American Nightmare explains why women don’t report rape. I didn’t report mine
On Sunday evening, I sat down to watch the new Netflix documentary, American Nightmare. The three-part series examines a case dubbed “the real-life Gone Girl”, in which a woman’s abduction and subsequent rape allegation was dismissed as a hoax by local police. I stayed firmly on my sofa as each episode rolled into the next, reaching the part where the victim, Denise Huskins, in an emotional interview with the filmmakers, says, “Here I am, literally taken in the middle of the night, my body stolen and violated... I don’t know what needs to happen to me, what needs to happen to any woman, for them to be believed.”
Her words set me back to an incident in my own life, one I’ve tried hard to leave in the past.
The police arrived within the hour. A man and a woman, sitting across from me in my living room, a mixing bowl of half-eaten spinach and ricotta ravioli between us. The female officer was the first one to use the word “rape”. She said it quickly and assertively,
