Shadow World

On 1 July 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne ran ahead of her brothers and sister in a field near her grandparents' home in West Sussex and was never seen alive again. Seventeen days later, her body was found. Her disappearance prompted one of the largest and most heavily publicised searches in British history — and at its heart was Sarah's mother, Sara Payne, a woman who set out to turn unimaginable loss into a force for change. Across six episodes, documentary-maker Edmund Coulthard draws on archive and new testimony from Sarah's family, detectives, journalists and politicians to tell the story of the murder investigation, the divisive News of the World campaign to name and shame sex offenders and the long battle for Sarah's Law. It is the story of a crime that changed the national conversation about child sex offenders living in ordinary communities, and of an extraordinary woman determined that her daughter's name would never be forgotten.

Gripping stories from the Shadows - BBC investigations from across the UK.