Victim/Suspect (2023)

[bunniefuu]

Me and him weren't really dating,

but I had a crush on him,

and since, like, they saw it as, like,

oh, like, you were in a relationship.

That

that just happens in relationships, like

But I was, like, 12, so I told them,

I was, like,

"That that shouldn't have happened."

Was there a point, like,

with the investigation

where you felt, like, the police just

you knew they weren't believing you and--

The detective told me,

"He didn't hold you down.

That's not r*pe."

She filed the charges against me

before my r*pe kit

or anything else came in.

They just didn't believe me

from the start.

I have a list of more than

a hundred other cases that I'm following,

so, we can keep talking

if that sounds okay with you.

The evidence

in this case is notjiving

with your side of the story.

I want you to really

tell me the truth

because I have this on video.

I don't believe you.

I do not believe you at all.

If you continue to lie to me,

this is about to go south.

I don't know.

Everything was good.

Consensual.

You guys had sex.

Both you guys are grown adults.

It appears that you were using

the thr*at of r*pe

to get what you wanted.

It's a crime

to file that false report.

I have to arrest you for it.

Here at the Student Health Center

is where physical therapy students

get to put their knowledge

into into practice.

I couldn't say that word.

Here at the physical therapy center

Oh. That's not right.

Here at the physical No, no, no.

Here at the Student Health Center

Here at the Student Health Center

is where physical therapy students

get to put their knowledge

into practice. They get

Well, I started journalism in high school

working at the local news station.

One more time.

My first investigative piece

was looking into a pothole

and why it never got fixed.

And actually, after I published it,

it did get fixed, and that felt very good.

But nobody like

The stakes were very low.

Although people

were getting into accidents.

It was like It was a big pothole.

Speed limit signs that are white,

like this one behind me,

mean they have to be enforced,

but if their street surveys

aren't up-to-date,

police officers can't use

radar or laser technologies

to pull someone over.

This was easy stuff, not controversial.

Lucy's only been at the Harbor Shelter

for two weeks

but has become

the third adopted dog today.

As an aspiring journalist,

my dream was to work

at the Center for Investigative Reporting

just outside of Oakland.

I was, like, that's the

that's the most serious place you can go.

You know, it's like that

and 60 Minutes or something.

I knew it as this amazing organization

where the best journalists go to work.

After a couple attempts,

I landed an entry-level job.

I was working on other people's stories,

so I really wanted to find something

that I could own, that I could report on.

I was searching through local news

when I stumbled on a story

of a young woman being arrested

for making a false report of r*pe.

A 20-year-old student claiming

she'd been r*ped after a party

involving the Sacred Heart University

football team.

But tonight

Nikki Yovino ischarged

with making it all up

and then fabricating the evidence.

These kinds of allegations,

what they do is they

They're problematic

for the people that are accused.

And also,

for all the other cases out there

that are legitimate MeToo cases

where there are cases of as*ault,

it really muddies the waters

in such a dangerous,dangerous way.

Nikki Yovino's case was covered

all over national and local media

at the height

of the MeToo movement in 2017.

Nikki was looking at up to a year

in prison for the false reporting charge.

And five more years

for tampering with evidence

because she got a r*pe kit exam.

That sounded really punitive.

I thought Nikki's case was an anomaly,

but then I found another case

a thousand miles away.

Eighteen-year-old UA student Emma Mannion

told police she was forced

into a vehicle and sexually assaulted.

Today, Mannion sits behind bars.

after being charged

with false reporting to law enforcement.

When a false report is made like this,

then the person that makes the report

such as that, well,

they need to suffer the consequences.

Filing a false report

is a Class A misdemeanor

punishable up to one year in jail.

I gathered

all the material I could find,

and I took the story to my editorial team.

Rae brought the story

to a couple of editors,

and there was a lot of skepticism

Which I understand.

I mean, it's a it's

it takes a lot to green-light a story

because you know we're investing

incredible time, incredible resources.

In the cases Rae was looking at, uh,

the women had pled guilty.

And so, there was there was sort of

a knee-jerk sense, well, they pled guilty.

They admitted it.

There There's no story here.

She lied

about being r*ped

Nikki pled guilty

and went to prison.

Emma also pled guilty.

But when I spoke to them, they both

maintained that the assaults did happen.

I didn't lie to the police about anything.

I didn't lie

to the detective about anything.

I didn't lie

What happened during

those police interrogations?

Even though the editorial team

didn't green-light my story,

I couldn't let it go.

And so my editor, my supervisor,

encouraged me to just keep reporting.

Nikki's story was reported on widely,

but no journalists

had talked to Emma Mannion.

As a reporter, you really do

have to keep an open mind.

Just like I'm keeping an open mind

that she could be lying,

I'm also keeping an open mind

that she's telling the truth.

My name's Emma.

I'm 23 years old,

and I'm a dance teacher.

I am born and raised in New Hampshire.

The high school that I went to

had 60 kids in my graduating class.

And then I go to a school

in a completely different area.

I don't know anyone,

and there's 10,000in my freshman class.

It was a hard transition.

That Saturday,

my friend and I

were just gonna go out and have fun.

We headed over to the frat row area,

and a group of guys came up to us.

Very friendly.

Seemed like normal, friendly college guys

trying to talk to girls.

Like, didn't think anything of it.

- What do you want to dance?

- You don't know any of that.

I can learn.

