Credits

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"Silencing Mary" is a 1998 made for TV movie, produced by Hartbreak Productions, and starring Melissa Joan Hart and Lisa Dean Ryan (pictured left). It deals with how colleges and universities can hide cases of student on student rape in secret on-campus disciplinary proceedings. Although a work of fiction, it incorporates elements of several actual cases that have received public attention in recent years. The movie is set on the campus of the fictional "Cornwall University" a school supposidly "rated as the fourth safest campus in the United States."

Originally set to be aired during the fall of 1997, this movie covers the months of September through December of that year. The project, originally titled "Campus Justice," was developed by Melissa Joan Hart's sister Trisha a student at Miami University of Ohio, where the issue of "campus courts" has been heavily debated and is the subject of an ongoing legal battle. Trisha Hart, who conceived and co-produced "Silencing Mary" was honored as one of two student recipients of the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Award in 1998 for her work on this project.

Freshman student journalist Mary Stuartson (Melissa Joan Hart, pictured right), the first person in her family to attend a university, and her roommate Holly Sherman (Lisa Dean Ryan) are enjoying college life at "Cornwall University" until tragedy strikes. Holly is invited to a fraternity party where she is raped by star football player Clay Roberts (Josh Hopkins) an NFL hopeful.

Mary is outraged, and wants to call the police; a reluctant Holly agrees to report the rape through the university judicial system instead. Mary, who had already been working on a story in which members of the football team had broken into a professor's house and stolen an art history exam off of his computer (09/23/97), is outraged, and wants to use her position at the school paper to expose the athletes.

With the support of the paper's advisor Harvey Thiel (James McDaniel, pictured above right with Hart) Mary's investigative journalism turns up the fact that there had been 21 on campus rapes the previous year and that 15 of those had also been dealt with through internal disciplinary proceedings, however none were included in the school's crime statistics.

As soon as the student newspaper, "The Clarion," runs her article entitled "Campus Justice or Campus Cover-Up?" she is called in and lectured by the Dean of Student Affairs (Peter MacNicol, pictured right) about the "adverse publicity" that her article will bring to the school. The Dean claims that the 15 cases were "unfounded," but Mary argues that the school is not "equipped to make that decision."

Members of the football team then set out on a campaign to threaten and terrorize her, Holly and other friends of Mary's, including a member of the team. Her car is stolen and sunk in a local lake. After Holly decides to leave school, Mary is going through items left in their room and finds evidence that can be used to prove that the football player assaulted Holly.

Mary is then able to get the metropolitan police to get a warrant to question Clay. While the police are on their way to arrest him, the team is engaged in the final regular season game which they need to win in order to get a bid to a bowl game. The team looses 24-21 and Clay is taken in for questioning by the police.

Clay is indicted and the Dean of Student Affairs recommends that all students be allowed legal representation in the school's campus courts.