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BBC Radio 4

News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.

File on 4

Psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead has spent more than 30 years working with violence perpetrators. In this programme, she visits Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang rehabilitation in the world. The charity, which offers training, education, therapy and other services, was set up by a Jesuit Priest, Father Gregory Boyle. He was responding to the so-called “decade of death,” in the late 1980s, as his neighbourhood was terrorised by gang violence. 

"There were shootings all the time. I buried eight teenagers in a three-week period", he said. 

But this is a good news story. Today, 40 years on, it’s been called one of the most successful gang rehabilitation organisations in the world. Talking to Father Boyle and several former gang members, Dr Adshead explores the Home Boy model of rehabilitation and asks if something similar could work here?

Presenter: Dr Gwen Adshead
Producer: Jim Frank
Editor: Clare Fordham 
Production co-ordination: Katie Morrison.

Saving Young Men from Murder: The Homeboy Story

The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light moved into a former orphanage in Crewe in 2021. It’s American-born leader Abdullah Hashem has declared himself the Madhi or saviour. But earlier this year, 500 police officers raided the organisation's headquarters, leading to protests in the town throughout the summer. File on 4 Investigates follows the group’s journey from Egypt through Europe to discover what brought them to the UK. 

Presented by Hayley Mortimer & Emir Nader.

Archive: The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light / AROPL Studios.

Has a cult come to town?

In October 2015 President Xi Jinping was welcomed to Britain on a state visit, the event was seen as the pinnacle of the so called 'Golden Era' of warm relations between the UK and China. Over a decade later, and despite a cooling of that relationship, File on 4 Investigates discovers Chinese state money and influence reaching far into UK companies and universities as China targets British chip and blockchain technology, and asks whether enough is being done to mitigate the threat to national security. 

Presenter: Paul Kenyon
Producer: Anna Meisel
Research: Sze-Fung Lee, independent analyst
Additional research: BBC Verify 
Junior Production Manager: Tom Dunster
Production Management Assistant: Tim Fernley 
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tara McDermott

China and the UK... after the 'Golden Era'

One doctor dies by suicide every three weeks, according to figures from the British Medical Association.

In 2021, Dr Lalith Wijedoru left his role as consultant paediatrician in emergency medicine, to focus on supporting workforce health and wellbeing, including those working in healthcare. 

Given rare access to a wellbeing and recovery retreat, we hear emotional testimonies from the four groups of doctors at greatest risk of suicide - General Practitioners, anaesthetists, surgeons and psychiatrists.

Their stories - of workplace bullying, isolation, fatigue and fear of patient complaints - suggest a system in which doctors are made to feel like machines, rather than human beings. 

The concept of 'moral injury' is also a factor - where a doctor is unable to provide the care they wish to give to their patient, due to lack of resources or system breakdown. 

Many doctors we hear from say they feel intense internalised pressure to do better - to work harder, and to never complain at worsening conditions. All have suffered from fear of failure, and the lack of the opportunity to decompress after traumatic events in the workplace. 

These stories take us to the heart of issues being faced by many or most NHS professionals - and by the ‘system’ more generally.

For Lalith, this sharing of difficult stories is an important pathway to recovery, even a life-saving intervention.

Lalith is spurred on to talk to those who seek to help and support doctors, from charities like Doctors in Distress, founded by the brother of a doctor who died by suicide, as well as those who are studying the problem of why - and how many - doctors are dying by suicide. 

Worryingly, there are gaps in available data, because statistics are drawn from coroners' Preventable Death reports. In England, these are a matter for each individual coroner to decide on, so death by suicide is not uniformly recorded. 

Having laid many of these problems bare, what hope is there of realistic change and improvement? 

Presenter: Dr Lalith Wijedoru

Producer: Amanda Hargreaves

Sound design: Joel Cox

Location recordings: Jon Calver

Executive producer: Dave Howard

A Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4 

This programme contains reference to suicide. If you've been affected by issues raised in this programme, you can find out more about organisations that can help by going to www.bbc.co.uk/actionline.

