Former Police Captain Donna Roman (D.R.) Hernandez exposes her family’s 40-year secret of domestic violence that had life-altering consequences for her entire family in the multi-award-winning docu-drama independent film “The Ultimate Betrayal: A Survivor’s Journey”. Donna felt professionally and culturally bound to keep this abuse a secret until now.
This edgy, empowering 54-minute film is about a “woman in blue” who lived 40 years under the shadows of violence, haunted by the memories of an abusive father who physically and emotionally terrorized her, her mother, and her siblings. For the first time in her life, Donna, who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, breaks her silence after the premature death of her mother and comes forward to tell about the lifetime of domestic violence she witnessed her mother endure during her 48-year marriage and the 40 years of abuse Donna and her siblings suffered at the hands of her father, a highly decorated disabled WWII veteran and post-war law enforcement officer.
In 2006 this film won Dovetail TV’s Internet Best Overall Film Award and the Short Documentary Film Award and in March 2007 it won the U.S.A. Short Documentary Film Award at the Women’s International Film Festival of South Florida. This film’s theme song, composed by D.R. Hernandez, won the Home Grown Composer Award at the 2007 New Jersey Garden State Film Festival.