Speaker 1: Pushkin. The following episode contains discussions of sexual assault that
Speaker 1: some listeners may find distressing. There's a certain equality in death.
Speaker 1: Visit a British military cemetery with its pristine lawns and
Speaker 1: carefully tended flower beds, and you'll see no difference between
Speaker 1: the pale stone grave markers of women's service members and
Speaker 1: those of their male counterparts, below a carved crest of
Speaker 1: their unit, be an army, navy, or air force. The
Speaker 1: tombstones carry each woman's name, her rank, the date on
Speaker 1: which she died, and her age forty four, twenty seven,
Speaker 1: twenty one, eighteen seventeen. In a space at the bottom
Speaker 1: of each stone, relatives are permitted to add a brief
Speaker 1: personal message. One grieving family writes, not goodbye, darling, but
Speaker 1: au revoir for we will meet again. Illness and accident
Speaker 1: are counted for hundreds of these wartime deaths, and while
Speaker 1: women were not supposed to serve on the front lines,
Speaker 1: many were indeed killed by enemy bullets and bombs. But distressingly,
Speaker 1: some of these tombstones also mark the final resting places
Speaker 1: of women who died in other troubling circumstances. Thirty seven
Speaker 1: year old Lilian Welsh, an army cook, is cycling back
Speaker 1: to the cottage she shares with her husband William and
Speaker 1: their daughter Audrey. Her steel helmet and military gas mask
Speaker 1: are slung over her shoulder. It's late in the evening
Speaker 1: and the twisting road is dark. Thick woodland comes right
Speaker 1: up to the edge of the tarmac, the bare winter
Speaker 1: branches meeting overhead. Lily probably isn't too concerned by the gloom.
Speaker 1: She's familiar with this quiet route. But then the sound
Speaker 1: of an approaching engine slowly fills the chill night air.
Speaker 1: The light from the truck's hooded headlamps might just be
Speaker 1: enough to illuminate Lilian's back and cast a shadow onto
Speaker 1: the tarmac ahead. The light grows stronger, the engine louder.
Speaker 1: Something isn't right. Lilian keeps to her side of the
Speaker 1: road and pedals on. Why doesn't he overtake? Why doesn't
Speaker 1: he pull over to the right and pass by? Hemmed
Speaker 1: in by trees? There's no obvious escape for the cyclist.
Speaker 1: How long this terrifying chase lasts isn't known. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: a matter of seconds, or perhaps Lilian is pursued by
Speaker 1: the driver for hundreds of yards. When the fender of
Speaker 1: the truck hits Lilian's bike, the force is enough to
Speaker 1: crumple the frame. Lily is catapulted from the saddle and
Speaker 1: sprawls onto the road just ahead of the truck. Her
Speaker 1: wristwatch stops at nine fifty three. This is the seldom
Speaker 1: told story of women in World War Two who were
Speaker 1: killed not by the enemy, but by husbands, lovers and
Speaker 1: strangers wearing the uniform of their own side. It's also
Speaker 1: the tale of a particular string of murder victims that
Speaker 1: history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Ribbinhold and I'm
Speaker 1: Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad women the Blackout River.
Speaker 1: During the Second World War, violence perpetrated against women wasn't
Speaker 1: confined to the Blackout Rippers west End hunting ground. It
Speaker 1: happened in other parts of London too, in other big
Speaker 1: cities and their suburbs, in bustling port towns, a remote
Speaker 1: airbases and army barracks, and even on the quiet lanes
Speaker 1: and rural back roads so familiar to Lillian Welsh. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we'll leave Piccadilly and Soho to explore the
Speaker 1: lives of young women who enlisted in the armed forces.
Speaker 1: These women made unique and brave contributions to the war effort,
Speaker 1: breaking codes and parachuting into enemy territory. They also made
Speaker 1: other equally important contributions, doing the dull and dirty tasks
Speaker 1: that freed men up to fight on the front line.
