‘Victim/Suspect’ on Netflix Is a Must-Watch Doc About Rape Reporting That Will Make Your Blood Boil

When eighteen-year-old Emma Mannion reported her rape to the police, she was brought into a freezing cold room, interrogated like a suspect, and taken away in handcuffs. When 20-year-old Megan Rodini reported her rape, she was questioned by an unsympathetic officer for over two hours and forced to relive her trauma, despite her obvious distress. By the time police let her leave, they’d accused her of theft and coerced her into dropping the charges. And when 21-year-old Dyanie Bermeo reported her sexual assault, she was arrested for filing a false report, and publicly humiliated when the Washington County Virginia police plastered her mugshot on their Facebook page.

You’ll witness all of these young girls being—there’s really no other word for it—bullied by police officers in Netflix’s Victim/Suspect, a new must-watch documentary that premiered at Sundance, and is coming to the streaming service tomorrow. Directed by Nancy Schwartzman, the documentary follows journalist Rae de Leon for the Center for Investigative Reporting, as she digs into the phenomenon of rape victims who, after reporting their sexual assault, find themselves suspects of a crime. Schwartzman spends a bit too much time giving de Leon her main character moment, but by the time the film ends, perhaps you’ll feel the reporter earned her spotlight. Because the patterns of police behavior toward rape victims that she uncovers, through thorough and meticulous reporting, will make your blood boil. And if you think this documentary is coming too late—it’s been over five years since the #MeToo movement brought down some of our most powerful sexual abusers, and changed the world—it’s only because Rae de Leon gives these cases with the kind of responsible, time-consuming care that the police declined to offer.

Mannion and Rodini’s cases are particularly damning because Schwartzman has access to the filmed police interviews. Viewers can see for themselves how officers speak to these girls, and how uncomfortable they are—clearly on purpose. In both cases, the police pointedly bring up that the girls were drinking alcohol, the unspoken vibe being that they were breaking the law and might be in trouble for that. They are repeatedly pressed for details, and the officers’ tone becomes increasingly skeptical when the girls can’t remember. (It’s well known that trauma survivors often have fragmented memories, especially when alcohol is involved.) Schwartzman brings in a retired police detective to help break down the interrogation methods the officers use to coerce the girls into recanting their accusations, but you almost don’t need his insight. The power dynamics in the footage are clear: An adult man in an uniform telling a young, scared, traumatized girl that he believes she is lying. What can she do but agree?

It’s not just Mannion and Rodini. Schwartzman compiles a dozen or so clips of actual footage of policing calming telling women—and one man—that they are lying, and will now be charged for falsely reporting sexual assault. The former officer, Carl Hershman, does provide valuable insight as to why police would be motivated to treat rape victims in such an appalling manner. “When I got into the sex crimes unit, every year, more people reported, but you’re getting less detectives to investigate,” Hershman says in the film. “Sex crimes are always going to take longer to work than other crimes, and if you’re already holding 30 or 40 cases, you end up short-cutting your investigative process. But if I can get her to decline prosecutions or stop the investigation, my numbers come down.”

Essentially, Hershman says, officers are handling burnout by managing their workload at the expense of these victims. But there’s at least one other motivating reason in the case of Megan Rodini. The young man she accused of assault, T.J. Bunn Jr., receives a very different sort of treatment from the police in his interview. The officers joke with him, their body language friendly and relaxed, as they promise to get him out of there ASAP. (Bunn’s interview lasts less than 20 minutes, compared to Rodini’s two hours.) Near the end, Bunn thanks the officers for their “thorough” investigation into the possibility that Rodini was lying. The officer, Tuscaloosa County investigator Josh Hasting responds, “Well, the way I look at it man, if it was me on the other side of it, I’d want to do the same thing for me.”

And there it is. We’ve heard time and time again, especially thanks to the work of Black Lives Matters activists in recent years: Police officers protect their own. Netflix’s Victim/Suspect is a must-watch because it demonstrates the deterrents to rape victims coming forward are far more dire than most of us realized. Less than a year after she was bullied into recanting her report, Megan Rodini took her own life. If your rage from the #MeToo movement over the last five years has faded, Victim/Suspect will reignite the flame.