Parity Pipeline

Parity Pipeline

Hilda O. vs. The State of New York

Directed by Heather Greer and Alison Cornyn
2025 00:16
Unscripted Short Film Festivals Work Sample

At 15 years old, Hilda Onley was sexually abused at the NY State Training School for Girls, where she was incarcerated in 1958. Hilda has lived for over 65 years, haunted and traumatized by the abuse She had faced an impenetrable statute of limitations until NY’s Child Victims Act was passed in 2019. Her case against the state began with limited time on the clock. This is the story of 82-year-old Hilda’s fight for justice.

  • ABOUT
  • BIO
  • SCREENINGS
  • GALLERY

Genre

Documentary Social Justice

Synopsis

A pair of recent statutes in NY State opened a brief window to allow victims of sexual assault for whom the statute of limitations had lapsed to get their day in court. The most visible example of a victim benefiting from this legislative change was E. Jean Carroll. Like E. Jean, Hilda Onley was a victim of sexual abuse decades ago – in her case, as a 15-year-old girl at the hands of her house father at the New York State Training School for Girls. She had waited 65 years to get her day in court. The NY Child Victims Act, passed in 2019, gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting for. In HILDA O. VSz THE STATE OF NEW YORK, we follow 81-year-old Hilda between deposition and court judgment, tracing her fight for justice.

Director Identity

she/her

Bio

Heather Greer is an Emmy-winning producer, award-winning filmmaker, media artist, and educator. She is the founder of Black Tartan Studios, a boutique creative agency and production company that guides process and production for clients whose mission embodies transformation. Black Tartan Studios specializes in short-form, nonfiction content centered around powerful human-driven stories. 

Heather’s films and video installations have screened and been exhibited nationally and internationally at leading festivals and arts venues, including MoMA, Tribeca, BAFICI, the Female Eye Film Festival, and CineDoc. 

In a humanitarian capacity and as a media educator, Heather has worked in several countries, including Rwanda, Malawi, Mali, and Bangladesh. 

She holds a master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she was an adjunct professor and thesis advisor for 12 years, and a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.

Screening History

Raindance Film Festival (2025)

St. Louis International Film Festival (2025)

New York State International Film Festival (2025)

Gallery

You Might Also Be Interested In

Game Show Dynamos TV Series

A quirky, brilliant-but-unstable playwright and her adoring but financially-challenged husband plunge into crippling debt and their ONLY escape to save…

Asian Magic Mike

Experience the captivating journey of four dynamic Asian male exotic dancers hailing from the US, Asia and Europe. These men…

Places in Between

Leila, an ambitious young Iranian woman, sets off to Canada for medical school in hopes of a better life, but…

Skerries are small rocky islands

A top journalist from NYC is sent out on an assignment to a small village in northern Spain as a…