time spent outdoors socialising with others and outdoor play, those kinds of things went down. For outdoor play alone, there was a decrease of almost 30 % in that time. And what went up was more kind of structured activities like sports, more kind of academic activities like homework and those sorts of things, and more screen time. And what’s striking about that is that, you know, that study stopped in 2015, but we can imagine that it’s just kept going, unfortunately.

Dr Naomi Murphy (19:25)

I know, just thinking about a lot of those structured activities like the sports, the tutoring, obviously it requires a certain level of income to be able to pay for, you know people whose kids go to activities three or four times a week, but there’s a cost associated with that, isn’t there? What’s it like for lower income families? What if they don’t have the resources to pay for their kids to go to these structured play clubs?

Mariana Brussoni (19:51)

Yeah, well, and it’s not just the resources, it’s the time, you know, to because we’re not letting kids go off to those places by themselves. We have to like ferry them back and forth and all of that and like get them registered and, just all of that. That is actually the current norm of good parenting is actually a very high resource, high time intensive norm. And certainly lower income families are being held to the same standard. But without the resources in every way you want to think about that to meet that standard. And so, more likely to have involvement from social services or things like that. So it’s really challenging and unfortunate. Now we did in the earlier research, we did see actually that in some cases lower income kids got off better in terms of outdoor play because the parents were like, okay, just go outside and play. I don’t have the resources to put you in these. But as the norms of good parenting became stronger, and as you even saw, in some cases, social services getting called because kids were out on their own or whatever, and the proliferation of screens and iPads, what we’ve seen now is a movement towards iPads or screens as kind of a tech babysitter while parents struggle to keep afloat.

Dr Naomi Murphy (21:22)

Thank you. Do you have enough knowledge about play, do you think? I mean, you obviously do in terms of your role, but do we as a society, is the public well educated about the importance of play?

Mariana Brussoni (21:36)

I definitely think not. We see like children need this as part of their everyday lives. You know, as we talked about the evolutionary purpose of play, it’s how they learn about the world. It’s how they process emotions. It’s how they bring joy and fun into their lives. And more and more we’ve designed it out of kids’ lives. And not just in the neighbourhood, but at school and childcare, et cetera, with this increasing emphasis on academic achievement. And just a fundamental misunderstanding that in fact, in order for kids to thrive and succeed academically as well, this absolutely needs to be part of their lives. And so a lot of what I do is kind of letting the different institutions know how important it is to change our society, to bring this back for kids so that we can see more of that thriving. More of that if you want to think about learning, the leaning into learning, the engagement with school, the wanting to be there and seeing how the learning that they’re having actually applies to real life rather than reading about it in a textbook.

Dr Naomi Murphy (22:47)

In some ways it feels a little bit like we don’t place adequate value on childhood. I was thinking about the shortening of the school day by squeezing the lunch break and making the lunch break shorter so there’s less scope for play. The removal of green space, which obviously everyone loses in, selling off of land and housing estates popping up on them. But actually children probably suffer more than most when those green bits of land. I wonder if in some ways it reflects a devaluing of childhood amongst society.

Mariana Brussoni (23:23)

I think very much so. I mean, on so many different levels, first of all, the expectation that children be invisible in communities and society. You see more and more complaints of kids who are in restaurants, for example, or public spaces that they’ll make noise. That’s kind of the point and it’s helpful for everybody. And we designed them out of spaces physically in our municipalities. But as well as the conception of children as incompetent or incapable, of needing adults to steward their relationship with the outside world. We’ve really devalued their thoughts, their opinions, their value, their contribution to society. And what’s ironic, I think, is that when cities, neighbourhoods, societies are built to support children, children’s rights, play, that it actually is better for everybody, including the environment.

Dr Naomi Murphy (24:30)

Thank you. What do you wish parents knew about play?

Mariana Brussoni (24:35)

Well, I wish they knew how important it was because we have a lot of kind of barriers that, you know, in terms of parents seeing, okay, it’s a waste of time or it’s too dangerous or things like that, that they understood how important it was. And certainly with respect to risky play, that they learned about that, that the fears that we commonly have far exceed the reality of the statistics. So one of the ironies is that the leading cause of death for kids is being a passenger in a car. And yet we don’t hesitate to put our kids in cars and drive them around, seeing that as the safe option when in fact it’s the leading cause of death. When you look at medically treated injuries, kids are much more likely to get injured in sports than they are in play. And yet there’s no uproar about sports. And sports are really important. I want to emphasise that. But why do we see play as so dangerous and harmful when in fact that’s not the case? And so really to reframe parents thinking around the value that this has in their children’s lives.

David Jones (25:57)

Mariana do you think our education systems incorporate an awareness of play? What’s happening in our education systems with regard to play?

Mariana Brussoni (26:11)

So there’s lots of stellar examples of schools that have done some amazing work. And in the UK, you have the OPAL program, the Outdoor Play and Learning program, which works with schools to bring kind of rich play opportunities to the time, you know, the recess time, the free play time. But for the most part, no, we really have devalued this as an important part of kids’ lives. And a lot of the work that we do is to bring it back. So thinking about inequities, we want to think about, we don’t want to put another burden on parents. So we want to think about how can we most benefit, bring equitable access to play? Well, you need to do it where the kids already are. And that’s where schools become such an important partner. So we do a lot of work with schools, not only around thinking about recess and free play, but very much to think about teachers and how they’re teaching and taking their teaching outdoors in ways that also incorporate risky play. And what the research shows is that by doing this, we often manage some of the biggest challenges that education systems have, you know, so a lack of engagement in learning, mental health crises, social, emotional problems, as well as academic achievement. Naomi, you mentioned the absence of green space. And in fact, there’s even research showing that access to green space at school increases math scores for kids, right? So we really need to rethink how we do things and remember that we’re evolutionarily designed to learn through play. And so having kids sitting indoors, in a controlled environment for hours and hours of their day is not an effective way to promote their education and learning.

