November 10, 2013 -- A nursery school student, angry at her teacher, says something stupid which leads to a chain of events that spirals out of control in a small Danish town. This intense drama about a teacher being accused of sexual abuse reminded me of similar cases in the U.S., particularly during a wave of day care sexual abuse hysteria that swept over North America in the 1980s.

Mads Mikkelsen stars in this Danish film (some of the spoken dialog is in English, the rest in Danish, with subtitles) as Lucas, a teacher who is accused of sexual abuse by a young girl, Klara (played by Annika Wedderkopp). To make matters worse, Klara is the daughter of Lucas' best friend, Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen) and he often walked her to preschool. Despite the fact that Klara and Lucas are friends, Klara tells the school principal, Grethe (Susse Wold) that she saw Lucas' erect penis. To her, it is a mild prank. She doesn't realize the seriousness of her accusation.

Grethe later questions Klara about what actually happened. Klara makes conflicting statements, at first saying she can't remember what happened, then she says nothing happened, then she says something happened. Her questioners start to suggest things to her that might have happened and she agrees with the suggestion that Lucas exposed himself to her at the preschool. Later, she says nothing happened, but the adults don't believe her at that point. Other students are questioned in a similar way. Soon, an elaborate story of sexual abuse in the basement of Lucas' house arises.

The police investigate the case and search Lucas' house, which doesn't even have a basement. The charges are dismissed, but the townspeople still believe Lucas is guilty. He loses his job. A rock is thrown through his window. His dog is killed. He is no longer welcomed at his best friends house. His son, Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrøm) is also ostracized.

He finally has enough of this treatment and fights back in one dramatic scene after being beaten and injured by employees at a supermarket. He limps back into the market and demands his food. In the end, he has to fight to get it. When he is at his lowest point, only his son, Marcus, and his friend, Bruun (Lars Ranthe) believe in his innocence. Brunn is also Marcus' godfather.

Marcus confronts Klara and her family. Lucas finally publicly confronts Theo at a church service. At last, Lucas has seemingly gotten back into the good graces of his old friends, but a final incident shows that the town hasn't made peace with him. It is more like an uneasy truce. This film rates a B.

Epilogue: This film follows the general pattern of periodic cases of sexual abuse hysteria. A famous example of this started with the 1982 Kern County, California child abuse case. The hysteria started in Kern County and spread across much of the world. The spread of this kind of psychological hysteria can be accelerated by the Internet. In this film, Internet pornography played a role. Children who are questioned improperly with leading questions tend to come up with fanciful answers to please their adult questioners, as happened in this film. In the U.S. it is estimated that over 80 percent of child sexual abuse claims end up being dismissed by investigators. For more information on this, check out the Wikipedia entry for day-care sex-abuse hysteria.

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Copyright © 2013 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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