She feels the onus should have been on the TV company to contact her for her permission rather than for her to have to track down the television company and ask them not to show it. "In a society where there are no longer many ways to participate, programmes like this can make them feel part of something." Yvonne's 50 seconds of fame appeared in a 15-minute "special operations" section of Crime Month, made by LWT, which follows different police departments carrying out their duties.A spokeswoman for LWT said their film crew and reporter had identified themselves to Yvonne. "Following strict guidelines, our reporter made himself known to her and explained he was from LWT," she says. "At no stage did she ask [the crew] to leave and, in fact, invited everyone in to her flat. "People we have interviewed say they like them because they may be able to help the police and play a role," she says. The security camera that filmed him saved his life because police officers came to his rescue, but he ended up reliving the lowest point of his life on ITV, BBC and in the local press.Dr Sonia Livingstone, a lecturer in social anthropology at the London School of Economics who is researching the representation of crime in the press, television and film, says programmes like Crime Month are attractive to audiences because they are participatory. "They may have been trespassing, but she probably implied consent because she thought they were a police crew." As the public thirst for real-life police action continues to spawn fly-on-the-wall footage from ambulance- chasing film crews, closed circuit TV and police cameras, Liberty is concerned at an increasing number of complaints from people who have had similar experiences to Yvonne's.

How did they have the right to film me at my own home and then use it against my will?"Philip Leach, the legal adviser at the civil liberties pressure group Liberty, says the camera crew were perfectly within their rights. When she rang 999, a camera crew came too. Yvonne, a freelance editor from west London, says the LWT cameraman, who she initially thought was a policeman videotaping her evidence, failed to identify himself to her and the police later promised her the footage would end up on the cutting room floor.She says she didn't think anything more of it, but when she went to get new keys cut for her flat three weeks later the key-cutter instantly recognised her from the television "Sorry to hear about your break-in," he said. She knows this because she has played the scene and the minutes leading up to it - when a large man held a knife to her throat and then moved it downwards to cut her handbag from her arm - over and over in her mind since the attack. Other people, friends and strangers, also know she was in shock because they saw her white face and the police breaking into her flat, SAS-style, on prime time television. Naryle Shields, the son of Dawn Shields who was strangled and dumped on remote moorland near Sheffield, twice had an application for compensation rejected because Dawn was a prostitute.. When the police arrived after Yvonne had been mugged at knifepoint, she was in shock. The receipt of benefits also extinguishes a bereavement award."A CICB spokesman said a number of factors were taken into account when claims were dealt with.The case is not the first controversial decision.