Investigative journalist Rae de Leon reveals a disturbing trend of women reporting sexual assault, who then get arrested because police think they’re making false allegations in the absence of properly investigating the case. We follow de Leon as she does the work the police investigators should have originally done, and as she works with The Center for Investigative Reporting to unpack the deeper dynamics of what is happening and why. We break down VICTIM/SUSPECT by Nancy Schwartzman in this episode.
Sundance 2023 Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
Distribution: Theatrical release on May 19, 2023, Streaming on Netflix on May 23, 2023.
From the Sundance website: Rae de Leon, a reporter working at The Center for Investigative Reporting, discovers a surprising number of legal cases nationwide that involve women reporting sexual assault to the police, only to be accused of fabricating their allegations. These women are then charged with crimes, sometimes facing years in prison. Victim/Suspect follows de Leon as she gathers firsthand accounts from numerous young women and their families and interviews police and legal experts. Simultaneously, de Leon re-examines elements of the initial police investigations, unearthing telling recordings of police interviews of women reporting their sexual assault.
Director Nancy Schwartzman crafts a deeply compelling and provocative investigative documentary, sure to elicit both empathy and outrage, that stands as a powerful testament to the carefully constructed work of determined reporters like de Leon. Victim/Suspect illuminates, with precision and focus, how local and nationwide systemic policing policies both motivate detectives to treat victims like suspects, and directly impact not only these vulnerable women’s cases, but also their lives.
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.518] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. And I'm Wonder Bright. And welcome to Story All The Way Down. We're a podcast looking at the Sundance documentaries from 2023. And today's episode is called Victim Suspect by Nancy Schwartzman. It's a part of the U.S. documentary competition at Sundance this year, and it's actually been picked up by Netflix. And so it should be available at some point in 2023. So this is a film that features the work of an investigative journalist named Ray DeLeon, who's trying to investigate this phenomena where women go in to report their sexual assaults, and all of a sudden, they become suspects for fabricating their stories. And then all of a sudden, the tables get turned and they're the ones being prosecuted and accused. This is a story where Ray ends up at the Center for Investigative Reporting. She's pitching it to her editors. They're kind of suspicious at first, but she continues to report on it. And then eventually it breaks open and we go on this whole journey of her trying to discover what is going on here. There does seem to be some sort of larger systemic issue here. And so, at the root of this documentary is that mystery that she's trying to solve for why is this happening and how is this coming about. I wanted to read one set of statistics that she gives at the end of the film just to help contextualize this. She says that there was 463,634 reports of sexual assaults, but only 30% of those are reported. 1% of those are prosecuted. And there's so little justice for those victims that we're kind of left with this question. Is it worth the risk of reporting when when you go in to report it? You may be accused of false reporting. And so there's this element of backlash that we see. And I think this documentary is shedding a light on this really troubling issue. But I'm really inspired by the intrepid nature of Ray DeLeon to do the hard work, doing all the FOIA requests and doing all the reporting that she did that you see in this documentary to shine a light on this is an issue. So, yeah, I'd love to get some of your initial thoughts on victim slash suspect.
[00:02:27.518] Wonder Bright: Yeah, this one, the subject matter is so demoralizing. And what these women go through is so harrowing. And anyone that I know personally who has suffered sexual assault is already going through something extremely harrowing. To then go to the authorities in an attempt to seek justice And instead to be on the receiving end of the full weight of suspicion and character assassination is, I mean, the only word that really does justice to it is nightmare. It feels like a living nightmare. And For that reason, the fact that this film manages to carry you along the story with excitement and passion and conviction in the pursuit of justice is quite a testament. I can fully recommend this film as something that has subject matter that is difficult to to take on, but is not hard to watch because of the way in which the film is crafted. And because at the heart of it, we also have, as you say, this intrepid reporter, which by the way, is also restorative in the sense of like how much the press has been maligned in the United States and around the world, really. In recent years, this film, much like the other film we've spoken about, Bad Press, that also aired at Sundance this year, are very restorative in terms of what's possible when journalistic integrity is maintained and pursued with the kind of vigilance that Ray de Leon embodies.
[00:04:13.287] Kent Bye: Yeah, she was working on this project for a number of years, three or four years, and under the auspices of the Center for Investigative Reporting. And so it does have this framing of the genre of true crime, the journalist actually doing the type of investigative work that the cops should have been doing. And you get an opportunity to hear the testimony from these victims who are on this other side of being
[00:04:39.560] Wonder Bright: flipped into reporting what happens to them and you're able to bear witness to their version, but also just to interject the testimony while they're actually being interviewed by the police, like we see the footage of them giving their testimony from the start.
[00:04:54.961] Kent Bye: Right. So this film is cutting in between the archival footage that the police investigators are able to take these testimonies. And we also have the opportunity to hear from a lot of these women as well, to hear additional context for what the experience was like when the tables got turned on them. So you really get a sense of getting that first person testimony. But there's many different twists and turns that happen in this film, and I'm hesitant to go into very many of them at all. But one I do want to point out is that I didn't fully realize that it was completely legal for cops to lie to these women.
[00:05:30.880] Wonder Bright: And so you end up having these women who- Not just to women, to anybody that they get an interrogation room. Cops have permission to lie. It's legal for cops to lie.
