In the 10 years she has been making documentaries, Stacey Dooley has reported on a huge variety of topics, from sex trafficking in Cambodia, to Yazidi women fighting back in Iraq. At the core of her reporting are incredible women in extraordinary and scarily ordinary circumstances – from sex workers in Russia to survivors of domestic violence in Honduras.
In her first book, Stacey draws on her encounters with these brave, bold and inspiring women, using their stories as a vehicle to explore some of the issues at the center of female experience. From gender equality and domestic violence, to sex trafficking and sexual identity, Stacey weaves these global strands together in an exploration of what it is to be a woman fighting back in the world today.
Grierson Award nominee Stacey Dooley is one of the UK’s most loved documentary presenters. She has explored the dangerous world of child pornography in Japan, investigated the missing indigenous girls of Canada, met the supporters of the DUP and gone undercover in the growing criminal world of Britain's digital drug dealers.
Most recently, Stacey has travelled to Iraq to present a follow-up to the critically acclaimed documentary, Stacey Dooley on The Frontline: Guns, Girls and ISIS.
Stacey lives in Brighton with her boyfriend Sam and their bulldog, Bernie.
For my mother, the first impressive woman in my life
It’s ten years since my mum picked up the leaflet and brought it home. It said, ‘Do you like fashion? Do you like travel? Do you like shopping?’
Tick, tick, tick – I answered yes to all the questions.
‘If you do, give this number a call.’
I called the number, not sure what to expect. ‘I just saw your advert, can you let me know what the story is?’
‘Yes,’ a researcher told me, ‘we’re a production company and we’re looking for six young consumers who are obsessed with fast, throwaway fashion.’
That was me. Back then I used to work hard, save up all my wages and go down to the Arndale at the end of the week, where I would buy as many clothes as possible with no real thought about what I was buying and who had made it.
‘We’re making a documentary about where your clothes come from and the consequences of your shopping,’ the researcher went on. ‘The process will take you to India, where you’ll see for yourself how the garments are made and perhaps try making some yourself. What do you reckon to that?’
‘It sounds awesome!’ I said. The only place outside Europe I’d been was New York.
Then I had a moment of panic. I had just turned 19 and had no experience of how telly works. Wait, I don’t think I’ll have the money to go, I thought.
‘Would I have to pay?’ I asked.
‘Oh God, no, we will take care of all the costs,’ she assured me.
‘OK, cool!’
‘So, why don’t I come to your house and have a chat about it?’ she suggested. ‘We can have a look at your wardrobe and take things from there.’
‘Yes, no sweat,’ I said. ‘I’ll swap shifts with someone and get the day off.’
I was working at Luton Airport at the time, selling perfume in duty free – Calvin Klein one week, Dior the next. I’d been there a couple of years and I loved it. Although it was never going to be a career, it was really easy and straightforward and I had loads of pals. I loved being with my girls.
The researcher came down on my day off. She seemed quite posh, like much of the telly crowd, to be honest. As I was showing her through my things, she said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve got so much stuff!’
I explained that I didn’t really have any outgoings, so all my earnings went on shopping and holidays. I didn’t have any responsibilities. I was a baby.
She started firing questions at me. Now that I understand how telly works, I imagine she was rubbing her hands in glee at my answers, because every time I opened my mouth a soundbite popped out, unawares.
For instance, I had pair of leather Dior gloves that I obviously didn’t need. I’d bought them in Selfridges.
‘How much were the gloves?’ she asked.
‘They were £200,’ I said. ‘Oh my God, that’s, like, £20 a finger!’ I cringe now, but that was my world.
The expression on her face said, ‘I’ve just found a contributor.’
When she left, she told me not to get my hopes up because there were thousands of people left to see. ‘Realistically you probably won’t be selected. Thank you for your time, blah, blah, blah.’
I wasn’t listening, though. I’m going to India, I thought. There’s just no way that they’re not going to take me.
My mother gave me a lot of confidence as I was growing up. She went the extra mile to fuss me and tell me how brilliant and capable I was. ‘You can achieve anything,’ she’d say, and I believed her. She was fiercely loving and loyal.
