Im chloe tilley. Over the next half hour we will show you some of the highlights from our programme of the last week. We start with a story from one of our viewers who the programme. Vicki, not her real name, is from birmingham and was adopted. When she turned 18 she requested her records from social services and hope of finding her biological parents. That is when she found out she was conceived by rape, and started her fight to have her father prosecuted. In our exclusive film, her words are spoken for her to protect her identity, you may not want your children to watch, it last for around eight minutes. My name is vicky. I was conceived by rape. I was born in birmingham in the 70s and adopted when i was seven months old. Growing up, i always wanted to find my birth mother. It is almost like she had been a ghost in my life, knowing there was somebody who had given birth to you, who was alive, walking around. When i hit my 18th birthday i was determined to get the files. That is when i was told by a social worker, and i saw in black and white in my files that my conception was a result of rape. My birth mum had been 13, a schoolgirl. My birth dad, a family friend who was 35. The record said that she had gone to babysit at his house and he raped her. To find out that you have been born to a horrendous act of violence against a child, and that people knew, it says in seven different places in the files that it was rape. The fact that she was 13 means it was statutory rape, because he had sex with a minor. It states his name and address, that social services and police and Health Workers knew, but nothing was done about it. My birth mum was from a black working class family, and i cannot help thinking attitudes at the time had something to do with that. It made me feel angry. Devastated for my birth mum, for me. And i remember thinking, will my birth mother ever want to meet me . I traced my birth mother with support from my adoptive father and i found her. Seeing the photo of her for the first time was incredible. It was like looking into a mirror. I remember us meeting when i was about 20. I walked off the train as she was there. I can only imagine how she must have felt seeing me there as an adult. She said that she had always hoped i would find her. But it wasnt some soft focus moment or loving embrace. It was just. Really surreal. It wasnt until decades later when thejimmy savile case and other historic cases were in the news that i really thought about trying to do anything about it. I had always thought it was so wrong that my birth father was never prosecuted. It was then that i thought, i have got dna evidence. Because i am dna evidence. I am a walking crime scene. It is all written in the files, surely people are going to take me seriously. I wanted him to be held accountable. I wanted justice for my mum, i wanted justice for me. The ramifications of what he chose to do have shaped my entire life. Youd think i would get sick of crying. And he has been able to get away with it and just live his life. My birth mother made it very clear that she had reported that it was a rape at the time. And people hadnt listened to her then, so why would they listen now . More than a0 years have passed, and she. Well, she doesnt want to go through it all again. But she supports me pursuing it. I have contacted so many people, police, social workers, solicitors, mps. They just say, you are not the victim. Because of that crime, i am alive. My whole life has been dictated by it. But no one will see me as the victim. I am living, breathing proof of a child rapist, and nobody is interested. How is that 0k . My birth fathers name was in my files. So i traced him. I was getting nowhere with the police. Eventually i decided to go to his address. I just remember the nerves, my heart was pounding, i was sweating. This man, like a ghost, he has done the most heinous act, and this is who im going to meet. He came to the front door and ijust said, hello, i belive i am your daughter. Hejust said, oh, come in. And that was it. It was the most surreal a0 minutes of my life. I remember saying to him, well, did you have sex with her . Because if you didnt, we dont need to be having this conversation. And he just said that just because you have sex with someone, doesnt mean you make a baby, and so that to me was he had just confirmed it. Why would you not deny it . I noticed theres photo on the wall of a girl, maybe about 12 years old. I just sort of said, who is that . It was as great granddaughter or someone, and that made me feel absolutely sick. I mean, who is protecting her . I found out that there had been victimless prosecutions for rape, when people dont feel able to report it, because of the nature of the crime. But there is evidence. I want the police to look at the files, and at least consider a victimless prosecution in my case. I want the definition of victim to be reviewed. This has nearly beating me down. Being adopted comes with so many difficulties. And the trauma of this has affected every part of my life. But i will persevere, because i know this is so wrong, and i want justice. So i am not going to go away. If you have been affected by the issues in that film, there is a range of organisations to offer you support. You can find the on the bbc action line website. More than 253,000 people have signed a petition, qualified legal aid to be provided to all families at inquests into