Sally Challen, John Worboys & the System Designed by Men | Harriet Wistrich

[00:00:00]Hey lovely listeners and welcome back to Crime Analyst in the Intelligence Cell.

[00:00:04]And today I'm joined by a superhero special guest who I am very excited to talk to. Harriet, please introduce yourself.

[00:00:13]>> Hi everyone. I'm Harriet Witch. I'm um speaking from a very hot London, unusually hot. And uh I am uh a lawyer, a solister who's done a lot of work over the years around all sorts of uh cases mainly to do with state accountability, police accountability in particular. And over the time of my career, I focused increasingly on violence against women and policing and the state. 10 years ago, uh I founded the illegal charity called the Center for Women's Justice.

[00:00:48]Uh, and I'm speaking from an office where everyone else has gone home now.

[00:00:55]>> Well, you're very welcome on Crime Analyst, Harriet, and I appreciate you've got incredibly hot conditions right now in London, but I am really excited to talk with you. You are a Shirou uh legal titan, a real inspiration to me and so many other professionals. And it's just such a privilege to talk with you. You have succeeded with many landmark decisions because you've used the law to hold the state to account. And your book is called sister-in-law, fighting for justice in a system designed by men. And you know, I wonder if we could start off. I do want to talk about John War boys and various cases like Sally Chalon as well, but can you just take us back to where did this where did it begin for you this drive and this motivation to fight for women, but also to be so smart to use the law to challenge decisions in a very innovative and creative way. Can you take us back in time? What was the case or was there some, you know, a number of things that happened where you just felt compelled to to use your voice? Yes. So, um what I would say is um I hadn't actually ever had an ambition to become a lawyer particularly. It hadn't really crossed my mind. Um but I was very driven by feminism to women's liberation and um finding ways to advance that. Um potentially using uh you know through communication in different ways was was was sort of where I felt I was heading.

[00:02:32]Um but in my early 30s I think I um together with uh some other feminist activists ended up um organizing a demonstration outside uh the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in London to protest and support an appeal uh by a woman called Sarah Thornton who had been convicted of murder uh and um had uh failed to use a defense of provocation even though uh she was, you know, an established victim of domestic abuse. And she was [snorts] one of a number of cases that had been highlighted in a TV documentary called The Provoke Wife, which basically gave a number of examples of women who had been convicted of murder, who are victims of domestic abuse, unable to use that um defense. And so we we organized an ad hoc demo just to support her appeal. And um things kind of developed really from there because we were handing out leaflets in which we were highlighting how women who killed their violent partners were being convicted of murder.

[00:03:40]But men who, you know, were provoked by um nagging or other, you know, being taunted or something were successfully using this defense of provocation.

[00:03:53]and uh that that that that um this demonstrated a you know a really significant um inequality within the law. So we were trying to highlight that issue and as it happened Sarah Thornton lost her appeal and a couple of days later you know perfect example of a man getting away with murder uh when he kicked his wife to death and the judge commented she would have tried the patience of a saint. So that was the and that kind of because we created that publicity around Sara's appeal that then uh caught up you know we it kind of it captured the public imag imagination there was some media coverage of that and and things escalated from there and then we were campaigning we joined together with an organization called south or black sisters uh who are a brilliant um black feminist organization campaigning around a range of issues including U highlighting the case of Kirinda Talawalia who was another woman who' killed her very violent partner and we then founded a campaign group called uh justice for women uh which kind of was looking at this issue specifically of women subject to domestic abuse who killed but also in the context the wider issue of of domestic murders I suppose.

