| Genre: | Drama |
| Teleplay: | Joanna Crawford Jerrold Freedman |
| Director: | Paul Wendkos |
| Starring: | Lesley Ann Warren Rip Torn |
| Theme Music Composer: | Paul Chihara |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Executive Producer: | Roger Gimbel Tony Converse |
| Producer: | Marc Trabulus |
| Cinematography: | Gayne Rescher |
| Editor: | Dana Cahn |
| Runtime: | 96 minutes |
| Company: | EMI Television Roger Gimbel Productions |
| Network: | NBC |
Betrayal is a 1978 American made-for-television drama film directed by Paul Wendkos and starring Rip Torn and Lesley Ann Warren, based on a non-fiction book by Julie Roy with Lucy Freeman. The subject is a real life lawsuit[1] about a woman who sued her psychiatrist after he allegedly lured her into a sexual relationship. The film was first aired on NBC Monday Night at the Movies on November 13, 1978.[2] [3]
When Julie Roy, a young woman, approaches a maverick attorney Bob Cohen who handled her divorce several years earlier, she was desperate. She needed money to move to San Francisco to escape her painful past and wanted to sue her psychiatrist because he hadn't helped her. What was then revealed by Julie to Bob and his associate, Loren Plotkin, was a frightening expose of how Julie was, in fact, claiming that her psychoanalyst, Doctor Renatus Hartog, raped her, and over a period of time used her for sex before discarding her.
At first skeptical, the two lawyers were finally persuaded that Julie was telling the truth and they had the grounds for an unprecedented malpractice case that became a landmark decision in legal history.[4]