Born Innocent (1974)

Director: Donald Wyre
Writer: Gerald Di Pego, based on the book by Creighton Brown Burnham
Stars: Linda Blair, Joanna Miles, Allyn Ann McLerie, Mary Murphy, Janit Baldwin, Nora Heflin, Tina Andrews, Sandra Ego, Mitch Vogel, Richard Jaeckel and Kim Hunter

Index: Make It a Double.

Linda Blair didn’t start her screen career in The Exorcist but it launched her to stardom in a way few fourteen year olds ever experience. It speaks volumes for her attitude that she took up this tough TV movie next and continued to accept tough roles in TV movies like Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Sweet Hostage and Victory at Entebbe. She took the harder road.

Born Innocent aired on 10th September, 1974 as an NBC World Premiere Movie and became the highest rated TV movie of that year. It looks at mental and physical abuse, pushing the edges of what network television was willing to do. Its notorious lesbian rape scene was removed from reruns, even though it’s key to the story.

And that story revolves around Chris Parker as she follows a brutal story arc. Arguably the most powerful scene isn’t the rape at all but a closing shot of the face of a counsellor as she realises she’s lost another one because of the system. What we see is how she entered it and how she gets lost within it.

We get a glimmer as we start out, watching Chris, naturally played by Blair, led around as if she’s a object rather than a human being. It’s initially a county jail where she’s locked into a cell that’s basically a dorm. Then it’s back out again to a juvenile detention home where the bars and the locks aren’t quite as obvious but are still there nonetheless. The soundtrack is a succession of clanking metal doors because no authority figure ever talks to her and she stays silent. She’s fourteen years old.

Before long, we find that she ran away from home again, the sixth time in two years. That’s led her parents to sign papers to relinquish all rights and make her a ward of the court. There isn’t a foster home available. Her brother isn’t in a position to help. Therefore, it’s the home.

Crucially, there’s nothing here to tackle why she ran away. She’s treated like a criminal and is constantly suspected, so people can be safe, but nobody seems remotely interested in an explanation. Damn, this is impersonal.

The first point we see sympathy is a glimpse on the face of Miss Lasko, the house mother at the juvenile home, but it’s a temporary thing. She’s taking Chris to the shower, but she strip searches her first as per protocol, and realises from her reaction that this is a human being, a person with a story, one that isn’t likely to be pleasant. There’s clearly trauma here.

The only point we see sustained sympathy is that counsellor, Barbara Clark, though I never caught the name in the film itself. She has the girls for so many hours a day to try to pass on an education. As you can imagine, most don’t want to know. Chris is a good student so sticks out here because of that as much as because of the smell of lye soap in her hair.

Certainly the girls have little sympathy. She shares a room with another girl whose wrists are bandaged, but we don’t hear her story; it’s likely to not be pleasant either. It’s a sign that most of these girls are victims, even if a couple are clearly criminal. Janit Baldwin, who plays Denny, looks seriously dangerous. It’s she who rapes Chris on the shower floor with a plunger as three others firmly hold her down.

For a while, it’s fair to believe that this will end well. Barbara will connect with Chris and make a crucial difference in her life, right? I’ve seen that movie often enough. Certainly she’s willing to treat her differently because, while she sadly knows that most of the girls can’t be helped at this point, she sees the potential for Chris to not be one of them.

However, when she orchestrates a four day visit back home, we see Chris’s back story and realise that it’s never going to be that simple. Tellingly, we’re only given a first name for her dad, Ben, which echoes how he sees the house. He’s Richard Jaeckel and he’s violent, slapping both his wife and his daughter well before the four days are up. She’s Kim Hunter and I think she’s self-medicating with alcohol.

So Chris runs yet again but is brought back yet again. She’s already done it from the home after the rape, right out of the classroom, only to be pulled down from the barbed wire fence and put back into solitary. She’s there a lot.

There are moments of hope, both for Chris and for other characters, but it’s clear that the system isn’t geared to help. There’s a powerful scene late in the film that brings some context to proceedings: Barbara and Lasko argue about the situation. What’s most blistering is how it isn’t an argument we can easily take a side on because neither is entirely wrong. This film is highlighting problems not floating solutions.

Lasko remembers being the progressive one there, getting in between girls and staff when the latter were beating the former with straps. Sure, it’s better than it used to be. That doesn’t mean that it’s right now. Not beating the girls with straps any more isn’t enough of a change.

And so the hope gradually dissipates and we realise that this is going to be depressing, but in an important way. After all, it’s a powerful social commentary film. So I was disappointed to read up on it but not find that it helped to improve the system. It doesn’t appear that any laws passed or policies changed because of it. The best I found is Blair saying that it made it easier for rape survivors to come forward.

Instead, LGBTQ+ groups lambasted it as anti-lesbian, one group falsely claiming that “men rape, women don’t”. In fact, a girl was jailed in California for a copycat crime and the mother of the raped girl sued NBC for inspiring it. She lost when the network was found not liable.

On top of that, the National Association of Broadcasters used all that as one reason to put a Family Viewing Hour policy in play in 1975, reserving the first hour of prime time for only family friendly material. The rape scene is half an hour into the movie and the film started at 8:00pm Eastern time. Do the math.

While American television has changed over the half a century since this was aired, the film still carries a serious punch. The more I watch titles like this and 1972’s That Certain Summer, the more I want to dive into what other topics traditionally not touched by television were in play in TV movies in the seventies. Maybe that should be another zine.

Certainly Linda Blair embraced them. Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic is another and I applaud her for tackling this sort of material as a child actor. She’s still rough here but she sells her traumatic story arc. That’s not trivial and this was a great choice for her Double.