It is now spring back in Paintsville Kentucky,
and that football superstar Shawn Grim has climbed
a giant mountain all his own.
Shawn Grim!
Beating the odds, Shawn Grim becomes the first person
in his family ever to get a high school diploma.
Shawn is on his way up and out, because Pikeville College,
about an hour from his home, has awarded
him a football scholarship.
He gets that surgery on his damaged knee,
complete with tempting prescription painkillers
with his mother Tina.
OK.
It'd be $150 for these 30.
If I wanted to sell, I could get rid of it today.
But my son is more important than $1.
As we said, it's a big achievement for Shawn
to go to college.
His stepbrother, Little Man, dropped out of school
and has two kids.
[MUSIC PLAYING - "LOLLIPOP"]
Listen.
We were in Little Man's trailer when Shawn played me
that ringtone again.
Can I see the dance you do to "Lollipop"?
I don't know the dance.
I bet you do.
Seriously, I don't.
Sorry.
I know the song.
But just as Shawn is getting close to going off
to his new life, a new blow.
Little Man's girlfriend, the mother of his children,
says at 3:00 AM she found Little Man and his 15-year-old half
sister out in back of the trailer having sex.
Shawn's mother Tina called the cops.
Knowing they're blood-related, and knowing that that happened,
that is really disgusting in my book.
Shawn's stepdad Rick says if Little Man comes around,
he's ready.
I'd blow his head off his body.
I'd shoot my own mother.
The parents are heading out to see
their daughter, who's been taken to a social services facility.
Later, Tina tells us she too was molested by a family member
when she was young.
Rick says this kind of thing doesn't just happen
in Appalachia, it's everywhere.
Well, did you ever hear the old saying, the closer the kin,
the deeper in?
It doesn't matter who it is.
They lay down.
Black, white, crippled, it don't matter.
In tears, Shawn's half sister tells their mother
that little man gave her pills or marijuana or money
in exchange for sex, and back home says
that wasn't the first time.
It happens all so fast, you really
don't know what's going on around you.
You just go on all through the days,
pretending like nothing's ever happened
because you're so scared.
Little Man says he is not guilty.
The mother of his children has now recanted her story.
Well, unfortunately, Eastern Kentucky
has a stereotype of incest, but it's everywhere.
It's in the whole United States.
And we have to be able to make sure and get out
that this cycle has to be broken.
For Shawn, anger and embarrassment.
In the wake of all this, he goes off to Pikeville College
to begin his new life, trying to upend all those stereotypes.
Us hillbillies don't want to do nothing
but drink and do drugs the rest of their life?
Is that what you're saying?
Stereotype.
Arriving at school, it's clear he
doesn't have the advantages a lot of the other kids have.
What's your story?
I ain't got a lot of money and--
You ain't got a lot of money?
No.
What'd you live in back home?
A house.
I slept wherever I fell asleep.
Hut!
For eight weeks, he goes to football practice,
where his teammates are now twice his size.
He also struggles in the classroom,
says he's feeling overwhelmed.
And by the way, his girlfriend from the right side
of the tracks has long since broken up with him.
Failing is probably I guess the biggest thing to ever scare me.
But I guess I'm just going to work harder and try harder.
Even with the scholarship, he says
he has no money for what other kids can afford--
supplies, food, fun.
After only eight weeks, he loses heart.
He drops out and goes back home.
Found out I couldn't pay for the college.
Had to come home.
No one's perfect.
Winter is coming.
The family needs coal, so Shawn heads out
for one of those illegal scavenging trips on the highway
wall on Route 23.
And all the people whizzing by have no idea
that the kid digging coal on the side of the road
was once the hope and hero of Appalachian football,
now on the side of the highway, with nothing around the bend.