Area woman’s film tackles sexual assault, PTSD in military
Alocal filmmaker has produced a feature film to help raise awareness of sexual assault and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) issues in the military. It is a story based on her own experiences and others suffered by those who have served in our Armed Forces.
Jillian Bullock, who spent her early years in the West Chester area and now lives in Philadelphia, has written, directed and produced the film titled “A Sense of Purpose: Fighting For Our Lives.”
“It is a story about true events, about men and women who have been sexually assaulted while they served in the military,” Bullock explained. A veteran herself, she said she wanted to be thorough and did research on why this is prevalent in the military and interviewed veterans and psychiatrists who treat them.
Bullock cited facts published by the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office that thousands of sexual assault incidences occur each year in the United States military, thousands of veterans suffer from PTSD and many die by suicide.
However, she said she believes that most of the men and women don’t report being raped or sexually assaulted. “The unfortunate thing about sexual assault in the
military is that a lot of men and women are afraid to report someone,” she said. “You need to have them at your back and you worry — will they protect me?”
“It is really a delicate situation and that is why this story needs to be told,” she said.
Bullock said that when she was on active duty herself, a sergeant tried to attack her and threatened her with demotion. She said that due to martial arts training she was able to fight him off. “I did not want to be a victim again,” Bullock said. “When I was 11 years old I was raped by a family friend and needed to help myself, so I started taking martial arts at age 12.” She eventually earned black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Wing Chun and trains in mixed martial arts and boxing.
Through her training, she was able to portray how the men and women in the film were able to use martial arts as a therapy to help them heal and assimilate back into society.
The trailer of the film, which is can be viewed at www.asenseofpurposemovie.com, shows how the movie portrays the harsh realities of rape and the consequences of PTSD suffering.
Bullock returned to the West Chester area to film some scenes of the movie. “Since I lived there years ago and was scouting locations for the film, I went to some there,” she said. One scene she described portrays a montage of action and music taking place in the downtown area of West Chester, with the actors walking in front of area stores and the Chester County Historical Society building.
Bullock explained the film will be shown at film festivals such as Tribeca and Sundance where it could be selected to go into distribution to theaters.
She invites veterans’ organizations or non-profit groups who work with military sexual assault survivors to have a short viewing of the movie trailer and clips followed by a question and answer period. She said they recently had such a screening at Temple University for veterans and their families, and afterwards people shared their stories about what had happened to them when serving. She said one woman related that she had never told anyone she was assaulted. “She cried and talked about how thankful she was to finally be able to tell the truth about what had happened to her,“Bullock said.
Bullock is CEO/President of Jillian Bullock Enterprises LLC, an empowerment and entertainment company based in Philadelphia. She said she first got interested in filmmaking while a student at LaSalle College. She honed her writing skills while at the Wall Street Journal for five years, working her way up from college intern to reporter. While in college she also got her start in filmmaking as an intern on Spike Lee’s movie, “Malcolm X” and has since won awards working on other films. “Filmmaking is my love and passion,” Bullock said.
She has also written a memoir about how she turned her life around after her horrific experiences while growing up, involving rape, homelessness as a teenager, drugs and criminal activity. After publication of her book, “Here I Stand,” in 2012, she received requests as a speaker and has traveled around the country, conducting lectures for women about domestic violence, self-defense and safety and preventative measures. “I speak about the red flag warning signs of an abuser, how to spot a sexual predator, and how NOT to get into an abusive relationship,” she explained.