General election in a year. Now on bbc news, one of our highlights of 2019. Clare balding presents the story of how a woman from one of america s most famous families changed the world through sport. Bill clinton, Nicole Scherzinger and members of the kennedy clan reveal howjfk s sister eunice was inspired by a tragedy in her own family to overcome ignorance and prejudice. Some of the words that people used to use were moan, idiotic, horrible. Youre different and youre odd. Walking through the neighbourhood and he actually shouted out, hey, i didnt know you was a retard, and started pelting orange behind me. Ive been called tracker, which isnt very nice at all. People used to tell me im not going to achieve. And they would call me a past it and everything like that and i would always feel lonely. Once people know you have a disability, you become the lowest thing in society. They are the worlds most innocent victims and they suffer only because they are different. The world said that people with intellectual problems should not be seen in public. Tonight, you are part of the years Largest Sporting event and the world is watching. If you seekjoy, come see the Special Olympics. She took people with intellectual disabilities and brought them out of institutions and gave them and their families hope. Eunice Kennedy Shriver is royalty as far as im concerned. The days of separation and segregation are over. What nation you come from doesnt matter, we dont care. The plan was laid early in my mothers life, to be fierce, determined, to some extent, angry. Your age, your size, we dont care. She had this great shock of hair, you know, and she would just stare at you, just stare a hole at you and just was pushing her cause. Go home and tell your countrymen, i am a champion athlete this is sport at its least cynical. This is pure, unadulterated sport. 30 years ago, the world said, you are unable to run 100 metres. Today, you run the marathon. I think she is one of the few people that changed the world. The Special Olympics world games is one of the biggest sporting events on the planet. Every two years, thousands gather to compete. And almost every day, in almost every country, theres a Special Olympics event. 5 million athletes with intellectual or learning disabilities are involved. But 50 years ago, these people were ignored and institutionalised. It took a woman from americas most powerful family to change that. A woman in a mans world. This is the story of how eunice Kennedy Shriver, inspired by her sisters struggles, defying her powerful father, confronting prejudice and ignorance, used sport to change lives. That was our royal family, the kennedys, thats exactly what they were. Eunice kennedy was born in 1921, the fifth of nine children. Arriving into a family whose fame was growing all the time. In the early part of the 20th century, a family of nine growing up in boston with prominent parents, very competitive environment, challenged to do the best, to be at the front lines of everything. She was a fighter from the get go, fighting to be seen, fighting to be acknowledged, fighting for her space. But amongst the smiles and the sport, there was a secret. My mothers sister was intellectually disabled, rosemary, but she could see that rosemary could do a lot of things. They loved their sister, rosemary, but they could see the world didnt love their sister. And its in this victorian workhouse atmosphere that some 2,000 people with damaged and inadequate brains work out their lives. In the middle of the 20th century, those with learning disabilities were invisible. Come on, peter, someone to see you. Warehoused, hidden, infanticide, forced sterilisation, shame, ignominy, the Supreme Court of the United States ruling that they should be sterilised against their will. They know how horrible their conditions are. Many of them, if they were lucky, they had a family, but there were so many medical problems that they usually died very early. My grandparents lives, with all the privileges and supports and opportunities that they had, still, they found nothing for rosemary. They tried to make her into a kennedy, you know . They tried to pretend that she wasnt special because even though the kennedys had money and power, there wasnt really any good place to put rosemary back then. She was a victim just like everybody else. And, finally, the father, joseph kennedy, decided on this terrible medical procedure. At the age of 23, rosemary had a lobotomy. Joseph kennedy didnt tell the rest of the family. Surgeons drilled into rosemarys brain to try and fix her. The operation was a disaster. Which left rosemary more incapacitated. She really wasnt incapacitated before. She could kind of like pass in society. After the operation, rosemary was sent away to a home for those with intellectual disabilities in wisconsin. The rest of the family moved onwards and upwards, but eunice couldnt forget her sister. I think, of all the members of the family, it really, really, really affected eunice, that there was anger about it, there was remorse, and there was some amount of guilt and thats where she started directing her energies. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what america will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. When her brother was elected president , my mother saw an opening and she drove a truck through it. Eunice persuaded jfk to set up a panel into what was then called mental retardation. Its advice was turned into the first us legislation for people with intellectual disabilities. A month after he signed the act into law, jfk was assassinated. During this period, eunice also decided to expose the familys secret, bringing rosemarys story out into the open for the first time and, later, making sure she was a regular visitor to the shriver family home until her death in 2005. I think when anybody wants to tell a story that some people in your family dont want you to tell, i think that requires bravery, it requires courage. She ran things for Developmental Disability which her father was trying to. Interviewer brush it under the carpet . Yeah, and