I can't tell if this was based on a true story, but it could have been. Jill Eikenberry is good as Diane Martin, a public school teacher who is single, and also a devout Catholic. Coming home from a retreat, she picks up a hitcher, a young man, simply as a good deed. That's her nature. Everything goes well, she takes him as far as she can, then lets him off as she checks into a roadside motel. The story gets going when, at night and raining, the young man has not yet caught another ride. The rest plays out in a fairly predictable manner, but tells a good story of a teacher being treated unfairly.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. She reluctantly lets him into her room to sleep on the floor. But he awakes to sexual feelings (male stereotype?) and with his knife as a weapon, forces himself upon her then escapes. Being afraid and ashamed, she did not report this to anyone. But things came to a head when she found out she was pregnant.
When the school board becomes aware of all this they want her to resign, or she will be fired for "immoral behavior", assuming her pregnancy was a result of an affair. Since she doesn't cooperate they begin to build trumped up charges, fire her, but she eventually, after counseling, decides to fight the dismissal. A pivotal scene was meeting another young man, a former student of hers, who was going to become a teacher because of her inspiration. She won her case. In the last scene we see her son who appears to be 5 or 6 years old by that time.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. She reluctantly lets him into her room to sleep on the floor. But he awakes to sexual feelings (male stereotype?) and with his knife as a weapon, forces himself upon her then escapes. Being afraid and ashamed, she did not report this to anyone. But things came to a head when she found out she was pregnant.
When the school board becomes aware of all this they want her to resign, or she will be fired for "immoral behavior", assuming her pregnancy was a result of an affair. Since she doesn't cooperate they begin to build trumped up charges, fire her, but she eventually, after counseling, decides to fight the dismissal. A pivotal scene was meeting another young man, a former student of hers, who was going to become a teacher because of her inspiration. She won her case. In the last scene we see her son who appears to be 5 or 6 years old by that time.