An American Crime (2007)
- 기본정보 : 미국
- 감독 : 토미 오하버
- 줄거리
서커스단에서 일하는 부모를 둔 실비아는 학교를 다녀야 하는 10대의 학생이기 때문에 유랑생활을 해야 하는 부모와 떨어져 지내야 한다. 이에 그녀의 동생 제니와 함께 한 과부의 집에서 머물게 된다. 과부는 6명의 아이를 키우고 있는데다가 돈이 절실히 필요했기 때문에 실비아의 부모로부터 얼마의 돈을 받기로 하고 실비아와 제니를 돌보기로 한 것이다. 과부는 실비아와 제니에게 처음에는 잘 대해줬지만 그들 부모로부터 받게 될 돈이 늦어진다는 것을 핑계로 점차 아이들에게 난폭하게 대하기 시작한다. 그러다 과부의 딸 폴라의 임신 사실을 실비아가 실수로 말하게 되어 그녀가 다니는 학교에선 소문이 퍼지고 폴라는 실비아에 대해 앙심을 품는다. 실비아와 제니의 작은 실수로도 쉽게 학대하는 엄마에게 그 사실을 거짓말로 부풀려 밀고하는 폴라. 그리고 6명의 아이들은 실비아에 대한 엄마의 학대에 동참하게 되는데...
- 나의 몇 줄 감상
일단 이 영화가 미국에서 실제 일어난 실화를 바탕으로 만들어진 영화라 더 놀라움을 금치 못했다. 주인공 '실비아'는 엄청난 학대에도 모잘라 영화상에서는 아니었지만 실제로는 '거티'가 돈을 받고 매춘까지 시켰다고 한다.
또한 너무나도 절망적인 결말이 안타까웠고 슬펐다. 이 세상에서 보호받고 가르침을 받아야 할 어린 생명들이 저렇게 학대 받고 잘못된 행동이 잘못된 행동인지 느끼지도 못한채 그대로 행해야했다는 사실이 더 가슴아팠다.
어린마음에 무서워서 고발하지 못한 동생 '제니'의 행동이 너무도 답답했지만, 한편으로는 언니를 떠나보내고 그 뒤의 인생을 죄책감으로 살았을 생각을 하면 그것 또한 가슴아프다.
정신질환을 앓은 잘못된 어른 한명으로 주변의 많은 사람이 피해를 본 것 같아 안타깝고, 주변인들로 인해 조성된 분위기가 죄를 저지른 사람의 생각까지도 묻어버린다는 게 무섭게 느껴졌다.
다시는 이런 끔찍한 일이 일어나지 않기를 바랄 뿐이다. 너무도 여리기만 했던 '실비아'가 다음생에는 세상에서 가장 행복한 아이로 환생하기를 바라며...
- 네티즌 리뷰 중에서
당시 타임지에 실렸던 사진과 기사글
실비아의 실제 사진
거트루드(거티)의 실제사진
실비아의 동생 제니의 사진
실비아가 실제로 갇혀있었던 지하실 사진
가여운 실비아의 고문당했던 피해사진
잔인했던 실화 이야기를 담은 책 사진
Background
Sylvia Likens was the third child of carnival workers Betty
and Lester Likens. Her birth came between two sets of fraternal twins, Diana and Daniel (two years older), and Jenny
and Benny (one year younger). The marriage of the Likens was unstable and the family moved many times. Likens was often boarded out or forced to live with relatives while her parents were working.
In 1965, Sylvia and her sister Jenny, who was disabled from polio, were living with their mother in Indianapolis when the elder woman was arrested and jailed for shoplifting.
Lester Likens, who had recently separated from his wife, arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude Baniszewski, the mother of Paula, a girl with whom the Likens girls
had become acquainted. Although the Baniszewski family was poor, with seven children, three spoons, and no stove, Lester Likens, as he reported in the trial, "didn't pry" into the condition of the house, and encouraged Baniszewski to "straighten his daughters out".
He agreed to pay her twenty dollars a week.
