Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother: A Memoir by Sue Johnston

Author:Sue Johnston [Johnston, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General
ISBN: 9780091938895
Google: 32JbS8PmuuQC
Amazon: 0091938899
Publisher: Ebury Press
Published: 2011-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

*

Sheila being raped was perhaps the biggest storyline that I undertook at Brookside. I was asked to go and see Phil Redmond. I sat down and he looked at me seriously. ‘Sue, we’re thinking of doing a storyline where Sheila is raped.’

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. ‘Right,’ I said slowly, trying to gather my thoughts.

‘I know it’ll be a hard thing to pull off but I think we can make it work. What do you think?’

Until then rape wasn’t something that had really been broached on primetime TV. But that wasn’t my main concern. I’d never talked to anyone other than close friends about when I had been attacked in my twenties. I thought for a moment; I looked at my hands, feeling nervous, guilty and embarrassed about what I was about to say.

‘I think you should know, Phil, that I was attacked when I was younger,’ I confessed.

Phil was visibly taken aback.

‘And if we’re going to do it, I need to make sure it’s done with the sensitivity it deserves.’

Phil listened as I told him that if we were to go ahead with the story then I was adamant that we shouldn’t just produce a sensationalist piece of television. What we screened had to be representative of what women who had been raped went through. I knew the shame and the trauma that stemmed from such a violation, I wanted to make sure that we treated the subject matter carefully.

We went along to the Rape Crisis centre in Liverpool and heard first-hand some of the awful attacks that these women had suffered. And more often than not they were at the hands of someone they knew. We also witnessed the great work that was carried out by the people who ran the centre. The fact that there was somewhere where women could access support after such a terrible event was a step in the right direction, although then, as still today, rape was a crime with a shockingly low conviction rate.

The day of filming came and I was very nervous. I had carried this anxiety around with me for years and I was about to relive it again. The one thing that bothered me was that the attacker was to come at me from behind, something that was still my biggest fear. We filmed it and I managed to get through the day without losing control and being overcome. It turned out to be a great release for me in the end. Acting and performing a rape scene allowed me to get rid of a lot of fear I had carried around for years. When it was over I had a real sense of relief.

When the episode aired there was a huge response from people who had been through the same thing. We received hundreds of letters from women who wanted to share their own experiences; many of these women had been raped and kept silent about it for years.

It is not often as an actress that you get to perform something that you feel directly affects people.

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