what did she do . She blasted it out. How did she pull that off . Then she invited hundreds of children out of institutions and into her own back yard for sporting summer camps. Camp shriver was the experiment, was the foundation, for Special Olympics. Mommy was proving, in our back yard, that people with intellectual disabilities could compete, could run, could swim, could play archery, could ride horses. If you can go to camp shriver and imagine in1962, Special Olympics seemed to come along at the perfect time. It was 1968. You could make a case that 1968 was the most eventful year in american history. Soldier field, the site of many great sports events, is preparing for the more than 200 separate activities to take place there. Track and field, swimming, basketball, football, hockey, the olympic torch is carried down the track by a proud young runner. In ancient rome, the gladiators went into the arena with these words on their lips, let me win, but if i cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. My mom stood here 50 years ago and proclaimed to the world that the world would never be the same again. By the 1980s, Special Olympics world games were drawing big crowds and big names. Tonight, we open the largest sport event in the world this year. One of the things eunice was able to do was enlist celebrities to the cause. You can make fun of that, but thats what you need to do. Eunice, she is just such a bad mamba jamba shejust was. She knew what she was doing and knew that people of profile and celebrities of certain stature had that voice to really help be the voice of the people who didnt have it and people who are misunderstood. That meant continually pushing her cause at the white house, regardless of who was president. Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States of america, bill clinton. She was the classic example of a tiny group of people that we identified when i was president and they were called the just say yes people. In other words, they came at you, you are going to do what they wanted to do. So, you might as well save yourself a lot of time and trouble and just go on and say, yes. Thats what eunice was. You know, she was so intense. But it was loving, you know . It wasnt, like, irritable, it was loving. You knew that she was right. You knew she was trying to get you to do something thats right. Nice kick. Butjust a little straighter. Well into her 80s, with 100,000 Special Olympics events a year worldwide, still eunice refused to slow down. She kept pushing. She felt the sting of being trivialised, and treated as doing work that didnt matter, her whole life. It infuriated her. It didnt stop her. No question about it. That the rage, you know, she went to her grave with that. Eunice died in 2009. Special olympics athletes at her funeral tossed their medals into her grave. I used to always think, gosh, i want to be one of your special children. Of your special children. And thats the way she always thought of Special Olympics athletes. They were her sixth child and they were her extended family. Without their founder, the games go on. Theyve been to china, japan, korea, greece, and back stateside to los angeles in 2015. The next world games take place in abu dhabi. This time with 7,000 athletes from more than 170 countries. You get, like, a breeze through your face, it feels like youre flying and youre having a fantastic time. One of the athletes is kiera byland. I just struggled to understand writing. Reading, numbers, telling the time. Which i still struggle to today. So, show me where 100g is. There. Can you see that . Mm hm. So, put some carrots in and try and weigh out 100g. Lets put that on there. Id put kiera in the category of the invisible child. You cant see kieras impairment and then people say, well, whats wrong with her . And i say, theres nothing wrong with her, itsjust that she has many autism traits. Two threes, two twos, two fives, two sixes and then, all of a sudden, your favourite bit of the race, six, seven, eight, nine. Mm hm, yeah. Are you going to try that . Yeah. People dont believe it. Or, if youve got a child who has got a learning disability, youll go through that period where you dont want to believe it yourself. And then, certainly, dont want to tell anybody else about it because. Will that have an impact on them in life . I really struggled making friends. I didnt really quite understand, at that point, why. So, i used to, like, cry. I used to cry myself asleep, actually. Kieras one passion was to make a friend and have friends. So, i thought i was worthless and that i did something wrong. I didnt know how to handle it, so i did used to hit myself. Thinking, 0h, thatll make it all better. When i started to find food in her room, and shed hidden it, and ate it, i was really worried. And then she would literally hit herself, and smack herself. And say, im useless, im rubbish. And that upsets me now. Because ijust think, i should have taken that away, thats what mums do. So, it still upsets me now. At her lowest point, kiera sought refuge in sport. First, swimming, and then, cycling. I think kiera found something that she was good at. Its given me confidence. Its given me the chance to believe in myself and that im actually worth something. Kiera was great britains most successful competitor at the last world summer games in los angeles, winning three gold medals. That was. That was it, i suppose. Seeing her on the podium then. And you cant help but think back to all the bad times. And you think, wow, we got through all that lot and look at this, this is payback. Lot and look at this, this is payback. So, its great. I actually use the sport to help me feel better. And, also, my friends are there because they want to be there, they like cycling. And that helps me, as well. Kiera is hoping to match her medal haul this time around. Im, hopefully, going to win three golds, because i know that i managed that last time in la. But, hopefully, i can try. They were taking me down here, basically, 20 25 metres from where i had been standing. I reached this door and they opened the door