[00:05:14]So that that was sort of what drew me in uh in terms of seeing the law. I was went to one or two court of appeal cases and I got quite fascinated by it. And uh then um we were approached by a young woman called Emma Humphre who was only 17 when she killed this violent pimp boyfriend um and was convicted of murder. and she'd written to us asking if we could help and we approached the solicitor who had supported Kieran Jatalia and asked if he could take the case on and he said well I don't really have the time but if one of you would come forward and volunteer to work with Emma and uh you know I I you know I'll kind of steer the case towards you know if if there's any possibility of an appeal of course appealing conviction is very difficult so having been in a bit of a hiatus of where what I was doing with myself. I decided to volunteer and I was very interested in the legal process and so I worked with with Emma Humphre and that was a very very intense and fascinating case and I worked with her over a period of time to gather her story and to and and then to pass that on to barristers who were looking at grounds of appeal and and then as a group justice women built up a huge campaign and three years later um and during that process I then decided to study the law and so I was I was um doing my law conversion course and um legal practice course while we were building up this campaign around Emma Humphrey's case and the the case was eventually heard in fact it's 7th July today isn't it? So it was it was this date in 1995 so 31 years ago I think uh that uh that appeal took place and it was a big big case. It had huge publicity and it kind of established the you the idea that that women might be subject to cumulative provocation. That was how how it was framed at the time. Uh so that was a a very significant case and and working with Emma was a a big learning experience for me and and a very important experience for me and and in fact as we got the appeal judgment was just as I'd qualified from my course and uh then went into uh deciding to become a solicitor uh a training contract and uh worked in a solicitor's firm uh you know very interesting firm that did a range of work um around things like immigration and actions against police as well as criminal law. So um yeah, that's where I I started.

[00:08:03]>> Incredible. Incredible that you volunteered and then you end up training to become a lawyer, but at the same time, you're putting together Emma's case. And I read some of her diary entries and my goodness, I mean, what she endured um and the fact that he Armitage had um threatened to gang rape her um with his son and friends. And that came prior to her then slitting her wrists and him mocking her for doing that. and her whole history. It's just such a sad sad story in terms of she never really stood a chance of having, you know, being the product of, you know, parents who were alcoholics and she just suffered so much in her short life. and incredible to have someone like a whole range of different forms of you know in a way her cases uh you know tells you about a lot of different aspects of violence against women and you know child abuse as well as um uh you know being prostituted and using pornography and then this domestic violence and you know everything that kind of you know she she had a lot to contend with. She was in prison for 10 years by the time she came out. She she came straight out from the court of appeal and then um you know new difficulties began for her. Um, and she was really by then too damaged, I think, to find a way of of existing in the world. And and sadly, um, she'd become very addicted to, um, medication that that the prison used to the sort of chemical cautious they called it and and she overdosed on that u three years after she came out and died. So very very sad uh story that sort of lived with me all this time really >> I bet and it's probably why you decided to memorialize her as well in terms of the award that that the center gives out every year which is just so important.

[00:10:13]But yes, I mean I was very moved by her her story and I was sure that that resided with you, you know, of the the fight for her life, but also for other women to establish that provocation could be cumulative. And it's that drip drip drip, isn't it? And particularly when we see it with coercive control where someone's autonomy has been taken and eroded and where they are entrapped and we know that a lot of juries and the public just don't understand that level of entrapment and and that's something that you've tried to change with many cases including a very high-profile case of Sally Chalon. But I think it's important just to show the readback the look back to your career of where it all began. And of course, a lot of people know you for Sally Chalon's case and the incredible um advocacy that you did on on her case legally to show that she was a victim from the age of 15 to 56.

[00:11:11]Another woman whose life was really changed because of a a man coming on the scene who abused her in every way and she ended up with a very long sentence. And and that's what we tend to see, isn't it? that women end up with the longer sentence and it's deemed to be murder. And yet, as you mentioned, you know, I always remember Harriet Harmon, the solicitor general, calling it the nagging shagging defense that men use. And they get off from us, but >> Oh, it's from you. Well, I'm going to reappropriate back to you then, but that nagging shagging defense that that they use and and often we see manslaughter convictions and they receive much lesser. I mean, sometimes seven years and they're out in three.

[00:11:53]>> Yeah. Well, in fact, um, at that time in the early '9s, I mean, sentences have gone up and up and up for both men and women and and women are suffered the consequences of often of, you know, this sort of push back on on abusive men.

[00:12:07]But, I mean, at the time, like the Joseph McGrael guy whose wife tried the patience of a saint, I think he got two years, you know, at that time there were very, very short sentences. Indeed.

[00:12:17]Yeah.

