MUM-OF-FOUR Sam Brown scanned the distance and watched transfixed as a camera crew jogged alongside actor Steve Coogan.
Dressed in a tracksuit, a wig of straggly white hair blowing behind him, Coogan looked the very image of the man who haunted her childhood – sex offender Jimmy Savile.
Darren FletcherSam chose to tell her story in the drama[/caption]
News Group Newspapers LtdJimmy Savile ran charity marathons to mask his true nature[/caption]
Sam could barely tear her eyes away as Coogan reenacted one of Savile’s famous marathon runs, which helped propel him into the hearts of a nation utterly blind to his dark, sinister nature.
Coogan’s transformation, for the BBC drama The Reckoning, was so convincing that, when he later walked up to Sam to introduce himself a long buried fear resurfaced.
“I felt that fear of Savile again,” says Sam.
“Steve walked up to me and I thought I was saying ‘stand back, stand back, stand back’ in my head, but my husband Jim said I’d voiced it out loud.
“I heard Steve say ‘I’m not him, I’m dressed up’ and he apologised. It felt so intense for that moment.”
After seeing Coogan transformed for scenes in the drama, which airs tonight, Sam previously described his make-over as “creepy, weird, awful, disgusting.”
BBC/ITV Studios/Matt SquireCoogan stars as paedophile Savile[/caption]
SuppliedSam was abused in chapel[/caption]
Yet she has no regrets about being one of four Savile victims who give their real-life testimony before each episode.
Sam knows the show will be a tough watch for many of those Savile heaped pain and suffering on.
But she refuses to be silenced on the horror of his crimes, convinced that speaking out is the only way to stop history repeating itself.
Perhaps it’s because Sam, 56, spent her whole childhood unable to talk about her abuse, first at the hands of her grandfather, then by the TV star she spent her Saturday nights watching along with 20 million other British kids.
Sam says the show has been “cathartic” for her, despite being hit hard by the scenes in which her young self appears.
“My heart broke for the little girl that was me,” she says.
“I’d always had trouble accepting that I was that little girl and seeing it play out in that way helped me accept that it was actually me.”
SuppliedAs a child abuse victim Sam was even more vulnerable to Savile’s vile plan[/caption]
Darren FletcherSam says seeing Coogan as Savile made her freeze[/caption]
Abused in plain sight
Sam was 11 when Savile started attending mass in the chapel at Stoke Mandeville – three years before his £40 million drive to rebuild the hospital eventually earned him a knighthood.
He never sat in the pews and instead lurked around the presbytery during the sermon but Sam says he was always keen to make his ‘powerful’ presence felt by dropping £50 in the collection plate each week.
“I knew what he was the minute I first saw him, “ says Sam. “I had been abused for years by my grandfather, a policeman, so recognised what Savile was.
“He knew who I was too. I was vulnerable. I was an easy pick really.”
When Sam was tasked with fetching the collection plate from the presbytery each week she felt sick in the pit of her stomach.
Savile wasted no time in indulging his sick perversions, says Sam.
“He started by giving me a touch of the hand or the shoulder as I reached out for the plate or he’d touch my face or my back. He was testing me and I’d freeze.
He knew who I was too. I was vulnerable. I was an easy pick really.
“It only took him a couple of weeks to realise I was a quiet, frightened girl and that’s when he started putting all five of his fingers in my mouth as he touched me. I would be gagging but he didn’t stop.
“He silenced me so he could do what he wanted.”
Chillingly, Savile would leave the door to the room ajar in a move Sam believes gave him a thrill.
“I’d be in there for about five minutes to one side of the door and he’d put his fingers in my mouth and I’d be praying for the priest to stop talking so I could go outside with the plate.
“I could see the priest give his sermon, I could see the back of my mum’s head. Savile knew that.
“It was such a busy chapel. Every pew would be full and people were there on their hospital beds.
“I wanted someone to see, I wanted someone to see me. But they never did.”
GettySavile’s celebrity meant his crimes went unpunished[/caption]
BBCCoogan, as Savile, talks to a patient at Stoke Mandeville in the drama[/caption]
Vulnerable victim
Sam said by the time Savile started attacking her she had already learned to shut down her mind after suffering abuse at the hands of her late granddad, a police officer.
She was even able to watch the BBC presenter on Jim’ll Fix It as he made wishes come true for kids all over the country.
“I used to watch the show every week without that connection but then detachment is a strange thing. Somehow I didn’t associate the two things,” she said.
When she hit 14, Sam says she went off the rails, drinking and sniffing glue. By 15, she was no longer going to chapel and was pregnant to a boyfriend.
She credits her daughter Gemma with saving her life by “giving me a purpose.”
For years she locked her pain away but when Savile died in 2011 it all came flooding back.
“I was in the gym on a treadmill when I saw his picture come up on all the monitors,” she says.
“I suddenly couldn’t move and one of the trainers had to come and help me off.”
When she left the gym, Sam went straight to the police station.
“People later asked me why I didn’t say anything as a child, but you don’t have the words for something like this. You’re aware if you say it out loud it’s real.
“While you keep it in your head you can control it.”
Over 400 abused
Sam is well aware The Reckoning has been criticised for its failure to delve into the role the BBC played in Savile’s rise to fame – and its decisions in the aftermath.
It showed a tribute to the pervert immediately after his death – then, a month later, axed a Newsnight episode revealing he was a predatory paedophile.
“This is a much bigger story than Newsnight,” she says, clearly annoyed.
“What about the victims? There were lots of rumours surrounding Savile. Loads of people must have known what he was and why aren’t they being held accountable?
“If somebody, somewhere along the line did something for me it would have changed my whole life.”
Alan Partridge actor Coogan says he felt “great trepidation” about the possible pitfalls of playing Savile.
He said he “felt comfortable” that the show was being made “for the right reasons.”
Coogan said: “You have to show things that perhaps initially seem counterintuitive.
“He (Savile) was charismatic, undoubtedly, because that was part of the Trojan horse that he created, to go about his sexual assaults.
“He created, over 30 years, quite an elaborate machine…which served him very well. And the court jester character he created was his armour.”
It emerged in late 2012 that Savile sexually abused more than 400 people, most of them children but some as old as 75 and mostly female.
He used his position at the BBC and his charity work to gain access to victims, including at Stoke Mandeville, Leeds General Infirmary and secure units Rampton and Broadmoor.
Sam realises that some victims will be horrified by the drama but believes it has been handled sensitively.
She says: “It’s hard because it will evoke emotions in a lot of people, not just those abused by Savile but those who are sitting at home on the sofa watching who may or may not have spoken out.
“For me, I want other people to realise that you can get through it. Just look at me. I’m alive.”
The Reckoning begins tonight on BBC1 at 9pm
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