Speaker 1: Many had the time of their lives. I was very
Speaker 1: much afraid the war would end before I could get
Speaker 1: involved and helped to win. But luckily it didn't, and
Speaker 1: in fact had a rather interesting Women like Patricia Outram
Speaker 1: were plucked from their homes and faced new challenges alongside
Speaker 1: people they'd never otherwise have met. The foundations of careers
Speaker 1: were built, friendships forged, and romances kindled. I did have
Speaker 1: a boyfriend, a Canadian. We used to explore Kent and
Speaker 1: his staff car and you know, have a bit of
Speaker 1: a social life. But of course he went off to
Speaker 1: your open He wrote for time, and then obviously he
Speaker 1: lost interest. So I didn't form any permanent touchment during
Speaker 1: the war. I was quite keen not to, actually, because
Speaker 1: I didn't just want to be married and settled down
Speaker 1: have a family. I wanted to have a correl. Pat
Speaker 1: and her sister Jean were teenagers when they joined up,
Speaker 1: and their foreign language skills saw them assigned to top
Speaker 1: secret work spying on the enemy for Kazana Fordham glossant
Speaker 1: or stuntner on stairs knocked off for Today. Both aged
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred. The sisters have a party piece. They
Speaker 1: sing the popular wartime hit Lily Marline together Pat in
Speaker 1: German Jean in Italian. Yes, I've probably got a lot
Speaker 1: of the words wrong, but we used to sing it
Speaker 1: out to. Both women clearly loved their time in the forces.
Speaker 1: In retirement in the leafy London district of Chiswick, they
Speaker 1: happily regale visitors with tales of their wartime exploits, probably
Speaker 1: the only irrespectable Chiswick who might be able to use
Speaker 1: her like machine gun. But the new opportunities they enjoyed
Speaker 1: sometimes brought new and less welcome interactions. Jean, a crossword
Speaker 1: whiz who became a codebreaker, traveled widely. Her secret work
Speaker 1: took her to the battle fronts of North Africa and Italy,
Speaker 1: often perilously close to the fighting, But it was in
Speaker 1: London that she experienced one chilling brush with danger. During
Speaker 1: an air aid. She was forced to take cover in
Speaker 1: a public shelter and there was a man that the
Speaker 1: appalling creature I had ever seen the whole of my life,
Speaker 1: who reached out as I came in. Jean was a
Speaker 1: teenager and alone. She turned on her heels and raced
Speaker 1: back up the steps to escape this male assailant. In
Speaker 1: the end, she decided that it was better to face
Speaker 1: the blitz than to risk falling into his clutches. So
Speaker 1: I did stay up on the top, but luckily it
Speaker 1: was not bombed and nobody killed me, but it might
Speaker 1: have done if I'd gone down those steps. Such terrifying
Speaker 1: encounters were by no means rare, and while Pat and
Speaker 1: Jean have nothing but praise for their male colleagues, women
Speaker 1: in the forces didn't just have to avoid assault at
Speaker 1: the hands of strangers in air aid shelters, the men
Speaker 1: fighting alongside them could also pose a threat. Men must
Speaker 1: dodge advancing bullets, and girls are expected to dodge advancing men.
Speaker 1: Doctor Tessa Dunlop says female veterans have long been reluctant
Speaker 1: to talk about such harassment. They don't want to undermine
Speaker 1: the reputation of Britain's military forces in its greatest hour.
Speaker 1: Why would they want to do that? You know we
Speaker 1: were the goodies. Our boys were the good guys. Tessa
Speaker 1: is the author of Army Girls, The Secrets and Stories
Speaker 1: and Military Service from the final few Women who fought
Speaker 1: in World War Two. She spent countless hours talking to
Speaker 1: female veterans and examining written accounts from the time. I
Speaker 1: noticed there was a clear discrepancy between the way in
Speaker 1: which they remembered their experiences fondly, laughing, always a bit
Speaker 1: of a pest, giggling about it in late Great old Age,
Speaker 1: and the letters they wrote home, especially if the letters
Speaker 1: were written between contemporaries written to their peers. Tessa's research
Speaker 1: has uncovered patterns of harassment, intimidation, and sexual offenses that
Speaker 1: are grimly familiar to women today, like the behaviors described
Speaker 1: in this private letter. I do wish that men didn't
Speaker 1: always assume that if they take you out, they can
Speaker 1: kiss you whenever they choose. Last night I went with
Speaker 1: a naval type to the club. He started getting gooey,
Speaker 1: and I had a hell of a time on the
Speaker 1: way home. When service women faced lewd comments, unwanted advances, groping,
Speaker 1: or worse, the opportunities to challenge behavior were limited. There
Speaker 1: was the usual social pressure on women to manage the
Speaker 1: egos of all men, but the military added another power dynamic.
