Born Innocent

After the edited re-airings in the 1980s, the movie disappeared from circulation completely. In 2004 VCI Entertainment released it on DVD with the rape scene intact, the first time it had been seen by the general public in 30 years.

The rape scene was deleted after it was blamed for influencing a group of young girls to rape an eight-year-old girl with a bottle, but the California Supreme Court declared NBC was held blameless for the inspired-by rapes.

In a 2003 interview with E! Linda Blair confessed the rape scene was very difficult for her to do. "You go through all the motions of being raped... you come out of it feeling pretty raped. That did not sit well with me at all. That was just plain really hard to do. Didn't like that. But, you know, I hoped it would make a difference, and it did. It really drove people to change their course in life."

Linda Blair was 14 when this film was made and 15 when it was released. However, the other girls at the reform school in the film were much older than the ages they portrayed. Two others who are credited were in their mid-20s when this was filmed, as Nora Heflin and Tina Andrews were 24 and 23, respectively, while Janit Baldwin was 18 or 19. All of these girls were older than Mitch Vogel, who was supposedly portraying her 20-year-old brother (he was actually 18 at the time).

Aired during what was soon to be called the Family Viewing Hour, the world exploded when the rape scene was shown. Gay and lesbian rights organizations objected to the implied causal connection between homosexuality and rape. The National Organization for Women and the New York Rape Coalition piled on. And from the other end of the political spectrum, family-friendly organizations objected to just about everything about the film. The phone lines lit up, forcing the NBC network to try to stave off government involvement by crafting a more specific policy regarding family viewing and what became the Family Viewing Hour. But to no avail, because lawsuits started to pile up, and copycat crimes had kids raping peers with various instruments. Eventually, a legal challenge made its way to the California Supreme Court, where the film was found not to be obscene and NBC was held blameless for the inspired-by rapes.