[00:12:18]>> Yeah. And you know it's quite right that you highlight this double standard and gender bias and the misogyny that we see. You know it's it's unbelievable that women have to endure such abuse and then when they fight back to survive and it literally is. is I've looked at some of the cases that the cent's supporting some of the women where there seems to be a pattern where it's a you know one stab situation where they're either being strangled or they're being physically assaulted or they're being sexually assaulted and they stab that person to survive and then they are criminalized and they are seen even worse as if it was planned premeditated and so on. So there really is this gender bias in so many cases and of course Sally's her her son David was an incredible advocate for her of talking out and I just think his journey um Harriet and I know you know you've been with him the whole way through and it was a really incredible moment to be at his book launch last year in London and and that's where you and I spoke and I you know congratulated you and I felt just it was an incredible moment to see him stand in his power, understanding fully coercive control and what he did for his mother and to have the vocabulary, the language and all that he does where when I first spoke to him, he didn't have that language. He didn't have that knowledge. He was struggling to identify what it was that he and his brother and his mom went through. And so changing the law on coercive control, I mean it it really was a big step change in the sense of giving the language, giving a framework, a legal framework so that we recognize this drip drip drip and we changed the law in 2015.

[00:14:08]I believe you wrote to Sally and you felt that you could help her. Can you just talk us through that process for you of when you understood, well, hang on, we've got the coercive control law.

[00:14:19]We've got to change here. And then you thought you would write to Sally and see if you could help her.

[00:14:24]>> I I was actually contacted by um a relative of Sally's uh in very shortly after she was convicted of the murder, which was back in 2011, I think, uh when I when I heard from her and she said, "Look, we we just sat through this trial.

[00:14:42]um you know, she'd been convicted of murder, got a very long sentence, and we just don't think the full truth came out at the trial and would you have a look at this case? And so I I agreed to have a look at it. I I what I often do at the beginning is look at the newspaper headlines and think, "God, this is difficult." Uh because obviously the newspapers tell the story of the prosecution case. Um but I did um you know I visited Sally and then over um a long period of time I tried to build up you know look I analyzed what had happened in her case. I tried to build up a story and actually really struggled to find a way forward any grounds of appeal. So this was about three or four years on. I'd worked with her on and off. I'd looked at various options. I kind of I think I'd asked the psychiatrist to to do a new assessment of her, but it didn't feel like we had a way forward. I'd met David and you know was struck by his his very clear view that his dad was the the rotten one, not his mom. Then uh you know as I was I I think I just became aware of this law that was coming in uh in 2015. So, as I say, a few years on from when I was first working with Sally, it just sort of struck me actually that the way in which coercive control was framed described very aptly Sally Challen's experience. What what we see with these sorts of cases generally is that um there's this kind of view that uh well domestic vi people look at violence as the thing that that that that's the thing that uh you know and and some of the cases uh like Emma Humphrey's case for example there was no no difficulty in demonstrating that she was subjected to horrendous violence sexual violence and so on. For a case like Sally's, there was no visible violence from the outside. Although I had garnered from her that there was se there was some violence and some sexual violence, it wasn't sort of the key thing. So what was it that kept her trapped in this relationship? And it was the coercive control. It was all the different elements uh really that that just felt like they were kind of jelling together. And so I kind of thought of this as like well maybe we could argue that this was because there's so so limited grounds you can appeal you you know it's either uh because something's gone wrong in the trial the judge has failed to direct or sum up or because um there's some fresh evidence as evidence that wasn't around at the time that has now come to light. as I was trying to think, well, maybe we could argue that we didn't have that framework for understanding the nature of what was going on in this relationship until um this sort of new concept or way of understanding entrapment if you like kind of was was was coming into English law. I mean, in fact, people have been working around this for quite a few years, but it just wasn't commonly understood. So, that was sort of our first angle. And then we also kind of had other um another angle related to psychiatric evidence because of course curse of control itself isn't a defense. So you still you're still stuck with a very limited basis on which you can put a defense to murder uh um a partial defense in this case. And and so we were looking at her mental health uh in relation to diminished responsibility as well as the provocation side. And um that there was some other fresh evidence that came to light in relation to that which so it was a combination of the coercive control and the sort of psych new psychiatric diagnosis if you like that uh kind of formed the basis of the appeal. But I think very importantly the it was a it was a difficult appeal and I think the the the amount of campaigning and particularly uh David's voice in combination with with justice women as well the campaigning around it uh and the and the kind of public conversation that was being created about coercive control just put a huge focus on on Sally's appeal. So by the time it actually came to the court of appeal um which wasn't till 2019 I think um 28 2019 was it 2018 I can't remember anyway it it it um the court was packed there was a lot of protest there was a huge amount of media interest and so the judges you know kind of were very aware you know it it just kind of provided a lot of scrutiny really for the judges to come to a decision which tends to be quite helpful rather than it just being a case in court that nobody knows about.

