Director Kirby Dick stated that less than eight percent of the population is responsible for more than ninety percent of all sexual assaults. The filmmakers feature experts who say that most rapes are committed by a small number of repeat offenders. His accuser, Erica Kinsman, publicly discusses the incident for the first time after Jameis Winston refused to speak about the incident. Many male victims were feeling ashamed." Ī section of the film is focused on Jameis Winston, the former star quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles football team, former quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, and the accusation of sexual assault against him while at Florida State. For men it's often harder to speak up because there is a social stigma associated with rape. Producer Amy Ziering stated the filmmakers "felt it was important to show men and women.
![jameis winston the hunting ground jameis winston the hunting ground](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/msnbc/2015_13/308541/rtr4gzi3_copy.jpg)
The Hunting Ground also includes testimony from male victims of sexual assault. The officer spoke of a case where he was not allowed to question a student accused of rape, a Notre Dame football player, at any time that student was on athletic department property. The Hunting Ground also includes a conversation with a former Notre Dame police officer who criticized how rape cases were handled at that institution. Īs well as talking to women who share how they were victims of both rapists and unsympathetic university officials, the filmmakers interviewed students, parents, and administrators. In response to what they saw as an inadequate response from the university, they filed a Title IX complaint against The University of North Carolina on Janu(along with three other students), and co-founded the group End Rape on Campus. The narrative features Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, students at the University of North Carolina, who became campus anti-rape activists after being assaulted. The film chiefly criticized actions (or lack thereof) by university administrations, including Harvard, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amherst College, and Notre Dame, but it also examines fraternities such as Sigma Alpha Epsilon, colloquially referred by some as “Sexual Assault Expected”.
![jameis winston the hunting ground jameis winston the hunting ground](https://www.tampabay.com/resizer/dPWJzLdmrgx5qxcYLCSMsYMSQ-A=/fit-in/883x497/smart/filters:fill(000)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tbt.s3.amazonaws.com/public/SQVUMHGGJII6TCHRIBWI6S7HAY.jpg)
The film shows that many college officials were more concerned by minimizing rape statistics for their universities than by the welfare of the students, and contains interviews with college administrators who state that they were pressured into suppressing rape cases. The Hunting Ground presents multiple students who were sexually assaulted at their college campuses, and say that college administrators either ignored them or required that they navigate a complex academic bureaucracy to have their claims addressed. Īccording to Ziering, reactions from women on college campuses to Dick and Ziering's 2012 documentary The Invisible War, which focuses on the issue of sexual assault in the US military, inspired them to make a documentary about the subject of sexual assault at American colleges. The filmmakers have actively defended their work. (Harvard was one of the institutions criticized for minimizing the issue of sexual assault and protecting an alleged perpetrator.) Among the issues raised by critics are the film's portrayal of one man as a rapist, while not disclosing that the university and the police had found him not responsible for the alleged sexual assault, and for use of controversial statistics. Ĭritics of the film, including writer Emily Yoffe and a number of Harvard Law School professors, have questioned The Hunting Ground's accuracy and objectivity. The use of Title IX in campus sexual assault cases became a model for universities across the country.
![jameis winston the hunting ground jameis winston the hunting ground](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/26/arts/JPHUNTING/JPHUNTING-articleLarge.jpg)
Clark and Andrea Pino, two former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students who filed a Title IX complaint against UNC in response to their rapes while enrolled. Lady Gaga recorded an original song, " Til It Happens to You," for the film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was released on Netflix in March 2016. The film was released on February 27, 2015, an edited version aired on CNN on November 22, 2015, and was released on DVD the week of December 1, 2015. Written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering, it premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The Hunting Ground is a 2015 American documentary film about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States and the reported failure of college administrations to deal with it adequately.