Eventually I got a phone call saying, ‘You’re down to the last few, but the channel have asked me to explain to you that this is really going to be quite tricky. It will be very immersive and as real and close to the workers’ lives as possible, so you’ll be spending a month in sweatshops and you’ll have to sleep under the sewing machines. You might see things that are quite upsetting. How do you feel about that?’
‘Yes, no problem I can handle it,’ I said.
I had no idea.
They invited me along to the production company to speak to the executive producer. Walking into the office was like entering a new world, a different life. The producer had his feet on the table and was on his Blackberry throughout the meeting. There were five other people in the room asking things like, ‘Why do you think you’d be good for this?’ They put me through the mill.
I got a phone call a few days later saying, ‘We’d love you to come to India. How do you feel about that?’
My heart leapt. ‘Really delighted!’
The next thing I knew I was on my way to Heathrow with my bags.
I didn’t have a privileged upbringing, but I was very fortunate compared to a lot of people. I was brought up in Luton and for a long time it was just me and my mother. My father is dead now, but he was never on the scene. My mum sort of knew that was going to be the case, so I didn’t take his name. That’s why I’m Stacey Dooley – Dooley is my mother’s name.
My father had his demons; our relationship was difficult and fractured. But I don’t ever think, Poor me. I just feel blessed that I had my mother. She was such a great mum. She went above and beyond to make up for the fact I didn’t have two parents. I was very lucky.
My mum is so badass, so rad; she’s so, so lovely. Growing up, I never went without – and the reason I didn’t was because for a long time she had nothing nice. She sheltered me from a lot of what was going on and it’s only now that I’m an adult that I recognise what she did for me, and how ridiculous her finances must have been. She was working really shitty jobs, doing really shitty hours for shitty money, but she did it because she was my mum. I will always be eternally grateful for that. And perhaps I don’t tell her enough.
We lived in a really crap flat for a long time. We only got out of there when my mum took a photo of me in my nappy holding a mouse that I’d found and sent it to the council. Then we were lucky enough to get a council house. Eventually she met a man – my stepfather, Norman – and they had a child, my sister. He’s been a beautiful father to her and a great influence on me so it’s all worked out, but it was hard for us. It was not OK for a long time. So I’m not from a kind of perfect 2.4-children family setup in any way, but I’m also not someone who feels hard done by. I think that’s why I never try to be too judgemental and write people off.
I was a bit of a nightmare from the age of 13. My mum says it was like I woke up one morning and turned into a devil. I was really wild. I had no interest in school; I found it boring. I remember thinking, I just don’t want to do this.
I was the pits. I started bunking off and went robbing with my mates in town, stealing blue eyeliner and Morgan tops from Debenhams. If my mother had known half of the things I was up to, she would have killed me or had a breakdown. I was awful. She would have been so disappointed.
I left school at 15, didn’t collect my GCSEs, didn’t even do a lot of them, which is again really awful. I never went to college, never went to university. Never did anything like that. My first job after I left school was waitressing for £3 an hour.
I was a late bloomer for sure.
Going to India was huge. I soon realised that I’d underestimated what the trip was going to involve and the kinds of questions that were going to be thrown up as a result. It was surreal from the start: I was desperate for the loo when I got off the plane in Delhi, but when I got to the toilets there was just a hole in the floor. It’s totally standard to me now, but it threw me the first time. I was thinking, How am I going to do this for the next month?
Leaving the airport, I was blown away by the colours, the smell and the madness of Delhi. I remember seeing a cow in the middle of the road and thinking how bizarre it was. ‘Why isn’t anyone moving the cow?’ I wondered.
‘Cows are sacred to Hindus,’ someone explained. ‘They are incredibly well respected here.’
But it’s just getting in the way, I thought.
Meanwhile, I was trying to work out who all the characters were – from the TV crew to the other five other contributors – and we were being filmed all the while, which felt quite intrusive. It was hot, I was hungry. There was so much going on.
We were six incredibly fortunate, privileged people who were taken right out of our comfort zone and thrown into a tough, chaotic existence. The idea was that we would live alongside the garment workers whose lives and jobs we were going to share, so the taxi from the airport took us straight to one of the poorest areas of New Delhi, where we stayed with a factory supervisor and his family. Their home was super basic because they were earning just enough to survive.
