Rebel 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. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, and with the government.
We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system whether as victims or women who have committed crimes; or people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world..
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 the justice system creating important change; climate activists, judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
Rebel Justice
E. 85: Farah Damji Launches High Court Appeal Which Could Change the English Justice System
What happens when a woman who gives voice to the voiceless becomes the target of the very system she criticises? Farah Damji's story challenges everything we believe about justice, compassion, and human dignity in modern Britain.
Farah—a mother, editor, writer, and fierce advocate for women in prison—founded The View magazine in 2020 to amplify the stories of women caught in the criminal justice system. Now she finds herself fighting not only stage three breast cancer but also appealing a six-year sentence handed down in what her legal team describes as a profoundly flawed trial.
The details are harrowing. After a 13-hour cancer surgery, Farah was shackled to prison guards around the clock for 23 days—while showering, using the toilet, even during wound dressing with her breasts exposed. She missed 22 vital hospital appointments because Sodexo ltd which runs HMOP Bronzefield and CNWL NHS Foundation Trust failed to take her to hospital and never managed to put in place a proper CarePlan so she can commence chemotherapy and radiotherapy due to negligence and malicious misconduct by prison director, Charlotte Wilson and acting deputy director, Angie Dench. The prison couldn't arrange escorts, claiming they did not have 2 female escort staff available, so Sharon Milliken refused to sign off the prison escort risk assessment, dropping her survival prognosis to just 20%. Despite her surgeon pleading for her release to access treatment and also 30,000 cash bail put out by her family, judges at Wood green Crown court denied bail four times.
Her application for leave to appeal both convictions and sentence, including disclosure failures, judicial misconduct, and the weaponization of stalking laws against a woman.
Sign the petition to stop the torture of women with cancer at HMP Bronzefield: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-torture-of-women-with-cancer-at-hmp-bronzefield
Sign the petition to demand the removal of Judge Joanna Greenberg to safeguard women and girls: https://www.change.org/p/demand-the-removal-of-judge-joanna-greenberg-to-safeguard-women-and-girls
Credits
Producers: Nico Rivosecchi & Charlotte Janes
Editor: Nico Rivosecchi
Soundtrack: Particles (Revo Main Version) by [Coma-Media]
Download Issue 14 of The View Magazine to read the full article here: https://theviewmag.org.uk/product/the-view-issue-14/
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you're listening to rebel justice, the podcast from the view magazine. When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else somewhere else, but justice and the law regulates every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organizations and with the government. We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone close. 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. We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system with humanity and dignity. We also speak of people who are in the heart of the justice system, creating important change Judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers. Today, we return to the case of writer and activist Farah Damji. Farah is many things a mother, a publisher, a fierce advocate for women in prison, but she is also living with stage three breast cancer. And yet she has spent more than a year on remand without trial and is now appealing a six-year sentence handed down in July 2025. Her story is complex, it is painful and it is urgent because at the heart of this case are questions of fairness, compassion and how our justice system treats women, particularly women of colour, women with trauma and women who dare to speak out. Farah Damji has been a fawn in the side of the establishment for years. Farah Damji has been a fawn in the side of the establishment for years. As the founder of the View magazine and as the original creator of this very podcast, she gave women in the criminal justice system a platform to tell their stories. She's written about human rights, mental health and the brutality of our prisons, but Farrah has also been relentlessly targeted by that same system. She has faced repeated prosecutions, many of them collapsing. When she tried to challenge unfair detention through habeas corpus applications, the courts placed her under MAPA restrictions, conditions normally reserved for terrorists and violent offenders. Police officers even visited her friends and associates, handing out propaganda documents that implied sinister risks, without making any concrete allegations. This was her pattern Surveillance, harassment and punishment far beyond the scale of her offences. And yet, despite everything, Farah kept working. She relaunched the View. She reopened this podcast. She even started a cafe in King's Cross. Who had planned to set up a pro bono legal centre for women.
Host:But then her life took another turn. Farah was diagnosed with aggressive stage 3 breast cancer. Doctors said she needed urgent surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Instead, she found herself behind bars. After a 13-hour operation she woke up chained to prison guards. For the next 23 days, from the 21st of April to the 13th of May 2024, she was shackled around the clock in the shower on the toilet, even while her wounds were being dressed, with her breasts exposed.
Host:Sometimes she was cuffed to female officers, but sometimes to male. She repeatedly told staff that this was degrading, frightening and dangerous to her recovery. She was denied access to fresh air for 17 days. And here's the thing the rules are crystal clear. A policy framework introduced in September 2022 states that unnecessary handcuffing during hospital treatment can breach human rights laws. Necessary handcuffing during hospital treatment can breach human rights laws. That guidance is based on the Graham Judgment of 2007, where the courts found that unjustified restraint could violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the absolute ban on torture or inhumane and degrading treatment. In other words, chaining a cancer patient to her bed after surgery wasn't just harsh, it may well have been unlawful.
Host:This all came to a head on the 20th of May. A guard Manpreet tried to double cuff Farah without reason. Nurses intervened. They said Farah hadn't been rude as claimed, but that the officer had been aggressive. A duty doctor had to be called on a Sunday night in a busy London hospital to stop the double cuffing, warning that it would damage her healing wounds. Meanwhile the guards treated her room like a staff canteen, eating takeaways throughout the night. One officer's food smelled so strongly that it made Farrah wake up and vomit. Another time she woke to find a guard named Richard photographing her in bed. Eventually she couldn't take any more.