Dr Naomi Murphy (28:15)

As you were talking, I was just thinking about the preponderance of ADHD diagnoses, for instance. But actually, I watched my son kind of hanging with his legs upside down while he’s watching TV and always wriggling around and moving around. And that’s quite normal for kids, isn’t it, to be moving around. So if we’re expecting kids to sit still for much longer during the day, not giving them the opportunities to be able to be engaged in vigorous activity, do you think there is a relationship between those kind of disorders like ADHD, ADD and lack of play.

Mariana Brussoni (28:54)

I don’t necessarily know that there’s a causal effect, but certainly a relationship in the sense that, for example, what we find when we do change a school’s practice is that the kids, there’s some kids who will do okay in kind of whatever setting, right? They’ll do okay indoors, they’ll do okay outdoors. But it’s particularly for those kids that struggle the most to learn indoors, like those with ADHD or other challenges, those are the kids that make like, massive strides when you take the learning outside and feel more kind of comfortable and being able to listen and to engage with their learning.

David Jones (29:40)

So this is a big question I think and what you’re saying already reminds me of a couple of things because of course on the estate where I grew up there were hardly any cars and not many people had televisions. We didn’t have a television. We’d go somewhere else in the street to watch television and so the question really is because you can’t turn back time, unfortunately, and you can’t forget what everybody knows already. So what needs to change, do you think?

Mariana Brussoni (30:20)

And I want to be clear that it’s not about turning back time. There are a lot of things we don’t want to go back to from previous eras. But what we want to do is really lift the idea that kids need this as part of their everyday lives. And so part of what we do is we talk about three key ingredients to supporting outdoor and risky play in children’s lives. Time, space, and freedom. And so the time aspect being to help convince parents, adults, schools, others in authority that this is something the kids need every single day, just like they need to sleep or eat, they need to play and we need to kind of dedicate the time for them to do this. Space is that they need access to interesting and stimulating outdoor spaces that will allow them to explore, allow their imagination to shape their play and that have opportunities for challenges for all levels of ability and ages and so on. What we often find is that particularly for as the kids get older, they get really bored with what’s on offer. So making sure that there’s something for everyone. The third ingredient, the freedom relates to, once they’re out there playing that there’s not an adult hovering telling them to be careful or saying no or those kinds of things that they actually do have the freedom to explore those play opportunities and that we as adults, we work to manage the risk or sorry, the hazards in those environments, the things that kids maybe don’t have the lived experience to deal with or whatever, we can manage those, but we can keep the risks and let them go and explore those risks as they see fit.

David Jones (32:20)

Thank you.

Dr Naomi Murphy (32:21)

When you were talking about the sort of more, you know, the less challenging playground, because I mean, it’s very obvious, certainly in Britain, that the playgrounds have got really boring. They seem to be aimed at like five year olds rather than anyone who’s sort of approaching 10. And, there’s much less available. I wonder, is there something about us being able to manage our fear and our anxiety? I mean, in Britain, we don’t really have a suing culture like the Americans have for instance. So I’m not sure that that’s driven, you know, if the same problem exists in America, I would imagine that that could have something to do with it. But in Britain, we don’t have that so you know, why are we having this move towards more boring, less risky areas? But is there something about what adults need to be doing with our own anxieties?

Mariana Brussoni (33:10)

Yeah, absolutely. So you have the proliferation of playground standards that came in the 80s and 90s. And part of that is the fault of my profession in injury prevention, right? So again, if you’re thinking about risks as hazards or dangers, then you’re going to approach it with a different mindset than if you think about the risk benefit kind of approach. So playground standards were built really from an engineering perspective, they were designed to kind of engineer the danger, the risk out of play. And I mean, I think it’s important to remember that standards associations across the world were not designed to think about child development. They’re designed to promote trade between nations and to think about safety in a very narrow way. And so they’ve taken the thinking, for example, that you would have around workplace injuries in a factory environment and wanting to make everything look the same. So there’s no surprises, you know, no chance of tripping on anything, which works really well in a workplace, but really badly in a playground. And so, you know, certainly in Canada, playground standards are not mandatory. But they’ve ended up being mandatory because insurance says, if it’s a standard, you have to use it. And because there are value to standards, you want to make sure the equipment is kind of in the ground properly and things are welded together properly, but the reach has gone too far in terms of deciding how children should play.

And so with the proliferation of those, you have people kind of basically choosing equipment from catalogues that meet standards and plunking them here and there without any thought on how kids use them just to deal with liability, even though, insurance and all that, you would still have those kinds of issues in the UK, as well as absolutely, you know, we talk about kind of an anxiety-based caregiving culture. And so adults, we as adults are making decisions around kids’ lives and what they should be allowed to do to based on managing our own fears, rather than thinking about what does that kid mean or need in front of me? And what’s reality in terms of how dangerous that is? And that’s actually normal in the sense that we go through life kind of in fast thinking mode, we take cognitive shortcuts. And so that means we rely more on biases and heuristics and things like that. But it also means that emotions have a stronger impact on our actions. And so what we try and do is kind of slow down adults thinking so that we can insert between the desire to say, be careful, we can insert a bit of time to slow down their thinking. So it’s like, well, what’s the worst that can happen? And actually, look, they’re doing pretty well. And what will my interfering with this, what impact will it have on their play?

Dr Naomi Murphy (36:28)

Related to what you’re talking about, Mariana I can’t help but be reminded of the conversations that we had in prisons with people who had such little play in their lives, little appropriate play. If they did have risky play, then it was often far too dangerous, like riding around on buses very late at night as a primary school aged kid, you know, with no boundaries or anyone taking care of them, really reminded of that those conversations often cropped up when thinking about fun and the need for human beings to be able to have fun in their lives. And it feels like squashing play out is also making it harder for as a society to have fun. When you look at standards of perfectionism, workaholism, over emphasis on productivity rather than leisure time. I wonder if you see a relationship there between risky play and our ability to have fun as adults.

