Louis Theroux's eagerly anticipated documentary, The Night In Question, will air on BBC Two tonight.
The doc follows the filmmaker on his journey to the US to explore sexual assault on college campus, as he speaks to alleged perpetrators who are being investigated by their universities. However, the documentary, which will air at 9pm, almost didn't get completed.
"This is a programme we've been working on for more than a year, actively researching it. The first interview was not much less than a year ago," he told LADbible Group. "There were times when we thought we might never be able to see it to completion so it was nice to have something to show for all that work."
Advert
Louis explained how the subject of sexual assault and consent seemed like a 'natural subject' for him to explore, despite its sensitive nature.
"I suppose for my own purposes, ever since I started out in making programmes, I've tended to look at people like Ku Klux Klan and sort of people in cults. I've always tended to look at people who are on the slightly more dubious side of the fence if you like, not exclusively but that's tended to be where I've gone," he said.
"It's a kind of attempt to try and understand the psychology of people who do things that are either deeply wrong or controversial or filled with angst.
Advert
"So it felt like a kind of natural subject for me to examine people who'd been accused of and in many cases have done things they shouldn't have done, sexual misconduct.
"At the same time, I think we were all aware we needed to respect the perspective of the victims and so there were many, many conversations about how we balanced it - whilst applying a forensic standard to the people accused and then also giving a voice to the people who had experienced sexual misconduct, who'd actually been victims of either a sexual assault or rape."
In the programme, we meet Saifullah Khan, a neuroscience major who was accused of raping a fellow Yale student. He was acquitted of the crime but the documentary sees him awaiting the outcome of a university investigation into the incident.
Advert
However, a Yale Daily News article published in January 2019 says Saifullah was once expelled from Yale after the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct said he was 'responsible for sexually assaulting a Yale undergraduate in October 2015.'
Saifullah was arrested by police and his case went to court where he was acquitted on four counts of sexual assault in March 2018.
He was allowed to re-enroll at the university, however in October 2018, new allegations were made against Saifullah and he was suspended again. The Night In Question will explore what happened after that.
The Night In Question airs tonight at 9pm on BBC Two.
Featured Image Credit: BBCTopics: TV News, louis theroux, TV Entertainment
