A False Report/Unbelievable by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

 

This book is the basis of the hit Netflix documentary series Unbelievable.  It was first published as A False Report but is now being sold under the title Unbelievable.  Regardless of title, it is a sobering oversight of the status of rape reporting in the United States.

The book focuses on the issue through the lens of one serial rapist who terrorized Seattle, Washington while he was stationed there in the military and then in the Colorado suburbs around Denver.  The first known victim in Washington was a young woman named Marie.  She had a troubled upbringing and had spent most of her life in foster homes.  Now as an eighteen year old, she part of a program that supported teens such as her.  She had her first job and her first apartment.  That was where she was attacked one morning around dawn.  

Then and in his later attacks, the rapist had a pattern.  He would restrain the women, often blindfolding them.  He would rape them multiple times over hours.  He would take pictures incessantly, telling the women that if they reported him, he would put their pictures on the Internet.  Afterwards, before he left, he made them shower for at least twenty minutes and he took anything he thought might have evidence such as clothes and bed linens.

Marie did everything right.  She reported immediately and went to the hospital for an examination.  But by the next day, things started to go wrong.  For some reason, her former foster mother called the police and expressed reservations about whether Marie was telling the truth.  The police investigator, with minimal sexual crime experience, was quick to pick up on this and interrogated Marie, calling her a liar until she recanted.  She later disagreed with this but was again browbeaten into saying she was lying.  The sympathy she had gotten disappeared.  She lost her job and was in jeopardy of losing her apartment.  The crowning blow was when the policeman heading up the investigation charged her with making a false report, giving her a criminal record.

Several years later, a different police force handled the cases they had much differently.  There the investigators were mainly female and had trained for the work extensively.  They were quick to do things that had not been done in Washington.  They looked for other cases that fit the pattern, even out of their jurisdiction and were quick to cooperate with other divisions.  They spent extensive time taking the victims' statements, looking for connections and clues.  They, most importantly, believed the victims and threw enough resources at the case that they were able to identify and arrest the perpetrator.  

This is an important book.  It outlines the severity of the rape crisis and the many ways that it is downplayed and given minimal investigative resources in many cases.  Rape is not a primarily sexual crime although it is expressed in a sexual fashion.  It is a crime of power and control and those who are serial rapists often escalate trying to get the same feelings of mastery.  The steps that need to be taken in rape cases and the counseling afterwards is clearly defined.  This book is recommended for those interested in women's issues and social justice.