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Ken Pearce's forgettable and slightly old-looking teenage tearaway daughter, who popped inside for a quick life-altering visit, while giving the others a chance to reminisce.
Debbie first made an appearance amid Bea’s fluttering heart period of mutual attraction with Ken, while he was helping with rehearsals for a play. Bea witnessed him embracing a pretty young blonde at the prison gate, and assumed he had a mistress. This caused her to lose interest in the drama group, and all the women to suffer by her subsequent grumpiness.
Paul Reid became concerned that the drama group would fail, but couldn’t find out what had changed Bea’s mind until Doreen eventually told him. He got Bea and Ken into his office, and left them alone to talk, which allowed Ken to mention it was his daughter she saw.
Ken was having problems with Debbie keeping bad company, including a friend who was a prostitute. Especially when she stayed out all night before returning with a wad of money, which she said she won from betting on the horses, Ken told her she might have to go and live with her mother. She threatened to go and live with the prostitute friend instead. Bea told Ken a day inside prison would sort her ideas out, which he took seriously and spoke to Erica about it.
Erica got approval for Debbie to have a 24 hour stay in Wentworth to see what it was like inside, and Colleen Powell told the women about a similar scheme she had seen. (While those of us who have seen later episodes thought about Nikki Lennox and the curiously similar ‘scared straight’ storyline.)
Debbie agreed to the visit, was inducted, before getting her first taste of Vera. When she complained to Erica about her treatment, Erica pointed out that she was being treated the same as any other prisoner. Bea made Debbie listen to Doreen and Lizzie describing their stories, and later at night in Bea’s cell, Debbie explained how she was conceived while her father was on the run from prison. Bea’s final emotional story was how she’d be 50 before she got out, and couldn’t expect to find love in her life, not even with Ken.
Soon after all this, Ken told Bea the experience seemed to have worked, and Debbie had gone to live with her mother.
Not a very long-lasting or substantial character, with no real affect on the scheme of things. I can’t help wondering if her role was more as a device to bring in a touch of pathos from some of the principle characters’ back-stories. The idea of putting a wayward youth inside for a day is interesting (particularly if similar schemes really had happened) but that concept was better explored later in the series, when the planning involved seemed a little more convincing than the "bring-your-daughter-to-work-day" casualness of this occasion.
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