Joan Smith

Known for her human rights activism and writing on subjects such as atheism and feminism, Joan Smith is a columnist, critic and novelist. An Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a regular contributor to BBC radio, she has written five detective novels, two of which have been filmed by the BBC. Her latest novel, What Will Survive, was published in June 2007.

Joan Smith: Who benefits from hearing interviews with a paedophile?

Earlier this week, excerpts from a series of extraordinary tape recordings were played on BBC TV and radio. They were clips from four police interviews with Vanessa George, the nursery worker convicted a couple of weeks ago of horrific offences against young children, and George could be heard initially appearing to co-operate with detectives. As the interviews progressed, George gradually became sullen, refusing pleas from detectives to reveal the identities of the infants she abused. She sounded cold and uncaring, but that's hardly surprising, given the nature of her crimes.

Recently by Joan Smith

Joan Smith: French sexual tolerance is wearing thin

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Mitterrand: the minister who admits to using young prostitutes

Joan Smith: We stereotype sexual predators, and we get it wrong

Sunday, 4 October 2009

Vanessa, Colin and Angela: they sound like inoffensive neighbours whom you might invite round for a drink. In fact, they're three of the worst paedophiles ever convicted in this country.

Joan Smith: The soldiers who can't help bringing their work home

Sunday, 27 September 2009

The American army has various names for it: it's called "spousal aggression" or "intimate partner violence". These are posh terms for wife-beating, and it's a huge problem in the US military. In the year 2000, after three soldiers at Fort Campbell in Kentucky were charged with murdering their wives or girlfriends, Congress set up a task force to investigate domestic violence on military bases and make recommendations. One of the first places it visited was Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which became notorious only two years later when four army wives were killed by their husbands or ex-husbands in a six-week period; three of the cases involved Special Operations soldiers who had been in Afghanistan, and two of the perpetrators killed themselves as well. In all, there were 832 victims of domestic violence at the base between 2002 and 2004, according to the army's own figures.

Joan Smith: Another expenses scandal – in lap-dancing clubs

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Here's an expenses scandal, if ever there was one: taxpayers are subsidising companies which entertain their employees in lap-dancing clubs.

Joan Smith: Semenya's violation is sport's shame

Sunday, 13 September 2009

Scrutiny of the athlete's physique is distasteful

Joan Smith: One thing is certain with sharia... men make the rules

Tuesday, 8 September 2009

It's no surprise that Lubna Hussein has been convicted by a Sudanese court. Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, came to power in an Islamist-backed coup, and holds the distinction of being the first head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is not a state where anyone's human rights are respected, and women in particular are subject to arbitrary rulings of the local version of sharia law.

Joan Smith: Unsociable truth behind social networks

Sunday, 6 September 2009

A psychological crutch and a repository for morons' anger. Our columnist despairs at the nastier side of the internet

Joan Smith: Men like Ted Kennedy got feminism off the ground

Sunday, 30 August 2009

When the American feminist Betty Freidan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book offered startling insights into the discontent of a generation of women who appeared to have made "good" marriages. Jackie Kennedy, widowed only three months earlier, was one of them and her dignity after the assassination of John F Kennedy unified the nation; another was her sister-in-law Joan, whose husband, Ted Kennedy, had taken over JFK's old Senate seat in Massachusetts a few days before his murder. By the time Joan's marriage ended in divorce in 1982, some of the shine had come off the Kennedy clan, as a less deferential media revealed the scale of the private sleaze that made those ideal marriages a sham.

Joan Smith: Women and children are defying the Taliban

Sunday, 23 August 2009

The results from Afghanistan are fantastic. I'm not talking about last week's elections, obviously, but the interim results of a survey on the number of Afghan children who are now attending school. Published last month by Unicef, they show a "massive return" of boys and girls to schools around the country, with the number of female pupils going up by more than 90 per cent.