It's not easy being Pamela, Andrew, Susan, Margaret and Sandra

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jun 12, 2005 | by Jim Smith

LAST WEEK

BEING PAMELA

WEDNESDAY, CHANNEL 4, 9PM

THE story of Pamela Edwards, a 32-year-old suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), may well be familiar to you even if you didn't catch last week's superb documentary on her life. In the BBC's 33rd Of May, one of last year's finest dramas, Pamela was portrayed by Lia Williams, then Five focused on her for the not- so-subtly entitled Extraordinary People: The Woman With Seven Personalities. You may have heard of her after recent press coverage of Channel 4's high court battle to screen David Modell's disturbing but touching documentary.

If you're not familiar: Edwards is one of seven children born into a family of horrific abuse and to cope with the trauma of her childhood, as a survival mechanism, she created a better family in her head. As Modell put it, "these characters were the ones looking after her, but the awful thing is that they were created to help her and now they are disabling her".

It wasn't until 1999 that Pamela was diagnosed with DID, after Judy, her longterm carer and one-time foster mother, witnessed "Andrew" fighting with one of Pamela's other characters.

Award-winning director Modell - reunited with Steven Boulton, the producer he worked with on 2002's thought-provoking BNP documentary Young, Nazi And Proud - spent two years capturing Pamela's internal family on film. Rather than study the day-to-day events of that two- year period, the programme closed in on potential flashpoints, such as dealing with Pamela on the day one of her group of 20 part-time carers leaves for good, and the practicalities of taking her abroad for a fortnight's holiday.

With Pamela, who is also learning disabled, essentially acting out the parts of her internal family - Andrew, a boisterous young child; the matriarchal Sandra;

Margaret, a "dangerous mummy" who closely mirrors Pamela's own mother; and Susan, Sandra's sister - this could easily have edged towards slapstick, in search of moments of humour to lift the gravity.

Modell, however, was careful to handle Being Pamela in an adult and insightful way, which made viewing a much more painful experience. Moments that could have raised a smile hit home hard, such as Pamela's demonstrable, childlike pride after paddling in the Mediterranean on her own.

This window into the exhaustive experience of looking after Pamela - and Andrew and Susan and Margaret and Sandra - began to take its toll. This was tiring television, draining the viewer, with commercial breaks coming as welcome moments of relief.

When the lid on the hidden horrors of Pamela's past was finally lifted, Modell resisted the easy temptations and devices of tabloid television. Recounted through Pamela's sister Kiera - who had changed her name to escape her own past and start afresh - the catalogue of abuse that forced Pamela to recoil into her mind reads like a horror story: seven children locked in a single room, left to sleep on soaking wet beds, driven to steal bread from their own kitchen, dehydrated to the point of drinking their own urine, all this compounded by devastating sexual abuse. It soon became apparent that for the other six children to have survived unscathed was the miracle here.