Hey, did I not make

the conversation fun, though?

I feel like that was me now

but like

way, way more naive.

So on November 14th, 2016,

around 5:05 in the evening,

Emma called crying hysterically.

She was hyperventilating,

saying that she was sexually assaulted

in a car in a parking lot

on the strip

outside a place called Mo's Mexican.

There were two guys.

They put their arms around her

and brought her to their car,

pushed her into the car,

banged her head against the car.

And she wouldn't give any more details

at that time.

All I remember telling her

is that

I went out,

and something happened,

and I didn't want it to happen.

And she recommended

that I go to the hospital.

Halfway through the vaginal exam,

the nurse came in saying

that Tuscaloosa PD had arrived.

I have just a hospital gown on,

and the two detectives came in.

There was no conversation of,

"Do you want to report?

Do you want to investigate?"

"Do you want

to press charges against anyone?"

It was just,

"We're here to talk about your r*pe."

"Tell us what happened."

Three days after the hospital,

they called.

They said, "Come on in."

"We'll chat a little bit more."

When I went to the police station,

I felt like I needed

to keep my body completely covered.

I'm wearing jeans and a puffy vest.

And I am freezing.

-Hey, Emma, how are you feeling?

-I'm okay.

Uh, I told you, was it yesterday

or the day before yesterday, on the phone

we just basically, we like

to come back a couple days later,

sometimes you remember

more detailed stuff,

so we can get just a

a better formal interview with you

and get just as detailed

as we possibly can, okay?

You said

two guys pushed you in the vehicle.

And the other guys,

once Steven got in the vehicle,

all the other guys

stood around the vehicle.

And I just kind of

because it's something that

It's inconsistencies.

We We have to hash it out.

I was always kind of

raised to respect and trust authority.

I understood him wanting me

to walk through my story again.

I understood

him asking clarifying questions.

We've been investigating this

all week.

We have pulled, oh, if you

You have any idea

how many video cameras are around there?

All of that has been pulled.

Okay?

I'm going to tell you,

from the from the investigation,

you're not being honest with me, okay?

- With what I just told you?

- Yes.

I do not believe you.

I do not believe you at all.

And I think you're one of those people

that's taking away frommy true victims.

I didn't understand any

of the accusations.

I'm like, I haven't slept in four days.

My My brain isn't functioning.

I'm not lying.

Did you have sexual intercourse

with Steven?

Yes.

Was it wanted? Was it consensual? No.

Okay, did you did you

fight him off, kick him, tell him no?

Yes.

Watching the video stuff

that we have,

uh, and it shows you and,

I guess, Steven making out,

everything, and

and I know you got in the vehicle.

Now imagine you're the person that's out

there working overtime all week long.

Running around gathering information,

talking to people, getting video.

I'm mad because

Hey, we're

something's gonna be done about this.

I'm so sorry.

Well, if you're sorry,

then that makes me feel better.

I wanted to leave.

I did not want to be

in front of this man anymore.

Because all I heard was that

it was my fault, and I f*cked up.

It is a crime

to file that false report.

It is a crime to

to lie to us.

And

I have to arrest you for it.

I just got to get behind your back.

If you would put your hands

like you're praying.

- Mmm.

- Yep, flat palms to make it

So just fixing these up for you.

I got to jail.

I was fingerprinted, had pictures taken.

One of the older women who was there,

she's like, "Why are you here?"

And, like, the only thing I said

was that I was r*ped,

and they told me I lied about it.

And she was just like,

"You got f*cked over."

And then it hits me, and I'm like,

jeez, I I literally got f*cked over.

And while I was in jail,

an article was posted online

about my arrest.

My face.

My full name.

That's what I walked out to.

Watching the video stuff

that we have

shows you and, I guess, Steven making out.

Are you get in the vehicle,

and you're initially making out or

or what?

I don't remember.

I keep going back

to Investigator Akridge saying

he has surveillance footage

of Emma making out

with the man she's accusing.

Everything changes in that moment.

Emma's attorney shared with me

all the materials he got from the police.

But the thing that's always been missing

is that surveillance footage. You know?

- Yeah.

- He has a Dropbox folder. It's not there.

And also, even if you had it,

it has nothing to do

with what happened in that car.

And for as many strengths

as Emma has with her case,

I mean, the biggest weakness

was that she pled guilty.

Right.

And it was, like,

a week before my court date

that I read about Megan.

I cr cried so much.

And so I told my lawyer,

I want to know what plea deal I can get.

So many people in Tuscaloosa

had heard about Megan Rondini.

The man she had accused

of r*pe, TJ Bunn Jr.,

came from one

of the town's most prominent families.

I scoured everything I could find.

Text messages, documents, police videos,

and audio recordings.

It's July the second, 2015, 5:37 a.m.

It's Investigator Jones,

Investigator Hastings at DCH E.R.

-And I'm speaking with What's your name?

-Megan Rondini.

Are you working?

Full-time student here?

No, I was taking summer classes,

and I was about to go home on Sunday.

Tell me what happened last night,

who all you were with.

Me and my friends

went to trivia at Innisfree.

Um it was like me

and a group of ten of my other friends.

I know of his I'm

I'll gonna call him Sweet T because

that's like his nickname or whatever.

I mean, I see him there all the time,

but like,

it's not like we talk to each other.

Like, I just know who he is.

I'm not even sure he,

like, knew who I was.