terror attacks. It was set up a month ago by the boyfriend of nurse kirsty bowden, known as the angel of London Bridge. Bridge. She was stabbed to death while trying to save the life of another victim of the june 2017 attack. James holder is fighting for all families involved in similar attacks, including those of the Manchester Arena, to be given legal aid for the inquest. Anyone who met her, whether for a brief moment or longer, with always remember her. She loved life, she loved people, obviously she was a nurse, so she loved helping people, both professionally and then her personal life. She just had such a zest for life. Now that that has gone from myself and kirstys familys lives, it is incredibly difficult to carry on with life without that. What was kirsty doing when she herself was attacked . Kirsty was trying to help the waiter of the bistro, who had been stabbed in the neck and was obviously bleeding from that wound. She came to his aid as she put a cloth on his neck to try and stem the bleeding. It was at that moment that the three terrorists came across her, despite the fact that they came across her she still did not run, she stayed with alexander and they swarmed her and stabbed her to death. I dont know how you cope with that. You dont, to be honest, you take it one day at a time. And just try to get on as best as you can. You have just gone through the inquest, and that was really difficult for you. Just explain to our audience why. The inquest was almost torture. That sounds like an extreme word, but it was. We had to wait two years for the inquest to start, in which time we were obviously grieving for kirsty and we couldnt continue that process until the inquest started. The inquest itself went on for two months. In which you have to relive the worst night of your life in extreme detail in a public forum repeatedly. So you have to look at cctv footage, photos of the crime scene, coroners reports, witness testimony of kirstys last moments. It is literally torture for anyone that has been through that. At the end of that process, the government has then turned around to me and all the other families on London Bridge and said, you should pay for this, all the legal fees that you have racked up, you are the ones who will pay for it. What the ministry of justice say is that they appreciate how on the face of it not providing grieving families with legal aid for an inquest, because it is not in the public interest, may seem strange, but they say an inquest is designed to be about fact finding and establishing the truth rather than being adversarial, and as a consequence they say legal representation is rarely necessary. It is a pathetic excuse. I can see that working for an inquest of a smaller size, fair enough. But for an inquest the size of one like London Bridge, which goes on for two months in which for example the home secretary himself had three qcs representing himself and his office, there were eight separate public officers, all with their own legal team, who were there for the whole process. As we know at least one of the killers families got legal aid, so everyone has got lawyers. It is a lawyer fest. You dont have to tell us this, but how much was spent on legal fees from yourself . We dont know exactly, but about hundreds of thousands, because it is notjust the inquest, it is leading up to it as well, the legal team have to prepare themselves. They went through over 10,000 documents over a weeks worth of cctv, just to put together the starting point of the inquest. How would you possibly do that on your own without help from a legal professional . On your own without help from a it is impossible. On your own without help from a the families of the Manchester Arena attacks are about to go through this. What is your message to the newjustice secretary . What do you want to say to him . I want to meet him face to face. He can have whoever he wants with him in the room, but i want him to explain to me why he thinks it is not necessary to give state funded aid to victims like ours. Face to face, i am going to explain to him why i think he is wrong. So we can get this changed before the manchester inquest starts. What happens when an mp is unable to do theirjob . What is the impact on their constituents . We have been to Sheffield Hallam where the local mpjared 0mara has said he is unfit to continue. That was after his chief of staff apparently use the mps official twitter account to denounce his boss as selfish and degenerate and to accuse him of letting his constituents down. What has really been going on, and what do his constituents make of it . 0ur reporter has been to sheffield to find out. Just a warning, there is Strong Language just after three and a half minutes. 