Mariana Brussoni (37:31)

Fun and joy and seeing those as critical things that actually should be part of everybody’s lives. It’s not just kids who should play. All of us need play and what that looks like can vary, but all of us need it. So I absolutely agree. And it’s a shame because the other thing that we’ve lost not only is this kind of emphasis on joy and fun, but this permission to make mistakes and get things wrong which is such an important part of play and learning. Like, well, that didn’t work out so well, you know, and the world didn’t end. It’s okay. So yeah, lots of problems.

Dr Naomi Murphy (38:13)

Thank you. How can we as adults find more space for play in our lives?

Mariana Brussoni (38:19)

Yeah, it’s a great question, right? So, think about your day, you know, and we encourage adults or parents or anybody trying to make a change to start very small, start very simple, do something really, really, so easy that you could do it right away. It doesn’t overwhelm you. And maybe it’s just like finding five minutes in your day to do something that you find is playful and building from there. And in the case of parents, in the fears that come up, we talk about the 17 second rule as something that, kind of a hook to help them the next time they’re afraid or want to say be careful, count to 17. Let the situation play out so that you have a bit of cognitive time to be like, yeah, it’s not such a big deal and you don’t interfere with the play.

Dr Naomi Murphy (39:22)

And as you were talking, I just made a note to myself because it just reminded me I was looking to have some singing lessons so that I can confidently engage with a choir. And I thought, oh yeah, I need to text back that woman as I was talking to you. Thank you so much. It’s been a really interesting conversation to have with you, Mariana. I really enjoyed it.

Mariana Brussoni (39:41)

Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love talking about this and it’s great to think about it in a different way. I appreciate it.

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Today we are joined by Tom Harrison, who was a social psychiatrist in the National Health Service from 1976–2014. For four years in the 1970s he worked in the John Conolly Hospital an adult therapeutic community and subsequently established group community meetings in various long-stay psychiatric settings. Recently he completed a research project for a PhD at Birmingham University examining the history of the Ingrebourne Centre Psychotherapeutic Community. He is the author of Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and Northfield: Advancing on a Different Front (2000) a history of the Northfield. Today we are mainly talking about a book chapter concerning the Ingrebourne Centre. Tom, really nice to meet you. Glad you could join us today.

Tom Harrison [00:00:31]:

Thank you for asking me.

Naomi Murphy [00:00:33]:

Well, could you start by telling us what, what was the Ingrebourne Centre and why it was so important to you to research it?

Tom Harrison [00:00:41]:

The Ingrebourne Centre was probably the third longest lasting adult therapeutic community in the UK. It actually started a couple of years, probably about 5 or 6 years after Belmont, and lasted through to the beginnings of the 2000s. What drew me to it was the fact I didn’t know anything about it. I was working with Craig Fees at the Pett archive, and Richard Crocket’s archives were being collected at the same time as I was thinking about doing a PhD in history of psychiatry and particularly history of therapeutic communities, largely to follow on from my work on the Northfield experiments and perhaps to look at what the Northfield, originally to look at how the Northfield experiments had any influence following the Second World War rather than just mythology.

David Jones [00:01:47]:

Can I just clarify that a bit? So Richard Crocket was the person who started the Ingrebourne Centre, and this was shortly after the Northfield experiments.

Tom Harrison [00:02:01]:

He was appointed in 1954, and after about a couple of years of wondering what quite to do, he sort of stumbled on doing therapeutic community largely through the influence of people he employed. So he employed an ex-Castle nurse who was a sort of senior nurse in the unit, and also Hamish Henderson. Hamish, what was his second name? It’ll come to me in a minute. But Hamish, who was a junior doctor who’d been working with at the hospital up in the north where, ah, Dingleton, thank you. He’d been working at Dingleton before Maxwell Jones went there, but they’d already started an open hospital and working with groups. And he influenced, basically he wanted to start a community group. And Crocket was drawn into it.

Naomi Murphy [00:03:12]:

So for the benefit of listeners who haven’t worked in a therapeutic community or a TC, could you describe what the features are so that people will understand what we’re talking about?

Tom Harrison [00:03:23]:

There’s a big question. I think there are a number of ways of describing a therapeutic community, but for me, the central feature is that it’s a more open system of communication between staff and the people who are being helped, cared for, particularly centring around the community meeting, which is probably the central feature in that the staff are exposed to questioning and their roles are looked at critically by the people who they are supposed to be caring for. It has a number of other features, but that sort of central bit is where the rest, I think, comes out, extends from. It’s particularly important that you have a safe environment in which this is going to happen, safe in the sense that it’s confidential, that your way of expressing things isn’t going to be jumped on in a critical manner, a pejorative manner rather than critical manner, and you learn to trust people and it gives you an opportunity throughout the living experience there to explore new ways of being, I suppose, with other people, and that you can test out ways of behaving that you have previously not felt safe to do.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:16]:

Thank you. I think that’s really helpful. I think doctors, and especially I think psychiatrists, are often accused by other professionals of having a vested interest in hierarchy. And I wondered, you know, what impact did you see in this? This is quite different, isn’t it, this kind of approach to the traditional doctor-patient kind of hierarchy that might exist in other services?