The next day we went to the factory, where 4,000 workers were turning out 10,000 garments a day for British high-street stores. It was a far cry from a sweatshop, but we weren’t prepared for how hard you had to work to earn less than £2 a day. There were so many rules and regulations. You couldn’t get up from your seat or go to the toilet without asking permission first. You couldn’t chat. You couldn’t relax for a moment. It was a hard slog and almost impossible to live on the wages. Forget being able to afford the clothes we were making – you couldn’t buy anything apart from the basics. When we went to the shops after the first day, a small deodorant cost more than a day’s wages.
Things got harder as the weeks went by. We ended up working 15 to 18-hour days in hot, dirty factories and sweatshops. Sometimes we slept on the floor under the sewing machines. About halfway through the trip, I was really sick – so ill that I was on my hands and knees on the pavement. Our lovely fixer held my ponytail while I threw up on the streets of Delhi, thinking, Help, I’m going to die in India!
A month is a long time to be away from your family when you’re young. OK, I wasn’t a kid anymore but at 19 you’re still trying to work out who you are and I felt homesick. We spent some time in Delhi and then the rest of the time in and around Mumbai, where we were taken to Dharavi – the largest slum in Asia at the time, where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed. It was filthy, with open sewers running through the streets, houses built on top of houses and people living in ruins. Some of the kids I met there were starving or had broken bones. Some of them were being forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day. It was horrific, beyond belief, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was never a nasty or unkind kid up until that point, I just didn’t really ever think about anything or anyone else, because my entire existence was Luton and England. Of course I saw kids living in poverty on the news and knew there were people in India and elsewhere who were struggling. But it felt so far away and so far removed from my life. It’s not at the forefront of your mind until you’re sitting in front of a skeletal, starving child whose hands are bleeding from the work she’s being forced to do. At that point, you’d have to be a monster not to think, This is awful. What can we do collectively as decent human beings to stop it happening?
One day we visited a home for kids who had been rescued from sweatshops in Mumbai. There was one lad I’ll never forget. He sat down and showed me a box that had all of his gear in it – everything he owned – which amounted to a couple of T-shirts, some colouring pens and a toy. He had nothing else. It wasn’t something that worked well for television – that was it. He was only tiny but he was very matter-of-fact about his life. He didn’t know where his mother was, his dad had given him away and he had been sewing for as long as he could remember. He was rescued from a factory where the manager beat him up. It was very, very tragic.
Listening to him, I felt overwhelmed. I started crying my eyes out, especially when I realised that it wasn’t just an isolated case. It was the norm for loads of kids in this particular part of India. It sounds cheesy, but it was a lightbulb moment for me. Christ, I thought. We are so lucky back in the UK. I was already missing things like toilet roll, hot water and soap and food that isn’t going to make you throw up. I was pining for home but then I thought, I’ve only got to do this for another three weeks; this is their reality.
I had so much and was so greedy – and yet I wasn’t a bad person. I was at that age when you go to work, get your wages, go out on the Friday and probably come back on a Sunday; you’ve worn all your gear and you start again. Then suddenly I was shown a completely different world that I was a part of, without knowing it. Until then I hadn’t thought about where my clothes were coming from or how they were made. Now I instantly started to look at things differently. It opened my eyes.
The first overriding emotion is guilt – a sort of Western guilt – because you think, I have so much and I am so unappreciative at times. You see these folks who have nothing, and they’re so giving and they will include you in any way they can, despite everything. It makes you just feel terrible. You think: I’m so awful, I’ve got to change. I’ve got to learn from this, I’ve got to be more like you.
The crew made sure we had a hard time because they needed decent telly. I remember one of the lads kicking off big time while the cameras were on him. He was saying things like, ‘This place is a shithole! You’ve done this on purpose. You want a reaction – well, here it is.’
It was so uncool. I was dying of embarrassment. He was saying it in front of the Indian people who all live there.
