Rebekah Vardy makes room for a joke early in Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me (Channel 4, Tuesday, 10pm). “You might remember me as a bit of a controversial character from that trial,” she said.
She is referring to the Wagatha Christie Circus and her public feud with Coleen Rooney. But whereas it was easy to chuckle at that falling-out, there is little cause for laughter in her moving new film about her traumatic childhood in the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Vardy, 41, recalls how she was exposed to apocalyptic images from a young age and warned the end of the world was around the corner. She also suffered sexual abuse from age 12 – though the abuser was a family friend and not a church member.
“I told my mum about the abuse that I was experiencing,” she says. “She cried, but didn’t believe me. I told numerous members of my family, Jehovah’s Witness community, and they called a meeting. I think I was about 15. It was suggested that I had misinterpreted the abuse for a form of affection.”
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I had my kids in my mid-20s, which was unheard of among women of my class and generation
The church tells Vardy in a statement that it treated men and women as equals but added that “in accordance with the Bible”, only men may become elders. Vardy also acknowledges that the church does not “prevent anyone reporting sexual abuse” – meaning, she says, that responsibility for reporting abuse lies with parents rather than elders.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me is a personal journey. She holds back tears when she returns to Norwich and the Kingdom Hall at which she worshipped until age 15. Her extended family are still believers. “It’s weird to think my nan still comes up here,” she says.
But the programme was also about the experiences of others with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She travels to Galway, where she meets Jason Wynne, who had collected information about the “lack of transparency in the church”.
The film ends with Vardy going to the UK headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She presses a buzzer, but nobody comes down to see her.
Vardy will forever be synonymous with the Wagatha Christie trial. But here she is a sympathetic presence who speaks candidly about her childhood and has a sincere desire to connect with those with similar stories. If she can leave behind the notoriety of the Coleen Rooney affair, she could have a bright future in front of the cameras rather than on the witness box at a libel trial.
