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When Jillian was 18 years old, she was raped in her college dorm room. Twelve years later Second Assault follows her on the journey to confront this incident and in particular, her anger toward the police officer who deemed the assault consensual. This film explores the trauma of reporting sexual violence, and the “second assault” that survivors often experience when they are not believed.

Jillian’s story feels more powerful and unfiltered in a raw documentary style. Each assault survivor has both unique and similar stories, but it is important to let Jillian have a safe space to explore her story as it happened to her.

This film is critical for us for many reasons. Jillian has spent years hiding her story, struggling with anxiety and feeling alone in her experience. For the past twelve years, she had barely talked about it because so many people in her life did not believe her. But throughout the filmmaking process she has found that in talking about it she has freed herself from fear.

In the wake of the Weinstein assaults, Trump tapes, and the collective voices of women who are speaking out about their experiences, we feel that now is the time to speak. We hope that by sharing her story, other women can feel less alone, while on a broader level, we hope to expose how flawed our justice system is when handling sexual assault cases and why the process of women reporting sexual assault is often referred to as the “second assault.”

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Jillian (co-director) has been making films since she got her first VHS camera at 5 years old. Forcing her sisters to play along, and putting on performances for the reluctant neighbors, Jillian has always been a storyteller. But after Jillian’s sexual assault, she started to make art surrounding not only the issue of rape, but also the often insidious and hidden issues that plague modern women. In 2011, while working a full-time job in the advertising post-production world, Jillian started filming a community of people suffering from the hair-pulling disorder Trichotillomania. She ran three successful crowdfunding campaigns, with donations pouring in from all over the world, giving her the confidence to make Trichster into a feature-length documentary that played at festivals and screened all over the world.

Amy (co-director) did her M.A. in Latin American Studies, where she studied the role of documentary films within social movements. After graduating, Amy became a union organizer, organizing undocumented workers in Los Angeles and Denver. But after many heartbreaking labor movement disappointments, she felt that she could make more of a difference as a documentary storyteller. She saw the power of humanizing larger issues by telling personal stories - particularly women’s stories. Since then, almost every film she has made has focused on female stories and identities. She has made documentaries on everything from breastfeeding, female mountain climbers, and migrant stories to Brazilian police women, all-female anti-poaching units in South Africa, and women’s identities in the context of genocide.

Growing up in the 90’s, we were both exposed to a vast array of cliche, one dimensional, female characters mostly written, directed, and edited by men. For both of us, it took years to untangle this view of ourselves that had been normalized through this exposure. Even though there have always been incredibly talented female filmmakers in both documentary and narrative, it is only now that the conversation about the small number of women in film has become part of the mainstream discourse.

So for us, it feels like there was never a better time for female storytellers than right now. With this momentum, we feel empowered and committed to telling women’s stories in a way that can inspire social change by transforming mainstream narratives and creating radical dialogues that demand for all kinds of women to be seen and heard.

We have an obsession with not only the women who are pushing forward the female gaze, but also the women who inspire us to keep going...the women who have carved out spaces for themselves in this industry. The women who take and use this power UNAPOLOGETICALLY.