21,000. Cheering jared 0mara took the seat from nick clegg, one of the biggest shocks of the 2017 general election, an unknown 35 year old bar owner who had campaigned for disability rights had ousted the deputy Prime Minister, riding a wave of ill feeling over tuition fees. But that was about as good as it got for the constituencys first ever labour mp. Last month, for the second time, he said he was cutting back on his mps duties. He also told journalists he had made three attempts to take his own life. This is a story about the impact on his constituents. There must be a process to make sure that every constituent has an elected member of parliament that is actually effective in doing the job. 0n the labour party. I cant imagine people will be too quick to vote for labour again in this constituency. And whetherjared 0mara has been used by those who were supposed to be helping him. People have joked to me that i was basically the mp for Sheffield Hallam. Because he was so not here basically. Jared 0mara was born with cerebral palsy, and last year he told the media she had been diagnosed with autism. He has spoken openly about the difficulties of being a disabled mp and his Mental Health problems. When allegedly sexist, homophobic and misogynistic comments he had made before he entered politics surfaced, he was first suspended by labour and then quit the party. But he didnt say that he would step down as an mp until his friend and recently appointed chief of staff used 0maras twitter account to publicly destroy the mps character. Gareth arnold took to twitter to resign and denounce his boss asa degenerate who had let his constituents down. It was, it seems, the final straw. This is arnold. He initially agreed to be interviewed for this programme and invited us to film the team moving offices. When we arrived, he changed his mind, saying he didnt want to be part of the story. But the following day he did give and interview the bbc podcast the next episode. I am just a man with a job description. I am running this office. Nobody has vetted you. A self described troll and political provocateur, arnold says he has an old drinking partner ofjared 0mara from their days on sheffields late night bar scene. He was brought in just eight weeks ago to sort out the mps communications. Referring to his brutal twitter take down of jared 0mara, arnold told me she publicly burned his boss to put the mp out of his misery. He said it was like seeing a lamb by the side of the road with a half broken neck, stamping on the ground as if to kill the animal. He joked, it is what you have to do. And strangely foreign mps medications officer, he tried to direct me to the most vocal critics of his friend and boss. And he told me it is him, not jared 0mara, who has been blocking constituents from contacting the mp on twitter. Something those constituents have only complained about happening since arnold took control of the twitter account. If you are going to be a twit, he told me, you are going get blocked. Jodi garcetti set up a Facebook Group for people worried about their lack of political representation. She says people were blocked for asking a legitimate questions of their mp. It was one of the ways of contacting him, so by blocking them they didnt have that. It was just shutting down constituents who were trying to reach out. On a lot of his tweets, it is difficult to know which came from him and which came from his communications officer, seemed almost to ridicule us. He blocked quite a lot of our members in the first instance, some people who were calling him up on his bad behaviour. He just replied with various memes and gifs. If you look through his twitter feed, there is this thing about having a statement and the one before says, if i had a dog, i would name him stephen. Justin buxton is a Labour Party Member who says he questioned 0mara in person about his unorthodox use of twitter and that the mp told him he had nothing to do with it. It was all arnold. This yearjared has not done any tweets, it has all been Gareth Arnold, his so called chief of staff who has been taking over the twitter account. But what are the motivations of Gareth Arnold . When i met him, he showed me what he said was his tory Party Membership card. He said he had been a member for five years, weve seen a tweet from him suggesting Jeremy Corbyn should have been murdered instead of the labour mp jo cox. It is not clear exactly what role Gareth Arnold played all is continuing to play in jared 0maras office. Labour sources claim arnold is manipulating jared for his own ends, an allegation arnold says is laughable. Jared 0mara says he intends to resign after the summer, saying he is in no fit state to continue as an mp. He said he will be seeking professional help for his Mental Health and his personal issues, but in the meantime he will carry on collecting his wages and Sheffield Hallams constituents will be without an mp. Jared 0maras office told us he has five Staff Members and that case work is ongoing. They told us there is no backlog, although the two constituents we spoke to for this film are still waiting for a response. One of them was anne marie, who has multiple debilitating conditions and wanted 0maras offers to do more on i was brought up in alabourfamily, i supported labour for a long time, and i did actually vote forjared, because i thought there was potential hope here. I have been really let down. He could well be in post, but he is not, he may well be on the bankroll until the end of september, possibly mid 0ctober. Unfortunately there is not much we can do. One of the men attempting to restore faith in politics after the expenses scandal was nick clegg, who 0mara beat in 2017. He introduced a law allowing constituents to sack their mp, but their powers were limited. We as constituents had nothing we could we looked at if we could recall them and there is zero legislation for that. We discussed whether the office of the speaker of the house, and they said there is not much they can do, he is responsible to his party, he doesnt have a party. We have contacted parliamentary standards, they