The Girlfriends: Spotlight

When the Taliban captured Herat City in August 2021, Tooba Sarwari had just one thing on her mind: cricket. Would she ever be able to play her beloved sport again? And more pressing, would the Taliban find the evidence of her and her team mates’ sporting achievements? If they did, it would surely spell the end for them and their families. This is the story of how Tooba, and the other members...

Germany. Spring 1945. The writing is on the wall for the Nazis. And thousands of women are marching along dirt roads. If they stop walking, they’ll be shot. Their route is lined with piles of corpses. It’s a death march. Among these women are The Nine. Nine young women, all members of the French resistance, who have formed an extraordinary bond of friendship and support in the concentr...

Jacquie Davis joined the police when she was just 18 years old. She was fearless and ambitious, but she quickly realised her career progression was limited by her gender and education. Everything changed when she was recruited into The Circuit - a secretive network of freelance security professionals.  As one of the only women in her field, Jacquie’s career as a bodyguard would take her...

When Visaka Dharmadasa’s soldier son was kidnapped by the fearsome Tamil Tigers in the midst of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war, she couldn’t find anyone who could help find him - or the 608 other soldiers who had been taken the same night. So Visaka transformed herself, first into a fighter against the bureaucracy of the Sri Lankan government and the Red Cross, and then into a fear...

When you’ve suffered childhood trauma, endured alcohol abuse, been through awful bereavements, how can you heal? For Silvia Vasquez-Lavado the answer was to climb to the top of the world - and then take other traumatised women and girls with her. Silvia is the first Peruvian woman to summit Mount Everest and the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on ea...

Sharing your story, whether that’s on social media or through the news can be pretty daunting. But putting a spotlight on your community is essential to drawing attention to the causes you care about. So in this episode, Khadijah speaks to journalist Tamara Cherry about how trauma informed reporting can give survivors and advocates the opportunity to tell their stories in an ethical way. &nb...

Emmet Till’s murder sparked a 70 year movement, in this episode Khadijah speaks to a woman whose family has been fighting to preserve his legacy about what it takes to launch a movement and how you can mobilise your community to enact change.    US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assaul...

Roger Golubski’s story exposed decades worth of corruption at the heart of Kansas City Kansas, a systemic failure to hold perpetrators to account. In this episode, we explore how Wyandotte County’s current District Attorney is working to weed out corruption and enact change.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resourc...

What are your rights if you’re stopped by a police officer? What evidence would you need to build a case if you were a victim of police misconduct? In this episode Nikki dives into the laws and protocols surrounding police conduct to share tips for how to navigate distressing situations with law enforcement.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/   ...

Quindaro was once home to a stop on the Underground Railroad. In this episode, Nikki traces the long, rich, revolutionary history of Kansas City Kansas through the lens of a freedman who escaped slavery to make Quindaro home.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredirectory.or...

We’ve explored how people fight for justice, but how are the women whose lives were affected by Roger Golubski healing the aftermath of their trauma? In this episode, Khadijah and Nikki discuss the power of sisterhood and how community based programmes can support women on their path to recovery.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     Inter...

As Nikki and Khadijah start to pick up the pieces, they discover the story is darker than they could have ever imagined. The shocking news takes them back to the very beginning, where they uncover a vital missing piece in the puzzle.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredire...

It’s December 2nd 2024. After flying under the radar for decades, Detective Roger Golubski has finally been arrested. So the girlfriends drive over to the courthouse for the first day of a trial that will shake them to the core.    US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nom...

When Trena Cooper was a child, she had a dream that her mom had been killed by a police officer. 20 years later, she sets out on a mission to get to the bottom of her mothers murder investigation as whispers surrounding that Detective build to a chorus of protests.   US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Se...

As Stacey Quinn’s life goes into a downward spiral, her sister Niko watches on, desperate to save Stacey before it’s too late. But the walls are closing in on her, and it will take a whole sisterhood of women to get to the bottom of what’s really going on in Kansas City. US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources fo...

When Niko, Khadijah and Nikki finally come together, they instantly form a sisterhood. Niko tells her girlfriends the story of her older sister, Stacey. A woman whose life was turned upside down when she met Roger Golubski at 15 years old.  US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomor...

After 23 years behind bars, Lamonte McIntyre is finally stepping back into court to try and prove his innocence. When Khadijah Hardaway joins his desperate fight for justice, she helps uncover a chilling pattern of corruption as one man’s fight to be exonerated sparks a movement to expose the decades of abuse the women of Kansas City have faced at the hands of Roger Golubski.  US resour...

When tragedy strikes on a quiet spring morning, Niko Quinn’s tight knit community is torn apart. But that moment is just the start of an investigation that will uncover deep corruption, decades of abuse and a dark scandal at the heart of her hometown, Kansas City Kansas.  US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Viol...

As Niko Quinn grieves the loss of her favorite cousin and Lamonte McIntyre stands trial for a murder he says he didn’t commit, buried secrets about the lead detective in the case begin to  surface.  US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/     International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredirectory.org/   &nb...

When Niko Quinn saw her favourite cousin murdered in broad daylight, her life turned upside down. She went looking for justice, but instead uncovered a dark scandal at the heart of her community: A police detective had spent decades targeting, threatening and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City Kansas.   Detective Roger Golubski used the power of his badge to launch a reign of ter...

Lois Gibson has a rare gift: A gift for accurately drawing people she’s never seen before, from fragmented descriptions from traumatised witnesses. And that gift is incredibly useful to the Houston Police Department.  Lois is the world’s most successful forensic artist. Over 40 years, on more than 5089 cases, she’s worked with victims and witnesses to painstakingly piece tog...

Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience.  But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seem...

Phyllis Omido is just a few months into a new job, when her infant son starts to get sick. Fevers, dehydration, hospitalisation - Phyllis is scared. Then the doctors give her some shocking news: Her son has lead poisoning. The metal smelting plant where Phyllis works, just outside Mombassa, Kenya, is leeching toxic chemicals into the water of the nearby river. And her son isn’t the only one...

When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped. And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same. Related resources Karma Nir...

The fourth and final bonus episode of Season 3 and our first ever LIVE episode of The Girlfriends! Recorded in front of a live audience from Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, UK, Anna is joined by author Kate Summerscale to discuss her book, “The Peepshow” and the wider impact of the True Crime genre.    If you’re affected by any of the themes in this show please reac...