Tom Harrison [00:05:41]:

The question of hierarchy very often is fear on behalf of the doctors or the staff. And one of the things that challenge doctors and nurses and professional staff arriving at the Ingrebourne or anywhere like that was the very challenge that the patients could question what they were doing. And instead of relying on their superiority, and Tom Main of course is very strong about this in that he, you know, you open yourself up and it’s quite hard for doctors to do who’ve walked into Chelmsford as a medical student not really knowing what being a doctor is about and having to then defend that position from the very beginning. I was very lucky, I suppose. Just before I came on, I was watching David Renton talking about the public schools, and I went through a very similar experience of finding that public schools were not my cup of tea and having a fairly rebellious point of view about what hierarchy and authority was about. And so of course reacted by becoming a hippie and walking into a therapeutic community was just somewhat like coming home.

Naomi Murphy [00:07:11]:

Yeah, you can hear the echoes of Alex Renton’s conversation in what you’re saying. It does seem like there’s some resonance. But do you think there’s a particular kind of doctor that gravitates towards working in therapeutic communities?

Tom Harrison [00:07:25]:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, unfortunately, they’re not, yeah, the ones who started up very much as a particular kind of rebellious doctor. I mean, I think unfortunately the rebellion is often taken further than it needs to go. And there’s a few of the pioneers who actually managed to balance thoughtfulness, consideration, and rebellion without going overboard. But a lot of them finished up getting quite tangled up in their rebellion rather than actually being reflective and considering the needs of leadership in a more considered way. Sorry to beat the word considered, but it’s really interesting. Doctors don’t have training in leadership, and we all become, as we go up the hierarchy, we finish up as, quotation marks, leaders. And our failure to learn about leadership in a considered sense leads us to get very self-defensive.

Tom Harrison [00:08:37]:

And one of the problems at the Ingrebourne was the later stages of leadership at the Ingrebourne would run by doctors who really didn’t understand therapeutic communities, and no fault on their part, but they were feeling very defensive, and if things went wrong, they responded in an authoritarian way.

Naomi Murphy [00:08:59]:

What you’re saying is so interesting, and I think actually has a lot of relevance for the wider NHS and healthcare system generally, actually. But I mean, obviously we’re not here to talk about that, but I do think you’d have some really interesting insights into why the NHS itself as a whole isn’t, is perhaps not functioning as well as it could.

Tom Harrison [00:09:21]:

I’ve been writing about it recently, about leadership in the NHS. I mean, the evidence is very much that they try for a very standard authoritarian, defensive, top-down leadership rather than listening to the workers, as you might say.

Naomi Murphy [00:09:41]:

Yeah, thank you.

David Jones [00:09:43]:

I just want to interject something about, well, where David Kennard and I worked in Oxford at the Phoenix Unit, because Bertrand Mandelbrot was anything but a rebel. You know, he was a South African who came over here to work, and he was very conventional, but he invested authority and power into his staff, into nurses and social workers and psychologists. So it was a rather different kind of model.

Tom Harrison [00:10:15]:

He, of course, is one of the few people who literally, as you describe, is a much more considered and, dare I say it, intelligent approach to leadership. Yes, I mean, that’s exactly right. David Crocket, I mean, Richard Crocket. There’s an interesting slip. Richard Crocket undoubtedly was quite a rebel. I mean, he wrote articles in The Guardian, an article in The Guardian, basically slagging off the medical leadership and superintendents. David Clark was probably another person who was much more thoughtful about what he was doing. But interestingly, they fumbled their way to leadership of the TCs rather than having a plan beforehand.

Tom Harrison [00:11:08]:

And I think that’s really quite an important issue. I don’t know whether Bertrand Mandelbrot, I don’t know enough about him, but did he fumble his way towards it as well, finding out as he went along rather than having a big plan?

David Jones [00:11:23]:

That’s right. Well, he ran the psychiatric services in Wiltshire, I think it was. Or Gloucestershire, before getting the job at Littlemore. And he brought with him his senior nursing officer, and together they hit upon, well, obviously it would have been the other burgeoning TCs, Maxwell Jones TCs, and developed it from there.

Naomi Murphy [00:11:57]:

Tom, one of the observations you make in your book is how difficult it was to discern the staff from the patients. Which is an observation people often make when they go into either residential settings or psychiatric hospitals, isn’t it? People are quite shocked when they can’t tell who the staff are. But what’s so powerful about this?

Tom Harrison [00:12:21]:

We’re all humans. In other words, particularly TCs bring down the invulnerability, or the yes, invulnerability is probably quite a good word, of senior staff, and our vulnerability, particularly in the community meeting, is exposed. I mean, there’s a lovely description by one of the patients at the Ingrebourne who describes how one of the early, she meets this nurse who’s just started at the Ingrebourne, who’s busily writing down in a notebook all what’s happening in the group. And gradually this nurse becomes more and more relaxed over the period of time until the person who’s the patient says, thank you for being who you are. You’re basically wonderful. And this sort of the people who are receiving care see the vulnerability of the staff that they’re working with and perhaps even learn to protect the staff to some extent, and it becomes to a degree mutual. It’s a sort of strong feeling at the Ingrebourne that they were in the family, and it’s repeated by both staff and patients. Particularly when it was running well.

Naomi Murphy [00:13:58]:

I think that’s a really lovely metaphor for therapeutic work, isn’t it? And I wonder if you could explain something about why that’s so important and relevant for healing for psychiatric patients in particular.

Tom Harrison [00:14:13]:

Well, I mean, you go back to the sense of belonging from Rickman through Tom Main through Harold Bridger, they talk even at Northfield, they’re talking about belonging. Rickman talks about it in the very first paper they wrote with Bion about our ward, and within that the patients could challenge, you know, you’re an officer, why should we take you seriously? And it was our ward. And so the sense of belonging allows openness and trust that you can start revealing the things that you’re scared of, revealing in more open environments. And once you do that, you realise that other people are like you, that that paper dragon that you’ve been facing all the time is actually just that, a paper dragon. And you can go up to it and, oh, it’s just a piece of paper. Other people have the same paper dragons, revealing my narrowest leanings of the past, but I think it’s a very valuable image. You can let go of the fears, and then that allows you to trust other people. I mean, you’ll hear in my way of talking that I’m much more interested in the sociological approach than psychotherapeutic in many ways.

