The Many Trials of One Jane Doe

Thursday June 24, 2004 at 8pm.

Eight-time Gemini Award-winning producer Bernard Zukerman teams up for the third time with six-time award-winning director Jerry Ciccoritti for this true story of an extraordinary woman who, after a traumatizing rape, refuses to remain a avictim.

Wendy Crewson stars as the singular Jane Doe (as she legally must be called), a woman who discovers she was the fifth victim of a serial rapist carrying out his crimes in a two-block area surrounding her home. When she learns that the police department was aware of this dangerous criminal yet decided not to issue a public warning, she feels that she and all the women in the neighbourhood were offered up as bait. At first traumatized, then angry, Jane is driven to action. She investigates not only her case, but also police procedure with regard to rape and its victims. She is shocked by what she discovers: a legal system that is sexist, uncaring and, in her own case, negligent. It is then that she decides to take on the Toronto Police Department.

What follows for Jane Doe is a grueling 10-year legal battle that becomes vicious, all- consuming and personal.

The two-hour, made-for-TV movie also stars Steve Mackintosh (Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) as a thirty-something legal dynamo who agrees to take on Jane Doe�s case pro bono, and Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot) as the Queen's Court attorney, assigned to defend the Toronto Police Department.

The Many Trials of One Jane Doe is written by Karen Walton. Executive producers are Kim Todd of Original Pictures and Michael Prupas of Muse Entertainment Enterprises. The film is a Canada/U.K. co-production, produced by Indian Grove Productions, Original Pictures and Studio 8, in association with CBC Television.

Plot Synopsis: At and around the Shewsberry abbey, Brother Cadfael is a monk with a difference. Given a choice, he would enjoy just being a simple gardener and herbalist for his home. However too often, events force him to use his other talent as a master sleuth in response to mysterious crimes happening in his community. While he investigates these crimes, he often finds himself at odds with the contemporary attitudes of the times with his own ahead of his time beliefs.