{"id":8159,"date":"2019-09-18T21:12:42","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T04:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8159"},"modified":"2019-09-22T02:34:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T09:34:41","slug":"post1-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8159","title":{"rendered":"“The true story behind \u2018Unbelievable,\u2019 Netflix\u2019s gripping new drama about the women who solved a serial rape case”, The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Bethonie Butler, September 17, 2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Note: This story contains plot details from Netflix\u2019s \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d which is based on a true story.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the first episode of Netflix\u2019s \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d an 18-year-old Washington state woman reports her rape, only to face suspicion from the very detectives who are supposed to be helping her. The next episode follows another rape investigation \u2014 in Colorado, where a detective (played by two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever) listens patiently to the victim, reminding her that she may not be able to recall every detail of her attack.<\/p>\n

This stark contrast is at the heart of the Netflix drama, which began streaming Friday and was inspired by a 2015 article by ProPublica and the Marshall Project titled \u201cAn Unbelievable Story of Rape<\/a>.\u201d In the Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning story, reporters T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong detail the ordeal of a woman (referred to by her middle name, Marie) who was charged with filing a false report after recanting a claim that she had been raped at knifepoint in her apartment.<\/p>\n

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Hank Stuever: 12 new fall shows to watch (\u2018Unbelievable,\u2019 \u2018Evil,\u2019 \u2018Watchmen\u2019) and 5 you can probably skip<\/a><\/p>\n

The ProPublica story<\/a> is wrenching from its very first sentence: \u201cNo one came to court with her that day, except her public defender.\u201d Marie (portrayed in the series by \u201cBooksmart\u201d breakout Kaitlyn Dever) grew up in foster care after an early childhood marked by neglect. The article cites a report by one expert who, after interviewing Marie for five hours, noted that she \u201cremembers being hungry and eating dog food,\u201d and that she had been \u201csexually and physically abused.\u201d<\/p>\n

By August 2008, when Marie reported her rape, she was living on her own in Lynnwood, a Seattle suburb. She told police her attacker had broken into her apartment, which had been subsidized through a program designed to help young adults transition from the foster-care system. She reported being blindfolded during the attack but believed her rapist had worn a condom.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnbelievable\u201d begins in the hours after Marie\u2019s rape, when she is forced to recount the attack repeatedly to male police detectives, who \u2014 by the end of the episode \u2014 find minor inconsistencies in her story troubling enough that they suggest she made the whole thing up.<\/p>\n

Armstrong, the co-author of the ProPublica story, devoted a lengthy Twitter thread<\/a> to the series Monday. \u201cTo me, Marie is not a character. She is someone who trusted me with her story, painful as it was,\u201d he wrote. He praised the series and showrunner Susannah Grant, who he noted \u201cwanted to capture how an investigation can become its own form of trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo do that,\u201d he added, \u201cshe let the facts speak for themselves.\u201d As such, the series takes many details directly from the article, which recalls that two of Marie\u2019s former foster mothers, with whom she maintained close relationships, also had doubts about her story. One found it strange that Marie became angry after not being able to buy a new set of the exact sheets that she had on her bed during the attack. The other was so disturbed by what she considered to be attention-seeking behavior in the days following Marie\u2019s attack that she called the lead police detective to tell him she didn\u2019t think the department should waste its resources on an investigation.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Marie recanted her claim after the detectives on her case insisted, following several interrogations, that she had lied about being raped. \u201cUnbelievable\u201d puts the implications of her recanted statement \u2014 which Marie is forced to put into writing \u2014 into crushing focus. She loses friends and risks losing her housing arrangement; she is vilified (though not identified by name) in news reports; she can no longer count on the few adults she had learned to trust; unable to cope with the compounded trauma, she impulsively quits her job.<\/p>\n

The first episode\u2019s final scene shows Marie climbing over the railing of a bridge, where she contemplates jumping. (In the ProPublica story, Marie describes this as \u201cprobably the only time I just wanted to die in my life.\u201d) And that\u2019s before the police department takes the rare step of charging her with a gross misdemeanor for filing a false report, despite the fact that she had implicated no one and despite the fact that \u2014 as two Colorado detectives would later discover \u2014 her account had been devastatingly true.<\/p>\n

The next episode jumps ahead to 2011 in Colorado, where a college student reports her rape by a masked intruder who took pictures of her and threatened to post them on the Internet if she called the police. Enter Wever\u2019s detective, Karen Duvall, who is the antithesis of the officers who investigated Marie\u2019s rape. She invites the victim, Amber (\u201cDumplin\u2019 \u201d star Danielle Macdonald), to talk in her truck, so they can chat away from the officers collecting crime scene evidence in her apartment. Her approach at every step of the investigation is rooted in compassion.<\/p>\n

Duvall teams up with Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette), a veteran detective who investigated a similar case and agrees they may be looking for the same elusive suspect. As many critics<\/a> have noted, the show sets up an endearing buddy cop dynamic between Duvall, based on Golden, Colo., Detective Stacy Galbraith, and Rasmussen, based on Galbraith\u2019s real-life counterpart, Westminster, Colo., Detective Edna Hendershot.<\/p>\n

The ProPublica story details the duo\u2019s dogged, multi-department investigation, which ultimately led to the arrest of Marc O\u2019Leary, a serial rapist who had taken pictures of all of his victims. One of them was Marie \u2014 whose learner\u2019s permit, with its Lynnwood, Wash., address, was displayed prominently in one of the photos O\u2019Leary forced her to be in. O\u2019Leary, the story notes, \u201cpleaded guilty to 28 counts of rape and associated felonies in Colorado.\u201d He was given the maximum sentence under the law: 327\u00bd years.<\/p>\n

The fallout forced Lynnwood to review its practices; a sex crimes supervisor later declared<\/a> that what had happened to Marie was \u201cnothing short of the victim being coerced into admitting that she lied about the rape.\u201d Marie ultimately sued the city, settling for $150,000<\/a> before leaving the state \u2014 but not before confronting one of the detectives who had pressured her to recant. He told her<\/a> he was \u201cdeeply sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armstrong said Monday on Twitter that Marie had watched the show and thought it was \u201cexcellent,\u201d though she admitted it made her \u201ccry quite a bit.\u201d The reporter shared that Marie was struck by one scene in particular: the one that depicts the police interrogation that led her to recant. The scene \u201cwas, like, perfect,\u201d she told him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marie also found solace in the final episode, which follows the Colorado detectives as they zero in on Christopher McCarthy, the fictionalized version of her attacker. \u201cSeeing him get put away,\u201d she told Armstrong<\/a>, \u201cthat was closure for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Bethonie Butler, September 17, 2019 Note: This story contains plot details from Netflix\u2019s \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d which is based on a true story. In the first episode of Netflix\u2019s \u201cUnbelievable,\u201d an 18-year-old Washington state woman reports her rape, only to face suspicion from the very detectives who are supposed to be helping her. The next episode follows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8159"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8185,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8159\/revisions\/8185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}