Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
What is justice? Who does it serve? Why should you care?
When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. Bad people. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, with the government.
We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
News, views and trues from The View Magazine, a social justice and campaigning platform for the rights of women in the justice system.
Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system whether as victims or women who have committed crimes; people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world such as maligned climate justice campaigners.
We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system, with humanity and dignity.
We also speak with people who are in the heart of of the justice system creating important change, climate activists, judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
The View believes that we can rebuild lives with hope, and successfully reintegrate people who have caused harm or been harmed, through the restoring nature of art and creativity, open dialogue and - love.
Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
E. 67 Shackled by Injustice: Farah Damji's Fight Against Cancer and a Broken System
What happens when the justice system turns a blind eye to its own failings? Farah Damji's chilling ordeal exposes a broken system that unjustly punishes the vulnerable. We unravel the disturbing narrative of a woman battling both stage 3 breast cancer and a prison system rigged against her. Despite her legal innocence, Farah faces horrifying neglect and mistreatment, from delayed cancer treatments to the indignity of being shackled during hospital visits. Her story is compounded by the manipulations of her ex-partner, Nigel Gould-Davis, whose abusive actions are alarmingly overlooked by the legal system. Engage with us as we shine a light on these systemic injustices and urge action through spreading awareness and contacting MPs with the hashtag #WomenVTheState.
As we journey through the harsh realities of the UK's flawed prison and healthcare systems, we expose the gross inadequacies in medical care and the unyielding challenges faced while pursuing justice. The CNWL NHS Foundation Trust's failings, the abuse of legal processes, and the deplorable prison conditions all contribute to a narrative of neglect and abuse. Through the lens of Farah's experiences, we challenge listeners to confront these issues head-on and advocate for change. Join the Rebel Justice Podcast and the View magazine in amplifying the voices of women like Farah, who are trapped in a system that should protect them, but instead, empowers their oppressors.
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Welcome to the View magazine's Rebel Justice podcast. This episode provides an eyewitness account of life in prison on remand so therefore legally innocent with aggressive stage 3 breast cancer. It's our society's dirty secret that our prison system, particularly the women's estate, is broken, dysfunctional and harmful. Three days before her trial at Wood Green Crown Court, Farah Damji has been dumped with 2,500 pages of telephone evidence and messages from her ex-partner's phone. Despite asking for this information in March, Nigel Gould-Davis has refused to provide his phone data in this case until yesterday, Two weeks after the officer in the case, Yasmin Rinsler, lied to the court and said the data would be sent to her defence team on 25 October.
THE VIEW:The police have released Gore Davis's Police National Computer background, which confirms he has previous for abusing another former partner, a South Korean PhD student from UCL whose property he tried to keep. Similar situations arose across Europe with another ex, Amal Labianchi, and students from Harvard and Oxford, where he was a tutor. Gould Davis claims he is a victim of domestic abuse, yet he's being investigated by Islington Police for coercive control and gravious bodily harm on Farah. He refuses to hand over his medical records, as he claims he's suffering from trauma and depression. So far, the officer in the case and the CPS solicitor have avoided dealing with this elephant in the room that these mental health conditions are pre-existing for many years.
THE VIEW:Too often, men who are repeat, serious serial offenders will use the courts to try and oppress silence and, in this case, even kill the women they've targeted. Imagine going through all of this stress and pressure while dealing with a serious breast cancer diagnosis and being told every single day that you need to start chemotherapy, but being too afraid to start it in the prison. In this situation, the Crown Court has bent over backwards to accommodate the CPS, ignoring the cancer diagnosis and the need for urgent treatment. We're highlighting this case as it shows clearly the way the state supports men who are abusers and perpetrators of violence against women in malicious prosecutions, using every tool in its arsenal, From lazy and corrupt police officers.
