Last Friday, Netflix released their latest true crime series entitled Unbelievable, which is centered around The Marshall Project and ProPublica's Pulitzer-prize-winning article, An Unbelievable Story of Rape. It follows the true story of an 18-year-old woman named Marie, who in 2008, filed a report claiming she was gagged, bound, and raped. Even though this was true, she recanted her claim soon after and said she made it all up. As a result, Marie was charged with a gross demeanor and had to pay $500 for court costs.
Her retraction came after detectives Sgt. Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn (known as Detective Parker and Detective Pruitt in the series) pointed out inconsistencies in her story and said if she failed a lie detector test, she'd be booked into jail. Eventually, it was revealed that Jeffrey and Jerry's interactions with Marie included "bullying" and "hounding," and were “nothing short of the victim being coerced into admitting that she lied about the rape.”
Steve Rider, the commander of Lynnwood’s Criminal Investigations Division, also called Marie’s case a “major failing.” Still, no one in the Lynnwood Police Department faced disciplinary action.
After seeing the series, many Unbelievable viewers became upset with how the police dealt with Marie's case. "I just started watching #Unbelievable and am already so angry. I am having to explain to someone how rape cases are handled so insensitivity by police in America," one viewer tweeted. "I'm watching #Unbelievable ... and the differences of approach in questioning rape victims by male and female cops is incredibly alarming. I'm torn all over again," another said.
While Kaitlyn Dever (who plays Marie Adler in the Netflix series) tells GoodHousekeeping.com that she hoped Unbelievable would "start a conversation," she doesn't think the series necessarily "vilifies" the two male cops.
"We're just telling the story, and we are giving the facts," Kaitlyn says. "I think this show has done that incredibly well, and was never about gender or saying 'Because they were male detectives, that's why they didn't have compassion for it.'"
Like in the ProPublica piece, the Netflix series compares Marie's police experience with another woman, Amber. Amber, who is an anonymous rape survivor in the original account, had Detective Stacy Galbraith (Karen Duvall in the series) on her case after reporting that she had been assaulted repeatedly in Golden, Colorado. Stacy "often volunteered to take rape cases," and was "good at empathizing with the victims." She also "listened to the woman with a sense of alarm."
What's more, Stacy's partner on the greater sexual-assault investigation, Sgt. Edna Hendershot (Grace Rasmussen in the show), had investigated more than 100 rapes by 2011.
By contrast, Jeffrey had only taken on two rape cases before Marie's, while Jerry worked as a technician in the aerospace industry before becoming a detective.
While it could be conceived that their genders made all the difference, for Danielle Macdonald, who portrays Amber in Unbelievable, it's more so about being educated.
"It's not about men versus women, that's not what the show is doing," she says. "It is showing Amber's detectives were educated about survivors, they understand these cases, and Marie's detectives never really had cases like this before, and they didn't know."
Both Kaitlyn and Danielle think what's most important is that viewers of Unbelievable learn to accept that not all survivors are the same and that we must take their accounts seriously. After all, a review of research from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) finds that the prevalence of false reporting is very low — between 2 and 10%. What's more, of the sexual violence crimes not reported to police from 2005 to 2010, 13% believed the police would not do anything to help, according to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).
"We can't just treat these people as one large group ... we can't do that. People cope differently, react differently," Kaitlyn says. "We have to treat these kind of cases more singularly."
If you or someone you know needs help or has been affected by sexual assault, call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. You can also visit online.rainn.org to receive support via confidential online chat.
