Who Trolled Amber? - Gareth | Lucky Boy Ep1

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Gareth spent years believing he was a lucky boy. He was the 14-year-old who got the attention of the attractive young science teacher. Now, decades later, he wants the truth to come out about the damage it’s caused him. But his story is not straight forward. You can find out more about Tortoise:Download the Tortoise app - for a listening experience curated by our journalistsSubscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free contentBecome a member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and moreIf you want to get in touch with us directly about a story, or tell us more about the stories you want to hear about contact [e-mail] and produced by: Chloe Hadjimatheou and Gary Marshall Sound design: Hannah VarrallPodcast artwork: Lola Williams Executive producer: Basia Cummings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just a heads up before we start, this episode contains strong language and references to sexual abuse. Can you just talk for a sec? Hello, how are you? My name is Monty and I like golf. I don't know why he said he's Monty. This is actually Mark. He's one of my oldest mates and he doesn't like golf. Again? One two, one two, one two, testing, one two.

He's always been the funny one in our group of friends. It was the same when we were kids growing up in the 80s. It's a bit embarrassing now but back then me and Mark were the Goths. No I mean it wasn't, you know, like we were, you know, it was the mid 80s, late 80s. We were all spots, greasy hair, you know, dodgy school shoes, you know, we just. You had a crimped fringe. I had a crimped fringe, yeah, but I was quite cool. You were quite cool. Do you know what I mean? Like, our lot were sort of quite cool, but then...

At least we thought we were. For our lot, it was all about going to gigs. Suzy and the Banshees, The Cure, and some pretty dire stuff too, like fields of the Nephilim. That still makes me cringe. It was easy for teenagers back then, because tickets were affordable, only around a tenner. And in venues that seemed so edgy and happening, like the Town and Country Club and the Camden Palace, most of them years gone now. Local places, pretty close to home, which for us

back then was a little patch of North London, specifically Finchley. But I digress. Since those teenage days, I've ended up becoming an investigative journalist and Mark's an actor, but we're still close friends. OK. So I've asked Mark to come to the studio at Tortis because of something that happened to him a while ago. So basically, tell me how this all started. So it was first lockdown, I'd say June or July and I get a phone call from this unknown

number and it's this woman, this sort of Spanish, Latin sounding woman saying, my husband's asked me to call you. She tells Mark he was in the same year as her husband at Christ's College Finchley, the boys' comprehensive school that had a pretty good reputation. I was at the girls' school just up the road. This woman asks if Mark remembers her husband, Gareth. Actually, that's not his real name. I can't tell you that for reasons that will become clear pretty soon. I was like, yeah. And then alarm bells started going off because I remember being at school at this time and there being all these rumours and we all kind of knew that something was going on but we didn't know for sure mostly

The rumours were about what happened between this guy Gareth and a teacher at the school. His wife is calling Mark because Gareth needs witnesses and he remembers Mark because they were both misfits. You either did well in your exams at Christ College or they weren't interested. They just wrote you off? They wrote you off completely. I mean they wrote me off completely and they wrote him off completely. And because Gareth remembers Mark suffered at the school just like he did, he thinks Mark might be more likely to help him out. Mark and Gareth end up having several long conversations, sometimes late into the night,

rewinding to the 1980s and playing out their school days. Who had a fight with who? The fact that caning was still allowed in their first few years. Which teachers would use it and which would just throw books at you or clip you round the ear? About the hours after school spent sitting on buses smoking cigarettes, or hanging around Golders Green station trying to look cool and get the attention of girls. Memories of that sweet time in the early years when they were still blank slates. And then they talk about the real reason they were having this call. What happened between Gareth and this teacher at Christ's College.

And he was saying, look, if I got you to a police station, would you talk? I said, look, if I remembered anything that wasn't an embellished memory, then absolutely, but I can't guarantee my memories for you. But I do know what happened to you was wrong. The first time Mark tells me about all this, that this former classmate of his, Gareth, had called him out the blue to talk about how he'd been sexually abused by his teacher at the age of 14. I have to admit, I immediately jumped to what I thought was a pretty obvious conclusion, that the teacher carrying out the abuse had been a man.

