The Girlfriends: Flight or Fight

In 2013, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year-old daughter, Ella, died from a catastrophic asthma attack. Her death transformed her mum into a formidable campaigner. First, she fought to find out what had killed Ella - why had her previously healthy little girl suddenly developed breathing problems so bad they would become fatal? 

The answer lay very close to home - Ella, Rosamund and her siblings lived just off the busy South Circular Road, and the air pollution levels were dangerously high. Rosamund’s fight led to Ella becoming the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. Now Rosamund is one of the world’s leading campaigners to clean up dirty air globally.

In this episode, she’s joined by a very special guest: Anna’s mum, Rachel Sinfield. Rachel’s son, Kit, also died from an unexpected asthma attack, and she’s inspired by Rosamund’s work.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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Christmas Day, 1992. Sarajevo, Bosnia. War is ranging - Serb forces surround the city. For nearly four years, its people have endured daily shelling and sniper attacks, cut off from the rest of the world in the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. More than 11,000 people were killed. 1600 of them were children. 

And in the main hospital, a baby is born: Lejla Damon. Her mother didn’t want anything to do with her - if she held her, she said, she would strangle her.

Lejla was born of sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Her birth mother had been raped, repeatedly, by Serb soldiers in a concentration camp. And Lejla was just too closely linked to her attackers for her to bear.

Lejla was adopted by a British couple, and grew up in London. She felt alone in her earliest life experiences. But in adulthood, she’s found her Bosnian identity, and become an advocate for the countless other ‘invisible’ children around the world born of sexual violence used as a weapon of war.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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It’s the 1990s in San Francisco, and Antonia Crane is a dancer at the legendary peep show, the Lusty Lady. In the dressing room and the mirrored ‘Fishbowl’ where the dancers perform in six inch heels, a revolution is brewing. 

The dancers are sick of putting up with workplace injustices, or customers filming them without their consent. And they’re about to take on the system and fight to become one of the first unionised strip clubs in the United States.

Antonia Crane is an author, activist, sex worker and PhD candidate at USC. You can read more about her life in her memoir, ‘Spent’.

The other books mentioned in this episode are ‘Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry,’ by Professor Siobhan Brooks, another Lusty Lady alum; and ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare. Antonia also recommends 'Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power' by Dr. Jennifer Worley. 

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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When the Taliban captured Herat City in August 2021, Tooba Sarwari had just one thing on her mind: cricket. Would she ever be able to play her beloved sport again? And more pressing, would the Taliban find the evidence of her and her team mates’ sporting achievements? If they did, it would surely spell the end for them and their families.

This is the story of how Tooba, and the other members of the Afghan Women’s Cricket Team, risked everything to flee Afghanistan and start a new life in Australia - with the help of some cricketing friends. And how once they were there, they began to rebuilt the team…

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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Germany. Spring 1945. The writing is on the wall for the Nazis. And thousands of women are marching along dirt roads. If they stop walking, they’ll be shot. Their route is lined with piles of corpses. It’s a death march.

Among these women are The Nine. Nine young women, all members of the French resistance, who have formed an extraordinary bond of friendship and support in the concentration camp in which they’ve been held. Their unofficial leader is 25-year-old Hélène Podliasky. And she’s about to suggest something incredible: The Nine are going to escape.

Hélène’s story is told by her great niece, the writer Gwen Strauss.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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Jacquie Davis joined the police when she was just 18 years old. She was fearless and ambitious, but she quickly realised her career progression was limited by her gender and education. Everything changed when she was recruited into The Circuit - a secretive network of freelance security professionals. 

As one of the only women in her field, Jacquie’s career as a bodyguard would take her to incredible places - from high-risk protection jobs for Gulf State Sheikhas, to cracking a theft ring at bougie London department store Liberty, to a daring mission to free a pregnant British woman trapped in Pakistan. Risking arrest and armed conflict, will Jacquie and her charge make it across the mountains and to safety in India?

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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When Visaka Dharmadasa’s soldier son was kidnapped by the fearsome Tamil Tigers in the midst of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war, she couldn’t find anyone who could help find him - or the 608 other soldiers who had been taken the same night. So Visaka transformed herself, first into a fighter against the bureaucracy of the Sri Lankan government and the Red Cross, and then into a fearsome peace activist. 

Defying warnings, she crosses into Tamil Tiger territory and sits down with some of the terrorist group’s most notorious leaders, appealing to their humanity as a mother. And eventually, they listen.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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The number 1 hit true crime series is back with more women fighting crime, battling injustice and seriously kicking ass.

In Season 1 of The Girlfriends: Spotlight, our global gang of girlfriends grew to include Pussy Riot’s punk icon and political prisoner Nadya Tolokonnikova, British Nigerian beauty queen and founder of Miss Trans Global, Miss saHHara and ‘The Erin Brockovich of East Africa’, environmental activist Phyllis Omido.

Now host Anna Sinfield returns with more incredible stories of women like bodyguard Jacquie Davis, who set out on a daring mission to free a pregnant British woman trapped in Pakistan. We’ll hear the story of Helene, a member of the French Resistance plotting to escape the brutality of a concentration camp. We’ll also meet Visaka Dharmadasa, a Sri Lankan mother who sat face to face with notorious terrorists and helped end a civil war.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.
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When you’ve suffered childhood trauma, endured alcohol abuse, been through awful bereavements, how can you heal? For Silvia Vasquez-Lavado the answer was to climb to the top of the world - and then take other traumatised women and girls with her.

Silvia is the first Peruvian woman to summit Mount Everest and the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on each continent.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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Sharing your story, whether that’s on social media or through the news can be pretty daunting. But putting a spotlight on your community is essential to drawing attention to the causes you care about. So in this episode, Khadijah speaks to journalist Tamara Cherry about how trauma informed reporting can give survivors and advocates the opportunity to tell their stories in an ethical way.

US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/   

International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredirectory.org/   

US Suicide & Crisis Helpline: https://988lifeline.org/  

International Suicide & Crisis Helplines: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/ 

The Girlfriends: Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/. 

You can listen to new episodes of The Girlfriends: Untouchable completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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