TVScope 3 Minute Wonder: Facing The Dark - Four Tales of Forgiveness Channel 4, Monday-Thursday, 7.55pmThat the most ordinary people can be truly extraordinary was the inspirational message from this series of four short three-minute films on forgiveness.
It was profoundly moving to come face to face with Gill, Sue, Anna and Michael - the real people behind the grim headlines - and to hear in their own words how they have tried to make sense of the horrors heaped upon them.
Gill and Sue were both victims of terrorist attacks. The suicide bomber who got into Gill's rail carriage in London last July left her looking in bewilderment at "a perfect anatomical drawing of what legs looked like sliced in half". For Sue, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when an IRA bomb exploded deprived her first of a leg and then a husband who could not cope with her anger and rage.
While Sue and Gill's suffering was inflicted on them in a random, impersonal way by their attackers, Anna experienced the personal victimisation of being sexually abused by her father, who continues to victimise her by denying what he did.
Michael Watson lost the life he knew in front of millions of TV viewers when the injuries he received in a world title boxing contest against Chris Eubank left him paralysed down one side.
It was remarkable to hear the different ways in which all four had used forgiveness to prevent what had been done to them from destroying them completely.
They eloquently demonstrated that, contrary to how forgiveness can be seen as a sign of weakness and letting the wrongdoer off the hook, forgiveness is most beneficial to the forgiver.
The price they all had to pay though was the need to first really experience the pain of their loss to prevent forgiving from being merely forgetting and the deadly poisons of anger and revenge from taking over.
Gill told us how she is a better person now as a result of her suffering and her awareness of the fragility of life. "Colours are richer, people I love I love more."
This she has achieved by turning the other cheek "not with love but with a desire to understand," she says.
Anna realistically sees forgiveness as a process rather than a state. She demonstrated that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation and that the refusal of her abuser to repent, while meaning she will never be able to trust him again, does not prevent her from forgiving him.
She showed us that the real power of forgiveness is in the fact that it is at her discretion alone as to how she uses it in her life.
Michael rose above the public expectation that he should feel victimised by publicly forgiving and embracing Chris Eubank at a press conference.
It was Sue, however, who most vividly illustrated how forgiveness frees the victim from the prison of victimhood. When she was at her lowest ebb she was given the opportunity to learn to fly a small aeroplane. The exhilarating freeing sensation of flying saved her. Forgiving, she says, gives her the same sensation.
Olive Travers is a clinical psychologist.