Tom Harrison [00:15:48]:

But I think it’s how people interact is so powerful.

Naomi Murphy [00:15:55]:

And presumably that family metaphor works well, doesn’t it? In terms of when you think about the histories of many people who find themselves in psychiatric services, they have been harmed within families or by parental figures, in you know, maybe in children’s home where people were acting as parental figures. And so they’re carrying wounds from those relationships, aren’t they? And here’s the opportunity to have some kind of reparation of those, some ability to restore a sense of what we ought to expect from people who are in caregiving positions towards us.

Tom Harrison [00:16:38]:

I mean, that’s completely true, but also you’ve just made me think about an early intervention service I had for people with psychosis, and psychosis starts in adolescence and wrecks your adolescence. It’s not a question of how bad the parents were. In fact, I also used to say that if you can look after a child with schizophrenia well, I’m not entirely sure how good you’ll be with ordinary children. I mean, it’s a hell of a job to do, and it was very interesting on the early intervention service. How adolescent these young people were, and they were acting out the freedom of adolescence again without any pejorative things about the family or anything else. They were just being very, very childish, but at the same time they were getting through that, and they were allowed to. And I think probably that happens in therapeutic communities as well. Just purely that your adolescence is fucked up.

Tom Harrison [00:17:41]:

You don’t get on well with your peers very well. You’re allowed to rerun adolescence to a degree.

Naomi Murphy [00:17:56]:

Can you tell us something, Tom, about the kinds of groups that are run in therapeutic communities? And, you know, because these differ quite a lot from the kinds of groups that psychiatric patients are often exposed to, subjected to?

Tom Harrison [00:18:11]:

Community meeting. And that can be very challenging. Now I have to say, whenever I was in the therapeutic, in the community meeting, I felt like a fish in water. I mean, it’s just wonderful. But for people who first hit them, they’re really quite challenging and frightening. And you’re not, both the staff and for the new person who’s arrived in the unit. You’ve got a group, big group of people around you, you don’t know what to do, don’t know how to behave in it, and very scared of making a fool of yourself. But that brings together all the things happening on the unit as a whole.

Tom Harrison [00:18:54]:

So behaviours that occurred the night before are then discussed and brought into the light of day in a double sense, I suppose you call it. I don’t know if this is the right moment to bring in, but Harold Bridger talks about the transitional space having two tasks, the double task as he called it. The one task is the official task of the group, which is to carry out a particular task. The second task is to look at the emotional side of what’s going on and to explore that. And he used that in industry, but it holds very true, and his views on it hold true working therapeutic community. Largely, that’s a social group. Yes, I think the staff come in with psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic ideas, and that’s very valuable. But sometimes it’s a bit easy for the patients to start picking up on psychoanalytic ideas and start regurgitating them towards the staff.

Tom Harrison [00:20:05]:

And personally, I don’t think that’s very helpful. I think it’s about the here and now, as Tom Main, Bridger, Rickman, and so forth. What’s happening here and now? How is it affecting us and exploring that? I give an example of the psychiatrist who brought in a spirits bottle, an empty spirits bottle, and put it in the middle of the floor of the community meeting and everybody looking at this thinking, uh-uh, who’s been doing what? And then it’s the here and now what happened. Not some deep exploration of what happens in the past, but what was happening here and now, the relationships that were going on, the boundaries that were being pushed, and why the boundaries were necessary. And yeah, and then the discussion of alcohol and how you work with alcohol, etc., etc., just an explosion of different ideas but also with the sense that there’s quite a powerful emotional experience behind it. There’s not an awful lot written about the community meeting, interestingly. I’ve been trying to look it up, and it deserves more attention than I think it perhaps got. Elsewhere in Ingrebourne, there are other groups.

Tom Harrison [00:21:37]:

They would run proper psychotherapy groups, which were much smaller in the size of the group and much more emphasis on the history of the person. So they would regurgitate their pasts and start looking and reflecting on what happened in the past to them. Then there were various, what you might call recreational groups, but none of them were really recreational. I keep repeating the story of the gardening group in which a young person was encouraged by the staff member to plant potatoes. And her particular view, pursued by her particular demons, was these potatoes were going to rot and they would just be horrible, nasty things in the ground and she wouldn’t dig them up. But after talking with the psychotherapy groups and talking about these things, she eventually dug them up for herself. And for me, the staff member was exercising what I would call discerning compassion. The obvious compassionate thing is, oh, I’ll dig them up for you.

Tom Harrison [00:23:05]:

But no, the discernment was to encourage her to do it for herself. As Nietzsche would say, pluck the true fruit from the tree yourself. And then the story goes on that she dug the potatoes up, they were perfectly edible, and she shared the potatoes with the group afterwards, which I think is the therapeutic community almost encapsulated in a story. So these other groups, other psychodrama, but more importantly, these groups who catch, gave opportunities for spontaneous things to happen, which spontaneity is incredibly important, as Moreno pointed out, that you get new situations arising which you have to tackle in new ways and you haven’t got a script for it. Art therapy is very good for that. My favourite story about art therapy is Lawrence Bradbury at Northfield putting a piece of paper on the doorstep on wet days. And when the soldier arrived in the art therapy hut saying, I don’t know how to start, I don’t know what to do, and he’d put the piece of paper with a footprint on it and say, you’ve started already. So breaking up the normal patterns allows for new ways of thinking and novelty.

David Jones [00:24:45]:

So a wide range of different kinds of groups, really. I’m not sure whether you mentioned this, but presumably staff had quite a lot of groups as well. We call them after-groups.

