I was born in Israel on December 1st 1961. When I was small I always told my friends that my dad lost his left eye because of flying at extreme altitudes testing Mirage fighter planes for the Israeli Air Force. But that’s not true. He flew Boeing 707s for El- Al and lost his eye for medical reasons. Due to this he was grounded in his prime. He was 37 and looking for a job. I was 2 at the time. My parents decided to go and start again in South Africa, where my grandfather lived. So my earliest memory is throwing up on the flight from Tel Aviv to Johannesburg on my third birthday. I lived there until I had turned 21 and left for England. I had to wear a school uniform from age 6. I had a Dalmatian dog called Dick. I played table tennis and football, but I was better at table tennis. My nickname was Goose because some football coach put two and two together that “goosey goosey gander” rhymed with Kander, and I supported Liverpool FC because they were the best.
We used to drive down to the coast in a white Austin 1100 until my father “upgraded” to a Peugeot 504 which to my embarrassment had an avocado green paint job (he loved this car until he left South Africa 22 years later). I was 10 yrs old and bought him a mock leather steering-wheel cover with my pocket money. It was received and laced on before we had even left the petrol station. My first success. He liked it. I tell you all this because on these holidays my father used to photograph his year’s worth of transparency film on his Iconoflex which he had bought on one of his flights to NY. Weeks after returning to Johannesburg we would be treated to a slide show that I remember clearly. I think these slide shows were my first introduction to the possibilities of photograph.
Someone’s Daughters
Chasjit Verma
I was born in Bradford on 27th Mach 1979. I went to India to stay with my nan shortly after birth as my mum was not well, but came back to the UK after the birth of my sibling.
I had a very happy colourful childhood full of laughter and love. We were taught how to be respectful and have empathy from a young age, which I am grateful for as those qualities have got me through my life so far.
I fell in love with my childhood sweetheart and dedicated my life to him and gave birth to 2 amazing children. Even though we are no longer together, the children are our driving force though the hard times we faced.
I always aim to look at life with a positive perspective and believe everything happens for a purpose, so enjoy the ride, called LIFE.
Emily Ramsay
Whilst I was in Bronzefield I took part in the Koestler awards where I created an Avant Garde piece of hair on a doll’s head that I called “I’m in Chains”. The reason being for this is that at the time I was struggling with the whole concept of what is the purpose of Prisons?!… Are they for punishment or rehabilitation?…I felt that they were trying to both punish us but also prevent us from reoffending but I don’t believe you can do both at the same time!…
You’re in a position where your freedom has been taken away from you as a result of the crime that you have committed but you continue to be tormented whilst you are there. You are separated from loved ones, you are limited on money that needs to be used to call home AND buy things from the canteen. Officers could turn on you at any point and literally make your time there even more difficult than it was already.
I was at one point the only prisoner out of what 500 odd women in Bronzefield that got myself to a position where I was able to ROTL to a hairdressers which was great but at one point this was taken away from me at the click of a finger when my personal officer at the time decided to make an allegation to management that I had been getting visitors to the salon, why she felt the need to do this is literally beyond me but she did. As a result, my ROTL’s were stopped I think for around 4 days when they let me go back out again. By this point I made the decision that it was in my best interest to leave Bronzefield and go to East Sutton Park where their main focus was to make sure all women were out working and were able to maintain their family ties. Before they reinstated my ROTL’s at Bronzefield I had to sit down and have a meeting with one of the managers and a senior officer where I was pretty much expected to admit to something that I had not done, apologise for ”my behaviour”, lick ass in simple terms but I refused to do this as I was upset and angry that because an officer had made the allegation then it must have been the truth. Bearing in mind, this is the same officer who used to sit in women’s rooms, drink coffee, eat their canteen, on one occasion she even fell asleep on one of their beds, YES, she fell asleep and had the audacity to start to make my life difficult when all she used to do is take from the women and if you were not up her ass she was horrible!…
This is just touching the surface with the daily struggles that you face there. I got through my time the way that I did because I pretty much put up and shut up for an easy life! Which is why I had that constant feeling that I felt like I was ”in chains” with a gag over my mouth as I could not express my opinions or views in a way that I would feel safe and not then be victimised by certain officers. Don’t get my wrong, they were not all like that, I was fortunate enough to build a relationship with the women who ran the salon in Bronzefield, particularly a lady called Rachel who fought so hard for me to gain my level 2 in hairdressing, get my out to ROTL and be the person that I could go to and sit down with her, vent, cry, get angry and know that she really did have my best interests at heart! But there, it is not easy to find someone that you can trust. I struggled opening up to staff for fear that they could use against me at some point things that we would talk about. There’s no consistency, everyone is treated differently depending on whether the staff liked you or not!
Baroness Helena Kennedy
Helena Kennedy QC is one of the UKs most distinguished lawyers. She has practised at the Bar for 40 years in the field of criminal law and has conducted many of the leading cases. She is recognised as one of the seminal forces in reforming the legal profession’s
attitude to gender equality and minority access. She was the criminal law adviser to the UN Rapporteur on the extra judicial killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. She sits on UNESCO’s High Level Expert Panel on Media Freedom. Helena was chair of the British Council for 6 years, up until July 2004. She was chair of the Inquiry into Sudden Infant Death for the Royal Colleges of Pathologists and of Paediatrics, producing a protocol for the investigation of such deaths. She was the chair of Charter 88 and chair of the Power Inquiry which reported on British democracy. She was a member of the Government Commission on a British Bill of Rights. She has been a member of the House of Lords for over 20 years, where she sat on the Joint Committee of Human Rights and chaired the European Union Justice Committee. She now sits on the Justice and Home Affairs Committee. Helena was President of the School of Oriental and African Studies, a member of the World Bank Institute’s External
Advisory Council and a board member of the British Museum.
Helena has authored a number of books on law reform, co-wrote the successful television series Blind Justice and became a well known broadcaster on law and ethics during the 1980s, presenting the BBC’s Heart of the Matter. A frequent broadcaster and journalist on law and women’s rights, her publications include the widely acclaimed Eve Was Shamed: How British Justice is Failing Women (Chatto & Windus, October 2018); it was also published in paperback under the title, Misjustice: How British Law is Failing Women (September 2019). Her book Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters To Us All (Chatto & Windus, 2004) was also published in paperback in March 2005. Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice (Vintage, 1992) was published in paperback in 1993 and was fully updated and reissued in March 2005. Helena was the Investigating Officer of the Human Trafficking Commission in Scotland. She is a member of the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. She is now chairing a Scottish Working
Party on Misogyny. Helena was Master of Mansfield College, Oxford for several years and was responsible for creating the groundbreaking Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford. Helena was the chair of the Booker Prize Foundation for five years
and is the current chair of the Video Standards Council. Helena is also a member of the Microsoft Technology and Human Rights Advisory Council. She is the President of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists. She is the Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and the Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.