Host:Her solicitor, Simon Natas, sent a pre-action letter to Jonathan French, the then-director of Bronzefield Prison. He threatened legal action unless the chains were removed and that the officers stopped sitting inside her hospital room. Farah missed 22 hospital appointments because the prison couldn't arrange escorts appointments. Because the prison couldn't arrange escorts, judges denied her bail four times, despite her surgeon pleading for her release so that she could access treatment. Dr Jake Hard, a senior prison clinician, told the court plainly Farah's chances of radiotherapy while in prison are at zero, and yet the court kept her inside. Farrah herself put it this way contrast that with another case.
Host:Around the same time, a woman facing extradition to Italy was released on compassionate grounds for cancer treatment, but in England compassion was not extended to Farrah. So what led her here? The complainant in this case was Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British diplomat. He accused Farah of stalking, harassment, fraud and theft, but the prosecution's case rested on shaky ground. The key evidence Screenshots of forwarded emails and WhatsApp messages. Gould-Davies refused to hand over his laptop, which could have confirmed whether the emails were genuine, and delayed handling over his phone until just before the trial. Even then, thousands of potentially exorbitant messages were never received. Of potentially exorbitant messages were never received.
Host:Meanwhile, farrah's team presented evidence that she and Gould- Davies were in a consensual relationship. Witnesses saw them together as a couple. Travel records showed that she was in Spain during some of the alleged stalking incidents. Gould-D avies claimed that she went there to stalk his mother, but in fact she went with a friend, dr Miro de Breve, to paint murals at a boutique hotel. The theft allegation, too, is contested. The passport Gould-Davies says was stolen was found among Farrah's personal belongings and never reported stolen until much later. Her legal team calls it a deliberate set, deliberate setup to bolster a fake narrative. Farrah has provided photographs of injuries alleging that Gould Davis assaulted her, including pushing her down a staircase at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. Two of his former partners, jean Lee and Amalia Bianchi, also described similar coercive behaviour, providing statements about emotional manipulation, violence and degrading treatment. These testimonies were available but never fully presented in court. You can hear more about this in episode 77 of this podcast.
Host:Instead, the judge, Joanna Greenberg-Casey, used words like greedy and wicked to describe Farah in her sentencing remarks. She gave zero weight to her diagnoses of PTSD and depression, despite clear sentencing guidelines that require courts to treat mental health as a mitigating factor. And Judge Greenberg has faced criticism before. In a separate case she described a 16-year-old rape victim as having groomed her 42-year-old teacher. Critics argue that this history shows a pattern of prejudice against women in vulnerable situations.
Host:Now Farah's new legal team is challenging both the conviction and the six-year sentence. They argue that it is unsafe and they have set out several grounds. First is disclosure failures the Crown Prosecution Service allowed key digital evidence to be withheld or mishandled. Gould-davis' laptop was never examined. His medical records, which confirm long-standing depression and anxiety, were withheld. Second, judicial misconduct Judge Greenberg used inflammatory language, ignored psychiatric evidence and set a dangerous precedent by extending custody time limits, keeping Farrah on remand well beyond the usual six months without trial.
Host:Third, disregard of mental health. Expert reports confirmed that Farah lives with complex PTSD, depression and emotionally unstable personality traits. These should have been mitigating factors. Instead, the judge said they carried no weight at all an unlawful departure from guidelines. Fourth, excessive sentencing Six years is a severe penalty for disputed relationship allegations, especially when the central evidence is contested and unverified. In fact, the Attorney General has now referred her sentence to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient. A highly unusual step suggesting political motives may be at play. And finally, weaponisation of stalking laws. Laws intended to protect women are, in this case, being used against a woman. Campaigners call it a textbook example of the system enabling abusers to silence their victims through the courts.
Host:Despite her appeal, farrah's suffering continues inside prison walls At HMP Eastwood Park. She is still missing vital treatment. Her oncologist has applied for special funding so that she can access PHESGO, a standalone chemotherapy drug that will substantially improve her prognosis. The prison GP, Dr Jake Hard, has supported an application for early compassionate release. Yet bureaucratic delays persist. Even her medical notes show excuses like escorts being cancelled because two female officers weren't available. Farrah has never demanded all female escorts. In reality, male and female officers have always been present. Beyond the prison, the Ministry of Justice has also been accused of harassment. They spent over one quarter of a million pounds extraditing her from Ireland after she'd fled what she described as relentless abuse.
Host:Farah's case is not just about one woman. It's about a justice system that too often punishes women for surviving abuse. It's about a prison system that denies life-saving healthcare. It's about a judiciary that shows compassion to the powerful and cruelty to the vulnerable. As Lee Walsh, an advocate, put it, this is a man using the state to continue violence against a woman.
Host:It's not personal, it's systematic, and trauma expert Susan Pease Banitt said Farah has experienced a lot of trauma in her life. Despite that, she has managed to grow her organisation and advocate for women prisoners With kindness, treatment and support. She is a great asset to society. She is a fierce warrior for justice. Farah is now waiting for her appeal to be heard. Her survival prognosis has dropped to just 20% over the next decade because treatment windows were missed while she was kept in custody. You've been listening to Rebel Justice. If you'd like to support our work and receive four digital editions and one print issue a year, subscribe to the view for just £20. Make sure to follow us on instagram @the_ view_ magazines, and you can also find us on Linkedin, X and TikTok if you'd like to reach out directly. Thank you.