Born Innocent

Born Innocent
Directed by	Donald Wrye
Written by	Book: Creighton Brown Burnham Teleplay: Gerald Di Pego
Starring	Linda Blair Richard Jaeckel Kim Hunter
Distributed by	NBC
Release date(s)	September 10, 1974
Running time	98 minutes
Language	English

Born Innocent was a television movie which was first aired under the NBC World Premiere Movie umbrella on September 10, 1974. Highly publicized, Born Innocent was the highest-rated television movie to air in the United States in 1974. To this day, it has remained one of the most controversial films ever aired on American television.

Plot

The movie starred Linda Blair (fresh off her success with The Exorcist) as a teenage runaway, who was eventually sentenced to do time in a juvenile detention center, which doubled as a reform school for the girls. Blair's character, Christine Parker, came from an abusive home. Her father (played by Richard Jaeckel) beat her, which caused Chris to run away many times. Her mother (Kim Hunter) was unfeeling, sitting in her recliner, watching television and smoking cigarettes all day. While the movie has a morality play tone, showing the harsh effects of the detention center on a young girl, it also blames society for Christine's downfall, as her social worker does not find out that her parents caused her to run away, and then had her sent off to reform school when she told others.

Rape scene

One scene in particular that gained the movie infamy was the rape of Blair's character in the communal showers by a girl gang led by lesbian Moco (Nora Heflin) with a mop handle; this scene had the distinction of being the first all-female rape scene aired on American television. This scene was not glossed over in promotional spots for the movie; Linda Blair's screams as she was being attacked were aired in the promos, with the announcer intoning, "She was born innocent, but that was fourteen years ago!"

The scene drew much outcry on its first airing and was eventually pulled from the movie entirely when it was blamed for the rape of a nine-year-old girl, committed by some of her peers with a glass soda pop bottle. The California Supreme Court would declare the film was not obscene, and that the network which broadcast it was not liable for the actions of the persons who committed the crime. Olivia N. v. National Broadcasting Company, 126 Cal. App.3d 488 (1981).

Post original airings

In a response to the incident, re-airings in the late 1970s and 1980s did not air any of the rape sequence. The real-life rape, in part, helped establish the Family Viewing Hour which became mandatory for the networks in the late 1970s, as the movie was aired in the eight and nine o'clock hours on the East Coast, when some children may not have been in bed.

VHS and DVD release

After the edited re-airings in the 1980s, the uncut version appeared on VHS in numerous budget-priced editions. In 2004, VCI Entertainment released Born Innocent on DVD with the rape scene intact.

External links

• Born Innocent at the Internet Movie Database