Mind you, we all had our ups and downs. If I watched the series back now I know I’d be cringing at myself, at this leery, gobby lunatic from Luton who didn’t know how to respond or behave. I had some funky outfit choices going on as well but I really thought I looked the part. I remember thinking, Fucking hairstyle is brilliant. These outfits are great. I look awesome. But watching it back I know I’d think, Kill me now!
It’s funny, because prior to going to India, I’d never had any real desire or aspiration to be on television. But while I was there I found I really enjoyed being filmed, going through the sequences, meeting the contributors and finding out about other people’s lives. I learned so much.
Then I started noticing that every time the crew needed a piece to camera or an opinion, they would go to me. I can definitely do this, I thought excitedly. Perhaps they’re going to ask me to do some more presenting after this!
Who did I think I was? I was really young and inexperienced! I had no reason to be so cocky.
The flight home was the longest I’d ever been on, and I had mad jetlag on my first night back at my mum’s house where I was living at the time. I just couldn’t sleep. I felt I’d been on an emotional rollercoaster. I lay in the bed thinking, That was all just so unbelievable!
I sat up. Here I am in my comfy bed, I thought, but what about the boy at the orphanage and the girl with the bleeding hands? The thoughts were rushing through my head: I want to do something to help them. I want to do my bit.
I racked my brains for ideas and then suddenly it came to me. My twentieth birthday was coming up; I would ask the kids at the orphanage to draw some pictures and I would auction them at my birthday party. We’ll go for a curry, I decided. I’ll give the curry house a couple of hundred quid and they’ll put some food on. We’ll sell the pictures and then we’ll give all the money back to the orphanage, back to the kids.
I got in touch with the production company, and explained. ‘I’d love to do this. Can you let me know how to get in touch with the orphanage?’
They were very supportive. ‘We’d like to film it, if that’s possible?’
‘No problem,’ I said.
We raised over £500 for the kids that day and I gave my birthday money too. It wasn’t much, but I knew it would make a huge difference to the orphanage.
Meanwhile, I think my mum was thinking, What the hell is going on? Where has my devil child gone?
I went back to waitressing and started campaigning; I wrote to organisations and shops where I loved to spend my money. ‘I’ve just come back from India,’ I said. ‘I am a consumer and if you want me to spend my money with you, you have to ensure that the workplace conditions of the people who make your clothes are up to standard.’
Quite who I thought I was, I don’t know. I was writing to these multimillion-pound corporations, saying, ‘If you want my business [which was probably about £40 a month] then you’re going to have to tell me that you’re not using children in your factories.’
Very few of them got back to me.
Then the production company rang to say that Newsnight had invited me on – my first live telly gig. Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts was being heavily trailed and I think the channel was quite excited about it.
‘Yes, that’s cool,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’
Obviously I had never watched Newsnight. I didn’t have a clue about its style and tone, or how much of a hard time Jeremy Paxman gave the guests and politicians.
I rang my mum. ‘Mum, I’m going to be on Newsnight.’
‘What?!!’ she spluttered.
‘Yes, I’m going to talk about globalisation and our shopping habits and how we can change as consumers.’
‘You’re mental,’ she said. ‘Jeremy Paxman is going to tear chunks out of you! I think you’d better watch it before you say yes.’
I googled Newsnight. ‘Hmm, I see.’
But I can’t be a wimp, I thought. I feel fairly comfortable about what I believe, so I’m just going to say yes and see how it goes.
On the day, Georgina, one of the other contributors on Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts, and I were ushered into the studio. Paxman was very sweet to us – really lovely, in fact – but he seemed to think my name was Racey. ‘I’m Stacey,’ I said.
A little later, he called me Racey again.
I was thinking, Shit, don’t get that wrong because we’re about to go live and you’re going to call me Racey.
Just before we went live, I said to him, ‘Look, Jeremy, I know you can sometimes give people a hard time, but don’t try it with me.’
He must have thought, Who on earth is this leery girl that they’ve wheeled in front of me?
But he leant over and winked at me and he said, ‘I only give you a hard time if you’re a politician.’
I really enjoyed it in the end!
Nothing much happened after that. I was broke, and I got a job working in a clothes shop, Jigsaw, in St Albans. Then I started working in a pub in the evening as well. At one point I had three jobs: I was working in Jigsaw, in another shop called the Dressing Room and at the pub.
