Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 2095

Tonight's special guest is Ben Niles, an independent filmmaker who hopes to use his work as an educational tool in support of survivors of abuse and to help raise awareness. “The 5 Browns: Digging through the Darkness”, an acclaimed documentary, is about about siblings in a classical music ensemble, three sisters and two brothers. Home-schooled, each of them practiced and practiced piano at home. Then all the kids attended Julliard simultaneously. After their five-piano act got underway, Keith Brown, their father, became the business manager, and he put his children on a punishing schedule. He was also responsible for years of sexual abuse against the three sisters. Once the sisters revealed what was going on, at first to one another and then to their brothers, Gregory and Ryan, there had to be an accounting. Long before #MeToo, and well aware that their story would devastate their family and possibly the group, the young women bravely spoke out. Their father, Keith Brown, is now serving a prison sentence. "The 5 Browns" follows the siblings' search for healing through the transformative power of music. Two of the sisters, Desirae and Deondra, started the Foundation for Surviving Abuse, an advocacy group, and we see them at work with eloquence and compassion. Their trauma and their subsequent resolve, as depicted here, are also, finally, all-American. There are plans to show the film in San Francisco on April 17 and in Atlanta, Washington DC, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia between now and the fall.