I was leaving.

Somewhere along the line, he picked me up.

And it was me and another guy named Jason,

in the back of his car.

Sweet T took us to his house.

We were in a room

with, like,

all the animals he had sh*t or whatever.

Like, I don't know. He goes hunting a lot.

And he told Jason to go to bed,

and he told me

to go upstairs to his room.

Did you ever, uh, resist him?

- Uh Swing at him--

- I was just trying

I mean, I was I I

I know he's, like,

an influential person in Tuscaloosa,

and I was trying to be really nice to him

and just be like,

my friends are waiting on me

and, uh

I just really need to leave.

Oh.

I'm gonna go ahead

and end the interview right now.

According to the police report,

when officers first came to his door,

TJ Bunn denied

having anyone over the night before.

But after a short call with his attorney,

he changed his story.

Can you just tell me

kind of what happened last night?

Sure. I, uh, brought somebody

back to my residence with me.

We had consensual sex.

And

after I went to sleep,

apparently she decided to take my money

and take my car key andleave.

And

uh Josh Hastings woke me up,

ringing my door this morning at 6:45.

Okay. Okay.

- Do you know her name?

- I do not.

All right, man. I appreciate it,

thank you.

She called me the morning after.

Um, and then,

I started driving to Alabama.

The police keep calling

her, asking her to come in.

I don't want her

to go in until I get there.

Megan, Im going to let you sit

there and you sit there next to her.

Let me get a notebook,

and I'll be right back.

Ooh! It's chilly in here.

She's like,

"Mom, they're pressuring me to come in."

"I can do it. It's fine."

I'm like, "No, you need someone with you."

So I requested that an advocate

accompany her to the police station.

Another thingthat worries me,

I don't know if my dad told you,

is, like, this guy

is kind of, like, an influential--

I'm aware. Yeah.

Do you remember

getting in the car?

No.

Do you remember any stops at all?

No.

So

If I say that

y'all stopped by your apartment,

before you went to TJ's,

or Sweet T's,

before y'all went there

Okay, 'cause they're getting

You know, y'all's

your complex has got video there.

Okay, do you remember?

- I do not remember going there.

- Okay.

Do you remember fixin' him a drink?

No. I don't I don't remember being there

at all. Like I don't remember being there.

Okay.

Is any of this bringing back anything?

I feel like I want to, like, throw up.

Okay.

What we wanna do is just look

in your apartment. Okay?

Do you have a problem with us doing that?

Fine. Okay.

- I can't go to your apartment.

- That's fine.

I mean, do you want me to hang

around here till you come back or--

- No, I think I think I'm I'll be okay.

- Are you sure?

The advocate didn't stay with her

for the whole questioning,

and that's thepoint in the interview

where they turn the tables.

While you were in

back in the bedroom,

did you remember

going through any other things in there?

I went through all the keys, and then

I tried to see if he had any cash

that I could pay for a cab with.

Okay.

Did he have any cash?

He had, like, three dollars.

Okay.

So, you got Did you get the cash?

- Yes.

- Okay.

I'm not doubting

-what you're telling me--

-I just feel like

he has some advantage over me

and they're saying like I

I don't really understand why.

Hi, Ms. Gray, um,

this is Rachel de Leon.

I was just in speaking with someone there

regarding meeting with Sheriff Abernathy.

Love to know if he might be available

on Thursday after 1:00 p.m.

Okay, talk to you soon.

The chain of command

for this unit in Tuscaloosa

ends with Sheriff Abernathy.

He's responsible for his police officers.

The ones who investigated

Megan's and Emma's cases.

Hi, uh, this is Rachel de Leon.

I'm a reporter calling from Reveal.

I was, uh, following up

because you thought

perhaps Sheriff Abernathy may have

some time today for a phone call.

He's not going to have

any time this week to meet with you.

Oh, that's really unfortunate.

What happened?

He

His calendar just got filled up.

He doesn't have

any, you know, available time.

Once Sheriff Abernathy's office

decides a crime's been committed,

the case moves

to the district attorney's office.

It's the DA's office

who will decide whether to press charges.

- Hello.

- Hi, is this attorney, uh, Paula Whitley?

I am not willing

to really get into anything specific

about any particular cases.

-Bye.

-Take care. Bye.

For several months,

I tried to reach Sheriff Abernathy,

but he and others

in his department refused to talk to me.

for Sheriff Ron Abernathy.

Please leave a message,

and I will return your call

The only police officer

I could find who had a lot of knowledge

about Megan Rondini and was willing

to talk to me was Carl Hershman.

-Okay, you got me now?

-Got you now.

I was a cop for, uh, 32 years.

The majority of that time

I spent in Sex Crimes Unit.

I've been here lately testifying a lot.

-Nice to meet you. I'm Rae.

-Nice to meet you. I'm Carl.

He was an expert

in a lawsuit involving Megan's case.

In Megan's case,

within 13 hours of her reporting,

she's treated as a suspect.

So, what are the things that they're

that they say, you know,

make them question her story?

Well, there were several. So, the

the inconsistency in her statement

that she completely left out

that they went back to her apartment.

Do you remember

I do not remember going there.

Okay.

Inconsistent statements

are not red flags.

There's a reason for them.

Megan Rondini,

20 years old, severely intoxicated.

She became blacked out.

And now she's scared

because she doesn't know

what happened at the apartment.