I didn’t mind it. It was always exciting when the deliveries came in and all the new gear arrived. I’d put something aside and then I’d have nothing left from my wages because I’d spent it all! I loved the camaraderie of working with the other girls and really enjoyed interacting with the customers. The best part was helping them sort out their outfits to go to their dos, their weddings and their christenings.
I sometimes miss working in a shop, even now. I was happy. But then Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC3 at the time, asked to see me, and obviously I jumped at the chance. He started things rolling for me.
‘I found you quite inquisitive: you were asking questions and you weren’t worrying about coming across as being stupid,’ he said. ‘You empathised, you sympathised. How would you feel about your own series?’
He was being very brave because I had no experience and was totally unqualified. But he took the risk and commissioned two 60-minute programmes about child labour.
For my first solo gig I went to the Ivory Coast to look at life for children on the cocoa plantations. The idea was that I had been so taken with the lad in the orphanage in India that now I would be looking at the child labour around the world.
It was a nightmare. Africa was on another level; so tough, so relentless. The conditions were horrendous – there were kids working all day to machete cocoa pods off the trees and some of them were missing limbs. Survival was a constant struggle for them. Ironically they had never tasted chocolate, the end product of cocoa, and they weren’t into it at all when I gave them some to sample. They couldn’t understand the fascination people have with it.
I lived with an amazing family – Suzanne and her nine children. They lived in mud huts literally hours away from roads and towns. It was incredibly rural and remote. I quickly grew close to them all, even though they all spoke French and my French was terrible. Suzanne was really beautiful; she was a loving, selfless woman living a simple, basic existence. I gave her a bottle of perfume when I arrived and it instantly became a precious possession.
Their first language was Swahili and it was really funny when they spoke it among themselves because whenever they said my name, they said it how I say it, in a Luton accent. So it would be ‘Swahili, Swahili, Stacey.’ Sometimes the crew couldn’t contain themselves. They found it hilarious.
I remember asking Suzanne how many kids she had, when we first sat down to do an interview. ‘I’ve got ten,’ she said. ‘Nine are black and one is white.’
‘One is white?’ I said.
She smiled. ‘You are one of my babies now,’ she said with total sincerity. ‘You are here, in my home; you’re one of mine.’
She was so maternal. When I gashed my knee and ankle one day she tried her best to fix me and sort me out. She even got out her precious bottle of perfume and tipped it all over the wounds.
‘Argh!’ I screamed. The pain was terrible.
The filming days were really long, tiring and hard but the evenings were blissful. One of Suzanne’s sons, Paul, was trying to learn English; every night around the campfire we would go through the French-to-English dictionary and he would ask me how to say things in English. It was really back to basics.
One evening, Paul said to me, ‘Can I come to England. Is it a possibility?’
Oh no! I thought, I can’t promise you anything. The likelihood is that you’ll never leave this place.
‘You never know what’s going to happen, who knows?’ I said, feeling sad for him. His dream was to get out of his depressing circle of poverty, go to a place like England and be able to earn real money.
A few days into the trip, I started feeling quite ill. I couldn’t swallow. My tummy was upset. I felt weak and feverish. I tried not to worry, because everyone was saying, ‘There’s no way it’s malaria, man; it’s too quick. Malaria takes at least nine days.’
‘OK, cool,’ I said, trying to play it down. I thought they wouldn’t want to work with me again if I got sick on the first ever trip for the show.
The next day we met a Lebanese family who owned a massive cocoa factory in the economic capital, Abidjan. The father had private health care and he sent his son to my hotel to see if I was OK.
The son turned out to be quite handsome. When he asked about my symptoms, I felt embarrassed telling him I had the shits. On top of everything else! He sent along their doctor who did a blood test and diagnosed malaria. What are the chances? On my first solo job? I was so unlucky.
I now know many people who have had malaria, but at the time I thought it was a death sentence. No! This is awful! I thought. I’m going to die, I’m going to die in Africa. In the drama of the moment I threw my arms around the director, who wasn’t a particularly emotional or tactile person. ‘Get the hell off me!’ he snapped. Poor guy – he’s actually a good friend now.