THE VIEW:A broken court system in which Crown Court judges indulge and pander to the CPS is nonsense. The agencies of the state bring in the prosecution. The CPS Women will fight back. So share your stories with the View using the hashtag WomenBeTheState. Write to us and write to your MP to ask the Justice Minister to intervene in misplacement, abuse of process against a woman who is ill, vulnerable, imprisoned and doesn't have time to waste with the games that are being played with her life.
FARAH:My name's Farrah, I'm 57 and I was diagnosed with stage 3 HER2, that's the number 2 type aggressive breast cancer in September 2023. I'm a woman who's in prison at HMP Bronzefield. I don't have a release date. It's been impossible to get bail. The police are saying they don't have my passport, but they've lost it. The court refused £10,000 cash bail, saying that, although it recognized that I wouldn't get optimal healthcare in prison for cancer, no conditions would satisfy the court. What's the point of the bail act then ? Reminding women with serious breast cancer is like a death sentence when I've not been found guilty of anything.
FARAH:I fell bump in my armpit while I was showering. It wasn't there one day and then it was there the next. My GP was brilliant. She referred me to the two-week breast cancer pathway straight away, but waiting for the appointment for two weeks and then two weeks after for the results were like torture. I was reminded in March following false allegations from my ex saying I'd harassed and stolen from him, where the police had provided no evidence at all, just photos of texts and messages. My operation was a triple lumpectomy on the left side where the cancer was, and reduction mammoplasty on the right side to make sure that my breasts were the same size. This was delayed because I'd been remanded. It took 13 hours and immediately I woke up from general anesthetic I find myself chained 24 hours for 7 days a week to a prison guard. They sat in my room, used their mobile phones, photographed me and treated my hospital room like their rec room or canteen. After three weeks of being chained like a dog, my brilliant solicitor threatened the director of this privately run prison with a high court action for unlawful restraint. As no risk assessment had been done, the chains came off immediately. The guards had to sit outside the hospital room and wear a mask when they came in. But I contracted four infections in hospital due to the general lack of hygiene, both nurses, hca's and officers, including Morganelli, which is a life-threatening infection for someone with reduced immunity. Then Morehouse and the security department at the prison made it as difficult as possible. I couldn't see or call my family or friends for the first six weeks and I stayed at UCLH for three months getting more and more ill. I'd find more operations as the wounds became repeatedly infected and had to be debrided. I had a panoramic view of London from my seventh-in-store window in the tower building on Euston Road. I could see the Tate and the South Bank Centre on the left, mi5 directly across from me and Elizabeth Tower on the houses of Parliament slightly to the right.
FARAH:But I was being held hostage and prisoner at one of the world's top university hospitals, unable to access fresh air because the security manager, Michelle Brown, refused to send me closer in the prison and the hospital wouldn't let me go outside in the hospital nightgown. It took the direct intervention from my consultant, mr Bettel, and solicitor to force the private prisons to act according to the law and with decency. I could hardly even get outside. I had to use a wheelchair for fresh air and to help with my mental health and mobility. We pretend in England to be a world-class democracy, the bastion of human rights, but life is a shiny city with so much wealth and power, but women like me who are not found guilty of any crime are chained like animals or slaves from another age.
FARAH:The prison environment, especially in a private prison like Bronzefield, run by Sodexo, a French catering company which cares only about its bottom line and returning a profit for shareholders it's not an appropriate environment for cancer patients. The prison looked at my medical team and said they could manage the complex wound aftercare at a secret meeting on the 24th of July. I wasn't involved in any of the discharge planning and they didn't follow their own safeguarding procedures. They have a duty not to discharge patients to somewhere where they will be unsafe or in an unhealthy environment. The prison lied. It said everything was in place a clean cell, a space. But when I was unexpectedly coasted back to Brunswick the next day it was no notice and six prison officers and a governor standing at the bottom of my bed. Nothing was ready.
