This year, in Bartow, Florida, a man received a 17-year sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl. The same girl had reported a previous allegation of rape against the same man—only to be branded a liar and prosecuted as a juvenile for filing false information with the police.
The second time she reported being raped, the girl had photo and video evidence. The Ledger, a newspaper in Lakeland, Florida, reported that the prosecutor in the false-reporting case subsequently testified that the girl should never have been prosecuted. A judge, the paper said, later determined she had been failed by the criminal justice system.
Pentagon diverts billions in military construction funds to build Trump’s border wall
With its parallels to “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” co-published by The Marshall Project and ProPublica in December 2015, the girl’s case shows that there continue to be instances in which law enforcement authorities doubt victims of sexual assault and even charge them criminally for coming forward.
That failure of the criminal justice system is the subject of a dramatized, eight-part series that will begin airing on Netflix next week. Called “Unbelievable,” the Netflix series is based on the story by The Marshall Project and ProPublica, which won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2016, and on a subsequent radio episode of “This American Life.” The series also draws upon “A False Report,” a book written by the story’s two reporters about the case.
Source: Netflix Series Explores Costs of Not Believing Rape Victims
Recent Comments