Speaker 1: Would any allegations be taken seriously if the man accused
Speaker 1: was of a higher rank. Tessa gathered testimony from an
Speaker 1: army clock Joan Aubrey, who came under intense pressure to
Speaker 1: enter a relationship with an officer, and he just drives
Speaker 1: at a distraction. He sort of stalks her. I mean,
Speaker 1: he starts trying to contact her parents. He tries to
Speaker 1: change her leave to match hers, He leaves her flowers
Speaker 1: on her desk, he tries to kiss her. She's really
Speaker 1: bothered by she writes to her parents. She says, I'm
Speaker 1: so depressed. I could really wish all these men would
Speaker 1: go away, well, mainly one particular man. With her daily
Speaker 1: work life thus blighted and no relief in sight, all
Speaker 1: Joan could do was pray that the officer would be
Speaker 1: posted elsewhere, hopefully to the grim fighting taking place in
Speaker 1: the remote jungles of Burma. Other than these letters and diaries,
Speaker 1: this sort of harassment doesn't leave much of a paper trail,
Speaker 1: and to the military shame, it's only when it becomes
Speaker 1: more extreme and more violent that it finally crops up
Speaker 1: in the official archives in the form of court martial papers,
Speaker 1: police files, and autopsy reports. It was pretty dark, staff,
Speaker 1: that's going on at its wast pretty dark stuff. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it was still early when farm worker Herbert Pratt set out,
Speaker 1: too dark for him to see much of anything as
Speaker 1: he cycled to the fields and his waiting tractor. But
Speaker 1: then a strange shape on the verge at the side
Speaker 1: of the road caught his eye. A cap lay on
Speaker 1: the ground bearing the insignia of the Woman's branch of
Speaker 1: the Army, the Auxiliary Territorial Service or ATS, and close
Speaker 1: by was its owner. Lillian Welsh had suffered devastating head wounds.
Speaker 1: Blood trails across the tarmac revealed that her body had
Speaker 1: been dragged from the obvious sight of the collision. Whoever
Speaker 1: had killed this soldier had lingered at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: tampering with evidence. Lilian's underwear had been removed and placed
Speaker 1: next to her corpse. Lilian was laid to rest in
Speaker 1: the shadow of the ancient Stone church not far from
Speaker 1: the Welsh family cottage. Her coffin was ceremonially draped with
Speaker 1: the Union flag, and her headstone bore the crest of
Speaker 1: the ats, as well as her rank and serial number.
Speaker 1: The sergeants for whom she cooked stood to attention at
Speaker 1: the graveside, and full military honors were observed as her
Speaker 1: coffin was lowered into the ground. Investigators reviewing Lilian's long
Speaker 1: list of injuries quickly concluded that only a heavy vehicle
Speaker 1: could have wrought such damage. That type of vehicle driven
Speaker 1: almost exclusively by military personnel. I've got a few questions
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask. Police officers checked alibis for army
Speaker 1: drivers in camps in the vicinity. They identified one man
Speaker 1: who returned alone to his billet in a one and
Speaker 1: a half ton truck after ten o'clock on the night
Speaker 1: in question. At first, William Flack denied the allegations, but
Speaker 1: with the discovery of a pair of blood drenched boots
Speaker 1: hidden away under his army cart, and of incriminating dents
Speaker 1: and blood traces on the truck, his story slowly shifted.
Speaker 1: He was new to the area and he had mistakenly
Speaker 1: passed the turn to his camp and followed Lillian's route
Speaker 1: home instead. He maintained that he hadn't seen the cyclist
Speaker 1: at all, not until it was too late, he claimed that,
Speaker 1: disorientated and panicked, he'd moved her body and tampered with
Speaker 1: her underclothes, all in a bid to make it appear
Speaker 1: that someone who knew her had committed the crime. Flack
Speaker 1: was charged with wilful murder. Then the prosecution added more
Speaker 1: charges to the court docket. A pair of young women
Speaker 1: from Whales were Flack had previously been stationed, accused the
Speaker 1: army driver of sexual assault. One woman described how he'd
Speaker 1: launched his attack after knocking her from her bike with
Speaker 1: his truck. Flack denied this version of events. These women
Speaker 1: were simply lying. And as for mowing Lilian down, bespectacled,
Speaker 1: Flack stated that he was a novice behind the wheel
Speaker 1: and he'd repeatedly asked to be reassigned from driving duties
Speaker 1: because he fretted about his eyesight. He wasn't in the
Speaker 1: habit of deliberately knocking down women and launching sexual attacks
Speaker 1: on them. He was just clumsy. After twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: of deliberation, the jury agreed with Flack he was no murderer,
Speaker 1: and the judge, for his part, concurred with this verdict.