FARAH:I won House Block 4, supposed to be the enhanced block, but if the head of the house block is not here, absolutely nothing happens. I was put in a filthy cell and immediately contracted another infection. The shower is disgusting and has black mold everywhere. Under the social care act I should be getting support from a social worker from Surrey Council as a surgeon. Both sides have left severe scarring and tissue damage. I can't clean or mop the floor. This is still not in place. I have to begarring and tissue damage. I can't clean or mop the floor. This is still not in place. I have to beg other prisoners to help me.
FARAH:The quality of prison officers is awful. All the experienced ones are left. It really is people who are uneducated or couldn't get a job in the real economy and they have insufficient training, which is not their fault. The churn of prison officers here and the burnout is the highest that it's ever been. I have an important case against the Ministry of Justice about 15 and a half months on roll for re-court and I'm not getting my post from the court to be able to comply with the judge's orders. They keep on trying to get it struck out, but I'm not getting my post so I can't meet deadlines. I was told by an officer this morning I should wait three or four months for the postman security to give me my post. This wouldn't be that difficult in the community. Can you imagine the uproar In here?
FARAH:The rules only apply if the prison service wants them to. I've had money go missing, stolen by a guard from the hospital bed. Watch, which the prison initially denied having it, now is insisting that because it doesn't take cash, I have to get get it sent out, although I need it in here for phone calls and essentials. All my clothes were stolen while I lost my phone. I still don't have a proper diet. No complaints are ever responded to properly by the prison, if at all, and there appears to be little or no proper oversight of the contract from the Ministry of Justice by the Home Office Controller who runs the prison to ensure the rules are being followed. I'm not really sure what he does.
FARAH:I refuse to go to any hospital appointments in chains because managers like Mark Hodges insist I have to be chained during H2S examinations with a guard standing over me. It's humiliating and it's against the law. If they could be bothered to undertake proper risk assessment, they'd know. The prison policy framework is very clear Unless a person with cancer or an end-of-life patient has escaped lawful custody, committed murder or is a risk to the public. They couldn't be chained. The director at Bronshall doesn't seem to care about any of this and it takes threats of legal action to make him comply. I have a substantial claim for damages against Bronshall for unlawful restraint and assault, but that won't bring back the really important events that I've missed, that I wouldn't have been able to attend even with cancer if I was in the community, such as my daughter graduating from university and my self-engagement. I've been denied the complementary therapies I connected every day that I was remanded. In March, even while I was at the hospital, I was able to get Reiki and aromatherapy massages, but the prisoners obstructed manuka honey and essential oils, even though I paid for these myself and they've helped me greatly with my recovery.
FARAH:The health care here is run by CNWL NHS Foundation Trust and it's a nurse net. There isn't a full-time GP, so no one is responsible for the treatment of patients. We have 10 rotating GPs who are generally on health lines. We don't care about our well-being. They tell us everything is down to our mental health. There are never enough nurses on the house block and at night after 7pm there's one nurse for the whole prison population, which is over 540. These are not even properly trained nurses, they're HCA. These are nurses, according to Dr Amanda Brown, who was the prison GP at Bronzefield, who would never gain employment in a reputable trust. She wrote about this early in her three books about how healthcare at Bronzefield is failing vulnerable women.
FARAH:Nurses who were not trained in wound care were tasked with changing my dressing, with dirty hands and no regard to personal hygiene, let alone washing their hands or wearing gloves, but it seems to change my dressing with dirty hands and no regard to personal hygiene, let alone washing their hands or wearing gloves. They refuse to change my dressing and throw advantages at me, saying I should do it myself. When it's been sore and blisters have popped on the newly granulated skin from where the wound is healing after infection, they refuse to give me pain medication when I'm still in constant pain and without consulting my own medical team. The government has outsourced prison healthcare contracts to NHS Foundation, trust and private health companies such as Virgin and Care UK, which run with zero patient accountability. Cnwl doesn't bother to respond to complaints and nothing ever changes.
