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Silencing Mary

1998 film by Craig R. Baxley

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ7514440
Source-derived summary

Silencing Mary is a 1998 American drama television film directed by Craig R. Baxley and written by Steve Johnson. It stars Melissa Joan Hart as a college newspaper reporter determined to get justice after her best friend is raped by one of the school's star athletes. Corin Nemec, Josh Hopkins, Lisa Dean Ryan, Peter MacNicol, and James McDaniel also star.

The film was produced by Hartbreak Films and Viacom Productions and filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It aired on NBC in the United States on March 8, 1998.

Plot

Mary Stuartson is a college student who works as a reporter for the college newspaper. She is involved with a case, regarding possibly a few football players having hacked the computer of a professor to steal an upcoming test. Her best friend Holly is involved with one of the hackers, Billy, and one night at a party, she is raped by Clay Roberts, one of the athletes. She admits to Mary what happened, telling her that she tried to push him away and scream. She refuses to report it to the police and starts to think it was her own fault.

Editorial summary

“Silencing Mary” enters the record as 1998 film by Craig R. Baxley. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Silencing, Mary and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1998-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Silencing, Mary and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Silencing Mary” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Silencing, Mary and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7514440. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Silencing Mary”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Silencing Mary primary sources, Silencing Mary archive and Silencing research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Silencing Mary”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Silencing Mary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.