When Niko Quinn saw her favourite cousin murdered in broad daylight, her life turned upside down. She went looking for justice, but instead uncovered a dark scandal at the heart of her community: A police detective had spent decades targeting, threatening and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City Kansas.

Detective Roger Golubski used the power of his badge to launch a reign of terror. He acted as if he was above the law, until Niko, and an incredible group of women, came together to take him down.

The Girlfriends: Untouchable tells the story of a courageous sisterhood who exposed the dark underworld of a corrupt police officer, and brought their city’s horrifying truths to light. Because when the women of Kansas City Kansas realised the police weren’t coming to save them from their abuser, they stepped up to save themselves.

US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://rainn.org/

International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault: https://nomoredirectory.org/

US Suicide & Crisis Helpline: https://988lifeline.org/

International Suicide & Crisis Helplines: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/

The Girlfriends: Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/.

You can listen to new episodes of The Girlfriends: Untouchable completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

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Lois Gibson has a rare gift: A gift for accurately drawing people she’s never seen before, from fragmented descriptions from traumatised witnesses. And that gift is incredibly useful to the Houston Police Department.

Lois is the world’s most successful forensic artist. Over 40 years, on more than 5089 cases, she’s worked with victims and witnesses to painstakingly piece together a likeness of a suspect. And in more than 1313 cases, her drawings have nailed it with a conviction - case closed.

This is the story of how she found this talent in one of the very darkest moments of her own life.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

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Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience.

But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seemed to celebrate all the cliched cisgender beauty norms.

So, Miss saHHara decided to do something about it: She founded Miss Trans Global, a pageant where everybody is welcome, and where your advocacy and community work mean much more than the lightness of your skin or the bounciness of your hair.

Related Resources

Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Big Door Brigade - Mutual Aid Toolbox

Transgender Law Centre

Trans Rescue

The Gender Reveal Podcast

Jesse Lou Lawson - Media consultancy

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is not affiliated to any of these organizations and we are not in a position to endorse them.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.