[00:05:41.547] Kent Bye: Yeah. So if a cop is interrogating you, you don't actually know if what they're saying is true or not. But a lot of these women are in these situations of going through this intense trauma. And here is a person of authority who are telling them that whatever they're saying is being contradicted by this empirical evidence that they allegedly have, but oftentimes don't actually have. Or if they do say that they have video, it is suspect. And so the fact that Ray DeLeon is able to do all these Freedom of Information Act requests and get a hold of all this footage and basically reconstruct a lot of these different cases, but also do it at a massive scale to get the level of statistics that you need to say that this is a broader pattern. And I appreciated that intrepidness, but also some of the different police officers who are really able to crack into the psyche of what the police investigators for what they're thinking, even if the people who are directly being questioned, they're often refusing to go on camera and to speak about any of these things. But we do get the privilege of hearing what is the thinking for this mindset of how they investigate things and what their intentions and motivations are. And so this film is able to put together the full picture of this as a phenomena. And really, I think at the end of it starts to identify some key things that are going wrong. And yeah, I think just to see that in terms of the power of the stories like this, but also to reflect upon what's really required to help bring about a shift and change, whether it's through training or education or information. So I feel like this documentary is a big part of at least trying to identify this as an issue and a problem and how some of the existing methods that the cops are using are not really even designed for dealing with sexual assault in this way. And it's really kind of a mismatch for how they're even thinking about it. And this documentary is able to really identify that and break it down in a really brilliant way.
[00:07:38.372] Wonder Bright: Yeah, and it is a masterclass in deconstructing the ways in which women are systematically gaslit in this country around their own first person experiences. so that we really do, as women, begin to doubt the veracity of what we've actually experienced. Because the whole system is literally designed to have us not prioritize our first-person experience, but to always be thinking about other people and what they wanted and what they needed and what they desired. It is so deeply disturbing and it is such a relief to see it deconstructed as masterfully as it is in this film. And to be able now to point to it, just for myself personally, but also for other people to say, you need to understand these other layers of complications around people coming forward with stories about sexual assault and the ways in which the system is not designed to hear them out. and the problem with that, the larger problems that that points out to.
[00:08:53.159] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it was really restorative just to be able to see Ray DeLeon take on these individual cases and really investigate them and try to understand the gaps of the reasoning and for her to reveal to the people who were on the other side of this and for them to be like, oh my God, I can't believe that that's what they did. And just to have at least some degree of justice and fighting back within the context of the court system in some cases and Yeah, the people that are followed also seeing how they're able to carry forth the experiences that they had and able to contribute back into making a deeper change into some of these things. So, yeah. And like I said, it's like this true crime type of experience where you're trying to get at the root of what is happening and why it's going wrong. And I feel like this documentary really delivers on some of those answers and it's worth going on that journey with Ray DeLeon and Nancy Schwarzman as you unpack all these things. So yeah, I'm wondering what you're bearing witness to in this film, A Victim Suspect.
[00:09:58.969] Wonder Bright: Well, you know, our whole closing statement is about bearing witness. And this film is about bearing witness to witnesses who have witnessed their own sexual assault and they are bearing witness to it and they come forward and they give this testimony and it is denied and ignored. So I want to bear witness to the way the filmmakers are bearing witness to that first person witness and the way in which we all can do that. And the way in which by doing that, they're empowering all of us to take these experiences and these stories so much more seriously than we have as yet been able to do as a society.
[00:10:42.971] Kent Bye: Yeah. And I want to bear witness to Ray DeLeon for continuing to pursue this story, despite the editors being skeptical and everything else, all the blocks that she had to face and to continue on and digging deeper and digging deeper into really trusting her own gut and intuition to get to the bottom of the story that was really disturbing. And also there's some police officers in here that have had connections to family members who had experienced sexual assault who were really on this mission to bring about this deeper change and who are adding a lot of additional commentary for helping to describe some of what may be happening. in this larger institutional biases and dynamics and pressures that these cops are undergoing in a way that helps to explain in some ways, even if the cops who are doing the investigation aren't speaking for themselves, it helps at least to give at least some story for us to be able to hang on to for why it's happening, but also through his own work, how he's trying to bring about change as this is an issue. And yeah, I'm just happy that it's been picked up by Netflix and should be available for people to watch. I'm not sure if after people watch this, if they're going to feel encouraged more to report these sexual assaults. I think the question that is left with us at the end is, is it worth the risk? to report, especially considering how only 1% of all the reported cases end up with the prosecution. So it's a really difficult reality check in the sense of these deeper obstacles that this particular case is facing, but I'm really appreciative of this documentary to lay it all out. And I guess it's sort of up to the culture to figure out What are the deeper changes that we need to do in order to shift these statistics and these dynamics and to help people perhaps bring about larger changes within the training that these officers have for how they deal with sexual assault cases moving forward? So that was Victim Suspect by Nancy Schwartzman as a part of the U.S. documentary competition, and it has been picked up by Netflix and should be showing here at some point in 2023. So thanks for joining us on Story All the Way Down. To learn more about this film or the podcast, visit storyallthewaydown.com. There you'll find show notes, more information about the podcast and opportunities to support what we're doing. Thanks for joining us.
