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'Birth of a Nation' Nate Parker revisits sex-assault case on '60 Minutes'

Jayme Deerwester
USA TODAY

If Nate Parker thought the furor over his 1999 sexual-assault case and the 2012 suicide of his accuser would fade by the time The Birth of a Nation arrived in theaters Oct. 7, he miscalculated.

Nate Parker's '60 Minutes' interview is set to air this weekend.

That issue was the subject of the first promo for his 60 Minutes interview airing this Sunday on CBS (7 ET/PT).

In the clip released Thursday, Parker told Anderson Cooper that he does not feel guilty about what happened that night at Penn State, which led to a trial and exoneration for him and an overturned conviction for his roommate and co-writer, Jean Celestin.

Asked if he feels like he did something morally wrong, his response was similar to his Facebook essay:  "As a Christian man, just being in that situation, yeah, sure. I'm 36 years old. My faith is very important to me. Looking back through that lens, I definitely feel it's not the lens I had when I was 19 years old."

Preview: Nate Parker

Since Parker first responded to his accuser's death in a Facebook essay on Aug. 17, he's been the subject of more op-eds. One, written by Nation co-star and rape survivor Gabrielle Union for the Los Angeles Times, explained why she took a role in which her character is the victim of a brutal rape.  "I wanted to give a voice to my character, who remains silent throughout the film," she said.

In another piece published Thursday by Variety, Sharon Loeffler, the accuser's sister, questioned why the film even included that rape scene, which is intended to help explain the reason for preacher Nat Turner's rebellion.

"I find it creepy and perverse that Parker and Celestin would put a fictional rape at the center of their film, and that Parker would portray himself as a hero avenging that rape," she wrote. "Given what happened to my sister, and how no one was held accountable for it, I find this invention self-serving and sinister, and I take it as a cruel insult to my sister’s memory."

Loeffler requested that before the film arrives in theaters next weekend, Fox Searchlight should either remove the rape scene or include a disclaimer acknowledging it was creative license and not historical fact.

She also disagrees with Union's intention to use the film as a jumping-off point for discussions about sexual assault. "That would allow my sister to be exploited all over again, and it sickens me. I am extremely disappointed in anyone who would use my sister’s story to advance their own fame and fortune."

Nearly two decades may have passed but not much has changed, she says.

"I think Nate Parker and Jean Celestin knew this would come up. I think they thought that they could get away with exploiting my sister again, just like they did back at Penn State. They would just say that they were exonerated, and that they could dismiss her allegations.

"And now, instead of the power of Penn State, they would have the power of 20th Century Fox and the Murdoch family behind them."