Just recently I saw the 2007 movie "An American Crime" which is based on the real facts and courtroom transcripts of the trial. This took place in Indiana in 1965 and 1966, and for the most part the movie is an accurate depiction of what happened. The woman responsible for the abuse was tried and convicted, and she served 18 or 20 years in prison.
This movie, "The Girl Next Door", released in the same year, 2007, is loosely based on that same Indiana abuse case, but almost everything is changed, including the names of the characters. It is set in 1958, in New Jersey. Because of the death of their parents, two sisters are put into the home of a woman who has 3 sons.
The woman, Ruth, is truly crazy. She has very strong ideas about discipline, but she has a jaded view of boy-girl relationships. When the boy next door, David, gets a watercolor picture from the girl, Meg, Ruth turns it into a twisted story of how girls give to boys what the boys want. Somehow this escalates until Meg is being punished, and forced to live in the basement, tied up, and gagged. Eventually she is tortured, and the sons participate, for no apparent reason than the insanity of Ruth, their mother.
This is not as good a movie as "An American Crime". The fate of the girl, in this story Meg, is the same in both movies, but in this one there is no trial, Ruth meets her death at the hands of David in the basement when he and Meg were trying to escape.
NB - The movie opens and closes in modern time, with the grown up David, now a successful Wall Street executive, but the events of his childhood affected him still.
This movie, "The Girl Next Door", released in the same year, 2007, is loosely based on that same Indiana abuse case, but almost everything is changed, including the names of the characters. It is set in 1958, in New Jersey. Because of the death of their parents, two sisters are put into the home of a woman who has 3 sons.
The woman, Ruth, is truly crazy. She has very strong ideas about discipline, but she has a jaded view of boy-girl relationships. When the boy next door, David, gets a watercolor picture from the girl, Meg, Ruth turns it into a twisted story of how girls give to boys what the boys want. Somehow this escalates until Meg is being punished, and forced to live in the basement, tied up, and gagged. Eventually she is tortured, and the sons participate, for no apparent reason than the insanity of Ruth, their mother.
This is not as good a movie as "An American Crime". The fate of the girl, in this story Meg, is the same in both movies, but in this one there is no trial, Ruth meets her death at the hands of David in the basement when he and Meg were trying to escape.
NB - The movie opens and closes in modern time, with the grown up David, now a successful Wall Street executive, but the events of his childhood affected him still.