Latest / UK Column Radio / Reflections on a Day with Mothers Separated from Their Children

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Reflections on a Day with Mothers Separated from Their Children · UK Column Radio

0:06
Good afternoon. Great pleasure for me to have
0:11
Gemma Cooper with me in the studio.
0:13
Now Gemma, I'm really pleased to say, has joined the UK column
0:18
team. So Gemma, welcome.
0:20
This is your first time in the studio with me, but welcome to
0:24
the UK column. Well, thank you.
0:25
I mean it. It's an honour.
0:27
It's a real honour. I've spent my my entire career
0:30
in in the mainstream media, left the BBC in 2021 and then I've
0:35
been an alternative media ever since and worked for a variety
0:37
of organisations. But it's UK column.
0:41
I mean, it's just brilliant for me, absolutely brilliant.
0:44
Excellent. Thank you for the kind words.
0:46
Now I remember the first interview that I did with you.
0:49
I can't remember how long ago it was.
0:50
It was a couple of years ago, wasn't it?
0:53
And you wore a very nice yellow jacket, but that didn't go too
0:57
well with our, with our green screen.
1:00
So you're looking lovely today, presentable in front of the
1:04
camera and you're not wearing yellow.
1:05
So that's that's a plus point. That was a schoolboy error on my
1:09
part. Yeah.
1:10
Well, OK. And viewers of course can't see
1:14
it, but actually we we are in a very different studio from the
1:18
one that we've operated for many years.
1:20
And this is the result of Mike Robinson doing a a big change
1:26
round with help from Patrick Henningsen.
1:29
So there was a good bit of teamwork going on there.
1:31
So we're in a much nicer studio layout and one of the things
1:37
that this has made it easier to do is is have a little bit more
1:40
of an informal chat in the studio.
1:43
So I said to Gemma, relax, it's going to be an easy one to do.
1:48
And I think you were quite impressed when you you walked in
1:51
to see the new layout. Absolutely, yeah.
1:53
I mean, it doesn't look any different for you guys at home.
1:56
You still see the classic UK column with the hoe behind us
1:58
and everything. But actually from a broadcast
2:01
standpoint, there's lots of exciting things happening here
2:04
and the studio looks amazing and I think people may see some
2:07
changes in the future. Well, there's, yeah, there's a
2:10
lot more to come, but that, that'll, that'll be enough of a
2:14
little bit of advertising the UK column.
2:16
But it's, it's, we're working very hard not only to do more,
2:21
but to make what we, what we do look better.
2:24
Professional, Yes. But at the end of the day, we
2:27
don't want to be too professional because then all
2:29
sorts of accusations are made that we're too like that
2:32
dreadful organisation. I'm not going to mention.
2:36
So this was a little discussion between Gemma and myself which I
2:42
prompted and it's as a result of the fact that last week I was
2:48
given the opportunity to speak at a gathering of mums who've
2:54
had their children taken away through the so called Family
2:58
Court Child Protection System. And it was a great privilege for
3:03
me because the organisation simply works with mums.
3:09
And they specifically said to to me that there were no men who
3:15
were allowed to come anywhere near the meetings because some
3:18
of the mums have had problems in relationships.
3:21
So for me as a male to be invited to go and spend the day
3:26
with the mums and and to give a talk, a short talk was a great
3:31
privilege. I decided that it would be good
3:35
if I took Gemma and the joke that we shared with the ladies
3:39
of course, was that as the only male present, I needed a
3:43
chaperone. So Gemma kindly volunteered to
3:46
come as my chaperone for the day.
3:50
Of course she wasn't needed because the mums were lovely and
3:54
we had some really wonderful conversations with them and they
3:58
were very welcoming. So now I'm not mentioning the
4:02
name of the of the little charity.
4:05
And this is because it's early days in, in our relationship and
4:13
they have to be very careful in the sorts of material that
4:17
they're putting out and sharing. And so I was invited to give a
4:23
talk. We are going to talk to you, the
4:27
UK column audience, a little bit about how we found it.
4:30
And I was particularly interested in how Gemma saw
4:34
things because Gemma has has got a little bit of understanding
4:38
about what goes on when children are taken.
4:42
But this was the first time that she for some that you've been
4:47
able to meet in one environment. How many mums was it?