Speaker 1: Rather than being sent to the gallows, Flak received a
Speaker 1: seven year prison sentence for manslaughter. Flack died in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. Who knows if, as an elderly man
Speaker 1: he stood to attention amidst other veterans at Armistice Day parades,
Speaker 1: if he shared stories of his time in the forces,
Speaker 1: or if he let people stand him a beer at
Speaker 1: the local pub in thanks for his wartime service. Bringing
Speaker 1: offenders before the courts and securing convictions was difficult enough
Speaker 1: in this age before advanced forensic science, but when young
Speaker 1: women and particularly servicewomen were the victims, there were other
Speaker 1: hurdles to clear. Women in the forces were dogged by
Speaker 1: crude insinuations that they invited the advances of men and
Speaker 1: that they were asking for trouble. In fact, the reports
Speaker 1: and files on these cases are often a dismal exercise
Speaker 1: in victim blaming. All too often violence against women was
Speaker 1: cruelly ignored or coldly dismissed. Bad women. The blackout Ripper
Speaker 1: will return in a moment. Witnesses said the band was
Speaker 1: playing the tango sensation Jealousy as eighteen year old Private
Speaker 1: Louisa Price left the dance at a forest glen pavilier,
Speaker 1: a Uker's affair hosted by a detachment of American soldiers.
Speaker 1: You see her danceman, She didn't go far when her
Speaker 1: body was found in the nearby undergrowth. Her uniform and
Speaker 1: underwear had been torn away, and she'd been beaten to
Speaker 1: death with a rock. Months later, prosecutors thought they had
Speaker 1: their man, a twenty two year old military policeman called
Speaker 1: Sarga Michael Piosch, who had sustained several injuries on the
Speaker 1: night of the dance, and whose uniform bore bloodstains matching
Speaker 1: not only his own blood type but also Louisa's. British
Speaker 1: police had carried out the investigation, but because Piosh was American,
Speaker 1: it was the US Army who charged and tried him.
Speaker 1: At the trial, the officer defending Piosh deployed a cynical strategy,
Speaker 1: probing and picking apart Louisa Price's conduct. Private Price was
Speaker 1: a pretty good jitterbug dancer, he asked Louisa's ats comrade
Speaker 1: Lily Bentley. Yes, the jitterbug was one of the most
Speaker 1: fashionable dances of the day, but also the most notorious.
Speaker 1: Energetic and lively. Jitterbugging was seen by many as a
Speaker 1: deeply inappropriate and morally suspect import from the USA. Many
Speaker 1: venues in America and the UK had already banned the dance,
Speaker 1: and the moral panic about jitterbuggers like Louisa Price carried
Speaker 1: both misogynistic and racist overtone. One disgusted dancehall observer described
Speaker 1: maidens gasping with their eyes staring at almost fainting, as
Speaker 1: they hurled themselves about like savages. Was the defense counsel
Speaker 1: trying to paint a less than flattering picture of Private Price?
Speaker 1: Had she surrendered to this heathen music been passed from
Speaker 1: partner to partner and flung into the air like a
Speaker 1: savage with her army skirt billowing wildly? Lily Bentley defended
Speaker 1: her friend, Private Price, She told the court had only
Speaker 1: jitterbugged with other women. The defense tried another tack. Had
Speaker 1: the ats girls also requested that a sexually charged tango
Speaker 1: be played? And had they further teased the serviceman at
Speaker 1: the dance by asking the band to play the aptly
Speaker 1: title hit Jealousy? Were you one of those who asked
Speaker 1: the orchestra to play Jealousy Gloser? Had you asked for
Speaker 1: a tangul at all? No, sir, The defense suggested that
Speaker 1: Louisa had been killed by one of the men on
Speaker 1: the dance floor that night, a man she led on.