There are also specific resources available to doctors and healthcare workers - some links to these below.

NHS Practitioner Health
https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/

British Medical Association (confidential helpline with counselling and peer support for doctors and medical students
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/your-wellbeing/wellbeing-support-services/counselling-and-peer-support-services

Department of Health and Social Care (text message service - support available for workers in NHS England)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/supporting-our-nhs-people/support-now/

Doctors In Distress
https://doctors-in-distress.org.uk/

You Okay Doc?
https://youokaydoc.org.uk/

NHS Employers (Suicide Prevention/Postvention Toolkit)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/working-together-to-prevent-suicide-in-the-nhs

Medical Emergency

Coroners are called to investigate sudden, unexpected and violent deaths. In the more complex cases, they open an inquest. 

The BBC's social affairs correspondent Michael Buchanan has seen many coroners in action and reported from many inquests. 

For this programme we follow the inquest of Daniel Lindsay, who died in 2023 aged 41 in a Surrey care home, as we ask wider questions about coroners courts in England and Wales. Are they operating as well as they could and are there ways they could be better?

We discuss claims the system is ‘chronically under-funded’, even 'broken'. We ask why there is such variation and inconsistency between different coroners – a so-called ‘postcode lottery'. 

We hear from Daniel Lindsay’s cousins as we explore what it is like for a bereaved family to go through an inquest and ask whether the interests of relatives should be given a higher priority.

The Chief Coroner in England and Wales Alexia Durran responds to concerns and explains what she is doing to make the service more responsive and accountable. 

Details of advice and support with bereavement, or end of life care are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Producer: Leela Padmanabhan
Sound design: Hal Haines

The Coroners Question

Operation Venetic was the UK’s largest-ever law enforcement operation, following the infiltration of the encrypted communications network, EncroChat. 

Among those arrested was Faye Dunn, a former international footballer who had become involved as an administrator in an international operation to supply drugs. After three years in prison, Faye has now completed her sentence and is rebuilding her life away from the drugs trade. 

In prison, Faye saw close-up the disastrous effect drug abuse has on users for the first time.

In this File on 4 investigation, Danny Shaw explores the unexpected consequences of the EncroChat operation, as prisons struggle to cope with organised criminals behind bars. Speaking publicly for the first time, Faye tells Danny the story of how she stepped off a plane at Manchester Airport and straight into the hands of the police.

EncroChat was a mobile phone network used almost exclusively by organised criminals. When it was compromised by French and Dutch police, it supplied the biggest windfall of criminal intelligence in British history. It allowed police to view entire chains of communication used to coordinate the international drugs trade. 

In the context of the decades-old ‘War on Drugs’, it was a bunker-busting super-weapon, unlikely ever to be surpassed in law-enforcement terms. 

Thousands were arrested. Tonnes of drugs and millions in cash were seized. Weapons, ammunition and digital trails stretching across the global drug trade were uncovered. Major players were jailed. The police called it a once-in-a-lifetime victory. 

But six years later, has this Hollywood-style policing operation made an impact on the supply of drugs on our streets?

Has it truly disrupted the drug trade – or simply shifted it?

And with law enforcement and custody costing hundreds of millions of pounds, are there other ways of reducing the harm cased by drugs?

Danny visits cities across Britain to look at programmes that aim to reduce demand for drugs - the other side of this most lucrative business model.

Presenter: Danny Shaw
Producer: Beth McLeod
Technical Producer: Steve Wyatt
Executive Producer: Andrew Wilkie
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Image: Andy Aitchison
A Prison Radio Association production for BBC Radio 4

After EncroChat

A Romanian Ransom uncovers one of the Cold War's strangest secrets - a covert trade in which Jewish lives were bought and sold for livestock and cash. In 1958, MI5 agents watch pigs being loaded onto a plane in Hertfordshire, bound for Communist Romania. The man behind it, Henry Jakober, was a London livestock trader with hidden ties to Romanian intelligence.