It's an easy assumption to make. Most abusers tend to be male and recently I've been hearing more and more of these cases about boys being abused in boarding schools and churches. But this is not that story because in this case the abuser was a woman. You know everyone knew it it, but the culture at that time was not a problem. It's not really a big deal. Were you all like, you'd all have fantasies about her? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, still do. But I was talking to one of our friends, who will remain nameless,

he was saying, what good is it? It happened so long ago and she was quite fit so the sort of the implication was it was his fantasy and he got to fulfill his fantasy yeah what's he complaining about yeah but anyway I think the bottom line is there are two camps there's the yes it was really wrong that it happened and there's uh hello he got to basically shut up this gorgeous woman. All Mark remembers from back then was rumours. But what I want to know is were there people who saw stuff who can give me a better idea of what really happened? So I get him to ask around. He tells me there are WhatsApp groups where loads of

old boys, now men, still stay in touch and he's happy to connect me but... I think what you'll find if you do interview ex-Christ college boys, ex-teachers, they'll be like, oh 40 years ago, let it go, blah blah blah, blah. But, you know, there are teachers out there who are probably in their late 60s, mid 70s, who you would be able to talk to. Whether or not they would want to, you know, I don't know. What about Gareth? I don't remember him, but Mark's sure I knew him back when we were kids. Me, Ricky, Tom, Zach, that lot, you know, we'd be out on the streets. You've met him. You've met him. I probably have. I was always with him.

He used to wear this quite sort of Tony Soprano leather jacket with, up to the elbows, pull the sleeves up, hair greased, you know, greased down. pull the sleeves up, the hair greased down. Like I said, everyone thought they looked cool back then. So Mark asks Gareth whether he'll speak to me and… Hi Chloe, how you doing? Good, how are you? I'm okay, I'm okay. The voice on the other end is a bit rougher than I expected. But it's also thoughtful and intelligent.

You know, it's also just to put it in perspective for them, even though they're 50-year-old men now as well. What they were part of was an open secret when I went around that school. Gareth tells me that for a long time he found it difficult to pin down the harm this relationship caused. He thought of himself as a lucky boy. But one day the relationship ended. The teacher just walked away and when she did, his whole life fell apart. By the time he was 16 he was homeless and by 23 he'd tried to kill himself several times. Much later in life he realised he needed to process what happened to him. As I listen, I can feel the anger sitting just under the surface.

I was accused at one point of starting the rumors. From there, it just snowballed. What are you complaining about? What's the matter with you? The male has to get aroused for the act to happen. And that's a huge problem for people. That's the truth. Everyone did know. Are you joking?

I'm the one that protected her for 26 years. Various life events brought Gareth to the point where, 10 years ago, he decided to press charges against his teacher. Truth be told, he almost instantly regretted his decision. He still had lots of warm feelings towards her, still thought of her as his first real love. It wasn't really revenge he was after, more a general acknowledgement of the harm he'd suffered as a result. But then, one after another, the people he'd considered solid witnesses denied being aware of the relationship, and the teacher? She denied ever having any kind of sexual contact

with him. Gareth knows what happened between him and his teacher. He tells me he's sure of it. Those events are seared into his memory. And the fact that no one wants to talk about it now, well, it's like the entire cast of his childhood all gaslighting him at the same time. So now he's gone from being hesitant to being on a crusade.

It makes me really angry that people would even for one moment question my account. This is not a dream for me. So what do you want to get out of this? How about the truth? How about we do that first and then we work out where we're going to go from there? How about the truth? The truth is a good starting point for me too, but also why are people so reluctant to talk and why was this teacher allowed to have sex with a child without ever facing

any consequences? Could it have something to do with the fact that the abuser in this case was an attractive woman. I'm Chloe Hajimathau and from Tort, this is Lucky Boy. Episode 1. Gareth. It's 1986. We still get our music news from magazines like Smash Hits and Melody Maker and every Thursday evening we're glued to top of the pops on TV to see who's leading in the charts. The nightly comedy offering on the BBC is Benny Hill chasing big-breasted half-naked women around parks. If you arranged to meet someone and they didn't show up, you went back home again

and you used your turn-dial landline to call their landline. We have on the telephone now Mrs Thatcher. Hello, good morning. The same kind of landline that Margaret Thatcher used to call in to Radio 4's Today programme whenever she heard something that surprised her. IRA bombs seemed to be going off every other day and most kids around the country were fixated by only one North London secondary school, Grange Hill, on kids' TV. You don't believe me either, do you?

