This film was pretty closely based on the murder of Sylvia Likens. Like the movie Sylvia and her sister Jenny, were given to a family to be taken care of. However, they weren’t orphans but the children of a divorced family, and their father couldn’t take care of them. The real Ruth was a woman named Gertrude Baniszewksi, who had several kids of her own and charged $20 a week to care for the children. Their torture began after their father had forgotten to pay Gertrude on time. They were beaten, and mistreated but like in the film, Gertrude did use a hot metal object to carve a message into Sylvia’s stomach. It said, “I am a prostitute and proud of it.” Sylvia was also locked up for days and would be starved throughout that time. All this torture took its toll on Sylvia and she died from internal bleeding, shock, and malnutrition. In the real life event, there was no David character, and no one helped Sylvia before she died. Her father, mother and the two priest were charged with negligent homicide, like the priest in the movie was. In the film there were voice recording of the exorcism played in court, and in real life, 42 of the 67 exorcisms were recorded and used in the trial.