This is something new to her.

Now she's questioning herself

because that was just so foreign to her.

You can clearly see her body language.

As a victim, you think to yourself,

this will be used against me.

This is evidence.

They They think I'm lying.

Now, she's the suspect.

Those investigators were thinking

that this was consensual.

Even though at the hospital,

she makes the statement,

"He held me down."

He didn't hit me,

he didn't, like, shove me.

But he held me, like, down.

Now TJ Bunn, he's not once treated

like a sexual as*ault, uh, suspect.

As they walk through with a video camera,

you hear the lead detective say

had consensual sex, so

I think he was scared when we showed up,

still probablyintoxicated

and making some bad decisions.

They They don't

interview him on a sexual as*ault

that just occurred hours before that.

They let him go on a fishing trip

with his attorney.

- Sorry, guys.

- No, that's all right.

I'll get y'all outta here.

- Here.

- There we go.

We, uh We went fishing

What day did we go fishing? Thursday?

Fishing Friday well, Friday morning.

- Anything biting?

- Yep.

It's snapper season in state waters

right now,

- so we went out.

- Made a k*lling, huh?

Yeah, we we caught about 30 minutes in.

Really? Thirty minutes?

It took us 45 minutes to get there

and 30 minutes to catch

The investigator

gave his statement to him.

So y'all are having consensual sex.

She never said no, never said stop.

She was completely into it.

-Right?

-That's correct.

If anything, to be honest,

she was extremely flirtatious

- from the time we picked her up.

- Okay.

So, it was a willing--

It was a willing participant

on both ends.

Y'all did y'all's job,

and I appreciate it.

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.

- You know?

- I do. I appreciate all y'all.

Y'all have done a very thorough job,

and I appreciate it.

I I appreciate it.

I appreciate you being cooperative.

I know it's not something easy.

And you too, man.

You know? He's always

always been easy to deal with,

I'm telling you, always.

I wish they were all that that, uh,

easy to get a hold of when you need to.

- Y'all give me a sec. I'll be right back.

- Okay.

If they can communicate that to her.

That I won't pursue

I won't pursue her if she don't pursue me.

But I will play hardball if she does.

- You said you never resisted him.

- I did resist him.

I said that I wanted to leave.

When he tried to kiss me, I turned away.

- Like, I didn't--

- But you didn't.

Never kicked him or hit him,

tried tried to resist him.

So Megan, um

Later on, Megan learns

that they did pursue charges against her

for theft, not for false reporting.

And so she moves back home

and tries to move on with her life

and goto school, but, uh,

sadly Megan ends up taking her own life.

Um

Sorry.

Um

I was adamant that she find a therapist.

And so she was gonna go.

She filled out all the forms,

and they were there on her dresser, um

-When they found her body.

-filled out when they found her body.

When she d*ed, um,

she had a note next to her bed

that said the reason she

was seeking mental health treatment

was because she was r*ped, bullied

by police, and changed universities.

Her parents sued the school

and the alleged assailant.

Um, they settled with the school

and the alleged assailant.

They could not sue

the sheriff's department.

A lawsuit filed

against two investigators and myself

regarding the Megan Rondini su1c1de

has been dismissed.

The Alabama Attorney General's office

reviewed the case

and approved our investigators' actions

and the investigative process.

Hi, Sheriff Abernathy.

My name is Rachel de Leon. I'm a reporter.

- Hold on a second.

- Okay.

-Hi.

-I really don't have anything to say.

I I don't need to get

into the specifics. We can talk generally

about the department and how it

handles sexual as*ault investigations.

Okay, I'll see what I can do.

I appreciate that, and sorry for,

you know, bombarding you on a weekend,

but I'm in town tomorrow, and I'd be happy

to meet with you if you have some time.

- Okay. I appreciate it.

- In the morning. Thank you.

I'm super nervous,

in general, knocking on someone's door.

When I do things like that,

I just remember that I'm doing it

on behalf of someone else

who who can't do it themselves.

It's really important for me

that I see the evidence for myself

to make sure I have everything right

and get to the truth

without hearing it secondhand.

Megan's and Emma's cases were both handled

by the same police unit.

But are they indicative

of a police culture unique to Tuscaloosa,

or are they part of a bigger pattern?

Feels like there's a lot

of larger cultural issues at play here.

Like, from believing women,

you know, to police biases.

To me, the big question is,

do we know how representative this is?

You know, without necessarily going

to get cases,

maybe you could collect the media reports

of false reporting just to show

that it is

at least maybe a national issue.

Nope, don't even go near.

I wanted to find out how many people

were prosecuted for false reporting,

but there is essentially no research

that has been done about this.

I have a Google alert set up to catch

certain articles that would come in,

and new alerts would show up every month.

A woman has pled guilty

to three felonies and two misdemeanors

charges against

a well-known yogateacher.

sexually assaulted

by three police officers while she

I managed to gather more

than 160 cases

that were reported on in the media,

mostly from the last ten years

from all over the country.

Rae just kept finding

more and more cases,

and at a certain point,

we were like, "sh*t!"

Like, we got this was gonna be

a quick story, and this is this is huge.

And my role was to kick the tires on it.

Okay, what what do we really have?

What evidence can you find?

We have been collecting as much audio

or video of interviews as possible,

'cause I just think

that's a very important thing to look at.

I'm gonna tell you

right now that basically, I got you here

under, basically, a ruse.