do not deal with individuals. We tried a petition, you cannot make a petition about we have contacted parliamentary standards, they do not deal with individuals. We tried a petition, you cannot make a petition about someone losing theirjob. All these things that are supposed to be there to support us, we basically got told that we need to talk to our mp, but we cant because we dont have one. 0ne local councillor described 0mara as a paper candidate. He was never expected to win, and long standing labour members likejustin are living with the consequences. I cannot help but think it is a squandered opportunity. I cant imagine that people are going to be too quick to vote for labour again in this constituency. Who do you blame . I think the labour party should have taken more care about the selection of jared as a candidate. Labour told us they follow the correct procedures in selecting 0mara, and continue to support him. It is understood the party rejects the idea that background social media checks would have revealed concerns about him. Do you feel like you and otehr constituents have any form of recourse . It is fairly touch and go whether he would resign in the end. He has clung on for two years. It has early been capitulated by the behaviour of his chief of staff. That chief of staff is of course. Gareth arnold. Serious questions remain about the offers he is now running, and in whose interests he is working. Earlier this year, 0maras well thought of and experience staff left where sack, leaving arnold and his young team running the constituency office, like his boss, arnold says he is still getting paid while he works out his notice period, leaving a list of questions his constituents and taxpayers will want answering. Thats it for this week. You can always set as your ideas at. We are back on monday morning at ten oclock on bbc two and bbc news channel. Goodbye. Hello there. Good afternoon. At least the windy weather has eased away. The rain however has still been a concern through the day and will continue to be a concern for the next 12 hours or so, particularly for southern scotland and the northern half of england. So bbc local radio will have all the travel details. From the satellite picture you can see the best of the sunshine has been in the south. We have had some sharp showers but it is clearly much wetter and cloudier further north and its here across southern scotland and the north of england where the rain just keeps falling. Another ten to 20 millimetres today and possibly double that in a few places. Considering that some areas of cumbria have had a months worth of rain just throughout the weekend that is obviously going to cause further concerns with flooding. Some of these are thundery as well, these showers further south. But it has felt quite warm and the winds are light. 0utside those shows, in the sunshine, we have achieved 22, 23. It is notably cooler, though further north. Though, further north. Temperatures in glasgow yesterday were 23 degrees so five or six degrees down and that is a trend thats set this week. So here is our rain that continues to fall this evening further south was very slowly and hardly easing but drying up and turning chilly across scotland. Already drier for Northern Ireland and ahead of that as well the showers are easing away. A slightly less muggy night. But actually with that weather front close by in the south on monday the north westerly wind following on behind we could still see a cluster of showers developing through the morning across the south of england, particularly the south east and into east anglia. So that could be around for the rush hour but hopefully there will be a lot of dry and fine weather to be found, a little bit of morning mist. We will still have showers for parts of northern england. Not as prevalent as today but still around and more showers pep up for Northern Ireland in western scotland through the day. But it actually does look drier for the bulk of central and southern scotland bar the odd shower towards the west. And the showers do tend to eat somewhat across the north of england. So its a drier day for most of us. The winds are lighter. Again the sun will shine between the showers but it wont be warm. Temperatures will be below average for the first time in some considerable time. It is a showery week but wednesday at the moment is looking wet and potentially very windy again and it looks like england and wales will bear the brunt of that rather autumnal looking weather once again. However thats a few days off and will keep you updated. Theres more online. This is bbc news im lukwesa burak. The headlines at four. The Prime Minister vows to come down hard on crime pledging £2. 5 billion to create 10,000 new prison places while Police Forces in england and wales are to be given extended stop and search powers. Police in hong kong fire tear gas at pro democracy protesters in the tenth consecutive weekend of Anti Government demonstrations. An 18 year old man who got into difficulty in the sea off the essex coast has died days after his teenage sister lost her life in the same incident. Lawyers for the alleged victims of the multi millionaire businessman and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein say his death shouldnt stop the investigation into his alleged crimes. In rugby a late drop goal and england deny wales a chance
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