Speaker 1: They insimulated, but whose advances she then refused. Piosch, who
Speaker 1: was heavily inebriated, had been in no fit state that
Speaker 1: night to tango or dancer jitterbug. His own council described
Speaker 1: him as a drunken, drooling idiot. Sergeant Piosch was acquitted
Speaker 1: and he vowed to stop drinking for good. Louisa Price's
Speaker 1: killer was never found. The drunken, jitterbugging and tangoing of
Speaker 1: that party would only have reinforced a popular opinion about
Speaker 1: ats girls. The women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service were
Speaker 1: mockingly called ground sheets for the officers, or the auxiliary
Speaker 1: tart Service. Tessa Dunlop says the move to conscript women
Speaker 1: into the armed forces in nineteen forty one, when the
Speaker 1: demands of the war were quite literally outstripping the supply
Speaker 1: of manpower, was deeply unsettling for many people. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a real sign that Britain is waist deep
Speaker 1: in a war. It's not winning if it's having to
Speaker 1: actually draft inter military service into uniform females. The Nazi
Speaker 1: threat was an existential one, critics admitted, but surely women
Speaker 1: serving in the armed forces risk destroying the patriarchal underpinnings
Speaker 1: the very fabric of British society. So an idea that
Speaker 1: a man was going to go away and fight, he
Speaker 1: was going to be the brave hero. He was fighting
Speaker 1: for this idealist domestic ideal, the idea of the sort
Speaker 1: of wife at home with the comely bosom and fecund
Speaker 1: overflowing table. And there was a deep fear, and it
Speaker 1: persisted throughout the war that if you in some way
Speaker 1: unpick those very clearly defined gender roles where the woman
Speaker 1: is feminine icon to be protected and looked after, a
Speaker 1: man is masculine and brave and wears a uniforman kills,
Speaker 1: sometimes it will somehow undermine the basis on which the
Speaker 1: war is fought and the War office. Because I've had
Speaker 1: total connections over the demoralizing of troops. If women further
Speaker 1: encroached on this very male domain that was the military,
Speaker 1: many poorer women were already doing tough, physically demanding jobs
Speaker 1: to feed their families in themselves, but for veterans like
Speaker 1: Pat and Jean Oltram, who were entrusted with complex and
Speaker 1: top secret tasks. There was a real sense that they
Speaker 1: were breaking down barriers. I think I was lucky because,
Speaker 1: of course no woman in the family and I thing
Speaker 1: like the sort of jobs that Gene and I did
Speaker 1: in the war, and you were rather a well that
Speaker 1: you were covering new ground. Pat can't recall facing discrimination
Speaker 1: in the course of her duties, though her experience within
Speaker 1: the world of spying and intelligence was far from the norm.
Speaker 1: She was, however, adamant that societies prevailing prejudices about women's
Speaker 1: limited capabilities were quite wrong. I'm very keen that women
Speaker 1: can really do those jobs, anything like intelligence. Saw the
Speaker 1: sort of jobs that I was involved with perfectly well
Speaker 1: be done by a woman. But I think we did
Speaker 1: make a considerable sto forward during the war by showing that, yes,
Speaker 1: we could do well, perhaps a bit more than women
Speaker 1: had ever been thought of as capable of. There was
Speaker 1: a further concern about allowing nice young women like Pat
Speaker 1: and Jean to undertake military service. According to Tessa Dunlop,
Speaker 1: it was feared that once they had been unleased from
Speaker 1: the confines of domesticity, women would grow unfeminine. Course and
Speaker 1: sexually promiscuous, hurting the morale of their men folk, and
Speaker 1: the idea being. Of course, if you're a boy fatting
Speaker 1: out on the front line, you're worried your fiance, your
Speaker 1: sweetheart home is suddenly in uniform and actually not at
Speaker 1: home anymore, you know, might she be being flowered. So
Speaker 1: this was a really genuine concern. Rumors of sexual promiscuity
Speaker 1: among female recruits spread far and wide. It was the
Speaker 1: stuff of pub chatter, but it was also debated in
Speaker 1: the corridors of power. Questions were asked about it in Parliament.
Speaker 1: There is absolutely no foundation whatsoever for this whispering campaign,
Speaker 1: which I regret very much. Indeed, is there a fine
Speaker 1: body of women who were doing a fine job of work.
