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Broken Promises
By Janice Grieshaber Our daughter, Jenna, was a 22-year old nursing student at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York when she was murdered in 1997 by a parolee living in her apartment building. As a result of her death, we lobbied for and won passage of a bill, dubbed Jenna’s Law, which changed sentencing and parole in New York State.
Several years after our daughter’s death, we were contacted by a producer from The Erin Brockovich show, which according to her, dealt with women who had corrected an injustice or done something to improve the criminal justice system. After asking many questions and viewing the show, we gave our consent but with several caveats. One of these was that no re-enactments be used. The idea of actors recreating the horror of our daughter’s death was more than we could bear, even if we chose not to watch the show itself. In my subsequent conversations with this producer, we could not have been clearer about our intentions and stipulations. We only agreed to participate in the show to educate the public, to inspire others to take action when they felt action was called for, and to illustrate the need for citizens to make themselves aware of the issues around homicide and to make their voices heard.
Our efforts to insure that the issue was one of civic responsibility and awareness and not a gratuitous depiction of a homicide for the entertainment of others were completely ignored. While we did not watch the show, others close to us did, including friends of Jenna’s, relatives, and our friends. To say that the show was devastating to them is to seriously underestimate the effect of seeing someone pretending to be Jenna murdered on camera. It was incredibly painful to know that we put people we cared about in the position of watching something so emotionally ravaging. Our only solace was that our younger daughter was not exposed to the pain of witnessing this depiction. To realize that the reenactment was not essential to tell the story and absolutely against our stated wishes is to also realize that the promises made to us were obviously made knowing that they would not be kept. We were duped, devastated and angry.
The gratuitous and factually inaccurate portrayal of our daughter’s death should never have occurred. We were more than clear about our distaste for the type of reenactments of crimes that we had witnessed on the one show we had previewed before making our decision. We were reassured more than once that such reenactments were not typical of the show and would not be necessary to our story. We now realize that we should have secured all promises in writing.
Since this episode we have refused all subsequent inquiries from television producers. As an advocate, I now encourage victims to resist the temptation to work with anyone with whom they are not familiar and have not fully vetted. The potential advantages of media coverage are far outweighed by the damage done by those who see only a “good” story. Stories come from real people, real loss and very real pain.
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Janice Grieshaber, The Jenna Foundation for Nonviolence, Syracuse, NY
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