Hollywood actor Dakota Johnson has launched a new podcast featuring voicemail messages she has received from sexual abuse survivors.
The Left Ear podcast, released yesterday for the first time, includes unedited and anonymous stories from survivors who contacted the 50 Shades of Grey star after she gave out her telephone number at last year’s Global Citizen Festival.
She asked women and girls to contact her and tell their stories of violence, abuse and inequality - prompting 8000 people from across the globe to leave messages within the first 30 minutes.
The first podcast features messages from five survivors, including a woman who was abused by her father at the age of three and another who was abused by a school teacher.
Ms Johnson said: “Something about having no one on the other end of the phone to judge, diagnose, guide, criticise or pacify created a space where these women could just speak. There was a noticeable freedom and urgency in their voices.”
The podcast, which will run weekly, warns listeners that the stories “can feel very intense” and encourages people to “take care of yourself if you choose to listen”.
However, it adds: “By listening with your heart, you create a safe space for the silenced.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here