The best mate. See how much heroin you can find among that lot. In which every issue under the sun seemed to be playing out all at the same time, although the writer's imagination didn't stretch as far as an affair between a young boy and his female teacher. Back in the real North London, a new term's just started at Christ College and boys in dark blue uniforms are tumbling out of buses, flocking loudly into the school. The three-storey red brick building's more than 150 years old and it really stands out because of its huge

tower, more like a turret on a castle really, with little arched windows spiralling up in line with a narrow staircase on the inside. The towers where the science labs are and this term there's lots of commotion up there because the school has a new young chemistry teacher, Sally-Ann Bowen. This is her first teaching job, not long out of training. She's 27 with long blonde hair and like loads of the boys, 13-year-old Gareth can't help staring at her. Well yeah, because I mean, you can speak to any of the boys about this as well and I'm sure they'll back me up. I mean, everybody knew when Bowen hit Christ College. Nobody knew when Bowen hit Christ College.

Gareth's birthday is in May, so he's pretty young for his year, but he's a bright kid, athletic with wavy brown hair. My mother was an English teacher, my father was an editor. So I guess you would say that I came from a middle-class family. I was the youngest of four, had two older sisters and a brother. My early years, yeah, they were very happy. He's fiercely proud of his dad being a journalist. He teaches his son never to blindly accept what he's told. Question everything, he says.. Of course that doesn't always go down well with Gareth's teachers. Precocious and lippy is probably what they would have called him. But his dad's also an alcoholic and he can be violent.

Sometimes he beats Gareth with a belt and when he's drunk he goes after his mum too, till she can't take it anymore and leaves. I think I was in second year so I'd have been about 12, 13, I think. Gareth ends up living with his mum. He misses his dad, but he's busy, hanging out with his mates. They like going into the fields just north of Finchley, looking for golf balls, which they sell back to the golfers and use the money for sweets or comics. I was 13 when the conversation on the bus happened. Gareth's not in any of Miss Bowen's chemistry classes and so his story with her doesn't

really begin until about halfway through that year. There's a bus that takes pupils from one part of the school to another. Gareth's only in the third year. These days we call it Year 9 in the UK or eighth grade in the US. Then they got on the bus by one of them and Mackysaick together as they most of the time were. Miss MacIsaac's the other young female teacher at the school. She and Miss Bowen are really good friends. She would have been beautiful rank number one and MacIsaac would have been beautiful

rank number two. Yeah, I mean, it's a boys school and we were kids so I mean that was probably the way they thought about it. So on this particular day he's sitting on the bus when the two teachers climb up the steps and get on board. They sat at the front because the teachers would sit at the front of the bus and the kids would sit in the back. So Gareth moves up and sits in the road just behind them. Me being me, I was never shy with teachers.

I could always talk to adults. And he leans forward and says, Do you know when you get on the bus, everybody knows you two have got on the bus because they can smell you. What he means is they smell good. And Bowen made a big thing out of this and started saying, oh, what do we smell of? How do we smell? What are you trying to say? And I sort of said, well, you know, you smell a perfume. And she said, she said, I don't believe you. I don't believe that's what I said, well, you know, you smell a perfume. And she said, she said, I don't believe you.

I don't believe that's what you meant. And then she engaged in this game, where she said, I want you to tell me what you meant. But he's too young to play the game. He just doesn't get where she's going with all this. So Miss Bowen gives him clues. I think you meant something that we came out of the sea, like there's a creature out of the sea, you think.

At one point it did dawn on me, you know, at 13, even then, it did dawn on me what she was trying to get me to refer to. But he's really embarrassed. And when I eventually said fish, I think I said whale before, or whatever, I was trying to be polite. And when I said it, she was like so delighted that her little joke had come to fruition. The other member of staff, her friend, Miss MacIsaac, sitting right there. And she just like, like she cringed like, that's disgusting, like, I mean what woman

wouldn't? Years later, when she's asked to corroborate this event, Heather MacIsaac will say she doesn't remember anything about what happened on the bus that day or the inappropriate things Gareth remembers Miss Bowen saying to him. At the time Gareth was confused he didn't know a teacher could be like that. She had crossed the boundary at that moment. Yep. I mean I'm sure there were other inappropriate things she said to me, but they just haven't stuck out in my mind.

