Interview
SLIFF 2017 Interview: Trish Adlesic – Director of I AM EVIDENCE
I AM EVIDENCE screens Wednesday, November 8th at 6:30pm at The Plaza Frontenac Theater (1701 S Lindbergh Blvd # 210) as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Co-director Trish Adlesic and subject Kym L. Worthy, prosecutor of Wayne County, Michigan will be in attendance. This screening is sponsored by “Culture Shock”: A Film Series for Helping Kids Together and by Safe Connections. Ticket information can be found HERE.
A powerful indictment of the criminal-justice system’s seeming indifference to the crime of rape, I AM EVIDENCE exposes the shockingly large number of untested rape kits in the United States today. Despite the power of DNA to solve and prevent crimes, hundreds of thousands of kits containing potentially crucial DNA evidence languish untested in police evidence storage rooms across the country. Behind each of these kits lies an individual’s unresolved sexual-assault case. Produced by “Law & Order: SVU’s” Mariska Hargitay — who also appears in the documentary — I AM EVIDENCE tells the stories of survivors who have waited years for their kits to be tested and chronicles the efforts of the law-enforcement officials who are leading the charge to work through the backlog and pursue long-awaited justice in these cases. The film reveals the high cost of the lingering lassitude surrounding rape investigations in this country, and the positive effects of treating survivors with the respect they deserve.
Mariska Hargitay with Trish Adlesic
Director Trish Adlesic took the time to answer some questions about her film for We Are Movie Geeks before its screening at The St. Louis International Film Festival
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 1st, 2017
Tom Stockman: Have you been to St. Louis before?
Trish Adlesic: No, this will be my first time. I’m excited to visit the city.
TS: Your film I AM EVIDENCE is about untested rape kits. What exactly is a rape kit?
TA: Rape kits were developed in the late 70s, by a police Sergeant in Chicago named Louis Vitullo to capture DNA evidence to aid in solving the crime. When someone is sexually assaulted, their body becomes a living, breathing crime scene. The perpetrator’s body oils, hair, and fibers from their clothing can be found on the body of the victim. 14 samples are taken after the assault at the hospital by a forensically-trained nurse. The evidence is collected into the rape kit that gets turned over to police to assist in the investigation of the crime.
TS: Why do so many of these rape kits go untested?
TA: There are a number of different reasons. We feel the primary reason is that it wasn’t a priority. Some of the responses we got were that there wasn’t the funding to test them and that the science wasn’t developed enough. The technology is ever-evolving, but by the 90s, the technology was there. I think culturally we have issues around the perceptions of this crime, not believing a victim is a problem, saying that someone doesn’t look like they were raped, or isn’t behaving like they were raped, or that they were dressed in the wrong way. If someone had a necklace stolen off their body, they would not be scrutinized in a way that a rape victim is scrutinized. Some of these untested kits go back 30 years. It’s not uncommon when we speak with survivors about their experiences and the way that they were treated by law-enforcement that they felt re-victimized because it’s such a horror to go through this kind of violence. Then to go to the very entity that is set up to help them, and for police to not believe them, or blame them, and tell them that their rape kit is just going to sit on a shelf and nothing is going to be done, is heartbreaking for them. This is a critically important public safety issue. Many of these perpetrators are serial rapists. If you don’t test the kit and use the science that’s available, that’s a crime. We need to use the power of DNA to stop these perpetrators, to see if there is a match, or multiple matches. There’s a state CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) and a national CODIS database and DNA is uploaded to it. This is how we find matches to the kit or multiple matches across the country from serial offenders. This issue is a big reflection of cultural attitudes. Changing cultural attitudes and creating comprehensive legislation that requires the counting and testing of kits in all 50 states will make it possible to fix this problem and eradicate it from happening again. Right now we only have eight states with comprehensive legislative reform. There is legislation being proposed in several other states in varying forms.
TS: As a filmmaker, what drew you to this subject?
TA: I worked on the show Law and Order SVU for 14 years and got to know the star of the show, Mariska Hargitay. I started to produce documentaries GASLAND and GASLAND 2 for HBO highlighting the dangers of fracking which I was potentially going to be affected by. GASLAND received an Oscar nomination and won an Emmy. Mariska took note, and saw the success of the films that Josh Fox and I did. Mariska and I started talking about doing a project together like her, I too was outraged by learning of the rape kit backlog. I was subjected to two attempted rapes myself, both attempts involved weapons. I was fortunate to get away, but that’s not the case for so many. We all feel strongly, both men and women, that this kind of violence has to end. There’s a shame around it and we want to change the culture by making it OK to talk about these issues. We need a Cultural shift, and legislation, but at the forefront of it all is providing the best care for the survivors. Survivors need to be given a fair exchange. I immediately wanted to be a part of this project because it gave me the opportunity to be a part of giving voice to so many.
