Happy Friday, dear reader, and welcome to another interview conducted by, yours truly, Society Diary.
This week, Diary fired 10 penetrating questions at Australian, trained lawyer and charity chief executive, Sonya Sceats.
The Freedom from Torture boss shared tales of brawn selling, deadly spiders and meeting King Charles. Read our conversation below.
As an Aussie born in the US and living in London, which country does the best breakfast?
“Australia, every time. There’s nothing better than breakfast by the water on a summer’s day in Sydney. Fresh mangos from Queensland are magical.”
Growing up in Australia, what’s the most venomous animal you’ve been attacked by?
“As a child I once found a deadly redback spider in our front room. No big deal, we just put it in a jar. It’s the saltwater crocs up north that strike a primal fear into me. And you don’t want to get on the wrong side of a cassowary.”
What’s the strangest job you’ve had outside the charity sector?
“I started working as soon as I could as a teenager and tried my hand at all sorts. But as a vegetarian, a summer spent carving up and selling brawn was probably the weirdest job I ever took.”
What is it about lawyers that people distrust?
“Rules, I guess! But we need them, and we need our lawyers, too. ‘Lawyers are the foot soldiers of the constitution,’ wrote Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read in their book in defense of the legal profession. And if capitulations by law firms in the United States are anything to go by, we are about to discover just how important principled lawyers are in the battle to defend democracy, the rule of law and human rights in this country, too. Find a lawyer now and talk with them about the importance of professional ethics – as if your own safety depends on it.”
Whose idea was FFT’s golden poo and who has the trophy now?
“The credit for this belongs to our former campaigns supremo Jack Steadman who worked the phones until he found a 3D printer, Laboratory of Things, able to turn it around on the double. Initially, they told us they were backed up for weeks, but when we explained that a golden trophy of an airplane crashing into a big pile of poo would help us to stop the UK’s immoral ‘cash for humans’ scheme with Rwanda, they dropped everything and did it for free! Further proof of just how repugnant that policy was. All of us at Freedom from Torture are proud of our role in defeating it.”
Which word do you overuse?
“Hope. It’s impossible to lead a charity supporting refugees in these times without it. But it’s sometimes a tall ask of our service users and staff as anti-refugee politics and racist attacks in our communities escalate. Our survivor leaders light the way. They have lived through far worse and they believe vehemently that we can and will stem the tide here in Britain.”
If you could ban one song from ever being played on the radio, what would you pick?
“Mariah Carey’s Christmas song. We owe it to George Michael, RIP.”
Who’s the most famous person you’ve met?
“I had the pleasure of meeting the king at our award-winning Sanctuary Garden at Chelsea Flower Show in 2024. On behalf of survivors of torture up and down the country, I thanked him for his opposition to the Rwanda scheme. That was a satisfying moment.”
How do you relax at the end of a busy week?
“To be honest, I would love to spend my weekends tuning out at the cinema, but I’ve been manipulated by my little girl into becoming a ‘soccer mom’. She framed it as a girls’ rights issue, knowing I would have to jump on board with that. There have been silver linings though, including meeting so many wonderful new people. One day by the pitch I was talking with a ‘soccer dad’ who asked me what I did. I told him and he replied: ‘Freedom from Torture? You saved my life.’ It turned out that he had received clinical treatment from us decades ago after fleeing torture in Syria. Today he is the proud father of two lovely English-Syrian daughters and he continues to work as a journalist and activist fighting against human rights abuses in Syria and beyond. He embodies the power of therapy to help survivors restore everything that torturers’ tried to take away from them.”
City break or beach holiday?
“I love both! Props to Bristol which I visited earlier this year – it is such a politically engaged and cultured city. But I’m looking forward to hitting up Nielsen Park Beach in Sydney with my beloved school friends shortly.”