[00:19:48]>> That level of public awareness is really important, isn't it, to ensure that there's some pressure that people are watching and we expect a degree of transparency in these decisions. Um, but she had already served nine years up until that point. So, it it wasn't even really that, you know, she was saying she shouldn't be in prison. She from what I understand and from what Sally said to me, you know, she expected to be held responsible for what she did. Um, and she had served nine years. It wasn't like she'd been in prison for one year, two years. And and so when she accepted the, you know, the guilty plea to manslaughter, I heard that the CPS was still considering another trial for her.

[00:20:32]>> Yeah, they were. They were. I mean, you normally um if you succeed with an appeal on fresh evidence and the court will say, well, you've got to now go back to trial and see whether that fresh evidence would have made the difference.

[00:20:46]So, that was a bit of a nightmare. But in fact, um the the Crown Prosecution Service got their own um psychiatric report which um was supportive of a diminished responsibility defense. And then eventually the the crown decided to accept u or to offer her the opportunity to plead guilty to uh manslaughter. And she she took that opportunity. I mean some cases like Sally Chalins and others what you're looking at is the difference between murder and manslaughter.

[00:21:21]Uh other cases are about self-defense.

[00:21:25]Uh and and that is a complete acquitt.

[00:21:28]And uh you know it it depends. I mean you somebody like you know you've you've described in in our film Fight Back with for example which is on uh Center for Women's Justice website. You see a number of cases where women are literally being strangled um perhaps he lets go and then they stab and you know they're not succeeding with self-defense uh in those circumstances.

[00:21:54]And so there there are other aspects about how the law is still very much based on a male response uh rather than a female response um to violence.

[00:22:05]>> Yeah. And that's not an easy one because you know the misogyny of the system but the people in it is something that I continuously see and I'm sure that that is a feature continuously for you. you know, of perceptions and judgment that they're much harsher towards women even if you're trying to survive something.

[00:22:28]It's like that doesn't matter. And you know, I think about Robert Brown, the British Airways killer, and talking with Joe Simpson's mom die, and an incredible woman, but just how she was treated even at the trial where Diana was spoken to.

[00:22:46]I mean, I just couldn't believe what I heard when Diana was explaining that Graeme Reed, the prosecuting barrister, just said, you know, when she challenged, "Why is my daughter being put on trial? Where are the 30, 40 witnesses that are meant to be called to paint the picture and characterize my daughter?" And Graeme Reeds just said, you know, trivia, trivia, trivia. I'm not here to win a personality contest.

[00:23:10]I'm going to go and pour myself a large gin and tonic and forget all about you.

[00:23:15]And the case Yeah.

[00:23:16]>> Was that in court? Was that said or >> this was that afterwards where she had asked to speak with him?

[00:23:22]>> God, what a horrible horrible man. He deserves [laughter] >> truly. I mean >> but but this is one thing another theme that we see is the way in which women's characters are decimated whether if they're the the victim of uh you know domestic abuser like Robert Brown that you know the way in which their their their characters are put down and abused and and and I mean I've talked to to other families of women who've been killed and you know talking about how devastating it is when not only are they dealing with the horren horrendousness of the murder but also with their um loved ones character being trashed in that way. And then on the other hand uh when often where a woman's killed a male partner um you know in fact in Sally Chalon's case her her lawyers at trial had said look it's not going to go down well if we speak ill of the dead.

[00:24:21][laughter] you know, you know, someone who was actually an abuser and a controller, uh, is, you know, that full picture isn't even painted because of a sort of supposedly tactical decision not to speak ill of the dead. Well, that's immediately what when I interviewed Dye, I knew Sally's case was around the same time and you know, the fact that they had said we don't speak ill of the dead, whereas Robert Brown and the whole uh, you know, circus at court, everyone allowed Joe to be vilified as if she was the problem. And then he ended up with a manslaughter, not murder conviction, when he pre-dug the grave, he lined the coffin, you know, clearly pre premeditation in in his acts, but yet he was seen as by the jury because he was a British Airways pilot that carried um a lot of grace, right? And they believed what he said about this adjustment disorder. And I was truly horrified that if we can't get it right in a case like that and I suspect from talking to Diana and of course we brought the campaign to ensure that his automatic release was challenged but we felt very strongly about the fact that this was somebody who was very dangerous and he could manipulate people. He manipulated a whole jury and he ended up with this manslaughter could be released after 13 years. never cooperated with any prison psychologist. And you know, we challenged that and he ended up taking uh the Lord Chancellor to a judicial review. You're probably aware of this.

