*Trigger Warning: Mention Of Rape And Sexual Assault*
“I was fast asleep. Then he came; his face was masked, and he’d worn hand gloves. He tied me in bed and handcuffed me. I was also blindfolded and gagged. He said, ‘If you tell anybody, I’ll kill you’.
“He was there for almost 3 hours. I was raped repeatedly and he took a lot of photographs of me. Then he forced me to bathe twice,” narrates 16-year-old Marie Adler to the police officer in the Netflix series Unbelievable.
Marie is a former foster child now supported by the social service programme for troubled teens run by Washington State U.S.A.
After a couple of days, Parker, a detective, visits her and asks her to recount the incident. Then, again, she’s called to the police station and she has to narrate her story all over again. But the police have little regard for the psychic toll of reliving her own trauma. There’s no forensic evidence because the perpetrator had used hand gloves and forced the survivor to bathe twice, and he left only after that.
Responding to sexual assault involves numerous complex and specialised procedures. The investigation, evidence and information about the crime are gathered primarily from the survivor, the crime scene and the suspect. While handling sexual assault, every effort must be made to relieve the survivor’s feelings of anger, shame and self-blame.
The police find it difficult to piece the evidence together. They keep telling Marie that her story is inconsistent and fabricated. “You were fast asleep when the intruder came in and raped you, but you fail to provide any evidence. Did you dream a rape,” said the police.
Marie is shaken and intimidated by the barrage of the police. She’s made to feel guilty for “imagining an attack”. The detective asks Marie what she did after she was raped, who she called and why she called them. She is seen getting increasingly flustered as she is called out for “inconsistencies” in her story.
The police don’t merely stop blaming her; they also force her to sign an apology which states that there was no rape and she made it all up. With the apology, Marie stands to lose her social service aid. Her foster parents and friends started to believe the police, leaving her totally broken and alone.
Marie’s life takes a bad turn as she loses the whole lot. She starts working in a supermarket, but she is stalked by her store supervisor. She leaves the job in a jiffy and suffers yet another debacle.
At first glance, you might question why anyone would ever blame the survivor of a sexual assault. But when you think about it a little more, you discover that there have been times when the responsibility of proving innocence has been thrust on the survivor, rather than the perpetrator.
Sadly, it’s a common phenomenon. Actually, it’s the duty of the police to prove the crime and not vice-versa.
The myth that women lie about rape has to be busted. Survivors of a sexual assault might have even blamed themselves. They might get convinced that somehow, they did something wrong — or that they didn’t do enough to stop it.
Globally, police brutality targeting women is both an everyday reality and an invisible issue. That’s how the narrative of victim-blaming takes shape.
Three years after Marie reports being raped, two female detectives in Colorado, Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall begin investigating a string of assaults with a clear similarity to one another. Looking at the precision with which the crimes are carried out, the duo considers the possibility that the assailant is from the police.
Eventually, they learn the details are similar to what Marie had recounted before recanting.
The other two survivors of the masked perpetrator were also harassed by the police. However, Rasmussen and Duval, who are aware of the police atrocity, make it a priority to hunt down the perpetrator, James Massey, a cop who had been on the run.
The police succeed in arresting Massey and find the photographs and videos of those that he had captured. Massey had a collection of photographs and videos he had taken during the crime. Parker is flustered while looking at the photos and videos of Marie; the evidence proves how bad of a cop he was.
When the trial begins, two of the survivor’s break down in court while testifying. The failure of the police rings through the courtroom.
Marie says it’s hard to believe that most people are basically good. Of the three survivors, she is the youngest and most abused, first by the perpetrator and then by the state. But she gets a decent lawyer, a fair trial and compensation from the state of Washington for wrongfully accusing her of “imagining an attack”.
The series Unbelievable tries to invest faith in the survivors who tend to lose hope.
Written by Alka Gadgil from Maharashtra
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