CHILD ABUSE – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

LEAVE NO TRACE (Tribeca 2022) – Review by Leslie Combemale

June 6, 2022June 16, 2022 Leslie Combemale Boy Scouts of America, BSA, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Irene Taylor, leave no trace, lgbtq, Paul Ernst, Tribeca 2022

When Norman Rockwell began his long association with The Boy Scouts of American, he couldn’t possibly have imagined how much his romanticized, clean-cut, patriotic representation of the organization would aid in building a system tailor-made for pedophiles. The dozens of art images shown as part of the new documentary Leave No Trace are only one way filmmaker Irene Taylor lays out how the once storied, now infamous boy’s club promoted and branded itself as a safe, wholesome way to create a strong, healthy, loyal, and obedient young man. Leave No Trace recounts, often in shocking ways, just how far from the truth that really is, and has been nearly from their inception. Only in February 2022, the Boy Scouts of America reached a 2.7 billion agreement over sexual abuses that occurred over decades.

Movie of the Week Reviews

MOVIE OF THE WEEK March 26, 2021: GROOMED

March 21, 2021March 28, 2021 Jennifer Merin betsy bozzdech, Cate Marquis, CHILD ABUSE, documentaries, groomed, gwen van de pas, jennifer merin, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, marilyn ferdinanfd, marina antunes, motw, Movie of the Week, nell minow, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, susan wloszczyna

Both heartbreaking and immensely informative, Gwen van de Pas’ documentary Groomed details the trauma inflicted on her as a child by a trusted adult who betrayed that trust in the most heinous way possible. Decades later, when the long-buried memories of the sexual abuse and rape she suffered resurface as nightmares and panic attacks, she uses filmmaking as a way to process the experience and figure out how to move on.

Reviews

GROOMED – Review by Jennifer Merin

March 18, 2021April 3, 2021 Jennifer Merin CHILD ABUSE, documentaries, groomed, gwen van de pas, motw, Movie of the Week

Groomed is an intensely personal documentary in which the filmmaker chronicles her own journey to discover the truth about her childhood encounter with a predatory sexual abuser and to recover from the long lasting impact his abuse has had on her life as an adult. Gwen van de Pas, now living in San Francisco with a wonderfully understanding and supportive man, is beset by nightmares and panic attacks and sets out to investigate the cause of them.

Reviews

DELIVER US FROM EVIL – Retroview by Jennifer Merin

March 16, 2021March 20, 2021 Jennifer Merin amy berg, CATHOLIC CHURCH, CHILD ABUSE, DELIVER US FROM EVIL, documentaries

In her Academy Award nominated (2006) documentary, Deliver Us From Evil, director Amy Berg uses gripping testimony by victims, interviews with expert witnesses and archival footage to reveal the Catholic Church’s shocking cover up of ongoing incidents of child abuse by members of the clergy. The film focuses specifically on the case of Father Oliver O’Grady, the notorious pedophile priest who raped and sodomized hundreds of boys and girls aged nine months through adolescence, and one adolescent victim’s mother, over the course of 20 years.