4:52
24 I think or 25? Yeah.
4:56
And, and therefore I said to to Gemma because she was new to the
5:01
subject. I thought it would be really
5:04
great if we had a chat where Gemma was able to tell me this
5:09
is feedback from me, but it's also feedback from the UK column
5:13
audience how how she found the event and how she found hearing
5:21
the stories and the the cases that the women talked about.
5:25
So are we allowed? We're allowed to say.
5:27
We went to a nice hotel close to London and one of the meeting
5:33
rooms in the hotel was set aside for the mums.
5:38
Tell us how you found it, Gemma. I mean, where I don't really
5:43
know where to start because it made, it really did make me look
5:45
at myself that day because I did go still with a bit of a
5:49
mainstream media journalist head on.
5:51
And that was my, my bad. And I, I went thinking, no smoke
5:57
without fire. You know, these are mothers that
5:59
have had their children taken off them.
6:01
If a father has a child taken off them, it's generally because
6:04
he's a bit of a wrongan. So there, there must something
6:07
must have happened for these mums to have their kids taken
6:09
off them. And I was expecting to hear
6:13
stories that made me think, oh, yeah.
6:15
Well, you is no, no, no, the blame game, that kind of thing.
6:20
I, I, I would hear things that make me think, well, I'm not
6:22
surprised you had your kids taken off.
6:23
You know, I had a very mainstream media trained head on
6:25
when I walked through the door, but what I got was the exact
6:29
opposite. And I was so overwhelmed by the
6:32
amount of heart centred, empathic empaths, really women
6:38
that had just lived lives of, of not all, some had had very nice
6:42
childhoods, but some had had very traumatic childhoods.
6:45
So it had LED them to make not poor choices, but to maybe be
6:51
gravitate towards partners who really weren't suitable for them
6:54
because they were very empathic themselves and hearing stories
6:58
that they came out with about what happened via maybe the
7:02
control of the partner, which is why they didn't want any men
7:04
there. It there were some parallels in
7:07
my own life where I thought I've had experiences like that, not
7:12
all, but with partners with control issues and what I came
7:16
away with. The take out for me, the biggest
7:17
take out was when some of the stories I heard, I thought this
7:21
isn't actually even about the child, it's about the control of
7:24
the woman through the child from the partner.
7:27
That was some of the stories that I got.
7:28
I didn't get to speak to all 24 women, but the few of the
7:31
stories that I got, it was very much the part of wanting to take
7:34
the children away and have them so that the woman will be
7:37
controlled by him. For the kid and I, some of the
7:42
women were just so ones I spoke to, so warm and wonderful and I,
7:48
I really was ashamed that I'd walked in there like a
7:51
mainstream media journalist. So I already know the story
7:53
before it's even come out. I know what I'm going to write.
7:55
I know what I'm going to say. Well, that was blown out of the
7:58
water. Thank you.
8:02
Thank you very much for saying it in such, such a frank and
8:05
honest way because I, I didn't know how you would find, I knew
8:09
you would find it difficult. But of course, key thing for me
8:14
to say to the audience is this is the first I've dealt with.
8:17
I don't know how many mums cases over the years that I've dealt
8:21
with, but this was the first time that I've been able to be
8:26
with a group of women. And initially you and I sat
8:34
outside while they said just give us some time to just to
8:40
relax the women. And I was very happy to do that,
8:44
of course. And we sat and had had a coffee.
8:47
But when about an hour later, the door opened and we were
8:53
encouraged to come in, it was obvious that inside that room
8:57
had been a lot of emotion. And what we were subsequently
9:03
able to see was of course that there were some mums who'd been
9:06
associated with the charity for some time.
9:10
And what does the charity do? Its main job is to help support
9:16
and stabilise and strengthen women who've had their children
9:20
taken away. So some of the women who'd been
9:24
involved with the charity longer were clearly working very hard
9:29
to calm down and support the mums who were new to the whole
9:34
thing. And a comment which stuck in my
9:37
head very quickly when we went into the room was, was one of
9:42
the ladies said, well, of course, Brian, what you've got
9:44
to remember is every one of these women would prefer not to
9:49
be here. And that was that was a very
9:53
telling comment for me. So, so even the idea of coming
9:58
together with other mums where of support and they're
10:03
strengthened by hearing other cases, it's not just them, but
10:07
even having to listen to other mums talking about it, that was
10:11
a that was a powerful emotion. Yeah, and there were lots of
10:14
tears, lots of tears. And, and some women stood up and
10:18
told their stories very bravely, very courageously, straight from
10:23
the heart. And then, of course, you know,
10:25
it's such a deep emotional issue, the mother child bond,
10:29
you know, you're not talking about maybe going through a bad
10:32
divorce or which is traumatic enough, But these this is this
10:36
is the the ultimate love bond. And you.
