A 15-year-old girl named Carrie Lynn Eldridge (Danielle Panabaker) is caught about to have sex with her 21-year-old boyfriend, Justin (Jon Foster), by her mother Denise (Cathy Moriarty), who demands the police charge him with statutory rape, despite her daughter's objections. The investigation leads to Denise being found brutally murdered in her apartment, the young lovers as suspects, a children's rights lawyer (Glenne Headly) who refuses to cooperate, and history of chronic alcohol abuse and violence by the deceased.