and, as i walk in, i couldnt believe my eyes. Here was this youngster, completely silent, staring, basically, straight into the wall, and chained. Recognising immediately he probably had autism. And, although i hated myself for it, i thought, i need to take a picture of this. And then i turned to the mother and said, could you please unlock him . So, she did. He was totally nonverbal. I noticed that they had, basically, treated him like a thing. Translation because he was mentally sick, thats why he was tied up. He was shouting, fighting people and biting them. I have a wound myself after he bit me. He could fight people laughing at him. So, i showed it to our president , tim shriver, and he immediately felt we had to do something. It makes your. Whole body shudder. To see a child with a locked chain on his ankle. Intellectual disability is associated with bad omens, with taboo, and other bad things. So, a person with intellectual disability is generally discriminated and there are places where a person with an intellectual disability is not allowed even to step in. We engaged Special Olympics tanzania to come from Dar Es Salaam to the refugee camp, 1,800km, quite a distance. We never want to see that child again in that chain and so we have come, they said to her, to bring new hope to you, to your family and to your son. He speaks his own language Special Olympics now runs weekly competitions in the refugee camp, bringing out those with intellectual disabilities out of the shadows. So far, we have recruited well over 200 athletes in the camp who are normally doing, you know, football, athletics and other sports. One of them is malaki. His feet free from chains, hes been chosen to compete at the world summer games. Translation i was very happy with their trust in me for the games in abu dhabi. Life has changed since they came to pick me up. Now, things are ok. Translation he is very happy. Something changed. What made him happy is that he was given clothes and a ball. That made him happy. Oh, its amazing, its amazing. This is something that they had never imagined would happen. And quite a lot of attitudes have been changed and persons with intellectual disabilities are being accepted. 18 months after he freed him, nils and malaki were reunited. Hey he speaks malakis language well, for me, it was a very emotionally strong experience to, again, see malaki so much better. Now, he is starting to become verbal. Clearly, his life has completely changed. But, much more than the change in him, you could see how his mother doesnt see him, now, as a problem but sees him as her son. When president mandela said that freedom consists of breaking the chains, its not a metaphor. Sometimes the chains are chains. And, sometimes, the urgency is that acute. We need to break a chain thats holding a child. Its a reminder of how important this work is and how much hope the world still needs when it comes to those who are different. And i dont feel sad any more. The whole world is watching you. Look how far youve come. Hello. Boxing day has brought us a fair amount of cloud and that has been producing some outbreaks of rain. This picture was taken by a weather watcher in west sussex a bit earlier on. A similar picture across much of the uk but the rain will be easing and over the next couple of days, better news, particularly where we have had the flooding across central and southern england, things are turning drier and milder through the final few days of 2019. This evening, still some patchy rain lingering for the south west of england and south wales for a time but, for most of us, a spell of dry weather before the next area of wet and windy weather moves in across Northern Ireland and western Scotland First thing tomorrow. Milderfrom the west, temperatures around 11 overnight for parts of devon and cornwall. Still chilly in the east but a frost free start for most of us. Things turn milder through friday as a warm front pushes eastwards across the uk, which will introduce south westerly winds, bringing mild air through the day on friday and that will be staying with us over the next few days. Quite a cloudy day for most places on friday, patchy rain at times for Northern Ireland and Northern England and particularly for scotland, where it will also be breezy in the far north west but, for much of england and wales, a drier day, still quite cloudy, a bit of sunshine perhaps across eastern parts through the day. Temperatures between seven and 12, above average for the time of year and things will continue to turn warmer into the weekend as High Pressure starts to dominate our weather. Still some weather fronts not far away, mainly towards the north west. Saturday, a dry day for most places, there will be some rain for northern and western scotland, quite a bit of cloud but some brightness breaking through, particularly anywhere to the north east of higher ground, north east england, north wales. Temperatures in double figures across the board. By the time we get to sunday, spot the difference, still a bit of rain for the north west of scotland but largely dry elsewhere. A bit more sunshine by sunday afternoon so brightness breaking through, lifting temperatures up to 1a or so for the warmest spots. Above average for this time of the year. It remains largely dry and settled through to the end of 2019, some rain to come towards the north west. Bye for now. This is bbc news, im ben brown. The headlines at 11. Spanish police have named the three british holiday makers who died in a Swimming Pool on christmas eve. Gabriel diya and his two children drowned at a hotel on the costa del sol. A powerful typhoon tears through parts of the philippines, killing at least 16 people and leaving thousands homeless. As bushires rage out of control in australia theres a warning that more record breaking temperatures could be on the way. Israels Prime Minister faces a political fight, as his likud Party Decides who will lead them into the countrys third general election in a year. Whats occurin . More than 11 Million People tuned in for the return of gavin and stacey, making it the most