Weekend Woman's Hour: Anya Taylor-Joy, Arlene Phillips and Oti Mabuse, Lone Female Ukrainian Refugees

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has met and personally apologised to three victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale for failures in the investigation of the sexual exploitation of children. The apology comes exactly a decade after the 2012 trial that resulted in some members of the gangs being convicted for their crimes. We hear from Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the police’s failure to tackle these crimes.

Anya Taylor-Joy's decision to leave school at 16 to pursue a career in acting has certainly paid off. In 2020, in the first month of its release – a staggering sixty-two million households watched her play chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix mini-series 'The Queen’s Gambit'. She discusses her latest film – The Northman - a brutal and bloody viking revenge epic.

In August 2018, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic travelled to Iran to attend a seminar and conduct academic research. At Tehran airport on her way back home to Australia, she was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Accused of espionage, she was imprisoned and later convicted and given a ten year sentence. She was released in November 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Australian government. She’s written about those 804 days, in a new book The Uncaged Sky.

The UK government has been told to stop matching lone female Ukrainian refugees with single men. The UN has intervened following concerns that women and sometimes children are at risk of sexual exploitation. Under the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, British hosts must link up with refugees themselves, leaving tens of thousands of people to resort to unregulated social media groups to connect. We hear from Louise Calvey, Head of Services and Safeguarding at Refugee Action and Times reporter, Shayma Bakht.

With over 100 million record sales, an Academy Award, a Grammy, and an award from The Council of Fashion Designers of America, very few artists have a catalogue that matches the iconic Cher. A new musical, touring the UK - “The Cher Show” - tells the story of the Goddess of Pop’s meteoric rise to fame. The director and choreographer behind the show are two Strictly Come Dancing legends - Arlene Phillips and Oti Mabuse.