10:40
So the triggering was going on all the time, you know, and
10:43
suddenly you would hear some howls from the corner of the
10:47
room as women just lost it because it was bringing up
10:51
everything for them. And I mean, I had tears.
10:54
I had tears when you played that very emotive film where we saw,
10:58
and it was a very powerful thing to do in that room where we
11:01
played some clips. We've already showed on the
11:02
column anonymous clips of when people in social services and
11:06
police have come to take children away from their mums.
11:09
And that got the whole room, myself included.
11:11
I've seen it on the column. But seeing it in that room with
11:15
all the emotion and energy there, I, I was, I'd gone.
11:19
I was crying. I was like, Oh my goodness me.
11:22
But having said that, it was still really a very professional
11:25
day, very well organised, very well held.
11:28
The space was held really well for those women and for us as as
11:34
a meteorite. It was just, yeah, the emotion
11:36
was the emotion. Was.
11:37
Actually was overwhelming. It was overwhelming.
11:40
Absolutely, absolutely true. At the start or near the start,
11:48
there was a very nice lady called Debbie who was trained in
11:53
order to give professional help. So counselling and psychology.
11:59
And it was interesting to see her give a little bit of a talk
12:03
about what she did and, and how how she tried to help calm down
12:10
and strengthen some of the women.
12:11
And, and because of the emotion that you were talking about
12:15
there, Gemma in the day, she, she had to use her skills at
12:19
several times during, during the day when mums in hearing what
12:25
was being said were absolutely overcome with emotion.
12:29
And I I thought she did a really good job at at working with them
12:33
to to get them in a better, better frame of mind.
12:36
Absolutely. And it and that and again it was
12:39
how that the charity had held the space.
12:41
They knew that they would need somebody like that.
12:43
They knew that people were going to break down and and she was
12:47
the kind of fulcrum of, you know, where you could go and she
12:49
would, she was holding the space for a lot of women who were just
12:53
in floods. Close to it.
12:55
Well, we, we saw one of the speakers, you know, very bravely
13:00
told her story and then just almost collapsed at the end of
13:03
the motion and shaking and sobbing.
13:05
And it was, it was so much bravery there.
13:08
Yes, but something which I learnt from that group of women,
13:12
which I I've not learnt from the other mums that I've talked to.
13:16
And that was that for many of them it's, it's a feeling of
13:20
shame that these terrible circumstances have happened.
13:26
Sometimes they clearly haven't made good choices in their
13:29
lives. But do they deserve to have
13:32
their children simply taken away, or babies taken away or
13:35
all their children taken away? The answer has got to be no.
13:40
But it it came to the surface quite quickly that a lot of
13:43
them, one of the key things stopping them moving forward was
13:47
that as a result of what had happened to them, they felt this
13:50
intense shame inside. And that, that was something I I
13:54
absolutely learnt from. Yes, and and I do remember in
13:59
one of the early conversations of the day where one of the
14:02
women spoke to me and said, you know, you do carry.
14:05
It's a shame because people do have the attitude of there's no
14:08
smoke without fire. There's got to be a reason this
14:11
has happened. Well, we are there are reasons,
14:13
but they're not the reasons you would think that the women are
14:15
incapable mothers. They're different reasons, which
14:17
we'll probably go into. And I but I did think at the
14:20
start of the day, I was thinking like that.
14:21
Well, you know, it's got to be something here and what what I
14:26
heard, I was just it makes it made me question everything
14:28
again. I question everything anyway
14:31
since leaving the mainstream and before that and but you know,
14:34
the the system, the reasons behind controlling women, why
14:41
sever the mother child bond? Why this rush to you know, and
14:44
you answered some of those questions actually when when you
14:46
gave your presentation. But but yeah, the questions I
14:50
came away with were not the questions.
14:51
I walked in that door at the beginning of the day.