- Okay.

- Okay. Uh

-There is no letter.

-Okay.

And what we've done is we've allowed

the DA's office to review this case.

And they've issued a warrant

for your arrest.

Okay.

For falsely reporting a police report,

or a r*pe.

It appears that you were using the thr*at

of r*pe toget what you want.

No, sir.

I just wanna tell you this,

and there's no getting around it, um,

the evidence that we have in this case

is not jiving with your side of the story.

Our investigation

is showing, there is

some things that webelieve are untrue

coming from your side of the story.

We're never gonna know

exactly what happened

in any of these as*ault cases,

but we can look

at the police investigation.

Who did the police talk to?

What methods did they follow?

Was it thorough? Was it fair?

And did they rely on the reporting victim

retracting their story or recanting?

You'll be charged

with filing a false report.

You're gonna go

to the Douglas County Jail

-From here?

-You'll be booked in.

The charges will be

Falsely reporting

an incident.

I noticed when I got

into the Sex Crimes Unit

that every year,

more people reported. Right?

But you're getting less detectives

to investigate.

Sex crimes are always gonna take longer

to work than other crimes.

And if you're already holding

30 cases to 40 cases,

you could end up shortcutting

your investigative process.

If I can get her to, you know, decline

prosecution or stop the investigation,

my numbers come down.

You don't think I can

an 18-year-old can come up,

and I can talk her out of coming forward.

Oh, I can.

Uh, oh yeah, Cathy.

Yeah, yeah, I read your case.

Yeah, sorry this happened to you.

Hey, look, um,

I'm gonna tell you right now,

because you were making out

with this guy or his friend before,

uh, that's not gonna look good.

So, and the DA, they're gonna frown

upon that you were drinking underage.

Okay, thanks.

Click. Bang.

Sign it off. Hand it in.

Now you're 20?

- Yes.

- And you got a fake ID?

And And you said that you

had five cups of beer?

Yeah.

So they offered you sh*ts

of the Skyy vodka?

- Yes.

- Did y'all drink any of it?

This is what I think.

Mm-hmm.

You and Steven started

having consensual sex.

You freak out a little bit

Everything was good?

Consensual?

Both you guys are grown adults.

You don't wanna ruin this guy's life,

do you?

-You don't wanna see him go to prison.

-Deep down he's a good dude.

I mean, you guys just made a mistake.

You go your way. He'll go his way.

We're gonna go our way.

In most of the cases I looked at,

the alleged assailant was known somehow

to the reporting victim,

or there was a brief encounter

before the incident.

That opens up the possibility

the police could say there was consent.

a pretty big deal, okay?

But then I found a case

about a total stranger.

King University student

claimed that a law enforcement officer

or person impersonating an officer

assaulted her during a traffic stop.

The sheriff's office says Dyanie Bermeo

admitted that she lied

and charged her with giving false report

to law enforcement.

I got wind of Dyanie's case

as it was unfolding,

and I met Melissa who is fighting Dyanie's

false reporting charge at no cost.

Like, I saw the story.

- Yeah.

- It didn't sit well with me.

And I just wanted to let her know,

you know, if she wants to talk about it,

I'm here. I'm also an attorney

Her case caught my attention

because it's so different

from the others I've been investigating.

Dyanie says she was assaulted

by a total stranger.

And so, if police aren't disputing consent

in the case,

what is the basis for their doubt?

My name is

Dyanie Bermeo.

I go to school

at King University,

and I'm a double major

in psychology and criminal justice.

I remember I was in eighth grade.

I would hear

the Law & Order theme song coming on,

and I was like, "Dad, why are you

watching this? Like, just change it."

And he was just like, "Sit down

and actually watch an episode with me."

And I got hooked.

I'm Detective Benson.

Who are you?

I'm Dori.

My favorite detective

probably would be Olivia Benson.

You know where she is!

I used to just love

watching her catch the bad guy

and just how she pieced

all the clues together and everything.

The hints, the evidence.

And it was awesome.

We've got names, addresses,

dates of birth, Social Security numbers.

I knew I wanted to be a cop.

But this past year,

that hope of trying to be a

like, trying to make a difference

just wasn't there anymore.

I was 21 at the time.

I was driving back to campus,

and I was listening to music.

And then for a flash second,

I was looking up at my rearview mirror,

and I saw blue lights,

and I was just like, "Are you kidding me?"

So, I pulled over,

and the officer came to my window,

and he said,

"Did you know how fast you were going?"

And I was like, "No, sir.

It couldn't have been more than 40."

He was, like, "Okay, well,

can you step out of the vehicle?"

I asked him why,

and he was just, like,

"Well if you're gonna be

this much trouble,

I can call for backup

and have five to six officers out here."

And as soon as I got out of the vehicle,

he didn't even let me look

at him or anything. He turned me around.

He started searching me like

Like, he went like this.

He didn't go under my shirt or anything,

and then he went in between my legs.

I was just standing there.

I didn't want to look.

I had my eyes closed and everything.

He got back in his car, and he drove off.

The first person I called was my dad.

And I remember crying to him,

and I told him to not be mad.

I had told him that I was going

to talk to the police

and to report it, and he was like,

"Okay, okay, that's fine. Yeah."

What could you tell

about his face, if anything?

Nothing. I mean, he didn't even

As soon as I got out of the vehicle,

he told me to turn around

and put my hands on my car.