Speaker 1: Although the Secretary of State for War defended the honor
Speaker 1: of female recruits, a fellow politician told the government he
Speaker 1: was pretty sure the whole country had the very definite
Speaker 1: impression that the ATS is not the sort of service
Speaker 1: to which a nice girl called lease ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: The ATS had been organizing recruitment valleys. Now it had
Speaker 1: to change t staging public meetings to pacify parents and
Speaker 1: husbands and convinced them that their daughters and wives weren't
Speaker 1: headed for a life of barrack whom debauchery. The authorities
Speaker 1: tried to demonstrate that these allegations of sexual immorality weren't
Speaker 1: supported by the facts. They tallied the number of babies
Speaker 1: born out of wedlock in the general population and found
Speaker 1: it was higher than the number born to servicewomen. But
Speaker 1: of course, mud sticks. Some parents reacted with cold fury
Speaker 1: at the lew denuendos and idle chatter directed at their
Speaker 1: girls in the ATS. The famously proud coal miners of
Speaker 1: Durham in northern England suspected that class snobbery played a
Speaker 1: significant role in the denigration of their daughters serving in
Speaker 1: the military. Looks like she's wearing a mama's old curtains
Speaker 1: if you asked me. They declared, blisteringly that these rumors
Speaker 1: of immorality were intended to besmirched girls whose reputations are
Speaker 1: unassailable in their horn tones and villages. Tessa says that
Speaker 1: class was a defining issue for the women's services, especially
Speaker 1: the ATS. The rapidly expanding wartime military had little choice
Speaker 1: but to take recruits from all walks of life, sparking
Speaker 1: fears that so called decent girls would fall in with
Speaker 1: and be contaminated by roughs from the slums. Anne, another
Speaker 1: veteran interviewed by Tessa, recalled the gaping class divide in
Speaker 1: her unit, which was largely made up of girls from
Speaker 1: London's impoverished East End. Anne, who was a vicar's daughter
Speaker 1: and was immediately promoted above them aged eighteen, you know,
Speaker 1: remembers spending hours combing the knits out of their hair
Speaker 1: and just being spellbound by their conversations about sex and boys,
Speaker 1: stuff she'd never heard before. Because Anne says, what endured
Speaker 1: was our friendship and we would have never met had
Speaker 1: it not been the war. This idea that there was
Speaker 1: this night Vickers girl having her eyes opened, and likewise
Speaker 1: the East End of London equivalents being struck by this decoras,
Speaker 1: very sweet, polite girl who was helping them. So there
Speaker 1: was an aspect of melting. The ats vigorously argued that
Speaker 1: far from corrupting the nation's good girls, this social mixing
Speaker 1: elevated all recruits. After all, Winston Churchill's daughter Mary joined up,
Speaker 1: as did heir to the British throne, Princess Elizabeth. The
Speaker 1: daughters of the rich, so went the theory, had the
Speaker 1: breeding confidence and wherewithal to say no to men. It
Speaker 1: was hoped, therefore, that the right sort of girl would
Speaker 1: teach the wrong sort how to ward off male advances
Speaker 1: and the deep shame of premarital pregnancy. But as well,
Speaker 1: hereafter the break, some men wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1: The following story contains explicit language and descriptions of sexual
Speaker 1: assault that some listeners may find understandably dis dressing. We've
Speaker 1: also changed names to align with modern practices for protecting
Speaker 1: the identities of victims of sexual offenses. Jane is terrified.
Speaker 1: It's nearly midnight and an American soldier has pushed her
Speaker 1: off a bicycle and dragged her into the shadow of
Speaker 1: a hedge beside the road. The gi is on top
Speaker 1: of Jane, now tearing at her uniform and sexually assaulting her.
Speaker 1: Jane asked the stranger if he will stop so that
Speaker 1: they can talk. The man agrees and allows Jane to stand.
Speaker 1: She steps away from her attack her and screams for help.
Speaker 1: The soldier tackles Jane once more, dragging her to the ground,
Speaker 1: but her cries have finally attracted the attention of some
Speaker 1: people nearby to other gis smoking behind a edge, rushed
Speaker 1: to her aid, scaring the rapist away. He runs across
Speaker 1: a field in the direction of his barracks. Officers from
Speaker 1: the camp soon arrive, along with a local woman who
Speaker 1: tries to comfort Jane. Jane's hair is twisted and turned.
Speaker 1: Her army uniform is disarranged, stockings torn. You've had a
Speaker 1: nasty fry. Her cap has come loose in the prolonged
Speaker 1: struggle against her attacker. She asks her rescuers to help
Speaker 1: her find it. The witnesses describe her as upset and hysterical. Jane,
Speaker 1: a senior sergeant, will see her attacker again. She confidently
Speaker 1: picks him out of a lineup of fifteen other men
Speaker 1: from his unit. While many of those other men would
Speaker 1: later take part in the D Day Invasion, celebrated forevermore
Speaker 1: as patriots and heroes, John SIPs was tried, dishonorably discharged,
Speaker 1: and sent to prison to serve ten years hard labor.
Speaker 1: Tessa says that had Soaps ultimately succeeded in raping Jane,
Speaker 1: the abortion laws of the day would have forced her
Speaker 1: to carry any baby to full term. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: if she was then burdened with an illegitimate pregnancy. How
Speaker 1: even more torturous that process would have been had to
Speaker 1: have given up some baby and some awful mother and
Speaker 1: children's home, which is where a lot of these girls
Speaker 1: gave birth. But what really strikes Tessa about Jane's case
Speaker 1: is neither these cruel abortion laws nor the appalling brazenness
Speaker 1: of the attack itself. Instead, she's surprised that Jane's attacker
Speaker 1: was actually convicted. If you drill into the case, look
Speaker 1: what's required to achieve that conviction. There are two witnesses,
Speaker 1: two uniformed male witnesses, almost at the scene of the
Speaker 1: crime when it's happening, who hear her plaintive cries and
Speaker 1: find her damaged bicycle. And crucially, she's the sergeant major,
Speaker 1: so she's a woman of rank and status within the ATS.