The documentary follows Andrea Bernard and Radu Horaud, two children raised in communist Romania, where Jews faced decades of persecution, from the wartime Holocaust through Ceaușescu's secret police. Both hid their Jewish identity growing up, and both were separated from their parents, who defected to the West. Their reunions, in Tel Aviv and Paris, hinged on a name neither had heard before - Jakober.

Historians and the families reveal how Jakober brokered exit visas for desperate Romanian Jews, paid for with pigs, cattle, and farm equipment, later escalating to cash running into millions. Mossad, alarmed at first, ultimately co-opted the scheme, and Ceaușescu expanded it into an industrial operation, selling around 100,000 Jewish lives for tens of millions of dollars, while his secret police profited from the proceeds.

The documentary wrestles with Jakober's legacy - a Schindler-like rescuer, or a profiteer trading in human freedom? Through testimony and declassified files, we trace the moral complexity of a scheme that reunited families while treating them as commodities.

A Message Heard Media production for BBC Radio 4

A Romanian Ransom

The quality of maternity care in hospitals across the country has been in the spotlight following a series of scandals. On File on 4 Investigates families allege serious failings of care at the Countess of Chester maternity unit - the same hospital where neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering and attempting to murder 14 babies. 

We speak to families about their experiences and ask what implications the quality of maternity care could have had on the Letby case.

Presenter: Stephanie Hegarty
Producer: Ben Robinson
Production Co-ordinators: Tom Dunster and Tim Fernley
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Editor: Tara McDermott 

Details of organisations offering information and support with traumatic birth or child bereavement are available on the pregnancy related issues page at www.bbc.co.uk/actionline

Letby Hospital: Maternity failings at the Countess of Chester

Whistleblower Simon Andriesz reveals how he unearthed evidence that US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had failed to disclose a business relationship with the paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein. The British broker, who worked at one of Lutnick’s Wall Street firms, made the discovery in the Epstein files, some of which were released earlier this year. 

Mr Andriesz also speaks for the first time about the personal cost of disclosing what was going on inside one of the companies then run by Howard Lutnick and his decade-long battle with courts and regulators. And he reveals how Mr Lutnick's firm was keen to agree a $1m deal with the former Prince Andrew for introductions to wealthy individuals and sovereign institutions. 

This programme has been edited since it was first released to correct errors in dates. 

Presenter: Andy Verity
Producer: Rob Byrne
Production Co-ordinators: Tom Dunster & Tim Fernley
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tara McDermott

Epstein Files: Lutnick, the Royals and the British Whistleblower

File on 4 Investigates concerns about how some strict discipline measures are being implemented in schools across England. 

We discovered students internally excluded for around 20% of their lesson time, and some much longer. The Outwood Grange Academy in Wakefield put one pupil in an isolation booth for more than half of the academic year. 

We hear from a mother in Devon whose son Taylor took his own life, weeks after he’d expressed his frustration at what he saw as his school, Ivybridge Community College’s punitive and illogical rules. 

Presenter: Jane Deith
Producer: Anna Meisel
Production Co-ordinators: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tara McDermott

This programme contains reference to suicide and self harm. 

If you've been affected by some of the issues raised in this programme you can find out more about organisations that can help by going to www.bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Strict schools: Taking discipline too far?

In We Are Not A Conspiracy School, Darryl Morris sets out to meet the people behind HOPE Sussex, a community of home educators founded during the pandemic. 

On a sprawling site in the East Sussex countryside, a number of families gather to learn together, away from the mainstream. What’s taught there is contested. The media has called it a “conspiracy school", but the founders say it’s a community centre that encourages critical thinking. 

What are people actually doing there? And in a world where shared beliefs have fractured, and more are turning away from the mainstream, why do they feel a community like theirs is needed? 

Producer: Louisa Adams
Sound Design: Craig Edmondson
Executive Producer: Ailsa Rochester
An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4

We Are Not a Conspiracy School

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