The woman who accused “The Birth of a Nation” director and star Nate Parker of raping her while they were both Penn State students died in 2012 at age 30, according to family members and public records. 
 
 Her older brother told Variety that she committed suicide and overdosed on sleeping pills. “She became detached from reality,” the woman’s brother, Johnny, told Variety, asking not to use his last name to honor his sister’s wishes to remain anonymous. “The progression was very quick and she took her life.” 
 
 The news comes just days after Parker gave interviews last week to Variety and Deadline about being charged with rape as a student at Penn State. He was acquitted in a 2001 trial, but questions about the case persist. 
 
 “He may have litigated out of any kind of situation,” Johnny said. “My position is he got off on a technicality.” Other family members reached by Variety declined to publicly comment. 
 
 There’s no evidence that the woman’s death was directly linked to the trial. She died at a drug rehabilitation facility, where she was found unresponsive by staff with two 100-count pill bottles of an over-the-counter sleep aid with ingredients similar to Benadryl by her side. “It’s just a horrible life’s progression,” the coroner told Variety. “She was a young woman.” 
 
 Related Hollywood’s Sorry Legacy: D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Nate Parker to Direct LAPD Detective Film as First Feature After 'Birth of a Nation' 
 
 In court, she testified that she had attempted to kill herself twice after the reported rape. Her brother said that she suffered from depression after the incident. Her death certificate, obtained by Variety, stated that she suffered from “major depressive disorder with psychotic features, PTSD due to physical and sexual abuse, polysubstance abuse….” 
 
 “If I were to look back at her very short life and point to one moment where I think she changed as a person, it was obviously that point,” Johnny told Variety. He said that prior to entering college, his sister was an outgoing, popular girl who loved animals and school. He envisioned a career in marketing or media for her. “The trial was pretty tough for her,” he said. 
 
 In 1999, Parker, a student and wrestler at Penn State, and his roommate Jean Celestin (the co-writer of “The Birth of a Nation”) were charged with raping the 18-year old female in their apartment after a night of drinking. The woman claimed she was unconscious at the time, while Parker and Celestin maintained that the encounter was consensual. She later said that she was stalked and harassed by Parker and Celestin after she reported the incident. “She was afraid for her life,” her brother said. Both men were suspended from the wrestling team, and Parker transferred to a different college in Oklahoma. 
 
 A jury acquitted Parker of the charges, in part because of testimony that he had consensual sex with the victim prior to the incident. Celestin was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to six months of prison. Celestin appealed the verdict and was granted a new trial in 2005, but the case never made it back to court after the victim decided not to testify again. 
 
 The brother believes that if the trial had been held today, there would have been a different verdict. “I think by today’s legal standards, a lot has changed with regards to universities and the laws in sexual assault,” he said. “I feel certain if this were to happen in 2016, the outcome would be different than it was. Courts are a lot stricter about this kind of thing. You don’t touch someone who is so intoxicated — period.” 
 
 After the trial, the victim left college before graduating, and received a settlement from Penn State of $17,500. “She was trying to find happiness,” Johnny said. “She moved around frequently and tried to hold a job. She had a boyfriend. She gave birth to a young boy. That brought her a good bit of happiness. I think the ghosts continued to haunt her.” 
 
 Looking back, he doesn’t think that Penn State did its part to keep his 18-year-old sister safe. “I must admit Penn State has a horrendous record,” he said, referring to the former football coach at the University convicted of molesting children. “And Jerry Sandusky is just the tip of the iceberg. The University has a history of protecting [athletes].” 
 
 The Nate Parker trial is being re-examined now because of the public attention on “The Birth of a Nation,” which Fox Searchlight bought for a record $17.5 million out of last January’s Sundance Film Festival. When the movie first screened, it was crowned as an Oscar frontrunner, but the film’s release strategy has come into question in light of the recent allegations. Sources say that the senior executives at Fox Searchlight are monitoring press reports about the case, and are debating whether it is still possible to release the movie with a roadshow that would have Parker traveling to churches and college campuses talking about social injustice, which one of the conditions of the Sundance sale. 
 
 “His character should be under a microscope because of this incident,” Johnny said. “If you removed these two people, the project is commendable. But there’s a moral and ethical stance you would expect from someone with regard to this movie.” 
 