Abuse and death of Sylvia Likens
Baniszewski, described by the Indianapolis Star as a "haggard, underweight asthmatic"suffering from depression and the stress of several failed marriages, began taking her anger out on the Likens girls, beating them with paddles after payments from their parents failed to arrive on time.
During all of this Baniszewski accused her of stealing candy she had bought from a grocery store and humiliated her when she admitted that she had once had a boyfriend.
She kicked Likens in the groin and accused her of being pregnant. Paula Baniszewski, who was in fact pregnant at the time, became enraged and knocked Likens onto the floor.
Likens became convinced that she was pregnant, although medical examination proved that she was not and could not have been.
Likens was then accused of spreading rumors through Arsenal Technical High School of Stephanie and Paula being prostitutes, which was false. That supposedly prompted Stephanie's boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, to physically attack Likens. Mrs. Baniszewski encouraged Hubbard and other neighborhood children to torment Likens, including, among other things, putting cigarettes out on her skin and forcing her to remove her clothes and insert a Coke bottle into her vagina.
After Likens admitted stealing a gym suit, without which she was unable to attend gym class, Baniszewski pulled her out of school and did not allow her to leave the house.
When Likens urinated in her bed, she was locked in the cellar and forbidden to use the toilet. Later, she was forced to consume feces and urine. Baniszewski began to carve the
words "I'm a prostitute and proud of it!" into Sylvia's stomach with a heated needle, although Richard Hobbs finished the carving when Baniszewski couldn't.
Likens attempted to escape a few days before her death. As punishment, she was tied in the basement and given only crackers to eat. On October 26, 1965, after multiple beatings, she died of brain hemorrhage, shock, and malnutrition.
As Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs realized that Sylvia was not breathing,
Stephanie attempted to give Sylvia mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before realizing it was a lost cause.
Trial
Baniszewski sent Richard Hobbs to call the police from a nearby payphone. When they arrived, she handed them a letter she had forced Sylvia to write a few days previously, addressed to her parents. This letter stated that she had agreed to have sex with a group of boys in exchange for money, they dragged her away in their car, beat her up, burned her multiple times, and carved the inscription into her skin.
Before the police left, however, Jenny Likens approached them, saying: "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything."
During the highly-publicized trial, Baniszewski denied responsibility for the death, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. She claimed that she was too distracted by her ill health and depression to control her children. Attorneys for the young people on trial (Paula and John Baniszewski, Richard Hobbs, and Coy Hubbard) claimed that they had been pressured by Baniszewski. When Marie Baniszewski, Gertrude's eleven-year-old daughter, was called to the stand as a witness for the defense, she broke down and admitted that she had been forced to heat the needle with which Hobbs carved Sylvia Likens' skin and that she had seen her mother beating and forcing Sylvia into the basement. In his closing statement, Baniszewski's lawyer said: "I condemn her for being
a murderess... but I say she's not responsible because she's not all here!" and tapped his head.
On May 19, 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski was convicted of first-degree murder, but spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison. Her daughter Paula, who had given birth to a daughter named Gertrude during the trial, was convicted of second-degree murder and also given a life term. Richard Hobbs, Coy Hubbard, and John Baniszewski were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two-to-21-year terms.
The boys would spend two years in prison. In 1971, Paula and Gertrude Baniszewski were granted another trial. Paula pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released two years later.
Gertrude Baniszewski, however, was again convicted of
first-degree murder. She came up for parole in 1985, and despite a public outcry and petitions against her release, the parole board took her good behavior in prison into account, and she was set free.
Gertrude Baniszewski changed her name to Nadine van Fossan and moved to Iowa, where she died of lung cancer on June 16, 1990.
When Jenny Likens, who was then married and living in Beech Grove, Indiana, saw her obituary in the newspaper, she
clipped it out and mailed it to her mother with the note: "Some good news. Damn old Gertrude died. Ha ha ha! I am happy about that." Jenny Likens Wade died of a heart attack on June 23, 2004 at the age of 54.
After the Jonesboro school massacre, John Baniszewski, now known as John Blake, gave a statement claiming that young criminals were not beyond help and describing how he had managed to turn his life around.