TS: Were there people that you approached to be in the film that turned you down or did not want to be on camera?
TA: Many of the survivors felt that they had waited years for this moment to be heard and they were all glad that a documentary was being made to raise awareness. We only had 90 minutes and all the women involved, their voices and their stories, led us on how best to tell this story. Every voice mattered and continues to matter. I had a little bit of push back, not much, but here and there from some in law enforcement. It doesn’t make them look good when these rape kits are not accounted for and go untested. We want to engage the police and help them understand how important it is for survivors to be heard and for their kits to be tested.
TS: Tell me about Kym Worthy, the prosecutor from Michigan. How did she get involved and what was her role?
TA: Kym is an extraordinary prosecutor and person. In 2009, her assistant prosecutor Robert Spada was going through an abandoned police warehouse in Detroit looking for evidence regarding a murder case and stumbled upon a significant amount of rape kits, around 10,000 of them. He asked the officer who was giving him a tour of that facility if the kits had been tested and he was told that they had. But he could see that the seals on the boxes had not been broken, therefore they had not been tested. He immediately called Prosecutor Worthy and brought this to her attention. She was horrified and shocked that these kits had been sitting in the warehouse for so long. She immediately went into action. She had all the kits accounted for, but the county executive at the time, Robert Ficano, who is no longer in office, did not think it was important to provide funding to test the kits and would not provide her with funding. Kym, being a maverick and a heroine, on her own raised money privately to have the kits tested. She applied for Federal grants and raised money from private citizens. She’s been building a good team of prosecutors, which she needed because the backlog cases were now coming in for prosecution, and these cold cases had to be juggled with current cases. She raised the money, and with the support of The Joyful Heart Foundation and others, she and her team were able to raise funds to get all of the kits tested. By testing all of these kits, they have gotten over 900 serial rapist hits in 40 states. These are staggering findings.
TS: Amazing. Did you sort of storyboard this film, or just start filming and see where it took you?
TA: Documentaries in general never have scripts so what we do as filmmakers is we look at the situation in an in depth way. Whether it’s a national story or a local story, or about one person, we look at the big picture and go out and gather material. We had a relationship with Prosecutor Kym Worthy through The Joyful Heart foundation which Mariska Hargitay founded in 2004. It was important to me to find someone who had not yet had their kit tested and was part of the Detroit backlog so we could see if we could help them find it, have it tested and to see what the outcome would be.
TS: How many hours of footage did you end up shooting?
TA: We shot about 120 hours of footage.
TS: Was it difficult to edit down to 90 minutes?
TA: Very difficult. It’s a massive subject on many levels. We felt that we were able to successfully weave it into a very powerful film. The response has been incredible. I was just at the Savannah film festival where we had 1200 people in the audience We received a standing ovation and there were a number of survivors who approached me after the screening. The work is so gratifying for me because you’re reaching people. We’re on a film festival tour now. We won the Audience Award at Michael Moore’s film festival in Traverse City, Michigan and we also won the Audience Award at the Provincetown Film Festival. We just received the special grand jury prize for impactful filmmaking at the Hawaii film festival.
TS: Do you enjoy going to these film festivals?
TA: I do. I love to hear the reactions of the audience seeing the film and the Q&As are really important because you can engage with people directly and hear their experience with the film and answer any questions to help them understand the issue. At our screening in Traverse City Michigan, an emergency room doctor who was quite moved by the film said he had not received proper training in medical school on how to conduct a rape kit and he was relieved that the film had been made because he wants to use it to show medical schools how important it is to provide training on how to conduct these kits. Getting that type of feedback really helps us to understand where the needs are and how we can fix this problem.
TS: What’s your next project?
TA: I don’t know yet because I’m in the thick of rolling out the film right now. Promoting I AM EVIDENCE is keeping me busy.
TS: What are the release plans for I AM EVIDENCE?
TA: We’re going to continue with the film festival tour and HBO is going to air I AM EVIDENCE in the spring of 2018.
TS: Good luck with the film and I hope you enjoy your time in St. Louis.
TA: Thank you. I’m looking forward to being there.
The actual air date of I AM EVIDENCE will be posted on the film’s website.
https://www.iamevidencethemovie.com/
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