AllMovie

Widely hailed as one of the most riveting and groundbreaking documentaries on the subject of child sexual abuse as an epidemic in the United States, Searching for Angela Shelton began with a simple premise. Shelton, a blossoming Hollywood actress and writer from the American southeast, launched a sweeping effort to locate as many other women as she could find with the same name, on a coast-to-coast search. Of the 40 who agreed to participate in interviews, an astonishing 24 revealed their status as victims of childhood sexual abuse, rape, or other forms of domestic violence. The horrifying conclusion drawn from this statistic, of course, has nothing to do with the name 'Angela Shelton' and everything to do with the prevalence of domestic violence in contemporary America - a plague that afflicts millions of women, independently of demographic. At the core of the film is Shelton herself, who ultimately reveals that she, like so many of her subjects, was brutally molested by her father - and then embarks on a heart-rending journey to her childhood home of Charleston, to confront her dad for the first time about the events that permanently ripped her innocence away. Thus, a mission that begins as a shocking critical expose of modern society evolves into a deeply personal, cathartic journey of the heart.