But that was the first. Yeah. Memory is an elusive thing. When I look back on my years as a teenager, the images are hazy. Time's sort of taken the sharpness out of it all. But Gareth says specific moments are extremely vivid for him. Events that affected him so much that they're imprinted on his mind indelibly. Everything else, he admits, has faded away. So what he doesn't know is what happened around those key moments. I mean for me the next instance is the cafe instance but I mean there was there must have been hellos and nods and whatever else. The cafe instance, yeah we're coming to that,

but that's a little over a year after that first interaction with Miss Bowen. But that's a little over a year after that first interaction with Miss Bowen. So let's jump forward to 1988. Now Gareth's 14. He's in his fourth year at school. That's year 10 in the UK these days or ninth grade in the US. And he's doing pretty well. I mean, I stopped messing about and I got into all the top groups for the fourth year. At some point that spring term, Ms Bowen starts taking the same bus as Gareth to and from school.

I've got a lot of images of her standing at that bus stop in my head of me arriving at the bus stop and her standing there. And soon the conversation moves onto the bus. They're sitting next to each other, Gareth and her standing there. And soon the conversation moves onto the bus. They're sitting next to each other, Gareth and Miss Bowen. Do you think you'd have been walking to Golders Green station in the morning or waiting at the bus stop in the evening after school and thinking I hope she's there? Yeah obviously, obviously they're built up to that. They talk about all sorts of stuff like what they got up to on the weekend. He asks her

about the other teachers at Christ College, who out of the men does she fancy, and she tells him. He doesn't remember whether Miss Bowen asked him if he had a girlfriend. He didn't, and hadn't ever. At this point, he's briefly kissed a girl once, outside her place on an estate in Hendon, but that's it. That's the extent of his experience with the opposite sex. Do you think at that time having her give you that kind of level of attention which was very kind of specific to you on the bus you're slowly creating a friendship? Yeah. How would that have made you feel the 14 year old? Something like Jesus Christ, no? I mean what would you, of course that made me How would that have made you feel, the 14 year old dad?

Something like Jesus Christ, no? I mean, of course that made me feel extremely special. Well, she's got 900 kids there and she selects me. So yeah, that's what that did to me. Like I thought I was something special. I was, I just didn't know what kind of special that meant. Right, so I'm going to need you guys to come a little bit closer. I can't remember how I thought when I was 14, at what point in my development I was.

I know I felt very grown up and although I try it's really hard to imagine Gareth aged 14. All I see when I look at him is this large angry man with a deep voice. One two, one two, coming in from the radio. I have two boys but they're much younger so I ask a friend of mine if I can talk to her 14 year old son and his friends. Speak up, speak up. Hi guys. So I ask a friend of mine if I can talk to her 14-year-old son and his friends. We meet in a cafe around the corner from their school.

It's 3.30 and they're still in their school uniforms. And right away I'm surprised by how young they look. I'd pictured 14-year-olds as halfway to adulthood, but actually these guys are still baby-faced, not quite through puberty. Can I ask you something else? Are you all shaving? I'm not yet. No.

Where? Where? Because we don't want to pick a knot. Are you shaving your faces? No. I've always said Alfie should because he needs to trim that stash of him. It's not that big. I haven't got that much face or hair to be that stash of hair. It's not that big. I haven't got that much face of her, to be honest. To be honest, I've never really seen a boy in this year.

He's shaved. No. Tell me. They do go to the occasional party at friends' houses, and there are girls there. But like, so is there ever anybody getting together at these parties? Not us, not me, but basically almost like lots of other people, like yeah.

And what does getting together mean, like kissing and stuff? Kissing, nothing too, you know, big so far, but there has been some incidents where people went further, you know. I knew someone who got to second base in one day. At our age. Yeah, yeah. Are you going to hold a record or what? There have been a few kisses. I've had one at the age of my current age. Now, 14.

Well, I've had one at 13 yeah yeah yeah and me personally mine was really underwhelming because it wasn't like romantic it was just on a dare oh that didn't count then okay don't count mine I'm sorry a really good weekend for them is usually one where they get to have a sleepover. And once I turn the recorder off, one of them admitted to me he still sometimes plays with Lego. It's probably one of the trickiest times in life, when you're in such a hurry to grow up. But in reality, you have no experience of the world that qualifies you as being an adult. A time when a day of pretending to be grown up is so exhausting

that all you really want to do is go home to your Lego. Right, anyway, so that day we'd been up to Tesco, he's got our pasties, whatever. Now Gareth's a bit older. He's in the upper school, which means he and the other boys are allowed out for lunch. But actually, roaming up and down the high street, lunch is the least of what they get up to. This particular break, Gareth's with a group of mates, including a boy called Ben. Ben was fucking crazy anyway. Ben was fucking nuts, man.

