A lot of Lifetime's TV movies get overly preachy when they take on social issues. Not this one. This is a superb human drama that expertly combines two story threads: the trauma that Debbie Smith faced from being raped and her involvement in the struggle to increases the resources available to local police departments to run DNA tests to identify rapists even when no suspect has actually been identified or taken into custody. This film brings us Debbie's trauma and how her rape hurts not only her but her family as well, turning her off to sex with her husband (the scene in which she freaks out in bed because he's inadvertently used an endearment that was also spoken to her by her rapist is especially chilling) and even being exploited by her children's schoolmates as an excuse to tease them. Stefan Pleszczynski directs in a calm, straightforward style that makes the material far more chilling than it would have been in the hands of an artier director; his only miscalculation (and the reason I'm not giving this film a perfect 10) is making the rape scene itself look too pleasant, going for soft-core porn titillation instead of the hard reality of violation. Still, that's a small blemish on an otherwise great production that shows off Lifetime at its best.