Tom Harrison [00:24:56]:

Yes. Again, yes. I mean, after all the community meetings, there were staff groups. There were also what you might call community greetings meetings for the staff themselves. So once a week they would have an opportunity of reflecting what had happened during the week before. And unusually, the Ingrebourne have one particular set of these groups recorded at a particularly stressful time of the group. Of the Ingrebourne, which are a bit of a treasure trove as they work through a particular torrid time and explore whether they shouldn’t go become behavioural orientation. And eventually what was very interesting is how the consultants admitted to the staff group that he actually had been not doing things terribly well and that admission seemed to change things quite dramatically, that things definitely settled down afterwards.

Tom Harrison [00:26:09]:

But you don’t normally record those.

David Jones [00:26:14]:

Thank you. Tom, you touched upon transitional emotional space. Which I thought I associated with Winnicott, but I think you mentioned it in relation to Harold Bridger.

Tom Harrison [00:26:34]:

Harold Bridger used it quite specifically, taking it from Winnicott, and he saw the space as a transitional space, or even, I mean, reflecting on this transitional object. I mean, it was an opportunity to move from one position to another, looking at the, he particularly developed it within, well, he obviously developed it at Northfield, but he never called it that at Northfield. But he particularly developed it within industry, and it was an opportunity when industries are facing change for groups of staff to sit down and look at the issues that were brought up by the change, but alongside the task of actually facing the change, look at the emotional blocks that people were having. So they tried to provide a safe space in which people could say, I’m frightened, I don’t know what to do, or I’ve been doing it this way for so long, why shouldn’t I continue doing it that way? Unblocking the thing. I call it the emotional transitional space merely because it’s in the therapeutic community and to perhaps differentiate it from the precise task of the industrial transitional space, although I think Harold Bridger would probably criticise me for doing that because in fact they’re both the same thing. but I just wanted to distinguish it from the task getting better rather than change in the organisation.

David Jones [00:28:23]:

Thank you. Well, I think it’s a tremendous phrase, transitional emotional space, and you use another one, of course, when you refer to imagined Ingrebourne. Now, I was wondering whether this is in any way similar to what today I might tend to think of as being a TC in the mind? Do you think there’s any correspondence there?

Tom Harrison [00:28:53]:

Quite. I suspect there’s at least three imagined Ingrebourne in most people’s minds. There’s the one that Richard Crocket had, which is the ideal, there’s the reality and then there’s the memory of a space where I felt that I was accepted and even loved and wanted. And interestingly, Andy Roberts, who was a person who was a patient at the unit, actually developed an ideal Ingrebourne with some friends of his and actually drew it with the kitchen at the centre of it. Yes, I was encouraged to think about this when I was doing the thesis in this whole geography of the imagination I think people go back to imaginary maps as well. I can’t remember all the details of what I read at the time, that’s nearly 10, 12 years ago now, but the idea of a space, the abstract space becoming a place as you learn about it and you become familiar with it and you belong and you have this sense of belonging. Sorry, it’s a bit of a ramble.

David Jones [00:30:28]:

It’s okay. So one of the things you say in the chapter, I think, is that the Ingrebourne Centre wasn’t contained within the walls of the centre.

Tom Harrison [00:30:42]:

Well, absolutely. And one of the things about boundaries is you have to recognise that the Ingrebourne was permeable, and any therapeutic community is permeable. There’s a very strong feeling that develops in therapeutic communities that this is a safe space and I’m not going to let anybody else in or let the outside intrude on that space. And so Ingrebourne failed in this towards the end, particularly as maybe some other therapeutic communities did too, but it’s a permeable space. All the staff go in and out, the patients are going in and out, they have other spaces in which they have place, they have other communities they’re part of, and not to recognise that both at the level of the social and also to recognise it in in terms of the managerial-cum-political environment one’s in, is to fail to provide a safe space in many ways, because it becomes, if the more defensive you become, the more endangered you become. I hadn’t thought that one before, that’s quite nice, I like that.

David Jones [00:32:08]:

You can keep it. You can have it for yourself.

Tom Harrison [00:32:12]:

But anyway, yes, the more defensive you become, the more endangered you become. And beyond that, the Ingrebourne people outside would go and meet up in pubs, and the Ingrebourne in some ways would be recreated as they were discussed in pubs. When I went to interview people, Ingrebourne was recreated again, and imagine the Ingrebourne, however much I tried to be objective, was born in each relationship I had with people I interviewed. And so it has an ongoing existence. Even after its, quotation marks, death.

David Jones [00:33:06]:

Yes, it is striking, and Naomi and I have come across this many times, how often the kind of environment you’re describing remains in the minds of people for many years afterwards.

Tom Harrison [00:33:22]:

Yeah, I mean, I worked at the John Connolly, which was 4 years for me, and again, that has a huge, I got as much therapy out of the Connolly as probably the people I was working with, and it just had a huge impact on me and led me to go down this direction that I’ve gone since. And again, there’s another imagined space that keeps resonating.

David Jones [00:33:52]:

Thank you. Tom, in the chapter, you mentioned that mutual aid, that is, I think, patients helping patients, appears to be more powerful than staff interventions. Why do you think?

Tom Harrison [00:34:09]:

One of the first interviews I did was with a gentleman called Andy Roberts. I can use his name, he’s very happy for me to use his name. Anyway, he made it very clear he didn’t think the doctors had done very much. And he describes, I think he actually describes it on his blog, about how talking to, he was feeling very suicidal and was wanting to destroy himself. And he was talking to another girl who shared similar suicidal ideation. And she was talking about destroying herself. And he thought, hold on, I don’t want her to kill herself. Hold on.

