An edition of the UK TV police series Z Cars had an incest theme. Can remember watching the episode in about 1976. It was played very seriously indeed, a fantastic storyline.
It went thusly:
A woman makes a rape complaint against a workman who was with a company doing road repairs or whatever outside her house. The man is arrested but swears she led him on. She says she was just being friendly to the workers. I think she offered them refreshments and he attacked her when he went to collect them.
When inquiries are going on the woman and her male partner are found dead. Turns out that they were a sister and brother who'd lived together as a couple. They killed themselves in fear that their incest would become public.
One of the officers discussed it with a psychiatrist afterwards. He was told that the woman might have unconsciously led the man on, because she knew her relationship with her brother was unnatural and may have wanted validation of her attractiveness as a woman from another man.
Total victim-blaming bollocks of course. The brother might feel the same but he wasn't out on the pull.
The officer who'd spoken with the psychiatrist believed the woman was telling the truth, incest or not, and that the man might have done it before or might again. The police believed her.
Ah….Z cars Scargy, that’s stirred a few memories. I have a Fortean story about Z cars, which I will share with you now.
Years ago I dated a girl who’s uncle is a well-known actor. Just before Christmas one year we were visiting her Grandmother, to find the actor uncle had also decided to visit her that day.
We were sitting in the living room with cups of tea, when a neighbour popped in with a Christmas card, she said hello to all of us but said she couldn’t stop as she was busy with Christmas shopping – this neighbour had always claimed to be a psychic medium, and when she left the uncle told me a very interesting story about her.
Back in the late 60’s the uncle was a young man just starting out in the acting world, and looking for any work that came his way. Early one morning he was sitting in his agents office, when a call came through from the set of Z cars, asking for a young male to play a bit part for the day, the uncle agrees to do it and gets himself over to the studio.
The scene he has to play is to resist arrest, as 4 or 5 police officers attempt to forcibly put him into the back of a police van, after a few takes the director is happy, the scene ends, and as there is no more scenes left for him to play he goes home (back to his Mother’s house)
As he’s walking down the street in which his Mother lives, he notices the psychic neighbour standing on her doorstep staring at him with a face like thunder. He says hello to her but through gritted teeth invites him into her house, and to take a seat in the kitchen.
As soon as he sat down she rip’s into him about, how kind and decent his parents are, and that he should not bring any trouble back to his parents’ house. Confused he asks what on earth she thinks he’s done, and she tells him she saw him in her minds eye, and that she saw him fighting with the police, and that she saw him be arrested and be put in the back of a police van.
He tells her that he’s just come from the set at Z cars, and what she’d just described was true but only for a piece of Television.
She looked thoughtfully at him, for a moment, smiles and says “Ah that will be that then, you had me worried there”
Strange story I think.