[00:25:58]>> Yes.

[00:25:58]>> It backfired on him because he had to be assessed for the first time by psychologists who said that he was even more dangerous than what he was before.

[00:26:05]So, you know, everything that he >> Yeah. There's been another case actually in in the news today, one I've been working with a family around. This is a I don't know if you followed this the case of Robert Rhodess who killed his wife Dawn Rhodess. He actually got away with murder the first time. The jury returned self-defense and and the character of Dorm was was portrayed in a horrendous way. Exactly what we describing Diana's experience not only family dealing with the grief but also with this woman being completely trashed by a very manipulative man. And it was I mean it's a it's a long story so I won't go into it but but there new evidence came to light subsequently uh and there was a double jeopardy ruling and he was retrieded last year and convicted of murder. Court of appeal today just increased his sentence um under the unduly lenient scheme quite rightly. One of the most evil manipulative men I've come across in a long time. Yes, I did follow the case and um you know I I agree with your assessment there and there are some who are so diabolical and so devious and they need to be removed from society and one of those men is John Mo and I want to you know turn the last bit of our time to your incredible work on on that case. And for my listeners, you might not know the name, um, but he was the black cab rapist who was targeting women coming out of bars or clubs, but using the ruse of, you know, come and I'll take you home. It's on my way. Or, you know, I worry about women being left alone, you know, at night, so let me take you home. And then he would say that he won in the casino and therefore they would feel sort of indebted to him when he says, "Oh, help me celebrate."

[00:28:02]And some women would drink what he would give them and he would drug them and then sexually assault and rape them. and you mounted a challenge to the state with two of the incredible women, Leila and Sarah, who challenged um the fact that when he was arrested, when he was convicted, it was only for a small number of offenses that the CPS decided to prosecute on, but not for the totality of his offending. And can you just explain a little bit more about um the case that you brought, Harriet? And I do want to share with you that it's had a very positive impact in the parole board hearing, Robert Brown's recent parole board hearing. There's a direct line back, ironically, from that case to Robert Brown's where there was a factf finding for the first time prior to the parole board hearing and that factf finding aduced all his other offending and it was non-adjudicated offenses that had been dismissed by the original prosecutor and Diana and her Joe's family and friends always said that Joe was a victim of coercive control and stalking that he abused her.

[00:29:15]Well, all of that was disregarded at the trial, but because of your work, because of what you did in the war boy case, there had to be a factf finding where all of that was aduced as being relevant to risk. And so, it was decided just in April that he would not be released because of that factf finding. So you know the the the ripples on the pond from the war boys case you know is having very positive well a very positive outcome in in that case which I want to thank you for and you know can you just talk about you know what you did and how you did it and why it was so important.

[00:29:53]>> Yes. So there were actually two legal challenges. Um one was uh around the the original police investigation. So what we uh now know about war boys was over a period of a number of years he he attacked you mainly through drug drug raping passengers female passengers in his car um well over 100 women possibly you know estimated 500 or so but I mean we know over 100 women came forward uh at at the time he was doing that um not that many women um reported him, but some did. So, over a six-year period, uh there were about 10 women who who did report that they believed they'd been drugged and sexually assaulted by a taxi driver. I think what's important, there's a number of features about that.

