Born Innocent

Born Innocent centres on Chris Parker, a fourteen-year-old who repeatedly runs away from a home where her father beats her and her mother is an alcoholic. When she runs off once more, hoping to reach her older brother, her parents and the authorities decide she should be placed in a state facility for girls. There she finds herself caught between an indifferent bureaucracy, hostility from the other girls and the memory of her abusive family. A single care worker is the one person who recognises her potential to move beyond her circumstances.

Directed by Donald Wrye, this 1976 American television drama was the first of the three features listed in his filmography, followed by Ice Castles in 1978 and its later 2010 counterpart. Gerald Di Pego wrote the screenplay, and Bruce Cohn Curtis produced it for Tomorrow Entertainment. The cast includes Linda Blair as Chris Parker, Joanna Miles, Allyn Ann McLerie, Mary Murphy, Janit Baldwin and Richard Jaeckel.

Born Innocent runs 98 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.2 from around 1,400 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 6.3 from a much smaller pool of under sixty votes. The scores sit in similar territory, while the far larger vote count on IMDb reflects a wider viewership for a television film that has stayed in circulation for decades.