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‘One of Her Own’: Painful Code of Silence

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The blue wall of silence--otherwise known as a police department’s code of silence--costs a female officer her job and very nearly her life in the TV movie “One of Her Own.”

A spirited, enthusiastic rookie cop (the absorbing Lori Loughlin, in a sharp departure from her role on ABC’s “Full House”) is reduced to emotional paralysis after she is raped in her own home by a veteran officer with whom she has been casual buddies on a very macho, small-town police force.

Initially, the rookie understands all too well how police/boys stick together behind a shield of silence, and she refuses to tell anyone, even the man she loves, in order to hold onto her life and her job. But when the cop/rapist (the smirky Greg Evigan) becomes a suspect in several other sexual assaults in the community, the woman’s silence fills her with guilt and she reports her rape to her superiors.

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Big mistake.

This is not the first TV movie to deal with the intimidation of female officers in an old boys’ police station. But the subject is sufficiently fresh as dramatic entertainment because policewomen are still a comparative novelty.

It’s an outraged D.A. (deftly captured by Martin Sheen) who encourages our protagonist, against withering hostility, to go to court and nail the cop who raped her.

* “One of Her Own” airs at 9 tonight on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).

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