14:54
It was a transformative day. It, it was absolutely I, I was
15:00
very, very impressed with the way that the charity was
15:05
approaching its work. So what's the important thing
15:08
for them? Strengthening the women, taking
15:11
them from being Rex in some cases, and I don't mean that in
15:15
any disparaging way, but women in very bad place to get them
15:19
strengthened. So at least they can start to
15:24
have a life and then when they get stronger in that life,
15:29
hopefully they're in a position where they can go on to have a
15:33
better life and or be doing something to carry on fighting
15:39
for their children. But the overall theme that the
15:44
overall emotion through that is, is the loss of the children.
15:48
And as one of them said to me, The thing is, if your child
15:52
dies, but you have to accept that and you grieve and then,
15:56
then you can move on. But if you don't have your child
16:00
and you don't know where your child is and you don't know how
16:03
they're being treated, your mind is just full of the emotion of
16:07
your lost child the whole time. And so that was, that was
16:13
another very powerful thing that was said, said to me.
16:17
But the charity tries to build the mothers up and this is, this
16:22
is fantastic. And what, what I tried to do in
16:26
that presentation was to be saying that if you are in a
16:31
stronger place as a, as a mother, you can fight for your
16:35
children better. So you're going to perform
16:37
better in court if you're in a stronger place.
16:41
And I don't know, you might have thought I was being a bit brutal
16:45
at one stage, but I said to the mothers what I believe is
16:49
absolutely true, that if the mums cry at the wrong time, they
16:54
lose. Because there's nothing the
16:56
court loves better than an absolute broken emotional mum.
17:00
Because then they can accuse her of being having emotional
17:03
problems and breakdown and being an unsuitable mother.
17:07
So if you show too much emotion, the system attacks you and if
17:11
you show too little emotion. And several of the mums actually
17:15
talked about that, didn't they? They did, yeah.
17:18
And then they said the paradox is, of course, because the
17:20
system seems very geared to this subjugation of women.
17:25
Is they? They said if the woman cries,
17:27
that's it, Game over. You know, she's a hysterical
17:30
mess, not capable of looking after her kids.
17:32
If if if a father cries, apparently these are the stories
17:35
that were relayed to me. If a father cries in a family
17:38
court, he's seen as a sensitive, caring man, not a hysterical,
17:44
you know, piece of work. And and again, everything seems
17:47
designed to just. Beat them down.
17:50
Beat them down. Any showing of anything human,
17:55
you know, forget it. Yes.
17:57
Yeah. It's the system all over.
17:59
Don't be human. Yeah, so the mum cries and she's
18:03
going to lose because that that'll be used against her.
18:06
And this is one of the things that I said and what I was
18:09
trying to do was to actually to show those mums that there is a
18:14
way of fighting, but they have to start to act in a different
18:18
way. What they wear makes a
18:21
difference. So a lot of mums will go into
18:24
court wearing very casual clothes, the sorts of clothes
18:28
they they probably feel comfortable in, but in the power
18:33
dynamics of a court, that doesn't always put them in the
18:35
best light, particularly if it's just a scruffy T shirt.
18:40
And so in my mind, I can see that in the right place and the
18:44
right time, some of these mums can be helped to fight more
18:49
effectively through the family court system, as corrupt as it
18:54
is, but they can do certain things to help that.
18:58
And, and the other thing is that they have to understand what
19:02
they're up against. And so I, that little film clip
19:08
that I put together of the mums that we've done the interviews
19:11
with. So that was, that was Sam, the
19:14
black lady who's who's phenomenal, the Portuguese lady.
19:19
So Sam who's had two children taken away, Yolanda who'd had a
19:24
baby taken at birth. That was horrific, horrific. 1J,
19:30
who was speaking out on the abuse of her granddaughter, and
19:34
then the last lady who was anonymous was talking about
19:39
having her two very young children taken away and she was
19:42
holding up the dummy and the little.
19:46
I'm not sure what you call the baby grow.
19:48
Is that what it's called? Yeah, so she held up the dummy
19:51
and the baby grow to say these were the only things that she
19:55
got left to to remember her children by.
19:59
Because of course in talking to me in the interview, she wasn't
20:02
allowed to show photographs of her babies.
20:05
So that film clip I really thought very hard about.
20:11
It was only 9 minutes long, little clips of these mums
20:14
speaking but I put it up in order to show the.
20:19
The mums in the room, they were not alone and also the UK column
20:23
knew what it was doing in interviewing them.