He's one of these kids who doesn't seem to have any boundaries. On this day, Gareth and a group of other boys follow Ben into the local newsagents just up the road from the school. They think they're in there to buy a can of Coke and some sweets, but Ben has other things on his mind. I saw him do it. Five fucking magazines he's pulled off the top shelf. That's where the porno mags always are. You could be as subtle as you liked,

but if you were buying one, there was no hiding it. When you reach to the top shelf, even the people on the till would look, everyone would look because they'd see this hand going up from all over and Ben's done it five fucking times. He's taken down five porno magazines so that's like fucking hell Ben. You're not going to get out of shot with that mate, that's not like stealing football stickers mate. Brazen as hell. And somehow he walks out with these five mags without any trouble. So anyway, we've trundled down this, you know, we're going back towards the school and we've trundled down and it's like, oh, are we going to the CAF?

The CAF was a little Italian deli. Gareth used to go in there with his mates, not to eat but to hang out. His lunch money was already spent on a 10 pack of Benson and Hedges. Miss Bowen was often in there too. Did you clock her as soon as you got in? Yeah, yeah I did. Well the thing is I'm having conversations with her on the bus, she's like my friend at this point. So the boys all come in laughing because they've just pulled off this heist in the newsagents

and Ben's really excited about it. He's opening up the porno mags and waving the pictures around for everyone to see and he's trying to get Miss Bowen's attention, sticking the mags under her nose and saying, what's this then Miss, what's this? And it feels like it's getting all a bit out of hand. And if I remember rightly, the way I remember it is like, I grabbed one, I think Danny grabbed one, as in like, listen, you're embarrassing us all now, you're being a prick.

She didn't react. I don't know what she said, I can't remember that. I mean, you've got to remember the next event coming was such a huge event, it's hard to remember small memories surrounding that huge memory for me. What Gareth does remember is that the action sort of dissipates and Ben and the other boys get bored and leave. So Gareth slides into the seat opposite Miss Bowen. The porno mag he grabbed off Ben is tucked away somewhere inside his blazer pocket or

down the back of his trousers. She said, have you still got that magazine? I said yeah and she sort of said, give me the magazine. I was like, at first I was like, I think I said no, I think I questioned why she wanted it. And she just sort of said, give me the magazine. Gareth thinks she's going to confiscate it, but instead she opens it up under the table so it's out of sight and she starts flicking through the pages. She then just came to a page and she pointed it and she said, that's what mine looks like.

And I said to her, what do you mean? And she said, that's what my pussy looks like. And at that moment, what was going through your mind? Were you on the truth? Yeah. I knew I was going to fuck her. And that's really bad for me to say that because it's like, oh well you had intent. I actually, do you know what, I shouldn't actually say that because it's like oh well you had intent I actually actually do you know what I shouldn't actually say that because that's really wrong no

no it's really wrong because I shouldn't say that it misrepresents me badly I didn't know what I was gonna fuck up because I had no idea what fucking was but what it had done was cross a boundary with you it was a new boundary that had been crossed I knew that that's that's what I'm trying to say it's like hindsight I'm saying that oh I knew I was going to, no I didn't. I had no concept of it. How could I know I was going to do something I had no concept of?

That's the first thing I'd say about like, sort of like putting that in context. But you're quite right. There was something, there was something profoundly different about that. Hold on, now we're looking at vaginas and we're talking about like which one's yours. I mean, I know you're not having this conversation with no one else.

So I mean, yeah, huge, huge, that was huge. Did you say anything? Were you shocked? Yeah, I was fucking shocked, of course I was shocked. And then the curtains of his memory fall on this scene and it ends there. He doesn't remember how but he knows he and Miss Bowen get back to school and he knows however hard it is to keep his mouth shut he can't tell anyone what happened. If all this went down as Gareth remembers, that incident with the porno mag has completely tilted his relationship with Miss Bowen.

Now she's not just an attractive teacher, she's a woman who's given him explicit permission to think of her in sexual terms. She's invited him to. I'm not an expert, but I imagine this is probably what grooming looks like. And Gareth? He's hooked. The next day when they meet up after school, he tells her he loves her. And now he can't bear saying goodbye on the street corner, so one day he just keeps walking with her towards her place. That's when he clocks the other boy.

