Taped girl fight in Polk made into Lifetime movie


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Talisa Lindsay still gets emotional about the 2008 taped beating of her stepdaughter Victoria.
"You can't hurt somebody like that and get away with it. It's not OK," she said while fighting back tears at her south Lakeland home.
The cell phone video that still chokes her up created a media frenzy as the world watched Victoria's teenaged friends ambush and attack her inside a Polk County home.
Now the story is again playing out on the national stage - this time on Lifetime Television in a made-for-TV movie called "Girl Fight."
The movie stars Anne Heche in the role of the victim's mother, and she has a line Lindsay herself remembers uttering.
"You beat up my daughter," Heche says in the movie's trailer. "You think I'm going to let you get away with that?"
"I did say that," Lindsay said. She says the movie stays mostly true to the facts of the case.
Lindsay said she and her family shared their story with a writer from Lifetime to send a message about the disturbing increase in taped violence.
"It was about helping to make a change, and that's what we're hoping is to make a change," Lindsay said.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd says he'd love to see some change but isn't sure a made for television movie will do the trick.
"Let's face it, somebody can do something outrageous, use a simple cell phone, put it on YouTube, and it's a worldwide message instantly,and that's why we're where we are," Judd said.
He says Victoria Lindsay's case was just the beginning of similar instances.
Since then a Manatee County mother faced arrest after cheering her daughter on in a fight that ended up on YouTube.
A Hillsborough County father landed in jail when a fight between his son and another teen showed up online.
And a brawl between two teens in Tampa ended upon MySpace with onlookers, many of them adults, cheering the girls on rather than stopping the attack.
"I can tell you that each event needs to be just a little more edgy, just a little more violent, just a little more crazy for it to make an impact on YouTube or on the national or local news any more," Judd said.
He says that reality scares him for what the future might hold.
Talisa Lindsay worries too.
"And that's part of the other reason we wanted to move forward with the movie. Just to bring more of an awareness and hopefully get a little more educated so we can all pull together as a society and change it," Lindsay said. "That's what our hopes are."
"Girl Fight," the movie, premiered Monday on Lifetime. It airs again at 8 p.m. Saturday.