One to One Radio 4
When Madeleine Black was 13, she was raped by two 17-year-old American boys.
She thought it was her fault as she’d lied to her mother about where she was staying that weekend and she had drunk too much alcohol. Only her school friend knew what had happened to her. She woke up naked in bed. She had been stabbed, she had cigarette burns.
“We just decided to clean up the flat and not say anything. I went back to school on Monday and never spoke about it,” she told Trevor McDonald in a powerful interview.
But what you don’t say starts to leak out in other ways – depression, anorexia - she ended up taking an overdose.
It’s the kind of story that no mother ever wants to hear.
It was only years later in therapy that one of her counsellors asked her if she had thought about how her rapists felt about that weekend. It was the moment that changed her life.
Her father was a Holocaust survivor, he inspired her to get past events.
One to One is a series of interviews where broadcasters follow their personal passions and interview people whose stories interest them. It is riveting, if difficult listening.
In another episode, Liz Jones, a hugely successful columnist for a red top, talked about feeling a failure.
She writes about getting rid of superfluous hair, having grey roots or dealing with cellulite.
She is painfully honest.
She has written about the fact that on her wedding night her husband didn’t sleep with her:
“I couldn’t find him actually.”
She has written about stealing her ex boyfriend’s sperm. It is all grist to the mill.
“Women appreciate my failure, ineptitude and my flaws,” she said.
But all the worldly success is nothing when it’s just you.
She was completely alone on her birthday, she confided.
“I have no friends, my family won’t speak to me... that’s a huge cost,” she said.
“Huge tragedies have happened in my family and they never told me because they thought I’d write about it.”
There’s always a price.
