2023-05-26 08:10:00
Constant re-victimization, psychological abuse, bureaucratic procrastination and numerous injustices. Complaints of sexual abuse are usually a real headache for the victims, who with all the burden of the situation must also face a hostile scenario.
The documentary “Victim/Suspect”, released by Netflix last Tuesday, reflects this scenario like no other production. With the direction of Nancy Schwartzman and throughout 90 minutes, we will learn about the investigation of journalist Rachel de Leon into a case of sexual abuse that, after being denounced by the victim, ended up becoming an accusation of “false testimony” by police.
The case of Emma Mannion is the most paradigmatic, which guides us throughout the production. She is about a young woman who, at the age of 18, was sexually abused but she found that, after denouncing her victimizer, the police initiated a defamation case against her and harassed her through the media and social networks. That led Emma to plead guilty in order to stop the media harassment and reduce her potential sentence, even when the young woman was telling the truth.
Emma was not the only protagonist of the story. We also know the stories of Nikki Yovino and Dyane Bermeo. These three examples are used to shape the story, but De Leon herself comments in a passage from the documentary that after delving into the report she discovered hundreds of similar situations in the United States.
In Rachel’s voice we are getting to know the behind the scenes of both the cases and the investigation that she carried out, which was also her first in-depth work. It started between 2016 and 2017, during the height of the #MeToo movement. As she relates, she imagined that it was going to be a short investigation, but when she delved into the facts, she found a common thread that led her to carry out an investigation of several years, in great detail.
The documentary has, if you will, three layers. The first, in which we learn about Rachel’s story, her investigations, the way in which he managed to contact the different sources and his desperate search for the word of various protagonists, who chose to take refuge in silence. That facet that all the journalistic work behind the investigation shows is valuable, because it is not usually under the spotlight in many productions.
The second layer is that of the true protagonists. The victims, who see how their cases turn around due to the pressure of the police, and must deal with this situation accompanied by their families. We also see the public ridicule to which they are subjected, which in some cases even led to their having to abandon their studies and change institutions. The story of the protagonists is as raw as it is valuable, because you can undoubtedly identify the pain that this story caused them, and you can also see how each of the situations unfolded, some with a fairer ending than others.
Last but not least, the layer that perhaps makes the most impact. Not because we didn’t know the existence of these situations, but because of how well they are portrayed. In this case, reference is made to police abuse, the lousy system of (in)justice and the weight of contacts.
From the numerous recordings of confessionals obtained by Rachel, we will be able to see the brutality with which the police treat the victims, and how it puts pressure not only for them to drop the complaints, but even for them to feel bad for having made them. Perhaps one of the paradigmatic examples is when one of the victims is subjected to more than 2 and a half hours of interrogation (with phrases where they directly blamed her and even abuse was exercised by the troops) and the defendant, for his part, was only 20 minutes in the confessional and he left laughing, while one of the policemen thanked him for his predisposition and told him “if I were in your place, I would also want help”.
Supported by a large amount of material, this documentary perfectly portrays the tortuous path that many victims of abuse must face, and constitutes a necessary memory exercise.
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