I was taken to the nearest hospital and put on a drip. Everyone around me was speaking French. I lay in bed that first night feeling desperately sorry for myself. It was a night of real ups and downs. At one point a baby was born in the next-door room. I could hear it crying and the mother was so, so thrilled that her baby was fine. Meanwhile I felt really frightened and alone, going in and out of consciousness, convinced I was on the verge of dying. When you’re that ill, you don’t know what is real or if you’re hallucinating, and whether you’re making any sense. It was really bizarre. I’ve never felt so ill.
When I didn’t respond to the drip, the insurers flew me in an air ambulance to Ghana, where at least they spoke English. ‘Don’t tell my mum because she’ll go loopy,’ I told everyone. ‘She will be so concerned that she’ll drive herself insane.’
There was a flashing ambulance waiting for me when the aeroplane landed in Ghana and I was rushed to a hospital in Accra. After that, I seemed to hear Celine Dion singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ everywhere I went – in the hospital, in the hotel, in the car. It was on loop throughout the entire country and I thought, Christ, if malaria doesn’t kill me, this song will.
When I got a bit stronger, they flew me to London. Our fixer went back to Suzanne and her family and said, ‘She’s not being rude. She’s just not very well. They’re going to fly her back in a few weeks to continue the filming.’
Suzanne was so concerned about me that she sent Paul to a market hours away on his pushbike to buy a phone card so that they could ring to see how I was doing.
‘Suzanne has used her life savings to buy this phone card because she wants to know how you are,’ the fixer told me when he rang.
Wow, what a woman! I thought. How can you care so much for somebody that you’ve just met? How can you be willing to part with everything you own, literally, to make that call? What about that?
It took a couple of months to get better and then I went back to the Ivory Coast to finish the documentary. ‘Stacey, my baby!’ Suzanne cried out when she saw me.
She was incredible, so kind – your archetypal earth mother.
For the first few years doing telly, I was still working in pubs and in shops, because I wasn’t earning loads. It was only two or three weeks filming here and there. That was how it worked out for the first few years, until I was about 25.
People were really surprised when they came into the pub and I served them. ‘I think I’ve seen you on telly, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, you probably have,’ I’d say.
‘Why are you working here?’ they’d ask. There’s always an assumption that as soon as you’re on the screen you’re rolling in money.
‘I’m broke – that’s why I’m working here,’ I’d laugh. ‘I need to pay my rent.’
I moved out from my mum’s a few years after I got back from India. Then I moved back. Then I moved out again, until slowly I became a bit more settled. Now I’ve got a flat that I share with my boyfriend, Sam, and my dog, Bernie – and a job that takes me all over the world.
Looking back, I always think, Thank God I answered that advert! Thank God my mother showed it to me! Thank God Danny Cohen was at BBC3 at the time, because he changed my whole life. Sometimes I can hardly believe it happened, but the fact is that in the last ten years I’ve made more than 50 documentaries – 70, if you count the films I’ve made for CBBC. I’ve achieved more than I could ever have dreamed of.
I’m under no illusion: I know my life would be completely different if it wasn’t for Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts and Danny Cohen. I would probably still be in Luton, which isn’t a bad thing, but I would never have travelled as much as I have, seeing the world and witnessing things from other people’s point of view. Politically, I might have even voted differently to how I do now, and I think my crowd of friends would have been very different. My morals, my ethics and everything I’ve been through has shaped me and turned me into the woman I am now – but it started with my trip to India, no doubt.
My work has definitely made me less self-obsessed. I’m not perfect – I am still quite vain and love fashion and spend lots of money on myself – but I think I’m a lot less judgemental now, and a lot more open minded and reflective. If I hadn’t left Luton I don’t think I would have grown in the same way – travel is such a brilliant way to challenge yourself and make you think.
On my trips to hostile environments and the poorer parts of the world, I’ve seen that when people are having a tough time, the women are always up against it that bit more than the men. And that’s why I started to focus on the experiences of women around the world in my work. Suzanne in the Ivory Coast was one of the first females who really inspired me – her life was so hard, but she was so strong.