 Asked if the movie should be released, he responded: “I think that’s up to the people,” Johnny said. “I don’t think a rapist should be celebrated. It’s really a cultural decision we’re making as a society to go to the theater and speak with our dollars and reward a sexual predator.” 
 
 Parker did not directly speak about the victim when he addressed the issue last week. “Seventeen years ago, I experienced a very painful moment in my life,” Parker told Variety. “It resulted in it being litigated. I was cleared of it. That’s that. Seventeen years later, I’m a filmmaker. I have a family. I have five beautiful daughters. I have a lovely wife. I get it. The reality is I can’t relive 17 years ago. All I can do is be the best man I can be now.” 
 
 In a statement last week, the studio said: “Fox Searchlight is aware of the incident that occurred while Nate Parker was at Penn State. We also know that he was found innocent and cleared of all charges. We stand behind Nate and are proud to help bring this important and powerful story to the screen.” 
 
 Johnny said that the family has tried to move on from this tragedy. “It’s hard,” he said, “seeing my sister’s life slowly crumble while these men are by all accounts relatively successful and thriving.” 
 
 “It’s been 17 years,” he added. “We certainly as a family forgive them. I don’t know that [the victim] would forgive them. I don’t think that she would.” 
 
 Gene Maddaus and Brent Lang contributed to this story. ||||| "The Birth of a Nation" writer and director Nate Parker (center) also stars as Nat Turner, who led a famous slave revolt in 1831. The film won the Grand Jury Prize this year at Sundance Film Festival. 
 
 Few filmmakers have made the sort of explosive first impression that Nate Parker does in his directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation, a startling, powerful biopic about Virginia-born slave, minister, and rebel leader Nat Turner, who led a famous slave revolt in 1831, three decades before the Civil War. 
 
 An indie production that Parker wrote, directed, and produced - and in which he stars as Turner - Birth of a Nation made headlines in January when Fox Searchlight acquired it for $17.5 million at Sundance in the richest deal the festival has ever seen. More recently, the rape charges made against Parker at Penn State in 1999, his 2001 acquittal, and the 2012 suicide of his accuser have been big news. 
 
 There has been so much talk about Parker that it has all but drowned out the film itself - a fast-moving, deeply absorbing, and thoroughly exciting directorial debut. I'm going to stick to the moviemaking here. 
 
 [Read more: The Birth of a Nation dilemma: How to disentangle the director from the work?] 
 
 Parker's film is not the most daring work of cinema. It's a far more conventional piece of Hollywood storytelling than the more formally inventive recent film about the era, Gary Ross' Free State of Jones. But it displays a mastery of the form rare for a first film - with outstanding performances across the board. 
 
 Parker gives a controlled, subtle turn as Turner, a man who undergoes a radical ideological shift over the course of his brief life. (He was 31 when he led the revolt that ended with his death.) 
 
 He's backed by a fine ensemble, including Aunjanue Ellis as Turner's mother, Nancy; Aja Naomi King as his wife, Cherry; and Armie Hammer as Turner's Southampton County, Va., owner, Samuel Turner. 
 
 [Read more: Nate Parker wants to talk about `The Birth of a Nation' - not his past] 
 
 Equally impressive is Parker's ability to use every aspect of the film as a provocation in a politically charged work that doesn't pull its punches. Nat Turner's desperate rebellion and his violent tactics are a turnoff to the folks who write high school history books. Parker wants to remind us - to tell us - that Turner was a true American hero. 
 
 He begins by loading the film's title with a punch. 
 
 Parker named the film after D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a monstrously racist and monstrously popular 1915 epic about the Civil War and Reconstruction. 
 
 Adapted from novelist Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, Griffith's movie portrayed emancipation as a grave error, and the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic brotherhood with the power to heal the nation - principally, as the movie would have it, by stopping savage black men (played by white actors in blackface) from raping white women. 
 
 The film has been credited with revitalizing the KKK, whose membership swelled in its day. 
 
 Yet, it would have become a mere footnote to history had it not also revolutionized the medium. The Birth of a Nation single-handedly introduced modern film language. Before Griffith, movies were little more than static, stagy recordings of theatrical performances. The Birth of the Nation made filmmaking into a dynamic, vital art form of its own. It's an ugly irony: Our most racist film is celebrated today as a game-changer. 
 
 Parker's The Birth of a Nation subverts that other film with a strong point of view and a concrete goal: to return a measure of the dignity and humanity denied African Americans in the countless numbers of racist books, movies, paintings, and music that went into creating American culture. 
 