Speaker 1: So she's believed. Not only is she believed, but she's found,
Speaker 1: you know, some ripptights and derobed and scared. Just how
Speaker 1: unlikely is it that you're going to be attacked in
Speaker 1: air shot two men serving in uniform. By the way,
Speaker 1: men of course more likely to be believed, because men
Speaker 1: don't gossip, girls do. Tessa says that many servicewomen didn't
Speaker 1: even report rape and sexual assault, either through shame, fear,
Speaker 1: or just through the sense that there would wouldn't be believed.
Speaker 1: Such crimes were prosecuted internally in the military so called
Speaker 1: Khaki justice, rather than in civilian courts. This could place
Speaker 1: criminal cases in the hands of serving officers with little
Speaker 1: experience of the law. Indeed, Tessa accounts the disturbing case
Speaker 1: of another young woman who reported a rape to her
Speaker 1: somewhat clueless female commander, and the case falls apart because
Speaker 1: she didn't really understand what the girl was talking about.
Speaker 1: She couldn't make a property scryption of what either girl
Speaker 1: seemed or what she'd experienced. But she clearly doesn't know
Speaker 1: what intercourses and therefore indeed rape. You've got no idea
Speaker 1: how ignorant some people were. I always remember my own
Speaker 1: grandmother saying she thought that some couples gonna have had
Speaker 1: children simply didn't know what to do. So simple ignorance
Speaker 1: could upend a woman's chances of seeing justice. If you
Speaker 1: would have told me when I was like twenty that
Speaker 1: I would be interested in this topic, I would say no,
Speaker 1: not at all. US Army veteran Kim Difiori knows only
Speaker 1: too well the pressure women in the military continue to
Speaker 1: face to stay silent and conceal assaults from their commanders.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, they don't believe the victim anymore than sail
Speaker 1: especially if the sailant's a higher rank, and so you
Speaker 1: have that hurdle to go through and then say we
Speaker 1: did make it to a court martial. The chances of
Speaker 1: that person getting a conviction and get in a hefty
Speaker 1: sentence is like point zero zero zero one percent. The
Speaker 1: chance of them getting a light sentence is point eight percent.
Speaker 1: So the stats are against you. Kim is a West
Speaker 1: Point graduate and a career officer. After serving a brutal
Speaker 1: deployment in Afghanistan, she returned to what she thought was
Speaker 1: the safety of a base in Germany. We're just happy
Speaker 1: to be alive. It was just a very exciting time
Speaker 1: because we were like, hey, we made it, like through
Speaker 1: a combat tour. It was awesome. And so we're out
Speaker 1: and the club was about two blocks from where I lived,
Speaker 1: Like I was just walking home and my other friends
Speaker 1: were like, you're good to get home, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have two blocks. I'll just walk that way, and
Speaker 1: one of the guys followed me, and I just I
Speaker 1: was too drunk to really fight him off. I just
Speaker 1: said like, no, I don't want you here, and like
Speaker 1: I just kept saying no, no, no, And then next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I'm waking up and the next morning
Speaker 1: he's gone, and I just like couldn't get out of bed,
Speaker 1: and it was just this horrible new reality to wake
Speaker 1: up too. And until you've been through it, you can't
Speaker 1: really empathize with the victims of like waking up that
Speaker 1: next day and that next week and just seeing like
Speaker 1: that cloud that's just over you, and you're just like
Speaker 1: what do I do? Because I know the system and
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work in my favor. As a captain herself,
Speaker 1: Kim would have been expected to deal with allegations of
Speaker 1: rape or sexual assault brought to her by her troops,
Speaker 1: but she didn't formally report her own rape. And when
Speaker 1: I was telling people, I guess they assumed that I
Speaker 1: had reported it, but there was just such a matter
Speaker 1: of fact about it. It was like saying, like I
Speaker 1: got shot at Afghanistan and it wasn't like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really bad. I must have been traumatic, like it
Speaker 1: took me forever to even use a word like sexual
Speaker 1: as salt or rape or military sexual trauma, anything like that.
