BBC and Netflix remake of Lockerbie bombing resurfaces the horrendous assault

When Helen Scott discovered that Netflix and the BBC have been to make a six-part drama concerning the Lockerbie bombing, she was despatched right into a sudden state of tension.

But the 44-year previous – who was simply 9 when the atrocity modified her world – believes it will be flawed to disregard the assault.

She defined: “If I ever see or hear something concerning the catastrophe, I at all times have the identical response – it’s a gut-wrenching feeling.

“And it doesn’t get any simpler as time goes on. The catastrophe isn’t removed from my thoughts however when it comes out of the blue I really feel bodily sick and I’m proper again in it. It flashes up the recollections once I’m not ready for it. It’s PTSD, that’s what it’s.”

“What happened that night and in the years since was as unimaginable as it gets.”

That fateful evening – December 21, 1988 – Helen was a normal nine-year-old girl getting ready for Christmas with her mother and brother. Then a bomb caused Pan Am flight 103 to explode above their house in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

It killed all 243 passengers, 16 crew, plus 11 Lockerbie residents, all of whom lived on Sherwood Crescent, including two of her pals.

Incredibly, the Fraser family home at No 29 suffered no damage.

Others were reduced to shells and giant craters. While the Frasers were unharmed physically, they were deeply damaged psychologically, none more so than Helen.

She mentioned: “I’ve had psychological trouble because of the air disaster and I also have bipolar disorder. “I’ve been in and out of psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ offices since I was 10. I can’t count the number of people I’ve seen.

“My mother has been hugely affected as well. She suffers from depression. It has also affected my brother, but his reaction was it wasn’t going to define him in any way – and I think it probably propelled him to do more with his life, to not waste it. From the age of 14 he wanted to be a lawyer and he’s now a partner in a law firm.”

But she continued: “I still suffer from ‘survivors guilt’. I still think ‘Why not me?’ and I feel I have wasted my life. “The people I knew who died – I think maybe I should have died and they could have done something better with their lives.

I think it’s unfair I survived and frequently would rather not have been here at all – and then I feel guilty about that.

“If I could give my life to one of the girls I knew that died I would happily do so. I can’t get past that.” Six months after the catastrophe, the household moved to Aber-deenshire, which they’d beforehand deliberate to do anyway.

But Helen, who continues to be based mostly there, doesn’t suppose that helped: “It’s a different part of the country.

“We were all deeply traumatised but you couldn’t talk about it with anyone.“ I didn’t want to stand out and be a freak, I wanted to be invisible.”

“So you internalise. I feel if we had stayed in Lockerbie I might have had a very different outlook. I wouldn’t have stood out in school as everybody was from Lockerbie. There was a lot more help on hand.

“Lots was done for the people in the town that we didn’t necessarily get, because we weren’t in the town anymore. “I know from going back and talking to people that they don’t have the same reaction to the disaster that I have.

“They can talk about it in casual conversation, but that would make my stomach sink and I’d feel sick. “It’s everyday for them because they continued living there.”

Although this December will mark 35 years for the reason that assault, Helen nonetheless has nightmares. “Not every night, but fairly often.

“I might have strange dreams several nights on the trot. Some-times I don’t know what I’ve dreamt – I just wake up in a cold sweat, terrified. I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I’ve been sobbing. Some- times I have dreams when I’m about to be killed by a stranger.”

“In the past few years I’ve dreamt I’m seeing an aircraft in the sky and it’s coming down a distance away and I’m going ‘Oh my God, that’s going to crash, we need to run’’.

“People go, ‘no, it’s miles away’ and I say ‘You don’t understand how far the bits can go.’ This is to do with PTSD as well.”

She mentioned a part of her feared {that a} new drama concerning the outrage could possibly be sensationalised. She mentioned: “What happens to the people affected by it who are then retraumatised? I always worry these things won’t be very good.

“I worry they wouldn’t be able to capture the real feeling of the place and it may end up being overly sentimental, and possibly a bit ‘too American’’.

“The story speaks for itself – it doesn’t need sensationalising. “These programmes focus on the victims’ families, and yes, they’re the ones who came off worst as they lost loved ones – you don’t get over that.

But there were more people destroyed by the disaster. “You didn’t need to lose somebody you loved to be affected by it for the rest of your life.

“Talk to the farmers up in the fields who were carrying bodies – they’ll never get over that.

“Talk to the service people that were involved afterwards – and the people there on the ground when it happened. I was nine years old at home where I should have been safe – and the world I knew ended.”

But she mentioned she recognised the importance of Lockerbie to the nation’s psyche. She mentioned: “I could choose not to watch this series, but you can’t get away from it being discussed.

“Anytime there’s a Lockerbie documentary I find it difficult. I usually record it and watch it when I can cope with it, on my own – it can be overwhelming.”

“Selfishly I feel like it’s my private terror attack and I don’t really want it to be probed. “That’s the conflict inside when any of these things happen. I think ‘leave it alone’, then another part of me is saying, ‘No don’t’.

“I don’t think the disaster should ever be forgotten because it was a colossal act of terrorism – the biggest terror attack on Britain. “People need to remember this as it could easily happen again.”