There was an Asian guy from Christ College that obviously lived in the vicinity, otherwise he wouldn't have walked down Hamilton Road like that. Do you remember his name? No. I don't. It seems this Asian boy's been walking her home regularly. Gareth joins them and this one afternoon when all three of them get to Miss Bowen's house, instead of saying goodbye at the gate, she goes in leaving her front door open. So Gareth wanders in closing the door in the Asian boy's face and Miss Bowen lets him in for tea and a cigarette.

And we sat on the sofa in the front room and had a cup of tea. The living room's pretty bare and nondescript, no personal touches. Probably because it's a shared house full of young professionals where Miss Bowen's renting a room. None of the other tenants are in. I spoke about like, I don't know what we split. Like, when I say nothing unto ward, the whole fucking situation's unto ward, right? You don't have to say something that's going to make this worse. But yeah, so then I had

my cup of tea and I left. And then the next day... The next day when he walks her home again, they're alone. The Asian boy that was walking with them? Gareth never sees him again. And now it seems to be a given that he's going to come inside. But this time, halfway through their cup of tea on the sofa, Gareth stands up. So I've gone up and used the toilet. She's come upstairs and I've said, which room's yours? And I said, I think that room's yours. I said, well, we surely we can sit here and drink our tea. And she said, I'll go downstairs and get the sit here and drink our tea and she said I'll go downstairs and get the tea and she sat next to me on the bed like that.

It's a small box room. There's a cupboard and a cool looking record player on a shelf and they sit kind of awkwardly side by side sipping tea. Both facing the wall sort of like on a single bed sort of like sitting there like it was a sofa and then like yeah. And then? I don't know we were close together our heads were close together we were looking each other and then like just started kissing. That first time they don't go all the way, but when it eventually happens he has no idea. She has to stop and explain to him that they're actually having sex.

It's just a feeling that I'd never had before in my life. I didn't understand how it felt. I couldn't recognise that I had actually had sex. And then we had this big discussion On whether or not I was a virgin because though though she had sex with me. I didn't ejaculate in her and So I said all this big debate on whether or not I was really still a virgin or I wasn't a virgin anymore So can I just 14 year old garrus after the first time? Yeah You leave her house close the front door behind you and you're walking home.

Yeah. What's going on with you? Cat had got the cream. High as a kite. Lucky boy he thinks. I'm a really lucky boy. Miss Bowen's clear right from the outset. You can't tell anyone. But she needn't have bothered. There's no way Gareth's going to risk it, because he knows what they're doing isn't above board. He knows if people find out, there's a good chance they're going to put a stop to it. You think a 14-year-old boy is going to blow the whistle on that?

It must have been so massive for you. Yeah, it's fucking hard as well. What are you talking about? What the fuck? I'm lying here fucking, like, just mental. Mental. Absolutely, I didn't like it. I mean, you'd have to sit down and speak to a psychologist about, or a psychiatrist about what would come out of that, the thoughts and what that child would think and the boundaries broken. I can't even do it now. So he takes this vow of silence. What he could never have guessed is how that silence, which right now feels so sweet, is going to turn so toxic and going to extend to the whole school. How he's going to end up desperate for someone to blow the whistle.

Coming up in episode two. So the school would have known, the teachers? 100%. 100%. In that summer, it was me and her, right, against the world. Like, we were powerful, right? I could have killed her. I could. If I met her now, I think I'd strangle her. She's ruined his life.

In the past, Sallyanne Bowen has denied the incident in the cafe with the porno mags ever took place. She's also denied that Gareth ever came into her house or that she had any kind of sexual contact with him. Lucky Boy is reported by me, Chloe Hajimathau. The producer is Gary Marshall. Additional production from Rebecca Moore. Sound design is by Hannah Varrell. Original music by Tom Kinsella. Podcast artwork by Lola Williams

and the executive producer is Basher Cummings. If you or someone you know has experienced the issues covered in this episode, there are places you can reach out to. If you have any concerns about a child, then you can contact the NSPCC's helpline by calling 0808 800 5 0 0 0 or emailing help at nspcc.org.uk or visiting their website. Children can contact Childline and talk to an impartial counsellor. No concern is too big or small to discuss. Simply call 0800 1111 or visit their website for a one-to-one chat. For general concerns or talk, adults can contact the Samaritans on 116 123

or email joe at samaritans.org. That's joe at samaritans.org.