After seeing a lot of tweets and Facebook statuses about this one-off reconstructed drama and with domestic violence being a very close subject to me, I decided to check it out for myself on BBC iPlayer (available until 7th July 2014).
"It began and ended when I fell in love; but this was not a love story".
This drama is closely based on the story of Nottingham girl Casey Brittle who was murdered by her boyfriend Sanchez Williams in 2010.
The storyline follows a young 17 year old girl named Ashley Jones played by Georgina Campbell who falls in love with Reece (Royce Pierreson) who soon into their romantic relationship turns violent .
Due to the title of this drama, we all know how the story ends however the first few minutes of the programme show signs of a promising relationship. It isn't until we start to see signs of how controlling Reece can be when he demands to see text messages on Ashley's mobile phone.
The first scene of physical abuse is narrated as 6 months into the relationship, shortly after Ashley reveals that she is pregnant. The scene shows the rage growing inside of Reece's eyes and suddenly he snaps, grabbing Ashley's hair and pushing her head into the bedroom wall. Its harrowing to watch. Ashley leaves the situation and leads viewers to believe that she has ended the relationship; unfortunately she turns around and allows Reece's promises of it never happening again and being eternally faithful to Ashley to convince her she's doing the wrong thing in leaving.
As the drama goes on, the violence gets more and more extreme as does the emotional and mental abuse. We as viewers are shown severe bruising on the young girls body, we are aware of the polar opposites of Reece's mood and behaviour toward Ashley and we also become aware of how he is phrasing his opinions on Ashley in a way that she feels is almost caring and acceptable but is in fact emotional abuse.
Police are called when a neighbour overhears an argument between the couple which has left Ashley with a nasty bruise to her jaw; she assures the police that it was a petty phone argument and the couples daughter had headbutted her by accident causing the bruising.
Ashley's friends become aware of how controlling Reece is becoming and try to convince her that it isn't normal. As time goes on, her closest friend realises that its much more than just being controlled and that it is very much a violent relationship. This friend pleads with Ashley to leave Reece and to seek help. It is a few days later that Ashley leaves Reece due to him attacking her in public however this doesn't stop his constant phoning and calling round which leads to numerous emergency phone calls in which the police do next to nothing.
Eventually we see a young, fragile, emotionally drained Ashley agree to marry Reece and takes him back. It is after a night out that Reece pesters Ashley to tell him if anything had happened whilst the couple where on their break; in which she lies and says yes.
One of the most upsetting death scenes I have ever seen then follows. We see Reece beat Ashley with his fists which rapidly moves onto him kicking her. Their young toddler comes into the room which causes Reece to stop his actions and put her back to bed. He then returns to attack a motionless Ashley with an ironing board.
The drama ends with this scene. The viewers are then told that Ashley was found 2 hours late, with her daughter at her side by the ambulance crew. The young girl died in hospital later that day.
We are left with some statistics; During Ashley and Reece's 4 year relationship, 229 women died due to domestic abuse from their partners and 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence and abuse at some point in her life.
This is a beautiful piece of work despite how saddening its storyline is. It is completely believable and has been put together respectfully.
I found myself on the edge of my seat with my heart in my throat.
I believe that this drama should be readily available to people for a much longer time scale. I feel that it is important to open peoples eyes to this distressing subject.
This programme focused on the male over female role in domestic abuse however it is important that we are aware that there are men all over the world experiencing the same violence and abuse.
I don't personally believe that people need to be 'stronger' or 'braver' in these situations as it really isn't about strength or bravery. People need to understand that the mind is a powerful tool and once somebody else has control over it, it isn't as easy as just 'wising up'. The majority of people experiencing any form of abuse aren't truly aware of it starting and will always be in denial as to how bad it is if they do realise what is actually going on.
We shouldn't be asking 'why didn't she just leave?' but should be asking 'why didn't he stop?'.
Watched this and was impressed with the factual content she had been totally Stockholm ed by this phyopath and unfortunately had such low self esteem totally succumbed to his brain washing this does not take long and has a very long term affect as to her detriment,this is a classless issue and will affect all walks of life please if you suspect this is going on REPORT IT TO THE POLICE.
ReplyDeleteEvery week hundreds of men and woman are killed due to domestic violence,your phone call could save someone's life