Director NANCY SCHWARTZMAN (US 2023) 90 min
It’s estimated nearly half a million sexual assaults occur each year in the U.S. Yet less than one third get reported, only 1% prosecuted. Why so little justice for such crimes? One alarming answer is offered in this latest film by Nancy Schwartzman, whose prior Roll Red Roll explored similar terrain. She follows journalist Rae de Leon’s investigation of numerous instances where young women reporting sexual crimes were not only disbelieved by police but arrested and tried for “false reporting”—even as evidence supporting their claims was withheld or misrepresented to them. When officers treat a victim as a suspect, is it out of cultural bias? To protect the accused? Or simply to lighten their own caseloads? The answers are complicated. But it’s clear that in this realm, the system too often compounds trauma and shame by blaming the victim.