Taking Back My Life: The Nancy Ziegenmeyer Story | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Written by | April Smith |
Directed by | Harry Winer |
Starring | Patricia Wettig Stephen Lang Shelley Hack Joanna Cassidy |
Music by | Randy Edelman |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | Lawrence A. Lyttle Harry Winer |
Producer | Andrew Gottlieb |
Production location | Memphis, Tennessee |
Cinematography | Thomas Alger Olgeirson |
Editors | John A. Barton David A. Simmons |
Running time | 96 minutes |
Production company | Warner Bros. Television |
Original release | |
Network | CBS |
Release | March 15, 1992 |
Taking Back My Life: The Nancy Ziegenmeyer Story is a 1992 American made-for-television drama film about a rape victim who spoke out about her experiences and raised awareness of the fact that rape and sexual assault are never the victim's fault.
This true story inspired other victims who felt shame about what had happened to them to speak out. [1] Rape victim Nancy Ziegenmeyer spoke openly about her experiences, including with the hospital, the police, prosecutors, the accused, and the criminal justice system. [2] [3]
Nancy Ziegenmeyer wrote the book, Taking Back My Life, to encourage women to seek help after they've been victimized. [4]
The Des Moines Register won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1991 for publishing the story regarding Nancy Ziegenmeyer. [5]
Elizabeth Ann Gilmour is an American child safety activist and commentator for ABC News. She gained national attention at age 14 when she was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell. Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Smart captive for nine months until she was rescued by police officers on a street in Sandy, Utah.
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida's death row.
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.
The 1992 Ajmer scandal was a series of gangrapes and blackmailing in which 250 female students in either schools/colleges aged between 11 and 20 years old were reportedly victims of this crime.
Jill Saward, also known by her married name Jill Drake, was an English campaigner on issues relating to sexual violence.
The Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scandal was part of a series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in the United States that revealed widespread crimes in the American Catholic Church. In early 2002, TheBoston Globe published results of an investigation that led to the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests and thrust the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy into the national spotlight. Another accused priest who was involved in the Spotlight scandal also pleaded guilty. The Globe's coverage encouraged other victims to come forward with allegations of abuse, resulting in numerous lawsuits and 249 criminal cases.
Robyn Doolittle is a Canadian investigative reporter for The Globe and Mail.
In April 2013, Emma Sulkowicz, an American fourth-year visual arts major at Columbia University in New York City, filed a complaint with Columbia University requesting expulsion of fellow fourth-year student and German national, Paul Nungesser, alleging he had raped Sulkowicz in her dorm room on August 27, 2012. Nungesser was found not responsible by a university inquiry.
People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner (2015), was a criminal case in which Brock Allen Turner was convicted by jury trial of three counts of felony sexual assault.
After a sexual assault or rape, victims are often subjected to scrutiny and, in some cases, mistreatment. Victims undergo medical examinations and are interviewed by police. If there is a criminal trial, victims suffer a loss of privacy, and their credibility may be challenged. Victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, social stigmatization, sexual slurs and cyberbullying. These factors, contributing to a rape culture, are among some of the reasons that may contribute up to 80% of all rapes going unreported in the U.S, according to a 2016 study done by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Since the 1970s, at least 26 women have publicly accused Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women's skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations.
In October 2017, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that dozens of women had accused the American film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse over a period of at least 30 years. Over 80 women in the film industry eventually accused Weinstein of such acts. Weinstein himself denied "any non-consensual sex". Shortly after, he was dismissed from The Weinstein Company (TWC), expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other professional associations, and retired from public view.
#MeToo is a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture, in which women publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. "Me Too" is meant to empower those who have been sexually assaulted through empathy, solidarity and strength in numbers, by visibly demonstrating how many have experienced sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.
Rebecca Campbell is a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. She is known for her research pertaining to sexual assault and violence against women and children and the effects of treatment by law enforcement and medical staff on victims' psychological and physiological well-being. Campbell has been involved in criminal justice research on the investigation of Detroit's untested rape kits, wherein DNA evidence obtained in thousands of rape kits was left in storage and not analyzed. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Louise Kidder Early Career Award (2000), the American Psychological Association (APA) Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (2008), the APA Division 27 Council on Educational Program's Excellent Educator Award (2015), and the U.S. Department of Justice Vision 21 Crime Victims Research Award (2015).
Between 2008 and 2011, a series of rapes in the suburbs around Seattle and Denver were perpetrated by Marc Patrick O'Leary, a United States Army veteran who had been stationed near Tacoma. The first victim, an 18-year-old woman known as Marie, reported to Sergeant Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn that she had been raped at her home in Lynnwood, Washington. According to a later report, the bullying and hounding of her by the detectives led Marie to recant her statement, resulting in her being charged with making a false report of rape.
Katherine H. Koestner is an American activist against sexual assault. She came forward in 1990 at 18 years old publicly after an alleged rape that took place on William and Mary campus which involved her and her date. Koestner started speaking out about her experience in 1991 by lecturing at other college campuses to raise awareness. She also volunteered in rape crisis centers. She was featured in the media, including an HBO special, No Visible Bruises: The Katie Koestner Story (1993). Koestner's work and activism has helped the term "date rape" become part of the larger discussion around rape and sexual assault. Koestner founded several campus sexual assault prevention groups after graduating from the College of William & Mary in 1994. Koester is the current director of the Take Back The Night Foundation, president of Campus Outreach Services and serves as an advisor for other organizations to help prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Elizabeth Bruenig is an American journalist working as an opinion writer for The Atlantic. She previously worked as an opinion writer for The New York Times, and as an opinion writer and editor for The Washington Post, where she wrote about ethics, politics, theology, and economics. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2019 and in 2023.
Chanel Miller is an American writer based in San Francisco, California and New York City. She was known anonymously after she was sexually assaulted on the campus of Stanford University in January 2015 by Brock Allen Turner. The following year, her victim impact statement at his sentencing hearing went viral after it was published online by BuzzFeed, being read 11 million times within four days. Miller was referred to as "Emily Doe" in court documents and media reports until September 2019, when she relinquished her anonymity and released her memoir Know My Name: A Memoir. The book won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiographies and was named in several national book lists of the year. She is credited with sparking national discussion in the United States about the treatment of sexual assault cases and victims by college campuses and court systems, a topic she addresses as a public speaker.
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting.