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‘If you need any help having another sprog I’m your man’

Novichok judge reveals misogyny she faced as young lawyer, including time she was called into chambers and told:

By Chris Hastings ARTS CORRESPONDENT

ONE of Britain’s most respected female judges today reveals the a ppal l i ng misogyny t hat s he experienced as a barrister – including from a senior judge who offered to father her child.

Baroness Heather Hallett, who will preside over the inquest into the Novichok poison attack in Salisbury, says she was ‘too terrified’ to report the incident because it might ruin her career.

Then the mother of a young son, she recalls on today’s BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs being called into the judge’s chambers mid-way through a trial to discuss a ‘personal matter’.

‘ He said, “You have one sprog so far, well it’s obviously time you had another. If you need somebody helping to” – and he used the F word – “then I’m your man,” ’ she says.

‘I had to leave his room and go back into court and carry on with the trial. I was just stunned.’ Baroness Hallett, 71, adds: ‘Had I complained about him, I would have been complaining about a very senior figure in that area – loved by some, respected by some.

‘I didn’t report him… I didn’t even tell my husband, I don’t think. I buried it. I wish now I had protested more but you just didn’t. When I look back on some of the things that happened to me, and people say “Why didn’t you do something?”, all I can say is that we were just terrified it would affect our career.’

Baroness Hallett, who was the fifth woman to sit on the Court of Appeal, was called to the Bar in 1972 when, she says, sexism ‘was overt’.

She was refused a scholarship by her own Inn of Court after being told: ‘Surely, you’re just going to go off and have babies?’

On another occasion after securing a hard- earned appointment, she was propositioned by another senior member of the judiciary.

‘He decided that he was responsible for my getting that appointment and he made it perfectly plain how I could thank him physically, sexually, which I was very distressed about,’ she says.

Baroness Hallett, a crossbench peer, also describes winning a place at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, despite her school refusing to support her application because it thought she was not clever enough. She credits her police officer father and secretary mother with giving her the encouragement to achieve.

‘My parents thought I could do anything a man could do and they were nearly right,’ she says.

The Baroness – once named by BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour as the UK’s eighth most powerful woman – describes how she coped with harrowing testimony while presiding over inquests for the 52 victims of the 7/7 terror attacks.

‘It was a trick taught to me by a judge who is also ordained,’ she says.

‘He said that if ever you are doing a difficult funeral service or memorial service, you stick your nails into the palms of your hand and cause pain. If you cause pain then that emotion helps prevent the emotion of tears… On one occasion I came out of a 7/7 hearing and my palm was bleeding.’

Earlier this year, Baroness Hallett promised a ‘fearless’ inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018.

The intended victim of the attack – suspected of being carried out on the orders of the Kremlin – is believed to have been former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11am and will be repeated on Friday at 9am.

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2021-06-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

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