Tom Harrison [00:34:50]:

And that impact on him made him clear that he didn’t want to destroy himself really. And the fact that he wanted to, quotation marks, save her, led him to reflect on his own situation. And from then on, he was very clear that his relationships with other patients were very powerful. And although I was aware beforehand, that made me, another friend of mine talks about the bell that had been tinkling started ringing loudly, that actually the mutual aid networks are incredibly powerful and the support that people give each other, the compassion people give each other. The space in which you find out, oh, you have the same feelings as me. It can be very, it can be too much in some ways, and you start getting this feeling of belonging where nobody else understands and only this group understands. But at the same time, it’s hugely important. And that, for me, that’s why I think the social aspects of the therapy spiritual community are underrepresented, and people talk far too much about the therapeutic, psychotherapeutic aspects of it rather than looking at the social.

Tom Harrison [00:36:18]:

I mean, even Bion’s ideas of the basic assumptions are actually social aspects of the group, not strictly psychotherapeutic. They’re how groups happen and behave in a social manner, not in a, obviously psychodynamics drive it to an extent, but it’s the communications that drive it, but it’s what happens in every group. Sorry, I’m going on, but I do think we underplay in the therapy to community movement, the importance of the social and alongside the importance of leadership.

David Jones [00:37:09]:

Yes, Tom, I visit lots of TCs still and the ones that I feel aren’t doing terribly well are the ones where the patients or the residents say the staff don’t do enough, they’re never in the groups, and we can’t be helped by other patients/residents. How does one develop the kind of culture you’ve just been describing?

Tom Harrison [00:37:38]:

First of all, by being in the groups. If the staff don’t show the value of the people they’re working with, then they will undervalue themselves. And until they feel valued yes, they will feel neglected and their need for dependency on the absent leadership becomes enhanced and it becomes almost central to their thinking rather than I’m in a safe environment, frankly my parents are around, to help me feel safe. They value me, they may not say very much, but they’re here.

Naomi Murphy [00:38:26]:

I can really hear the passion in you, actually. There’s a really, no, it’s lovely, and actually I think that’s right, because I think staff can end up taking for granted these kind of groups, not prioritising them because they’re not important, they’re not counted formally, and yet actually we communicate so much about the patient’s worthiness by choosing to engage and interact with with them and having a presence and being available. So actually, it was really lovely to hear that impassioned defence of the need for staff to be in these groups and prioritise, you know, it matters, doesn’t it, to the patients, even if you’re not saying anything.

Tom Harrison [00:39:05]:

And if possible, at the community meeting, have the cleaners so they’re valued. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

David Jones [00:39:18]:

Well, it does, but to put it in a crude way, I think what you’re saying is that staff do need to be there to show respect, really. And also, they have to be there in order to recede into the background.

Tom Harrison [00:39:36]:

The task of the staff is to enable the client, the people there, to communicate. But they have to be there to do it, to provide the sense of safety and yes, to a degree, boundary keeping, so that if someone starts flying off the handle, I mean, at the Ingrebourne, interestingly, and I’m not quite sure what I think, I think I do know what I think about it, staff and patients would actually go off when someone left the group. Rather than leaving the person outside the group, they went back to collect them. Now, in strict psychoanalytic terms, that’s wrong. In terms of caring, it’s right. And that’s where I think psychotherapy can lead you up the wrong path, that it’s the staff showing care alongside the patient showing care and holding in a very fraught and frightening situation for people is part of what the staff do to hold these horrible emotions that are going on. And for the younger people, the new people in this service who, I mean, one of the things we don’t think too hard about is that new people arriving have very different experiences from the people who know what’s going on. Both staff and patients. And we don’t really adjust in, well, my experience was we don’t necessarily adjust our responses to account for that.

Naomi Murphy [00:41:13]:

Really agree with everything you had to say there, Tom, and it was also again making me think about dynamics in the wider NHS again. So, you know, the idea that, when wards are run with a constant rotation of staff, as if the staff themselves don’t matter, or having lots of agency staff, which of course communicates to the patients that, A, they’re not worth staying around for, but also you’ve basically got strangers coming in and babysitting. And you might have the more experienced staff in the offices doing tasks and management-related tasks, but actually what you need are the people that are interacting with the patients to be people that make the patients feel safe because they know them. Quite often these are people who’ve come from families where stepdad or the babysitter was an abusive individual. So that’s also replicated in these environments, isn’t it? It’s not just about how we communicate safety and care, but also how is danger represented within the environment, and what steps do the existing staff take to keep patients safe.

Tom Harrison [00:42:20]:

And how important the kitchen was at Ingrebourne. Where staff could join and sit down, including the doctors, could sit down, and for all the difficulties there were with one of the consultants, that individual came in and helped cook, and that was terribly important. She was involved at a very basic level with people. I don’t mean to use her gender, but that’s the way it is. And that probably helped her more than anything else she did to keep going, I suppose.

Naomi Murphy [00:43:04]:

It’s also relevant for staff, isn’t it? Because I was just thinking about in the NHS, absent managers makes a difference to the staff too. That if these staff don’t feel safe and contained by managers who are interested in them, then they’re not able to embody that and communicate that to the patients also. So you get a trickle-down effect when you get poor management who aren’t good parents to the staff, to the senior staff.

Tom Harrison [00:43:29]:

Absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of literature on the fact that staff want their managers to be involved, and the training tells them how not to be. The NCO, classic army thing of the NCO must separate themselves from the men, which is completely and utterly the wrong way around about it.

David Jones [00:43:50]:

So, Tom, I mean, we’ve touched upon this already, but you’ve already described your enthusiasm for the social rather than the psychotherapeutic.

Tom Harrison [00:44:09]:

Not rather than. That’s too strong. It’s very important for staff to have a methodology for understanding their emotions. I have no doubts about the value. I mean, I might go further and talk about Bourdieu’s idea of the habitus rather than necessarily psychoanalysis. Not that psychoanalysis isn’t important, it has a huge amount of insights that are incredibly important, transference and all that sort of stuff and projective identification. But I see it as being broader and habitus incorporates both psychoanalytic insights and a much more sociological understanding of the world. But, you know, it’s important that the staff have a safety net, a theoretical safety net for themselves.