Speaker 1: There's so much blame on me. But it was traumatic,
Speaker 1: and that trauma ended Kim's Army career. She's now an
Speaker 1: author and an advocate for reform when it comes to
Speaker 1: the way the military deals with sexual assault. We asked
Speaker 1: her to look at some of the cases from World
Speaker 1: War Two that we'd identified in the files. Well she
Speaker 1: at all surprised reading them. If you would have asked
Speaker 1: me at eighteen, yes, but after being in the military
Speaker 1: for thirteen years, not at all. It's such a prevalent
Speaker 1: problem the victim blaming attitudes inherent in some of the stories,
Speaker 1: like that of the jitterbugging Private Louisa Price, reminded Kim
Speaker 1: of warning she was given as a young Army cadet.
Speaker 1: I remember getting a briefing at West Points about two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, and the central message around sexual assault was, hey, females,
Speaker 1: be careful what you were because you don't want to
Speaker 1: be asking for trouble. It just cringes me to this day.
Speaker 1: That's the reality of it is. You still have messages
Speaker 1: like that saying don't ask for it, rather than putting
Speaker 1: the onus on Hey, let's get rid of rapists. Kim
Speaker 1: argues that war further clouds our judgment about rape and
Speaker 1: the men who perpetrate it. We celebrate those who show
Speaker 1: courage in battle or who are charismatic leaders, and we
Speaker 1: struggle to conceive that they might not behave so nobly
Speaker 1: in other situations. You can be a really good leader
Speaker 1: and also be a rapist. This bias can even make
Speaker 1: its way into the rape cases that do reach the
Speaker 1: military courts. You're allowed to present in your defense like
Speaker 1: a good soldier defense saying basically like, oh, this person
Speaker 1: can't be that bad of a person because they deploy
Speaker 1: direct through times. Such hero defenses crop up in the
Speaker 1: World War two archives as well. In one case, a
Speaker 1: soldier who had launched a terrifying assault on a woman
Speaker 1: was given just a min of fine after his superio
Speaker 1: Areas told the court that he'd shown heroism in battle.
Speaker 1: The man quickly went on to commit other sexual offenses
Speaker 1: until he was finally jailed. Reflecting on the experiences of
Speaker 1: women in World War Two, Kim recognizes patterns that haven't changed.
Speaker 1: The tendency to excuse attackers and blame victims. The conflict
Speaker 1: of interest inherent in allowing an organization to investigate its
Speaker 1: own members and the owners placed on women to change
Speaker 1: their behavior in the face of male violence. Kim also
Speaker 1: points out that men too are victims of sexual coercion
Speaker 1: and violence in the military. This was as true of
Speaker 1: World War Two as it is today. Kim certainly doesn't
Speaker 1: criticize those aging female veterans who shy away from speaking
Speaker 1: about the harassment, abuse and violence they endured, but she
Speaker 1: implores the rest of us to pay attention to the
Speaker 1: voices in the private letters and army files from that
Speaker 1: time and to heed what those women so long dismissed
Speaker 1: have to say. It's a hard topic to discuss, so
Speaker 1: it does a lot of good talking about it, even
Speaker 1: if it is uncomfortable, and I'll tell you it's uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for all of us. But it needs to be a
Speaker 1: very talked about discussion, just like anything else, because that's
Speaker 1: how we change cultures. In the next episode of Bad Women,
Speaker 1: will return to London's West End to meet the enigmatic
Speaker 1: Margaret Lowe, a refined woman known on the streets of
Speaker 1: Piccadilly simply as the Lady Will trace her complicated story
Speaker 1: and meet the violent men who seek her out. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about Patricia and Geane Outram's
Speaker 1: wartime experiences, then we recommend you read their fascinating book,
Speaker 1: Code Breaking Sisters, Our Secret War Bad Women. The Blackout
Speaker 1: Ripper is hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold and me
Speaker 1: Alice Fines. It was written and produced by Alice Fines
Speaker 1: and Ryan Dilley, with additional support from Courtney Guerino and
Speaker 1: Arthur Gomberts. Kate Healy of Oakwood Family Trees aided us
Speaker 1: with genealogical research. Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the
Speaker 1: show and composed all the original music. The show was
Speaker 1: recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry.
Speaker 1: You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover,
Speaker 1: Melanie Gutridge, Stella Halford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. Much
Speaker 1: of the music you heard was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes,
Speaker 1: Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick
Speaker 1: Taylor at Portcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Tolliday mixed the tracks
Speaker 1: and you heard additional piano playing by the eight Berry
Speaker 1: Wise Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible
Speaker 1: without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lucan. We'd
Speaker 1: also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunne of the Murder
Speaker 1: Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Catherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: Society and the Earb Historical Society. Bad Women is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show
Speaker 1: and spread the word about what we do, and thanks
Speaker 1: for listening the