[00:30:47]We know a lot of women are reluctant to record to report rape. Uh they feel like somehow or other it was their fault. So, the element you talk about women being persuaded to accept the strings. I mean, when you when you um see it, it's played quite well in the there's a TV drama now on ITVX which uh of of the story called Believe Me and and um you you kind of see exactly how this sort of chatty uh taxi driver just is really really pushy and the women are kind of like they don't really want to have a drink but they kind of feel obliged because you know women are feel like they have to be polite. So these women drunk this thing, it knocked them out and then they were assaulted. But then because they were knocked out, they didn't necessarily remember exactly what happened. So only some women were really sure of what happened. A lot were reluctant to report cuz they didn't know exactly what happened. They thought they'd be laughed out. But um amongst the 10 women who had reported him were were two women who became my clients who who were in the drama called Sarah and Ila. and they um uh you know what they were about four years apart and they both felt very angry about the way the police had treated their evidence. They were after initial initially taking their account their their accounts were pretty much dismissed pretty quickly partly because the police got the blood samples and then didn't see the date rape jug they were looking for. They ignored what else was in the bloodstream which was lots of other drugs and uh and and they felt you know disbelieved and the police didn't take it any further which meant that he was free to go on and rape many many more women. uh you know and that's pretty devastating because most women you know who report especially by a stranger are doing it you know obviously because this man did them wrong but primarily because they're really concerned that he is a danger and he'll do it to other women and that's why they did it and the police frustrated that.

[00:32:47]So eventually he was you know you know there somebody in the police managed to kind of connect some dots and realize a very similar modus operandi and he was eventually caught and prosecuted and convicted of a sample number of offenses. So, not the whole uh 100 odd cases that have been reported, but you know, a smaller sample of cases where the CPS thought they'd have a good chance of conviction. After um his conviction, the two women came to me separately and both said, "Look, I'm glad he's caught and he's gone to prison, but you know, I feel so angry about the police and and it, you know, how can we hold the police accountable?"

[00:33:30]So that that was really my initial role in that case was to look at if we could hold the police accountable for their failures in the investigation and under English law you can't sue police in negligence for a negligent police investigation but by uh fortunately uh we had enacted fairly recently the human rights act which uh creates a duty of the state to provide effective protections for women and to effectively investigate crimes which reach a certain threshold which would include rape. This is article three of the European Convention on Human Rights. So that was our route in and we we brought this what was then quite a novel human rights act case against the police and and in fact that case uh the police fought it uh lost it they kept challenging it until it got to the Supreme Court. So it's now a very clear precedent in English law um about you know the police's duty to conduct an effective investigation for these sorts of crimes and it's it's a duty that we at center just justice rely on for lots of our work. So that was the first big victory. But whilst we were waiting for the Supreme Court decision, we then learn through media reporting that he's he's been recommended for release by the parole board and there's a there's a huge outcry about it. Um he's he'd been in prison about nine nine or 10 years by then, you know, and everyone's saying, "Well, what can we do about this?" And both my clients who, you know, kind of said, "Look, is there anything we can do? Can we fight it?"

[00:35:15]and we decided to mount this second sort of novel legal challenge which was to bring a judicial review of the parole board decision to release him. So although there had been a lot of cases where you judicially review the parole board not to release somebody. So if you're the prisoner and you're not being released and you think that this this decision is is wrong in law, you could challenge it. But we'd never sort of seen it the other way around. But the court did allow that appeal uh that uh judicial review and we succeeded and and the key to that decision like you've described in the Brown decision was that because he was only prosecuted for a small sample of the offenses when the the people assessing whether he was uh worthy of release, they only considered those offenses. They didn't consider what we knew about his much wider offending because he hadn't been convicted of it. And the the the courts, the high court said, well, actually, you know, it is relevant to look at that wider offending even if he hasn't got convictions. And when you look at that, you can see how much more dangerous he is than than just the cases he was convicted of, which were bad enough as they were >> incredible. I mean, truly incredible challenges. and quite rightly needed.

[00:36:41]And I suspect with war boys, I mean, I ran the sexual offenses section at New Scotland Yard and you know what I can say is that for the five years that I ran it, we had big problems with mini cab drivers. So there were lots of campaigns about mini cab drivers and I don't recall and I you know there's part of me that thinks he exploited that on the one hand and there's another part that obviously met police license the black cats.

[00:37:05]>> Yeah, that's really interesting. So that must have been what in the early 2000s was it? We were doing that. One one of the things that was very particular about what the police said to the women at that time. So when they reported my two clients both separately four years apart, uh the police said, "Look, I don't think a black cab driver would risk his license." Uh you know, so that was part of their disbelief. But the other thing of course for the women that was so awful was here was this big campaign saying don't get an unlicensed mini cab, get a black cab. And and that that made them feel terrible because they knew that a black cab wasn't safe either. Uh you know in in this case and you know in others as well. So yeah.