And while he was touching me,

I All I could say was,

"P Please think what you're doing."

"What you're about to do.

Just, please, think about it."

And he told me to shut up.

I didn't even get to see him.

About howtall,

compared to you, do you feel like he was?

Taller. Um, at least six-four.

What car were you in?

A 2020 black Kia Soul.

Kia Soul.

We're taking this serious,

and certainly we don't want anyone

out there impersonating a police officer

and stopping females, and

-Uh

-That's right.

Touching their body inappropriately

or whatever.

You don't want them doing that.

I started digging into these cases

where r*pe victims

have been prosecuted for

false reporting back in about 2013,

and there's been a number of cases

where I've served as an expert witness

when somebody's been prosecuted

for a suspected false reporting.

If I pull it up on

Google Maps, you think you could show me

- about where you were stopped at?

- Yes.

She's I don't expect

she's necessarily gonnaremember

where she was assaulted.

Where exactly on the road.

-She does though.

-Does she?

She gives them so much information

because she

-Shes a very detail-oriented person.

-Okay.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Oh, and here they start talking

about their suspect.

This is very interesting.

Guy's gonna be

about 50, 45 to 50 years old.

You know exactly who I'm thinking,

don't you?

- Six-foot-four.

- Dewayne Mullins.

We suspected him years ago for stuff

like that,

- wanting to be a police officer.

- Dewayne Mullins

Yes!

He's got family--

He's got a Crown Vic!

He's got family down this way.

You know, they have a lead here.

This is a possible suspect.

You have to alibi that guy.

Where were you on this date and time?

And he's six-five.

He's been convicted

for impersonating a police officer before.

I'm not saying it's Dewayne Mullins.

I'm just saying that that's a lead

you got to follow up on and really hard.

Hi, this message is

for Dewayne Mullins.

Um, I don't know

if I have the right number--

rerecord

your message, press one.

To mark your message urgent, press two.

Hi, Dewayne,

my name is Rachel de Leon.

There's something that's come up

in a story I'm working on,

and I think you're the person

I want to speak with about.

They had someone in mind.

She remembers the person

being six-four or six-five.

Said he was driving a Crown Victoria.

-I haven't had a Crown Vic in years.

-Okay. All right.

We never even heard of the case.

- They never reached out to let you know?

- No.

If you do figure out, like,

where you were, I'd really appreciate it.

-And I heard--

-I wasn't back around there.

From nine to nine to ten,

I would've been at work.

-Titan Wheel.

-Yeah. They got cameras.

-In Saltville. They got cameras.

-Say it again.

They had a guy in mind,

a possible suspect in mind.

What they decide to do is

go out and try to get video

of where she had driven into and such.

Right. Maybe we'll get his car on there,

and then we can confront him with it.

That's great.

First video was from a gas station

that nobody ever mentions they drove past.

The second one was from a Jeep dealership.

They call, and they talked to Adam.

No No last name.

Adam calls him back and says,

"Oh I saw a 2020 Kia

drive past our dealership,

no car behind it."

And then the third video

was from this private residence

that sets back off about 150 yards.

A football field and a half.

But at nighttime, you can see the road

if there's little lights blinking,

I guess.

I did not, like, realize

that he was "behind me" behind me

until I saw the lights.

But the lights were so far back.

- That's when I saw this.

- Okay?

And I pulled over

right here.

- You okay?

- Mm-hmm.

I just remember putting the car inparked.

And I put the e-brake on,

and I just waited

until he came to the car.

And that's whenever

he had the flashlight on.

And I couldn't see his face.

Oh.

You can't see anything from here.

Like,

I don't even know if you could see

the house from over here.

- Like, not at all.

- No.

-You wanna take a walk over there?

-Let's do it.

I need to see where

the police got the surveillance footage

used as evidence in Dyanies case.

- Yeah, that one. Yep.

- Okay.

Totally empty.

The camera should have been right here,

because on the video,

there were two vehicles parked here.

So this is the extent

of what you see though.

We just, um, had a couple

of quick questions, if you don't mind. Um

So my client was driving

down this road at night,

she was sexually assaulted--

- Here?

- Yes.

So I guess a cop never came

and asked you questions about this.

- Didn't know a thing about it.

- Thank you so much.

If I was a detective,

I'd be knocking on all of these doors.

When the detectives came to my dorm,

I didn't know that they were recording me,

because I didn't know it was

an interrogation or something.

Scott told youearlier

we're trying to get video

from that one house.

We've looked at that video,

and we see you go by.

- Yeah.

- But no one else.

Okay.

After they said, like,

"Oh, we saw this video recording."

"We could specifically see your car

just passing byand nothing else,"

is whenever I felt like

they they just turned,

and they didn't believe me anymore.

I didn't even think about asking, like,

"Hey, can I see the video or anything?"

I just wanted it to be over with.

I just didn't want to talk

about it anymore.

This is the video.

-Okay.

-So there goes one car.

All they need is one car going by

and claim it is a Kia Soul.

Mm-hmm.

-They made their minds up.

-Right, yeah.

They knew that they were

going down there to accuse her.

The last thing I want

to do is stand here and call you a liar.

Yeah.

Okay, but what I see

you doing is digging your hole deeper.

So we just need you to keep it between us.

- But we need you to tell us the truth.

- Okay.

Okay?