 Griffith's film defined American identity in terms of white people's duty to undo any sense of agency and self-determination that African Americans hoped to wrest from emancipation. 
 
 Parker's film locates our nation's birth in the ability of African Americans to envision hope in spite of repression - even if Turner's early attempt by African Americans to shape their own destiny led to a virtual mass suicide. The rebellion ended with the deaths of 65 whites, while 200 slaves were killed in what was to be a preamble of violence to come. 
 
 To borrow an idiom from comic books, Parker's The Birth of a Nation is an origin story about one of America's first black rebels, a stirring account of the education, early ministry, and eventual martyrdom of one the progenitors of what would become the civil rights movement. 
 
 Parker's depiction of slavery is one of sustained brutality - stark, unadorned, and unsentimentalized. He doesn't single out specific acts to outrage the audience, but instead shows how the fabric of daily life was ruled by the master-slave relationship. 
 
 In a typical scene, an excited young girl of 6 or 7 bursts out of the house to show off her new birthday present to the other kids in the household - most of whom are slaves. 
 
 The gift she parades around isn't a hairbrush or a purse. It's a human person, a boy about the same age, who is tethered to his owner by a homemade leash, a length of rope attached to a noose around his neck. 
 
 Parker's Turner grows up in relative comfort - his owners are wealthy and liberal, so they feed and house their slaves well. The family matriarch, Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller), is especially progressive, and she encourages the young Turner to learn how to read and write using the Bible. She balks when he tries to read other books - they can be understood only by whites, she tells him. 
 
 Turner's sense of self is shaped by Baptist religiosity, and he becomes a spiritual guide to other slaves. When isolated cases of slave rebellions arise, the local white pastor (Mark Boone Junior) suggests Turner make a tour of neighboring farms to give slaves some religion. 
 
 His job is simple: Preach self-sacrifice. Talk about the Christian heaven, and reassure slaves that servitude will be rewarded in the next life. 
 
 In a matter of months, the fundamental inhumanity of slavery inspires him to use biblical language to preach resistance and eventually revolt. 
 
 The Birth of a Nation has a flawless internal logic and moves fluidly and inevitably toward its bloody conclusion. While it is propelled by the decision of its male victims, the film does try, if not always successfully, to give voice to the experience of enslaved black women. 
 
 Parker's celebration of Turner as a hero has led some critics to suggest his film endorses violent revolution. I think that's a simplistic, shortsighted reading. 
 
 Nor is it accurate to call The Birth of a Nation a revisionist history. It's a much-needed - and beautifully realized - corrective. 
 
 tirdad@phillynews.com 
 
 215-854-2736 
 
 MOVIE REVIEW 
 
 The Birth of a Nation 
 
 3 1/2 (Out of four stars) 
 
 Directed by Nate Parker. With Parker, Aunjanue Ellis, Aja Naomi King, Armie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. 
 
 Running time: 2 hours. 
 
 Parent's guide: R (disturbing violent content, and some brief nudity). 
 
 Playing at: Area theaters.
– Nate Parker hoped his drama about an 1831 slave rebellion would generate Oscar buzz. But talk about The Birth of a Nation—which Fox Searchlight bought for a record $17.5 million after its Sundance premiere—has suddenly taken a turn. As the New York Times recounts, the first-time director was accused of raping a woman while a student at Penn State in 1999, though he was eventually acquitted. It's old news, but it became big news this week when Variety revisited the case and reported for the first time that the woman involved took her own life in 2012 at age 30. The woman, who received a $17,500 settlement from Penn State, had said Parker and his roommate, Jean Celestin, raped her while she was drunk and unconscious. Parker and Celestin said the sex was consensual. Parker was acquitted in 2001, while Celestin was convicted of sexual assault, a ruling that was later overturned. Another factor in the controversy: Celestin co-wrote The Birth of a Nation, which includes a gang rape as a pivotal scene. With talk of a boycott growing, Parker is not shying away from the controversy, notes the Los Angeles Times. In a Facebook post, he expressed his "profound sorrow" upon learning of the suicide. Parker also says he welcomes discussion of the case, noting "violence against women is not taken seriously enough. And the dialogue and the discourse isn't loud enough." But "I was cleared of everything. At some point I have to ask myself, 'How often am I willing to relive it?'"