20:26
But you said to me at one, one point stop it.
20:30
And because that little video clip created a lot of very
20:36
strong emotion amongst some of the women to the extent that
20:41
they got so emotional they had to leave the room.
20:44
But I didn't want to stop the clip because that was that was
20:49
us demonstrating that we actually knew what what it was
20:52
about. And and I got some nice comments
20:57
about it at the end of the day, one lady said.
21:00
I nearly couldn't watch it, but I did and I'm glad I did.
21:03
I thought you doing that was a gamble.
21:06
I mean it was the second half of the day and and you were
21:08
obviously showing the charity and all of the mums in there
21:11
what the column column was about the coverage that we've done on
21:15
the state stealing children, which is what this is, is all
21:18
about. State stealing.
21:19
Yeah, state stealing children and you were obviously showing
21:23
the women look, this is this is our pedigree.
21:24
This is the work that particularly you have done and
21:26
the column have done and then include.
21:30
So it came in with stories and and a few stories of head shots
21:34
with mums, but then got into those very emotive clips and the
21:37
dummy and the baby grow and the one at the end where the police
21:41
turned up at someone's house to take tiny children out of their
21:44
mother's arms. That got that got the whole
21:46
room. And I was like, Brian, turn it
21:48
off. And you were like, no, I'm going
21:49
to show it. And I thought, God, that's that
21:51
is quite brutal and quite, you know, none of these mums do they
21:55
need to have their trauma re triggered to such an extent.
21:57
But it did work. It did.
22:00
It did work and I think that it it did get them to trust the
22:05
column and trust that we can help, which is what we want to
22:08
do. And we know what we're talking
22:09
about. What we're talking about is the
22:11
key thing. And the other bit that we did
22:15
is, is, well, which I thought was an important thing to talk
22:19
about, was to be showing them the size of the beast that
22:23
they're up against, that many of them think that everything
22:26
that's happened to them is just focused on them as individuals.
22:31
When in fact, 24 mums in the room showed no, no, this is
22:34
happening to a lot of other mums.
22:35
It's thousands. It's the reality.
22:38
But how big the beast is, they're up against.
22:42
And to try and demonstrate how cruel the system is, I put up
22:47
the little BBC clip of the Tory whip, Tim Fortescue.
22:53
I think the date was 1995. You can find that on YouTube as
22:58
a little interview the whip gave to the BBC in which he casually
23:03
says, well, MPs came to us with their problems.
23:07
It could be money, it could be little boys and we fixed it for
23:12
them. And why did we fix it?
23:15
We fixed it because then they would do as we asked.
23:18
So there you have a senior politician with immense power.
23:24
I think he was the chief whip, but certainly a whip admitting
23:29
that the Conservative Party was covering up the abuse of
23:34
children in order that they could blackmail MPs into doing
23:38
what the party political system wanted.
23:40
And, and that clip in front of the mums also, because I had
23:45
several of them say to me, I've never seen that clip before.
23:49
And I said to them, do you understand what it means?
23:51
Oh, they got what it what it meant.
23:54
Yeah, they did. They did.
23:55
They did. Yeah.
23:56
And I thought it was very well done how you did say to the
24:00
women, oh, I bet they said this to you in court.
24:04
Yeah, they did. Oh, I bet your social worker
24:05
might have said this. Yeah.
24:07
And it's like, it's a patent. It's a script.
24:10
It's a template that that the system is using to, to to take
24:15
these children. And of course you do because
24:17
they're so heightened, you, they take it, internalise it and
24:22
think, well, it's because of me, which is probably some of the
24:25
backgrounds that these women have had, the childhoods, they
24:27
have internalised a lot and thought, oh, this is because of
24:30
me. You know, this trauma is about
24:32
this environment. It's because of me because
24:33
that's how children think. And then you carry it with you
24:35
to the rest of your life. So it's trauma upon trauma.
24:38
And I think the system knows very well hearing that, you
24:41
know, it is a template. It's nothing to do with you.
24:43
It's just a template to get your kids is that the system knows
24:47
how to manipulate people in trauma.