No stop happened, did it?

Mm-mm.

Why did you make that up?

I don't know.

The moment he says,

"Well, why did you do this?"

And she says, "I don't know."

Instead of saying,

"I was doing poorly in school,"

which she wasn't,

"I was fighting with my boyfriend,"

which she wasn't,

"I was having personal problems

at home," which she wasn't.

She doesn't need the attention of this,

but they needed that admission from her,

so they tricked her.

I got a call

from Detective Adkins,

and he asked me if it was okay

if I could come to the station

and sign some paperwork

to close off the case.

He sat me down, and he was, like,

"There's no other way to tell you this,

but we have to charge you

with filing a false police report."

"You wasted

so many people's time and everything."

"So that's why we have to charge you

and that this is the sheriff's decision

to do this and everything."

We all talked, and we we decided

we have to press charges.

They took me back to take my mugshot.

They did my fingerprints,

and then Detective Adkins was like,

"If you plead guilty, you know,

we'll try and give a good word

to the prosecutor

that, you know, to go easy on you."

I drove back to campus,

and I was just crying

because

not only have I not told anybody

that the police didn't believe me,

but now I have to tell everybody

that I'm being charged

with filing a false police report.

And

Im so sorry.

What's making you so upset?

Just remembering how scared I was and how

Just how I handled everything.

That night, I didn't sleep good either.

And when I woke up,

my roommate was like,

"Dyanie, what is this?"

And it was the article that the police

had posted on their Facebook page.

I was getting Facebook messages

from random people.

Basically saying

what you could only imagine,

that I was going to rot in jail.

"People like you are the reason

why cops get bad rep."

My face was plastered everywhere,

and I didn't want to stay

on campus anymore.

There certainly seems

to be a mediaobsession

with this notion that, uh yeah,

women are somehow, uh, falsely accusing

all kinds of men of sexual as*ault.

There's a huge media fascination.

Desi assaulted me that night.

The Gone Girl syndrome, right?

She intentionally lied to you

about theassault.

I was being held prisoner.

A A lot of officers are told,

usually from somebody in their own office,

"Oh, yeah. You know, half of them lie."

Or, "Yeah, like, you know,

two-thirds of them lie."

False reports of sexual as*ault

are actually pretty rare.

The most reliable studies say 2% to 10%.

The much, much bigger concern

people should have, including men,

is that they could be sexually assaulted.

At least one out of every three women

and at least one out of every six men

will be a victim of sexual as*ault

in their lifetime.

Then their perpetrator

could be left to re-offend.

I've been collecting news stories

on false reporting cases

from mostly the past ten years.

But what is the media not including?

We needed to go beyond the headlines

and access the details

in the police records.

To get that kind

of information takes time, lawyers,

and lots of Freedom of Information

requests, or FOIAs.

It wasn't possible to FOIA every single

police department in the United States.

So, it was just choosing

a few counties to look at

to try to get full case files

so we could really do a deep dive.

What did

the police investigation look like?

Why did they make that flip?

Once we started requesting

and even suing for police records,

I was drowning in documents.

This took three years,

but we were able to uncover records

for 52 cases.

I needed a team of journalists to help me

make sense of what we were finding.

Four to five hundred pages

in here.

- And that was one case.

- Like a a needle in a haystack.

There were some cases

where they were charged

with false reporting within a day.

You're supposed to finish

the sexual as*ault investigation first

to show that there was no as*ault

or r*pe that occurred.

And then,

once you've done that, you explore

whether it was a false report.

-But it only happened in one of our cases.

-Yeah.

It's incredibly important as journalists

to never take what police write as the

as fact and truth.

It's only in the details

that you start seeing

how a reporting victim becomes a suspect.

It was finally enough

to start looking for patterns.

In more than half the cases we found,

the reporting victim recanted.

So if the investigator's writing that they

recanted, what happened before that?

I wonder how many of these investigators

used deceitbefore the person

allegedly confessed or recanted?

Mmm.

I want you

to really tell me the truth

because I have this on video.

The evidence

that we have

in this case is not jiving

with your side of the story.

I've got the video. We've got video too.

Police officers

in this country are allowed to lie to you,

and they don't have to indicatein

the police report that they lied to you.

They don't have to say that.

An officer will sometimes say,

"We have video footage

showing the encounter,

so I'm going to ask you some questions."

"Now, be honest with me,

because remember, I have video."

I believe evidence,

so if you tell me you have

video evidence that that didn't happen,

then, like, I guess I have to believe you.

You're not getting the truth out

when you do these kinds of things.

You are confusing a person

who's already traumatized

and already has memory difficulties.

I know

he's taken two polygraphs.

And I know

He didn't take two polygraphs.

He's lying to her.

-Oh wow.

-Yeah.

You don't think

Getting the victim

to retract their allegations is

such an important strategy

for some of these police officers

because they haven't actually investigated

the sexual as*ault thoroughly.

They don't actually have any evidence

no crime was committed

or attempted against the victim,

and so their best bet

is to pressure this person

to retract their allegations

and then use that retraction

to charge them.

I was really curious to talk

to you about Emma's case.

You know, she reported this,

and then five days later,

you know, it flips on her entirely.

They've got her in handcuffs.

So I'm trying to understand

how that happens for someone who,

you know, is adamant

that this did, you know, happen to her,

that she was assaulted.

