A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America

Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporters Miller and Armstrong excavate a disturbing strain of misogyny in American culture in this account of the mistreatment of victims of sexual assault in the criminal justice system. The book opens with the aftermath of the 2008 rape of an 18-year-old woman near Seattle. Marie had just aged out of foster care and was living on her own for the first time when a man with a knife broke into her house in the middle of the night and assaulted her. When Marie reported the crime, the authorities and her former foster parents were skeptical of her story. When questioned further by the police, Marie recanted under the impression that she had dreamt up the incident; she was subsequently charged with false reporting. Over two years later, an investigation into a similar crime in Colorado yielded evidence that Marie was indeed raped. The authors use this dramatic, almost unbelievable sequence of events as a springboard to a broader survey of the disturbing ways victims of rape are treated in America. Closely examining how rape is investigated and tried in the U.S., including the development of the rape kit in the 1970s and the origins of the “Hale warning” (an instruction to jurors in rape trials to be wary of false accusations), the book shines a critical light on an urgent and timely subject. [em](Feb.) [/em]