Now, after a decade of making documentaries, it seems like a good time to shine a light on some of the incredible women and characters I’ve met over the years by collecting their stories into a book. A lot of the women I’ve focused on have gone through the mill – they’ve been knocked down so hard that it’s hard to believe they’ve got up again. But they haven’t given up – they keep on going, keep on fighting. It’s so inspiring.
The girls and women I’ve met on my travels in the last ten years have completely moulded me – there’s no question – and I’m so grateful, because they’ve given me a sense of awareness I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Seeing into their lives helps you keep your priorities in check, and that’s something you can’t buy. It’s something that comes with experience and age; it’s a learning process.
I’ve never for a moment thought that single-handedly I could fix things that have been broken for such a long time. But if nobody knows about what’s going on, nothing can change. So in my mind I’ve got to be the woman who stands up and has something to say. Because I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and think, I’ve been true to what I believe in. I’ve said my bit.
You have to be a strong fierce female. The world is tricky and I think if you don’t fight for what you believe in – if you don’t try and be the change that you want to see, however cheesy it sounds – what’s the point? Especially as we live in a country where you’re able to do that without being thrown in jail or persecuted. You have the right, you have your voice – as long as you’re not inciting hatred, you can say whatever you want. Sadly, that’s not the case for so many girls and women across the world.
Thank you for buying this book. I hope the stories and issues you read about will help to inform and inspire change.
Just by knowing about them, you’re helping.
In the summer of 2012, I flew to America to make my first series of Stacey Dooley in the USA, which was a bit of a turning point for me. Although I had already worked on several solo documentaries, until then I hadn’t been massively involved editorially. I was just a presenter and still learning.
My first documentaries were very different from what I’m making now, partly because I didn’t narrate them – instead the producers brought in a male narrator to provide the commentary. I suppose they thought I didn’t have enough credibility to voice the entire film, and in hindsight I agree.
They were thinking, We need an authoritative voice here!
But as I learned more about how television works, I became more capable and comfortable in the job and got more involved in the editing. So I started saying, ‘It’s ridiculous that it’s not my voice narrating, because it’s my journey. It’s my experience.’
I pushed and pushed until gradually I was allowed to start commentating.
I don’t blame the producers for being cautious. Critics were saying that my style was a bit clumsy – and they were absolutely spot on, because it was very clumsy at the start. It was sincere, and there was a real interest and a real appetite to learn and understand, but I didn’t know what I was doing, because I wasn’t a trained journalist. I hadn’t studied media, so I was very unorthodox, and people criticised that. It triggered a lot of self-doubt in me. Anyone who says it doesn’t hurt at the start is lying.
‘Girls Behind Bars’ was the first film in the USA series, and it was the point at which I started to find my feet when it came to understanding what made a good TV documentary. People would disagree with that statement – and did – but for me it was a massive step forward.
It was focused around women in prison in the US; a hardcore topic in a country where more women are locked up than anywhere else in the world. I was going to spend time at two very different institutions to see how they compared. The first was Lakeview Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility, a military-style boot-camp prison in upstate New York, where the inmates go through a ‘shock’ programme aimed at rehabilitating them for the outside world. The second was Bayview Correctional Facility, a regular, medium-security prison in the unusual location of downtown New York, which housed women serving anything from three years to life.
I was feeling quite intimidated. There was so much I didn’t know about the issues and problems faced by women in prison. And the characters I met were quite complicated. For some, being in prison was circumstantial – they were really decent girls who had found themselves in bad situations or been really unlucky: wrong place and time. Other girls were horrendous, violent murderers. What surprised me was who among them I did or didn’t like – and how my beliefs changed during the making of the film.
It all began early one morning as I watched the newest intake of prisoners arrive at Lakeview in upstate New York. From the moment they stepped out of the prison van in handcuffs and leg irons, these women’s lives were totally regimented, army-style. They were divided into platoons and drilled like soldiers, sticking to a super-strict timetable and obeying precise rules and regulations. It felt very American to me – very, ‘Yes, Sir! No, Sir!’ – and a bit over the top. No wonder it was called ‘doing shock’. It looked totally traumatic, like something out of a nightmare.
