Catch up TV

Episode 26 June 2023

Charlie Webster is a broadcaster and journalist. She’s covered the world’s biggest sporting events. But there is one story she’s never been able to tell.\n\nWhen she was 12, Charlie joined an all-girls running group in Sheffield. Running became her passion and escape, and the girls in her running group were her best friends. It was a dream.\n\nBut all that time their sports coach was abusing her. She never spoke to any of her friends about what was happening to her.\n\n'It became my own secret that I pushed really far down, but I carried it with me everywhere'.\n\nWhen Charlie was 19, their coach was arrested and convicted. He was sent to prison for 10 years.\n\nAnd it was only then that she realised she wasn’t the only one he’d abused No-one had ever spoken to Charlie about it – not the police, not the athletics club – no-one.\n\nShe left Sheffield and didn’t speak to any of her friends again. To this day she doesn’t know what they went through. She has no idea who spoke up, or who else was abused by their coach.\n\nNow she wants to find out. She’s finally ready to talk to them – but she doesn’t know if they’ll talk to her.\n\nCharlie’s journey to find the friends she left behind all those years ago reveals a compelling personal story – of a tight-knit group of teenagers pushed apart by a predator who operated in plain sight. As Charlie finds each member of her old running group, she discovers what happened to them. Each discovery reveals a different side to their collective story. The more friends Charlie finds, the more she is able to piece back her past to really understand what happened to her.\n\nBut there is another question that needs answering – how was this allowed to happen? \n\nAs she digs deeper into her own past, Charlie wants to find out if what happened to her and her friends could happen again. She wants to know how young athletes are protected now. \n\nWhat she discovers is that abuse is still happening today – and the system is still failing young athletes, in exactly the same way. And that is something Charlie is determined to stop. \n\nFinding the friend who spoke out, whose testimony convicted their coach, brings Charlie the final answers she’s been searching for. \n\nAnd bringing the friends back together who haven’t spoken in decades, enables them to find the support and friendship that was taken from them all those years ago

Source: BBC 1