Stacey Dooley defends her controversial interview with Isis rape survivor

Stacey Dooley has defended her interview with a woman who was raped by Isis, after accusations that it was ‘unethical’.

She interviewed a 23-year-old Yazidi woman called Shireen, who was held captive by Isis and raped, in the BBC Three documentary Face To Face With Isis in 2018.

The 33-year-old took Shireen back to Mosul to revisit the house where she’d been imprisoned, and the slave market where she was sold.

The filmmaker then arranged Shireen to meet an Isis fighter.

Shireen’s sister was still in Isis territory when she was interviewed, meaning she could have been put at risk.

Critics blasted Stacey’s decision to take a rape survivor back to the scene of their trauma, and pointed out precautions such as obscuring identities were not taken.

Sareta Ashraph, a barrister who was the UN’s spokesperson on Isis crimes, called the show ‘exploitative’ and ‘unethical’,

She tweeted that the programme ‘abides by none of the protocols of interviewing survivors of sexual violence & excuses themselves by saying “well, the survivor wants to talk” as though that erases their own ethical obligations’.

Stacey has now defended the documentary, insisting Shireen chose to take part herself after months of conversations.

She told The Sunday Times: ‘My hand to my heart, I genuinely feel like she wanted to tell us everything that she did, and whenever she said she didn’t want to, then we just didn’t talk about it.

‘She seemed very at peace. I don’t think that she regrets being there. I think she took a lot from it. I feel really happy with how that was handled. I mean, it’s such difficult territory, and it’s impossible not to second guess and think, “Could we have done this or this?”‘

The film maker added: ‘But I think she was well looked after and her health was prioritised, her mental health.’

It comes after Stacey sparked controversy by referring to a Muslim prayer gesture as an ‘Isis salute’ in a Panorama documentary.

Her description was removed from the Panorama documentary by the BBC following intense backlash.

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Source: Metro News UK