Lakeview takes prisoners who are facing up to three years in a traditional prison for non-violent crimes, but choose to reduce their sentence to six months of shock. The aim of the Lakeview programme is to ‘shock’ inmates out of criminal behaviour by putting them through a military-style boot camp and to help them learn self-discipline and structure, so that on release they can get back on the right track and stay there. It’s all about breaking negative thought and behaviour patterns, and some of the staff compare it to ‘tough love’.
It’s a voluntary programme that inmates choose to sign up to – and it’s incredibly intensive and challenging, physically and emotionally. Nearly half of the women don’t make it through to the end and are either sent to a traditional prison to serve a longer term or returned to court for resentencing. But the girls who do complete their six months in shock are less likely to reoffend for three years after their release than prisoners in regular prison, and generally less likely to end up in prison again. So something’s working, but what?
On their arrival, the girls were given ugly green uniforms. Then they had their hair buzz cut to a quarter of an inch in length. Some of them had lovely long hair and tears streamed down their cheeks as it fell to the floor. I really felt for them – the haircuts seemed really symbolic to me, almost as if each inmate was being stripped of her individuality and girliness. But I was told that it was done for practical reasons, because they were only allowed three-minute showers.
‘Tell me how to have a shower in three minutes?’ I asked some of the girls as they were queuing up for the bathroom.
‘Put your shampoo in your hair before you go in there,’ one of them said, ‘and rinse off real quick.’
She looked away. If you got caught talking in the queue, your shower time was reduced to one minute. Armpits and fanny, in and out.
Almost all of them were unhappy about it. ‘I want a proper shower. I miss my hair. I’m devastated that I’m not allowed to wear makeup,’ they told me.
But one girl said, ‘I’ve never felt so comfortable. I’m not just gay for the stay, I am a gay woman. I feel much more comfortable with my hair shaved and wearing these conservative overalls.’
She hadn’t felt she could dress to express her sexuality before – but in prison she could.
I spent time with the women who made up G1 platoon. Every morning, when the whistle blew, they had eight minutes to get up, get dressed, make their bed and tidy their locker. They did two hours of exercise before going to breakfast in the canteen, where they had to wait to be told to sit down. They needed permission to talk, wash, eat, go to the toilet, everything. They had eight minutes to eat their food. It was really tough. I don’t think I would have lasted three minutes.
During breakfast on my first day, I noticed one of the newer inmates eating standing up. She told me it was her punishment for not sitting down properly. This was Tiffany; she was 23 and the first prisoner I got really pally with. Tiffany was really hard work. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me for the first day or two. She wouldn’t keep eye contact when we talked and she’d end up snarling at me.
I realised I would have to prove myself to her and the other girls if I was going to get them to open up. But it wasn’t easy being this little white English girl surrounded by all these hard-ass women. I was so inexperienced, and they just weren’t taking me seriously. So I had to be persistent.
I was so persistent.
I kept standing next to Tiffany and saying, ‘You alright?’
She’d be like, ‘Fuck off.’
‘OK,’ I’d say, as if I didn’t take it to heart.
Then slowly she began to thaw.
I remember the moment I finally broke the ice. We were all sitting around a table and one of the girls turned to me and said, ‘Didn’t fancy doing your hair today?’
My hair was in a messy bun with bits falling out. Yes, it did look shit, but when it’s dirty and you’re working you just tie it back, don’t you?
The other girls laughed.
It was just a bit of cheap point scoring and I thought, You cheeky bugger! I’m working hard here …
I don’t know where it came from, but I said, ‘You can fucking talk. You haven’t got any hair. You’ve had all yours shaved off.’
The girls were like, ‘Oh!’
I gulped. But actually, in hindsight, it’s the best thing I could have done because it put us on more of a level playing field and we started getting on. It was the opening of the gate, I suppose. They thought, Oh, OK. She’s got something about her.
Later on, I asked one of the girls, ‘Where are you from?’
‘Brooklyn,’ she said. ‘What do you know about Brooklyn?’
‘Biggie Smalls is from Brooklyn,’ I said.
Their eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh, she knows about The Notorious!’