Rape case from the past casts pallor on ‘Birth of a Nation’

“The Birth of a Nation”, a drama about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion, has been pegged as an Academy Awards candidate since its award-winning debut at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it fetched a record $17.5 million acquisition price from Fox Searchlight. Now, news has broken that the plaintiff in the case died in 2012 at the age of 30.

“I’m not try, trying to be mean, but, I felt like you put yourself in that situation, you know what I mean?” My mom lives here with me; I brought her here.

The woman’s family also responded on Tuesday in a statement to??The New York Times, ??saying, “We appreciate that after all this time, these men are being held accountable for their actions”.

The original case stems from an August 1999 incident involving the accuser and two Penn State wrestlers at the time, Parker and Celestin??(who has a co-story credit on??Birth of a Nation).

Parker maintained that the sex was consensual, and in 2001, he was eventually acquitted. He reiterated this point in his post Tuesday night. He then appealed the verdict and was granted a new trial in 2005 – but the case never came to court after the victim decided not to testify again. She later agreed to a settlement with Penn State. The victim’s death certificate, also obtained by Variety, states she suffered from “major depressive disorder with psychotic features, PTSD due to physical and sexual abuse, polysubstance abuse”.

Parker told Variety that he’s an open book, but he will not keep reliving that “painful” period of his life. “The trial was pretty tough for her”, he said. Her brother told Variety that “she became detached from reality”. As a 36-year-old father of daughters and person of faith, I look back on that time as a teenager and can say without hesitation that I should have used more wisdom. But in a pair of trade interviews published Friday, Parker confronted it straightforwardly. With so much buzz surrounding the film and Parker beginning the promotion cycle in earnest, it was inevitable that this part of his past would come to light.

Celestin offered his own statement via e-mail: “This was something that I experienced as a college student 17 years ago and was fully exonerated of”. And I can imagine it was painful, for everyone. I see now that I may not have shown enough empathy even as I fought to clear my name.

“I’ve done a lot of living, and raised a lot of children”, he added. “I’ve got five daughters and a lovely wife”. He noted that it was not an attempt to “solve this with a statement” but merely a response to the moment.

“I feel certain if this were to happen in 2016, the outcome would be different than it was. I can not bring this young woman who was someone else’s daughter, someone’s sister and someone’s mother back to life”, he wrote.

Naturally, the coverage of this case thus far has centered not on the effect that the assault and subsequent trial had on the victim, but whether it will hurt “The Birth of a Nation” s promotional schedule and Oscar chances. On the other hand, Parker wasn’t found guilty and he has faced the case more directly than some Hollywood stars have in the past. This is clear in Deadline’s headline, Fox Searchlight, Nate Parker Confront Old Sex Case That Could Tarnish ‘The Birth Of A Nation.’ Praised as the “antidote to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy” upon its premiere at Sundance, Parker has emerged as an empowering new voice for black artists in the film industry.

The studio confirmed to EW that the film about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion is still scheduled to open nationwide October 7, and said in a statement, “Searchlight is aware of the incident that occurred while Nate Parker was at Penn State”.