In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sonia Orchard chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Groomed.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• How Sonia’s daughter approaching the age Sonia was when the abuse occurred, prompted her to reconsider the relationship and pursue justice for herself and the next generation.
• Why Sonia used the police investigation and court case as the memoir’s narrative spine, beginning with the question: ‘Had a crime been committed?’
• How writing the unfolding legal process in real time without knowing its outcome created immediacy, uncertainty and suspense.
• Why Sonia interwove memoir with neuroscience, psychology, cultural history and legal research, using research as both a means of understanding and a source of emotional distance.
• How Sonia’s teenage diaries and adult perspective reveal competing narratives of love and abuse—and helped her reclaim her story through narrative justice.
• What Groomed reveals about grooming, gaslighting and coercive control, and the cultural narratives that allow child abuse to be mistaken for romance.
• Why Sonia’s search for accountability became a wider critique of a legal system that can retraumatise survivors while failing to provide recognition, care and communal healing.
• How her cancer diagnosis illuminated society’s contrasting responses to physical and emotional trauma, and why she advises trauma writers to seek support, trust their instincts and write only when ready.