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Sutherland, 67, followed the family from Poor Bear's first day out of alcohol rehab, through school and jobs, juggling being a mother and trying to become a social worker. The centerpiece of the film is Poor Bear's battle to gain custody of her children while improving her own life.

On Monday, April 1, and Tuesday, April 2 at 9 ET, PBS's "Frontline" will air a powerful documentary, "Kind Hearted Woman," about Poor Bear's struggle to stay sober, further her education and heal herself from the deep wounds of sexual abuse.ĭavid Sutherland, whose films "The Farmer's Wife" (1998) and "Country Boys" (2005) also offer a cinema verite look at poor, rural life, spent three years with Poor Bear and her children. And when Poor Bear eventually spoke up about the abuse, her daughter and son, now 17 and 14, were taken away from her.

The psychological anguish caused Poor Bear, an Oglala Sioux and member of North Dakota's Spirit Lake tribe, to turn to alcohol. That pain is revisited after the couple divorces and her ex-husband is convicted of molesting their 12-year-old daughter, as well as a teenage foster daughter. Then, as a young wife, she was beaten by her husband. Poor Bear suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of her foster father and two uncles until she was 13. "I remember the door and being so terrified it would fly open and someone would get me." "I remember it - not the rape itself, but the emergency room and the nurses trying to hold me down to examine me," Poor Bear, now living in Minnesota, told ABC News. But today, at 35, she gives a voice to others who have suffered sexual abuse. The daughter of an alcoholic mother, Poor Bear was molested by her foster father at age 3.