24:49
We saw that 2020 onwards. I mean, you put the whole world
24:52
in trauma and you can manipulate it and make it do whatever you
24:55
want. And so that's what the system is
24:57
doing on a on a smaller scale was not that small with this
25:00
taking of kids. Yes, and we we then did our best
25:05
to lead them to. Well, OK, if you're going to
25:08
fight something, you've got to understand what you're up
25:10
against. But once we'd talked through
25:12
that, the, the idea that the mums haven't got a drown in
25:18
thousands of hundreds or thousands of pages of court
25:22
documentation, which they see as the evidence.
25:25
If, if the mums talk to you about what's happened in the
25:28
case, to them, the evidence is, is, is everything that's in the
25:32
court bundles. It's the emails, it's the
25:35
letters, it's the telephone call transcripts.
25:38
And, and I, I said to them what I really wanted to say to them,
25:43
I know the evidence is you. And the more mums that come
25:46
forward to talk about what's happened and how it's happened
25:50
that that forms the real body of evidence and that is what needs
25:55
to be exposed to the wider public.
25:58
And we did get a response. So we, we, we have got 2-3
26:05
ladies. I think there may be another one
26:07
from that group who have been in contact with us and said, Oh my
26:12
goodness, we, we, well, we got something out of what you did.
26:17
And, and, and I think I'd like to speak out.
26:22
And that is a huge plus because it means we've taken people from
26:28
being, albeit in a very nice support group to say, no, don't
26:33
just be in a support group. Come and fight.
26:36
And that to me was was a big plus that we had that
26:40
connectivity. Absolutely.
26:42
But I do think it's down as well, the testament as I go back
26:44
to the start of, like, I was expecting a certain type of
26:48
person when I walked through the door.
26:49
And what I found was bravery, strength, empathy and so much
26:54
courage. And I think, you know,
26:56
explaining things the way you did to them.
26:59
I mean, I was just an observer, but making, you know, contacts.
27:03
But it did spark something in a lot of them where they thought,
27:05
yeah, I'm going to do it because they want, one, they want their
27:09
kids back and two, they seen so much injustice and that bravery
27:13
in all of them. That heart centred was the word
27:16
courage comes. It means karage, doesn't it?
27:18
I think it comes from the heart, yeah.
27:21
And that's so we, yeah. Brilliant that we've got some
27:24
from that group that will speak to us and the stories I think
27:29
will resonate with more and more people.
27:31
That's the reach of those stories and the issue itself, It
27:35
comes more into the public. Yeah, comes up.
27:37
Yeah. So looking back on it now, few
27:42
days have gone past. Looking back on it, what do you
27:46
think you got out of it? Well, I looked at myself and I
27:52
thought, I looked at myself and my mainstream media training and
27:55
I thought it hasn't left me yet. So indoctrinated how they train
27:58
you in the mainstream that you know what the story is before
28:00
you go. And I did have a bit of that in
28:03
my head. So it really made me look at
28:04
myself that I was quite embarrassed actually that I'd
28:08
gone in with that attitude. But that's that's my
28:11
brainwashing for my, my former career.
28:14
And then I was thinking about the women and the ones that I
28:17
spoke to and how they were parallels, the some parallels
28:21
with my own life and going through trauma in a, in a
28:24
particular relationship, which wasn't very healthy for me.
28:27
And I, and I was hearing that and I was really hearing about
28:30
this control of women. It's about the control of women.
28:33
That was what this, my instincts were telling me is this is all
28:36
about keeping women in their place almost.
28:39
It's, it's really hard to explain unless you were there.
28:43
But the women's stories in themselves with the ones I spoke
28:46
to were so similar about the abusive partner, about the
28:49
domestic violence and about escaping the domestic violence,
28:53
escaping the partner. And as soon as they asked for
28:56
the divorce or said, I'm leaving you, I don't want to be battered
28:59
anymore, that was when, right, I'm getting the kids, I'm going
29:03
to take the kids. If you're going to leave me,
29:04
I'll get the kids. And they did.
29:05
They did. They did.
29:06
The partners did. And I thought, yeah, this is all
29:09
about, this is about you. It's not about the kids.
29:11
And also one woman said to me the the husband or boyfriend had
29:15
said I'll go to prison or I'll die before I see you get the
29:19
kids back. And I thought that's how walked
29:21
it is. And then, and then the court,
29:23
the whole court system works to support the abusive partner, to
29:30
gain the children. This, this is the story.
29:33
And, and of course, for the women, it's a nightmare because
29:36
most of them don't want, well, they obviously don't want to go
29:40
near the family court. But when when they do, they're
29:43
approaching it that this court is going to be fair and it's
29:47
going to come to sensible decisions.