FARAH:The food is good. I'm not getting the nutrients I need. The prison GP that I saw, doesn't think that there is a cancer diet prescribed by the NHS, when there clearly is. He thinks that fish in oil are considered oily fish. I can't deal with this level of ignorance. I spent some of my cancer diagnosis the last time I had to go to the hospital. They were all free to see if I needed a skin graft, but the operations team forgot to book a taxi skin graft. The operations team forgot to put a taxi, so I sat in the reception area when prisoners were accessing Hep C and HIV for up to three hours. The prisoner promised the hospital that I would not be around other prisoners. They're just completely incompetent.
FARAH:I got the all clear from a CT scan last week so no cancer showed up in the imaging. I didn't need to have chemotherapy or my chances of survival for the next five years with surgery only are just 33%. My oncologist is piling on the pressure to get the chemo, but her septin and Fezgo, two of the chemo drugs that I'll have to take in a 65-week treatment plan, have serious side effects, such as neuropathy and damage to my heart, as well as extreme fatigue, joint pain, hair loss and extremely low immunity, which will increase the risk of infection and neutropenic sepsis requiring immediate hospitalization for treatment. I'm not putting my hands in the. I'm not putting my life in the hands of these buffoons. I can't risk it. I've seen how they've almost killed a woman with stage four stomach cancer. They can't manage her chemo here. They can't even give her oral chemo to have the 12 hours of heart which is essential and they left her to rot recently when she got sepsis and liver damage. I just can't take those risks. It was a year until they took her to hospital. So by the time she got to hospital she got done, but she already had days full of stuff. This is completely avoidable.
FARAH:I'm angry. I'm angry. We should want to move the Justice Minister, his constituent. I was and it was so helpful to me in the past. I did a genuine speech today about wanting to reduce the number of women in prisons and close down all women's prisons. Raymond's very hollow. She's heard about my case. I've reached out to her and her team directly as my MP and the Justice Minister. She, her and her team directly as my MPE and the Justice Minister. She ignores me. I'm angry with Judge Dodd at Woodbury Crown Court, who has an audacity to find a video link on the 4th of September, but I look in remarkably fine form. I should have lifted up my t-shirt and shown him the angry scars, infected breasts and swollen armpits. I didn't know he had a psych hospital.
FARAH:As an oncologist, I'm fed up with the British justice system. They've been in the army for six and a half months on no evidence, just the ratting of the material of these women. The police are aware of him but have taken his bizarre, docile allegations at face value and lied to the court about the risks that I pose to the public. Just to keep me reminded, the justice system doesn't do anything about the number of women in prison, but critical will isn't there.
FARAH:Emptying prisons is not a vote now. Judges need to be properly trained, more diverse and in touch and understand that compassion and mercy are important elements of our justice system. At present they're entirely lacking. It can't just be all about imagined risk, paranoid public protection and sentencing women who are very ill to death when we've not even been convicted. There's boundary judges who are not regulated and wish to punish women, especially minoritized women, who receive harsher and longer sentences than our white counterparts because we're seen as doubly deviant. Ultimately, this judge and the justice minister were responsible for my death. Every day that I have to start chemotherapy, the clock of my life is literally ticking down and death approaches closer. Because the court feels that the bail conditions have been sufficient, then the court system, the bail act act and the entire British justice system are useless and broken. Why not just stop this pretext of justice and send women with cancer straight?
FARAH:to the gas chamber. That's more honest than this justice for sale illusion.
THE VIEW:And
THE VIEW:this is our podcast for today. We are the Rebel Justice Podcast, brought to you by the View magazine, an independent media platform by and for women in the justice system. For more about the View, please check out our website at theviewmagorguk. You will find us on ex-formerly Twitter at Rebel Justice, and on Facebook and Instagram as the View Magazines. On LinkedIn, we are the View magazine. Please like and subscribe to the show. We rely on your support and please do leave us a nice review if you like what you heard and found it informative. Thank you.
