Description
A documentary drama based on a true case history researched by MIND, the National Association for Mental Health. The play starts when Colin, a social worker for Mind, discovers Christine, a 14-year-old girl, in Holloway Prison. He is shocked to see her in an empty cell with only a mattress on the floor and to read on the door that her sentence is “for the period of your life”. Christine recounts her story to Colin: how an apparently normal child with a troubled childhood becomes an outcast at school, is taken into care, moved from institution to institution, sedated yet rebellious, and how eventually after setting fire to some curtains she received her life sentence.
The film questions the legal system which condemns children like Christine to this kind of treatment and the inhuman buck passing bureaucracy of the Welfare State, which comes close to destroying her whilst acting “in her best interests”. “It’s already likely that it will rank in television history and legend with ‘Cathy Come Home’. It deserves to, both because it casts a revealing light on what must surely be reckoned with an intolerable state of affairs, and because the writing production and acting are all of the highest order”. Mervyn Jones, The Listener.
The imagery and film quality may not be to modern standards, the subject will always be timeless.
The full film is now available for free on our YouTube channel which you can see below.