29:49
And then they're in, they're in this closed court.
29:52
Star Chamber is what it is with no jury and no proper press
29:57
where everything is turned on them.
29:59
That's what's so vicious about it.
30:02
And that's what does so much damage to them, I think.
30:05
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the system's been geared
30:07
up. We want to go really deep.
30:09
The system's been geared up against women for quite some
30:12
time and but then I was also approaching it from another
30:15
level and there was a lot of talk in there from me to other
30:18
women about this rise of the divine feminine, which has been
30:21
banded about in some circles. Not everybody will resonate with
30:24
that. And I thought these these women
30:26
in this charity and the ones that are now brave enough to
30:29
speak out, bravely speaking out, this is some kind of energetic
30:33
shift which we saw 20-20 onwards of like people saying no to the
30:38
system and saying no, you're not telling me what to put in my
30:42
body and you're certainly not having my kids.
30:44
And it was the same kind of dynamic on a smaller scale of
30:47
what a lot of us collectively in 2020 said, no, this is wrong,
30:52
I'm not staying at home, this is all wrong.
30:54
Instinctively in my heart, I know this is all wrong and these
30:56
women are feeling the same, the same way.
30:58
And, and, and she's something we should mention is that for a lot
31:02
of the women in these cases, certainly there was a couple in
31:06
that room. But for a lot of women who've
31:08
experienced these problems countrywide, it was compounded
31:13
during locked COVID lockdown. Because if you've got an abusive
31:17
partner and you're locked up with them, 20 fours at 4 hours a
31:20
day, seven days a week, because the government puts you in that
31:23
situation that caused huge problems.
31:26
And This is why statistically, you can see this huge surge in
31:31
children that were taken, taken during that period.
31:35
So, yeah, this is a very interesting point.
31:37
I, it was a privilege. It was an incredible day.
31:43
I was able to speak, sit and chat to a couple of the ladies
31:47
sort of at the end of the day before I before I drove back.
31:51
But in my drive from close to London back down to Plymouth,
31:56
yeah, it was a swirl in my brain.
31:58
It really made an impact on me. And in fact, it was there
32:01
Saturday morning in particular, so very emotional.
32:06
But what a privilege to be invited to, you know, to go and
32:10
meet them. And I was asked if I'd write a
32:14
little article for their newsletter, which I've done.
32:17
I'm waiting to know whether my words have been approved.
32:21
But if, if they do use those words that text in their
32:25
newsletter, then I will feel that it's OK to pop that up on
32:30
the UK Con website with this video and and our viewers get a
32:36
better reflection of of the day. I'll emphasise that the reason
32:42
I'm being coy about the charity is because they receive funding,
32:45
of course, from a number of sources.
32:48
They need to function as a charity because they're they're
32:51
doing good work. But yeah, people have got reason
32:54
to believe that if they they deal with news channels that are
32:58
challenging the system, maybe this will cause problems.
33:01
And we don't want to cause any problem to their setup and their
33:05
organisation and their funding stream.
33:07
But what I am hoping is that they're also going to perhaps
33:11
give, give the UK column permission to do a one off
33:16
fundraiser for them because I'd really like to raise money for
33:19
that group of women because I think they're doing a brilliant
33:23
job. Oh yeah.
33:24
So we'll see what happens. Well, there we are.
33:27
Gemma. That wasn't too painful, was it?
33:30
Well, it was a brilliant experience for me and now being
33:33
in the studio to talk about it, it's my first appearance in the
33:36
new studio, first since I began working with you guys a few
33:39
months ago. And it would think it's just, it
33:42
was a really interesting day in how the column goes out and
33:46
showcases what we do. We're not the mainstream, we
33:50
never will be. And we tackle the stories and
33:52
this is the story the mainstream should be absolutely
33:54
investigating. Of course, it won't go near it.
33:55
We all know why. So for me, it was, it was a
33:59
double whammy really in in how the columns journalism is
34:04
received. And it was received
34:06
exceptionally well by an exceptional group of people.
34:09
And yeah, collaboration is key in these crazy times.
34:12
So we hope to support them as much as we can.
34:14
Do more. Brilliant Gemma, thank you very
34:16
much for joining me in the UK column Studio.
34:19
Thank you very much. Nice to be here.
34:22
Yeah.