Speak like a leader

 Listen to Simon Lancaster speak about rhetoric and get some good ideas about speaking in public.

'My father, the killer'

 "Did you actually kill hundreds of people, Dad?" It's not a question that many people feel the need to ask their parents. But for a group of daughters and sons in Argentina, it became one they could not ignore.

When the phone rang in Analía Kalinec's Buenos Aires home on a wintry August afternoon, she had no reason to suspect the call would end up blowing her family apart.

"It was my mum. 'Look, don't freak out but Daddy is in jail,' she told me. 'But don't worry, this is just politics.' Until that phone call, I had never ever linked my dad's job to the dictatorship. Not even remotely…"

Analía's father is Eduardo Emilio Kalinec, a former police officer who served under the brutal military junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

He was accused of some of the worst human rights violations in the country's recent past - over 180 cases of abduction, torture and murder committed in the regime's secret detention camps.

For the seven years it held power, the military government targeted political dissidents - communists, socialists, union leaders, students and artists. Up to 30,000 were "disappeared" after being kidnapped and illegally imprisoned by security officials like Kalinec.

But Analía hadn't got even a hint of her father's well-kept secrets until 2005, when she was 25, and received that call from her mum.

Kalinec was taken into custody and, despite his wife's initial optimism, was never released. In 2010, he was given a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

"He asked me: 'Do you think I'm a monster?'" Analía says. "What did he expect me to say? It was my beloved dad, I was so close to him… I was stunned."

Paula (who asked the BBC not to use her full name) also experienced a moment of revelation about her father.

When she was 14 he took her and her brother to a cafe, and told them he had been an undercover cop. Later she realised he had been a spy, infiltrating left-wing groups and identifying people to be seized by the regime.

"Since it clicked in my head that what I knew about the dictatorship had been done by my father, or that he worked for them, I've been feeling ashamed and guilty as if I were an accomplice," says Paula.

"Now I have this knowledge and there's nothing I can do. It's like I'm keeping a secret I don't want to keep."

It took these daughters years to understand and come to terms with their family history, but recently they have felt the urge to speak out.

They are part of a group of the "sons, daughters and relatives of the perpetrators of genocide", as they call themselves. They publicly condemn their fathers and are often ostracised by their families as a result.

This is the beginning of a really interesting, stunning and thought-provoking BBC article. Read it clicking here: My father, the killer

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