HOME TRUTH, Documentary About Domestic Violence Activist Jessica Gonzales, On PBS Stations In October

In 1999, Colorado mother Jessica Gonzales experienced every parent's worst nightmare when her three young daughters were killed after her estranged husband abducted them in violation of a domestic violence restraining order. Devastated, Jessica filed a lawsuit against the police, claiming they did not adequately enforce her restraining order despite her repeated calls for help that night. Determined to make sure her daughters did not die in vain, Jessica pursues her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and an international human rights tribunal, seeking to strengthen legal rights for domestic violence victims. Meanwhile, her relationship with her one-surviving child, her son Jessie, suffers, as he struggles with the tragedy in his own way.

HOME TRUTH chronicles one family's pursuit of justice, shedding light on how our society responds to domestic violence and how the trauma from domestic violence tragedies can linger throughout generations. Filmed over the course of nine years, the film captures intimate moments in the lives of Jessica and her family as well as interviews with members of Jessica's legal team including attorney Carrie Bettinger-Lopez (former Obama White House Advisor on Violence Against Women) and Lenora Lapidus of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. A film by Katia Maguire and April Hayes, HOME TRUTH premieres on PBS stations throughout October (check local listings) in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The film will also be available for free streaming on pbs.orgbeginning October 2, 2018.

About the Filmmakers

KATIA MAGUIRE (Director/Producer) is an Emmy nominated Latina producer and director. She produced Participant Media's Kingdom of Shadows, a documentary about the lives of three witnesses to the U.S.-Mexico "drug war" that aired on PBS's POV in 2016 and was nominated for a 2017 News and Documentary Emmy Award. She recently was post-production supervisor on the hit documentary RBGabout Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, was released in theaters nationwide and will broadcast on CNN in fall 2018. She also produced The Graduates/Los Graduados, a bilingual series about Latino high school students that broadcast nationally on PBS' INDEPENDENT LENS in 2013. Previously, Katia worked for veteran public television journalist Bill Moyers on his PBS series Moyers & Company and Bill Moyers Journal. She was a senior associate producer on Women, War & Peace, a five-part PBS series about the role of women in modern conflict, and co-producer onQuest for Honor, a documentary about violence against women in Iraq that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was short-listed for the 2010 Academy Awards. Katia was a 2016 Impact Partners Documentary Producing Fellow and has received fellowships from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Producer's Academy, the Union Docs Collaborative Studio, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers' Latino Producer's Academy, and the Flaherty Film Seminar.

APRIL HAYES (Director/Producer) is a Los Angeles-based documentary director, producer, and creative director. As a producer, her recent projects include the feature documentary The Sentence, an intimate film about the long-term impact of mass incarceration and mandatory minimum sentencing on one family, which premiered in competition and won the Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and will air on HBO in October 2018; and LYNCHING IN AMERICA, a multimedia documentary project with the Equal Justice Initiative on the history of lynching and racial terror in America that has won a Bronze Lion award at Cannes, two Webby awards, and went on to become a traveling exhibit at Brooklyn Museum and EJI's The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. Recent directing projects include a short documentary as part of Google's #ShowUp campaign documenting the current state of Pride movements around the country; "Respond & Rebuild," about Occupy's post-Hurricane Sandy relief efforts in the Rockaways that was featured on DEMOCRACY NOW! in 2013; and directed with Katia Maguire, "God is a Garden" (2015), about an order of environmentalist nuns. April also works as an archivist, most notably managing Bob Dylan's media archive for seven years, and working as an in-house producer for his film and video projects. Forthcoming projects include feature documentaries directed by Martin Scorsese and David O. Russell, and the launch of an upcoming short documentary series about the intersection of tech and humanity.

About JESSICA LENAHAN (formerly Gonzales)

Jessica Lenahan is a Latina/Native American human rights and women's rights advocate who has spoken around the world on issues of violence against women. In 1999, Jessica's three young daughters were tragically killed when her estranged husband abducted them in violation of a domestic violence restraining order and he was not arrested, despite her repeated calls to the police for help. She filed a lawsuit against the police for failing to enforce her restraining order, and in 2004, her lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, ruled that she had no Constitutional right to enforcement of her restraining order, and that police departments could not be sued for improper enforcement of such orders, Jessica and her legal team, including the ACLU and Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute, filed a case against the United States government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. With this case, Jessica became the first individual domestic violence SURVIVOR to bring a case against the United States before an international human rights tribunal. In 2011, in a landmark decision, the Commission found the United States responsible for human rights violations against Jessica and her three deceased children.

Jessica has received awards from the U.S. Human Rights Network, the National Coalition

Against Domestic Violence, and RFK Human Rights. She is currently at visiting scholar at the Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York.

CREDITS

Directed, Written and Produced by April Hayes & Katia Maguire

Executive Producer for ITVS Sally Jo Fifer

Executive Producer for LPB Sandie Viquez Pedlow

Edited and Written by Becky Laks

Original Music by West Dylan Thordson

Associate Producer Laura Pilloni

HOME TRUTH is a co-production of ADEQUATE IMAGES, INDEPENDENT TELEVISION SERVICE (ITVS) and LATINO PUBLIC BROADCASTING (LPB) with funding provided by THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (CPB)

Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) is the leader in the development, production, acquisition and distribution of non-commercial educational and cultural media that is representative of Latino people, or addresses issues of particular interest to Latino Americans. These programs are produced for dissemination to public broadcasting stations and other public telecommunication entities. Latino Public Broadcasting provides a voice to the diverse Latino community throughout the United States and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Latino Public Broadcasting produces the series VOCES, PBS' signature Latino arts and culture documentary showcase and the only ongoing national television series devoted to exploring and celebrating the rich diversity of the Latino cultural experience. Between 2009 and 2016, LPB programs have won over 85 awards, including the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award as well as two Emmys, two Imagen Awards and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. In addition, LPB has been the recipient of the Norman Lear Legacy Award and the NCLR Alma Award for Special Achievement.

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