True story behind that powerful Grey's Anatomy sexual assault episode shared in new docuseries

On March 28, 2019, Grey's Anatomy aired the episode "Silent All These Years," which featured Jo (Camilla Luddington) treating a woman who'd been sexually assaulted and culminated in a powerful scene of all the women in the hospital lining the hallway in order to make sure the patient was comfortable getting the treatment she needed.

The episode, which also revealed that Jo's father had raped her mother, was praised for its ability to tackle such a delicate topic, with much of that praise going to writer Elisabeth R. Finch. Finch and then-showrunner Krista Vernoff were even featured on EW's Awardist podcast to talk about the hour and the inspiration for the "Army of Awesome" when the women lined the hall.

But a new docuseries, Anatomy of Lies, has given some more insight into the episode. Anatomy of Lies details Finch's career with a focus on her time at Grey's Anatomy, revealing a number of lies that she told, including the fact that her colleagues spent years thinking she was living with cancer, which turned out to not be true.

In the series, former Grey's writer Kiley Donovan specifically recalls telling Finch about a personal story. "At some point we had a drink and I shared something that had happened to me, kind of something I was processing, which was that my biological father was my mother's rapist," Donovan says in the series. "And I had not processed that trauma." 

Donovan continues, "That was around the time that Finch started writing an episode that she called 'Silent All These Years,' where the character Jo Wilson is treating a woman who had been assaulted and was going to administer a rape kit to her. But then the second element of the episode was in the past. Jo had flashbacks to meeting her mother and learning that she had been conceived in rape."

There's no way to know for sure if Finch took inspiration from her friend's story or elsewhere, but Donovan admits it felt "weird and wrong" for Finch to be praised for writing what Donovan calls "THE high-profile episode post-Me Too."

Finch is even part of the episode. Every female member of the crew was invited to put on scrubs and be part of the pivotal hallway scene, Donovan included, but it's Finch who's front and center pushing the gurney.

Anatomy of Lies, which is out now on Peacock, follows Finch's life long after that specific episode as she allegedly steals stories from others and eventually, is outed for having lied about her cancer diagnosis, among other things.