10/07/2026
Today's A Mighty Girl Community Pick: "The Hunting Ground." This searing exposé of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses opens with cell phone videos of young women opening their college acceptance letters, screaming with joy. What the film documents, over the next 100 minutes, is what happens to a frighteningly large number of those young women after they arrive. At least one in five American female college students will be sexually assaulted during her time on campus -- a figure that larger and more recent surveys suggest is almost certainly an undercount -- and the overwhelming majority of their reports are ignored, buried, or quietly discouraged by the universities themselves.
Director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering, whose earlier Academy Award-nominated film "The Invisible War" exposed the same crisis in the United States military, center "The Hunting Ground" on Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, two University of North Carolina students who were failed by their administration and went on to co-found End R**e on Campus, teaching other survivors how to file Title IX complaints against their own schools. Through their work and the testimony of dozens of other survivors, Dick and Ziering lay out the machinery of institutional protection: perpetrators who face no consequence more serious than writing a paper, fraternities and athletic departments allowed to police themselves, and one major university that expelled 183 students for cheating in the same period it expelled zero for sexual assault.
"The Hunting Ground" was released in 2015, nominated for an Academy Award, and sent a current of anger through the country that led to real policy change at some universities. A decade later, with federal Title IX protections rolled back, reporting rates still dismal, and the same institutions still protecting the same reputations, every minute of this film remains as urgent as the day it premiered. Highly recommended for older teen and adult viewers.
"The Hunting Ground" is available for streaming at https://amzn.to/4y3GDJw
To watch the music video for "Til It Happens to You," the Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning original song that Lady Gaga and Diane Warren wrote for "The Hunting Ground" -- featuring survivors from the film and others who came forward -- visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWBrN7QV6Y
For several powerful memoirs by young women who survived and courageous spoke out after sexual assault, we highly recommend "Know My Name: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/know-my-name), "Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/notes-on-a-silencing), and "I Have The Right To" (https://www.amightygirl.com/i-have-the-right-to), recommended for older teens and adults
For Jon Krakauer's deeply reported book on a single college town's handling of a wave of sexual assault cases involving its football team, we recommend "Missoula: R**e and the Justice System in a College Town" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780804170567 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4jBn33A (Amazon)
If you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The S*xual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from S*xual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls
Raising kids to have empathy for others and an understanding of consent is one of the most important things parents can do to help reduce the incidence of sexual assault. To teach children -- girls and boys alike -- about the need to respect others and their personal boundaries, we recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
There is also a helpful guide for teens on topics such as consent and coercion, "Real Talk About S*x and Consent: What Every Teen Needs to Know," for ages 13 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/real-talk-about-sex-and-consent