Tom Harrison [00:45:02]:

It’s just when they impose it unnecessarily, whereas the here and now is more important.

David Jones [00:45:13]:

Thank you, that’s very helpful. So the therapy and the structure of therapy is valuable not just for helping patients but through giving staff a structure through which to understand their work.

Tom Harrison [00:45:28]:

Yeah, absolutely. I do tend to jump into the deep end and ignore psychotherapy because I suppose I’m trying to balance up what I see as being an overemphasis. But I don’t practice, so I’ve really, well, no, I had an interview for one of the Henderson replacements that was going to be set up around the country. And I got flummoxed answering a particular psychoanalytic question, which lost me the interview. But I knew what I was talking about. I had Harold Bridger and Tom Main sitting on my shoulder saying, you know, you’ve got it right, mate, basically. But yeah, however, I didn’t get the job and the emphasis was very much on why I didn’t understand psychoanalysis properly.

David Jones [00:46:42]:

So you do emphasise that in the chapter and in fact, the chapter really describes repeated tensions between the psychoanalytic approach and the social-oriented therapeutic practices. Why did these things become so divisive?

Tom Harrison [00:47:04]:

I think, again, it’s the later consultants were put in a very awkward situation. They were appointed because they were going to bring control and order to a chaotic environment. And that fed into their roles of how you trained as a doctor. And so you emphasise therapy. And they had no real understanding of the social dynamics that were occurring. And in fact, it was very interesting how the nurses and occupational therapists had a far clearer understanding of the social and were practicing it, whereas the doctors retreated into individual psychotherapy. And one of them made it very clear he couldn’t understand the groups. He didn’t understand the feel, that they were therapeutic.

Tom Harrison [00:48:02]:

And he quite clearly was much happier doing individual psychotherapy. Because it’s more therapeutic. And there’s no fault of his. It’s just that it was not helpful to the therapeutic community to be doing individual therapy in the outpatients when he was needed to understand much more the dynamics of the groups. And the consultant who was basically appointed to sort things out became much more authoritarian and again, there’s much more interest in individual psychotherapy because they were being proper doctors in that situation doing individual treatment, which fitted in with the social environment, of course, of Maggie Thatcher and the emphasis on value for money and the move towards RCTs and drugs. And it was much more, you could say, you can measure therapies, whereas this sort of random events of the social environment were uncapturable in RCT terms.

Naomi Murphy [00:49:15]:

What do you think the modern mental health services could learn from services like the Ingrebourne, both in terms of success and failure?

Tom Harrison [00:49:25]:

They couldn’t repeat this. I mean, the present situation wouldn’t allow you to repeat the Ingrebourne experience, but I do think it’s possible to run a weekly meeting on wards. Even in the 1970s, on a cancer ward in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, they had weekly meetings of the patients. Where the staff were exposed to the patients and their anxieties and feelings, and they had to learn how to cope with that. And I think it goes back to Dr. Pratt, who in the 1910s, ran educational groups for people with TB, and he was surprised and amazed by the power of the patients working together. Once they were able to be brought together in groups.

Tom Harrison [00:50:21]:

He provided a safe space for people to talk to each other, and they could talk about their experiences to each other. And I’m sure that’s relatively manageable within the ward if you can, they managed it on a cancer ward, and I think you could replicate that without having to go towards the whole thing of patients learning how to run the ward. That might be, but even then, little things they could suggest, you know, why don’t we give the food out, or why don’t we hand out teas or make the tea? They might offer help to each other in a way that would relieve the tensions on the staff. But again, spontaneity occurs in these meetings, that things happen if you allow them to, but you have to be open to allowing them to. I wouldn’t push it further than that, although I think management training could learn a lot from Harold Bridger and the transitional space, but they’d have to go to the Bayswater Institute for that. Very interestingly, people in Hertfordshire, I think it’s called Hertford University, there’s a guy called Ralph Stacey and his team are doing very similar work to Harold Bridger in terms of holding conversations at work. And interesting, they’ve linked up with group psychoanalysis in their work. Unfortunately, Ralph Stacey himself has retired, so I don’t know where it’s going, but very interesting group of people.

David Jones [00:52:22]:

Great. Well, you’ve mentioned many interesting things and interesting people. I think we’ll have to add a bibliography at the end of the show notes. Thanks very much indeed, Tom.

Tom Harrison [00:52:49]:

I hope it’s been helpful, or not helpful, but yeah, helpful and interesting.

Naomi Murphy [00:52:54]:

Lovely to hear about your work. Thank you.

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Bibliography

• Richard Crockett — founder of the Ingrebourne Centre

• Craig Fees —PETT archive

• Hamish Henderson — junior doctor influencing early TC practice

• Maxwell Jones —Henderson Hospital, Dingleton and TCs

• Tom Main —hierarchy and TC theory, Cassel Hospital

• Alex Renton — referenced indirectly in discussion of hierarchy and rebellion

  and in relation to public schools

• Bertram Mandelbrote — Consultant psychiatrist, Phoenix Unit in Oxford

• David Clarke — identified as a thoughtful TC leader Cambridge

• Andy Roberts — former patient

• Kurt Lewin —group dynamics

• John Rickman — psychoanalyst

• Wilfred Bion — referenced in relation to Northfield and group theory psychoanalyst

• Harold Bridger — major figure re transitional space, psychiatrist

• Jacob Moreno — psychodrama

• Lawrence Bradwick — art therapy

• Donald Winnicott — psychoanalyst, transitional space

• Frederich Nietzsche — philosopher