What many do not know is that sexual assault is a serious and ongoing problem. What would happen if the questions typically asked of rape victims were also routinely posed to, say, robbery victims? “‘Are you sure you didn’t mean to give him the television?’ ‘What were you wearing when he took your television?’ ‘Were you both drinking when the TV disappeared from your house?’ We laugh at those questions, but they’re the first questions we always ask in these situations,” said Ziering.After watching Kirby Dick’s documentary The Hunting Ground, I considered this film to be a huge “eye-opener.” Rape is a term that many are familiar with and have heard hundreds of time. That’s statistically consistent with every other crime in our society, and yet it’s the only crime that when you report you get questions that challenge the veracity of your motive, your story and what you were doing.”

Ziering added that in addition to changing university policies, we also need a broader cultural shift in the way we view rape and rape victims: “Ninety-two to ninety-eight percent of the time when someone reports this crime, they’re telling the truth.

It’s really up to all of us to change that.” “Our fear is if we don’t continue to talk about this and put pressure on these schools, they will do what all institutions naturally do: let the moment pass and go back to business as usual. “This is something that higher education has ignored and not dealt with for decades,” said Dick, who discussed the film with Ziering at Le Cirque in New York City on November 10. Subscribe to Gold Derby Breaking News Alerts & Experts’ Latest Oscar Predictions Dick and Ziering could return to the Oscar lineup for Best Documentary Feature for this film, which also has its broadcast premiere on November 19 on CNN. They expose the roadblocks that make it more difficult, often by design, for victims to report assaults and for perpetrators to be held responsible. In “ The Hunting Ground,” they examine the epidemic of rape on university campuses across the country. Three years after shedding light on the rise of sexual assaults in the US armed forces with the Oscar-nominated documentary “ The Invisible War,” director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering turn their eyes to another American institution facing the same crisis: college.

The Hunting Ground by Kirby Dick