Members of Middlesbrough Soroptimists recently put together a list of outstanding local women to shed further light on their achievements. Jan Hunter has been speaking to some of those nominated, and in the first of a series of features, she caught up with Susan Mansaray, a charity worker and refugee advocate. FROM an early age I saw and experienced women being silenced. When I became a journalist, I was their voice. I had a purpose, but I was robbed of it. These are the words of Susan Mansaray, from Stockton, who grew up and worked in Sierra Leone, surviving poverty, neglect and abuse as a child to having her own TV and radio programmes for the SLBS, the state-controlled network. She ran programmes for women, giving them a platform to discuss their experiences of abuse and FGM – female genital mutilation.