Editor’s note: The following story contains mentions of sexual assault. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotlinecall 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
Emma Mannion, Nikki Yavino, Dyanie Bermeo. All victims of sexual assault, all handcuffed for having had the courage to talk about it. At the end of Nancy Schwartzman victim/suspectthe shocking documentary premiering May 23 on Netflix, it’s completely understandable why anyone, regardless of the evidence, would be afraid to report a rape to the police.
Making a false statement of rape is an offense punishable by one year in prison. More alarming is that it is 100% legal for police officers to lie openly during an interview with an accuser, as long as these lies are used to extract a confession: the victim is then effectively treated as a suspect. These lies, from the perspective of a known authority, often cause the already traumatized victim to reconsider their story or retract it entirely.
Much of the document’s horrific content comes from surveillance footage collected by reporter Rachel (Rae) de Leon at the Center for Investigative Reporting, who in 2018 led an effort to examine the startling number of women arrested across the country. for fabricating allegations.
Finding more than 180 cases of false reports covered by the media over the past decade, de Leon discerns a pattern in the way police abuse their power, and victims manifestly mistrust them. In most of the footage, the accusers are grilled for hours a few days after their assault, usually in the absence of a lawyer or attorney. Often citing “video evidence” that somehow contradicts an accuser’s account, officers (significantly both male and female) coerce victims, mostly women, into retracting their allegations, in order that they can then be charged. At one point, a young female victim responds to a detective: “If you say there is no video evidence [of an assault]I guess I have to believe you.
The cases of Emma Mannion and Dyanie Bermeo anchor the film with a nuanced portrait of each young woman and how quickly the police invalidated her story to put her behind bars. “You’re not being honest with me, okay? the officer told Mannion, a University of Alabama student raped after a football game, during his interrogation. After being interrogated for nearly two hours, before she was handcuffed, Mannion actually apologizes to the officer for the overtime his team has put in investigating the case. In a later scene, Bermeo, a King’s University student who reported a police officer for assaulting her during a traffic stop, apologizes for crying as Schwartzman interviews her. victim/suspect exposes how women, conditioned to apologize for any inconvenience, are vulnerable to pressure to take blame, and even serve time, for their own violent rapes.
“This happened to you and now someone is accusing you of lying about it?” asks Dr. Lisa Avalos, a legal expert featured in the film. “Countless women, especially young women, have been driven to recant because that’s how they can get out of this situation.” Based on the efforts of de Leon and various civil rights attorneys, Mannion’s and Bermeo’s cases were quashed and their records expunged. But nothing can give them back the years in which they endured significant psychological damage and public stigma.
In light of Harvey Weinstein’s incarceration and the recent winning verdict in his trial against Donald Trump (for sexual assault, if not rape), it might seem that the tide is turning for victims of sexual assault. victim/suspect is difficult to watch for several reasons. One of those reasons is that it reveals all the work that remains to be done – not only to train police units to better handle cases of sexual assault, but also to foster a culture in which survivors are raw.
victim/suspect streams on Netflix starting May 23.