[00:37:48]>> Yeah. I I think he exploited a lot and I certainly think that there are probably hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women. I know a number here in LA actually Harriet who confided in me from the UK from London that they believe they got in his cab. They never reported it. You know I think there are just so many because when we look at his mo his modus operandi he was so well rehearsed planned he knew what he was doing. I call it a trade craft that he had perfected. And that comes from experience, doesn't it? So, >> yeah. And the more you get away with it, the more you refine your technique and become very cocky. I mean, by the time uh he was eventually caught. I mean, you know, it was just like several victims a day. I mean, it's just like how do you how do you fit all that those rapes in in in a day, you know? It's just horrendous. But yeah, >> but you exposed that his dangerousness.

[00:38:41]I mean, I've got the the parole board summary, actually decision summary here that was sent to me. And I think, you know, what's striking is that yes, he's not been released, which is good, but he only says the bare minimum when he needs to. He lied continuously. And in fact, there's one prison psychologist who really seems to understand how dangerous he is. And then there's another psychologist who's advocating for his release, which is just quite remarkable, I have to say. But the prison decision.

[00:39:11]>> This is the recent decision not to release him. One of them who seems to really have got his measure said, and I just want to read from it, that the prison offender manager has warned that Mr. Warboy's willingness to engage in general affable presentation should not necessarily be considered a substantive protective factor since he used such skills when grooming victims and may be driven by a more deviant motive, i.e. learning how he can show change rather than undergo actual change.

[00:39:39]>> Yeah. And that that's very much the story of his his period of imprisonment.

[00:39:44]So when we first got this case, you know, we one of the things we immediately saw was well up until two years ago, he was trying to appeal his conviction and deny that he was responsible for anything. Then he tried, you know, he realized that that wasn't going to work. So then he tries a new technique which is sort of, you know, admit, you know, turning to religion or admitting he'd done wrong, but only admitting to those offenses he's been convicted of. So by the time, you know, we had the decision of the the court, I mean, he he could, you know, he was advised and he would only admit to the to the small number of cases that he'd been convicted of, even though there were we knew there was much wider offending. So, you know, it was quite clear um what he's about. Yeah.

[00:40:28]>> Extremely dangerous, most likely a psychopath, and he will never be safe.

[00:40:32]And that that's my assessment with everything that I know and I know you probably know so much more that would add to that assessment that you know someone like him who's probably been offending his whole life course and we only know what we know but he's never going to give things up because he's playing the game and he plays it very well. So it's a tribute to you and to the two incredible victims survivors who challenge the decision. And I know we've run out of time and I could talk to you for a very long time, but one last question. Is there anything that my listeners can do to help you or the center or support your work?

[00:41:08]>> Um, well, you know, we always need funds. So can certainly if you if you if you want to donate uh to support Center for Women's Justice, uh just go to our website and donate. Um, other than that, I mean, just just just speak out, I suppose, about the issues and look for ways of supporting survivors of abuse and so on. Um, it's difficult to say. I mean, there's all sorts of different ways. I think, you know, part of the part of the principle of of the Center for Women's Justice is that, you know, it's not just lawyers that do these things. We collaborate. we collaborate with survivors, with activists, with frontline organizations, with academics, media, and so on. And that we're part of a a movement. That's that's what can make us and help us succeed is is if we're not just siloed off, but we're doing it in a bigger way. So, I think that there are lots of you don't have to become a lawyer or whatever. There are lots of different ways in which you can play that role. Uh, I'll just mention the the book I've written recently if people are interested in hearing more about those cases and and a few others I've been involved in. Um, please by my sister-in-law >> and I will put all the links in the show notes and thank you so much Harriet.

[00:42:26]Your time is precious and I really value and appreciate everything that you do fighting for women. And I know we're going to be talking again in the crime analyst squad. So if people want to listen to that conversation, please join us. patreon.com/crcimeanalyst.

[00:42:40]So thank you. You're incredible and you and the the women all need that support.

[00:42:46]So if people can donate to the center, then please do. Thank you, Harriet.

[00:42:53]Appreciate you and value you and everything that you've achieved. And to my lovely listeners, remember to be curious, ask questions, and always trust your instincts.