The Girlfriends: Spotlight

When Visaka Dharmadasa’s soldier son was kidnapped by the fearsome Tamil Tigers in the midst of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war, she couldn’t find anyone who could help find him - or the 608 other soldiers who had been taken the same night. So Visaka transformed herself, first into a fighter against the bureaucracy of the Sri Lankan government and the Red Cross, and then into a fearsome peace activist. 

Defying ...

When you’ve suffered childhood trauma, endured alcohol abuse, been through awful bereavements, how can you heal? For Silvia Vasquez-Lavado the answer was to climb to the top of the world - and then take other traumatised women and girls with her.

Silvia is the first Peruvian woman to summit Mount Everest and the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on each continent.

The Girlfriends: Spot...

Lois Gibson has a rare gift: A gift for accurately drawing people she’s never seen before, from fragmented descriptions from traumatised witnesses. And that gift is incredibly useful to the Houston Police Department. 

Lois is the world’s most successful forensic artist. Over 40 years, on more than 5089 cases, she’s worked with victims and witnesses to painstakingly piece together a likeness of a suspect. And ...

Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience. 

But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seemed to celebrate all the cliched cis...

Phyllis Omido is just a few months into a new job, when her infant son starts to get sick. Fevers, dehydration, hospitalisation - Phyllis is scared. Then the doctors give her some shocking news: Her son has lead poisoning. The metal smelting plant where Phyllis works, just outside Mombassa, Kenya, is leeching toxic chemicals into the water of the nearby river. And her son isn’t the only one who’s unwell: she believes th...

When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped.

And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same.

Related resources

Karma Nirvana - https://karmanirvana.org.uk/...

When Nadya Tolokonnikova saw her country Russia change under President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, she knew she had to do something. 

She started the iconic ski-mask-wearing art protest collective Pussy Riot. On February 21st, 2012, they performed their anti-Putin protest song, Punk Prayer, in a Moscow church, launching Nadya into overnight activist fame… and a prison labour camp.

We want YOUR st...

As a trans woman, Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin didn’t have much faith in mainstream health care. So when she wanted gender affirming surgery to remove her testicles, she turned to her best friend and trainee doctor Willow, and asked her to perform the operation in her living room…

From this humble beginning, Eilís and Willow built a whole clinic dedicated to trans women - in a tractor barn in the ru...

Madison Conradis had her life turned upside down when someone began posting naked photos of her online. Soon, the abuse intensified with anonymous messages and calls to her family, friends and even her boss…

The police didn’t seem to care, so Madison turned to her twin sister Christine for help. Together, they transformed into online sleuths, tracking the harasser across the country to get justice for Madison and other...

Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators.

That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in sto...

From the moment she heard a guitar being played in an empty classroom at her convent school in the Philippines in 1961, June Millington knew what she wanted to do with her life: rock and roll. 

So when a girl called up June and her sister and asked if they wanted to start a band, the answer was hell yeah. 

They went on to become Fanny, the first all-female rock band to release an album with a major record label. June and ...

Nellie Bly was a true trailblazer. In late 19th century America, women were expected to get married and become housewives, or go into a suitable career like teaching. 

But Nellie didn’t do any of that. Instead, she changed journalism forever, becoming one of the world’s first female investigative journalists, and paving the way for a generation of incredible ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’. 

And Nellie&rsqu...

When Lu Ann Cooper was just fifteen years old, she was told to drop out of school and marry her first cousin. She would be his fourth wife. 

Lu Ann grew up inside the so-called Kingston Clan, a religious sect where, Lu Ann claims, every man is expected to have many wives, and every woman is expected to have many children. All with the aim of building up the Kingdom of God.

But one day, Lu Ann couldn't take it anymore. She deci...

In 2019 Tracy Otto was a college student in Tampa, and a fitness fanatic. Then a violent attack by an ex-boyfriend changed her life forever. She was left paralysed from the chest down, and lost her left eye.

But that’s only the beginning of Tracy’s story. In the aftermath of the attack, she rebuilt her life through sheer force of will, and discovered a passion for archery. That passion would take her all the way to the ...

In Season 1, The Girlfriends told the story of how a group of incredible women came together to bring down one bad ex-boyfriend and seek justice for the murder of Gail Katz. In Season 2, we found the truth about a torso washed up on Staten Island, and gave Heidi Balch the memorial she deserved.

Now, we want to introduce you to a global gang of girlfriends in our new show, The Girlfriends: Spotlight. Each week, Anna Sinfield is brin...