So about an hour and a half

into Emma's interview,

Investigator Akridge walks out of the room

and locks the door behind him.

And then they put on

a white noise machine.

So the white noise is

they're talking outside the door,

and they just don't want her to hear.

So they leave it on

for ten minutes.

Watching the video stuff

that we have,

um, and it shows you

and, I guess, Steven making out

He talks about that there is this video,

and they've watched this video,

and we we don't know if it exists.

Emma hasn't seen it at this point.

His theory is what? It's consensual.

You know, but she still hasn't submitted

yet to his theory.

So if he is making up a video here,

uh, this would be

the perfect time to do it.

That video was

to get a reaction out of her,

and so when she recants or submits,

that's their entire case.

At this point, I had not gotten

the surveillance footage,

which Ireally, really wanted,

and they would not give it to me.

It was just a full denial.

However, I knew that that some of it

should be public record,

and so we were gonna fight for that.

Hi, Attorney Bailey.

We took the extra step

to hire an Alabama-based attorney

to sue for the records,

and we we won.

We got some of the records.

Okay, lets see.

This is hours of footage

from four different security cameras.

We're looking for Emma making out

or getting into a Jeep.

That's a couple.

Hmm.

What is that? A spider?

This is almost 1:00 a.m.

Yeah, I cant really tell.

Yeah,

they just start making out.

I want you to tell me

what you see,

and if anything's upsetting,

we'll stop. Um

So, this is a perspective

from, I guess, an alleyway nearby.

The sheriff's department

confirmed it's near Gallettes Bar,

if that sounds familiar at all?

Anyway, that's the first couple we saw,

so we noted it.

-Do they look familiar to you at all?

-No.

Okay,

this is a couple that's making out.

That's not m me.

- Like, that's just not

- Mm-hmm.

- That's not me.

- Mm-hmm.

Does that at all look like

who could have att*cked you?

-No, not at all.

-Okay.

Like, that's the longest and closest I saw

any couple doing anything like that

in the footage I was provided.

- Gotcha.

- On this video

they wouldn't give you

that you had to go to court to get.

Yeah.

Wow.

If it was truly an unbiased investigation

to get to the truth,

asking you whether or not

that was you on the video

should have been part of it.

Yeah. They don't get into a car.

They very clearly walked around

and away after they were done kissing.

Do you all want to look at, um,

the cell phone footage from that night?

-Yeah. I feel that would be smart.

-Absolutely.

- Where'd you get that?

- It's from my friend's phone.

-It's a video from that night.

-Oh, that's right.

I forgot about that.

The guy who's in the video with me is

the one who stood outside of the vehicle.

Okay.

She's very clearly got

some type of skirt or dress on.

Her hair is fully down.

My hair was in braids that night.

So if that's the video he's going off of,

this is a very direct lie to my face.

- Makes me very angry.

- Mm-hmm.

I think it could become harmful

to the subject

if a journalist starts

to play an advocate role.

My parents

My job is

to investigate it fully.

I cannot be their friend, and I don't ever

want there to be confusion about that.

So I need to maintain, like,

a professional boundary there.

Ooh. Behind one of these frats is

where that video

that you have of us is taken.

Emma told me

the detectives never accompanied her

to retrace her steps

the night of the alleged as*ault.

- What do you want to dance?

- You don't know any of that.

Wait. Yeah, its right here.

That's it. Is that it?

- Yes, that's the white--

- Yeah.

- Yep, that's absolutely it.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

From, like, right here.

Going back that way

Mm-hmm.

is how we went up

toward the strip area.

Okay.

I need to understand where Emma

remembers the alleged r*pe occurring

and whether that location was captured

in any of the footage that I have.

This is it.

So I don't know

where the angle is on the on your video.

-I feel like that's this alley?

-Right.

Yeah, it's got the white painted brick.

That's the camera.

So let's see if we can find

where the couple is kissing.

There is a camera right there, right?

The footage I received

from the Tuscaloosa Sheriff's Office

is from four surveillance cameras

around Gallettes Bar.

The couple making out was here.

Emma says she didn't walk by

the bar at all.

She told the detectives she walked

with the alleged assailants

from a completely different direction

and on to the gravel lot.

The car was parked here.

Absolutely no cameras.

f*ck.

Watching the video stuff

that we have,

um, and it shows you, and, I guess,

Steven, making out and everything.

And I I know you got in the vehicle.

How can you tell me that I'm lying to you

when there are no cameras

pointing in that area?

And the only footage that they gave you

is on the other side of the building.

I feel so unbelievably lied to.

f*ck!

Um, I was wondering

if Mr. Jared Akridge is available.

I was hoping to talk to you

about an investigation

that happened several years ago--

I can't speak to you

about any of our cases.

All right.

Well, can we sit down, I'll talk?

And if I can show you,

I would be very, very grateful.

I'm just not willing

to talk about anything at all.

Okay.

High five. Good boy.

- Do you have a second?

- Yeah.

How are you doing? How are you holding up?

Um, I'm doing okay.

I mean, I can't even imagine, like the

just the the small amount

that you shared from the case files

is enough to really stick with you.

Yeah, it's just hard to know,

I guess, if this is really gonna make

a difference, um doing this because

I guess, I'm not sure that the police

will ever own up to anything

because I know that matters

in the public's opinion.

- Right.

- Like what will the police own up to.

Right.

For Alabama,

Sheriff Abernathywon't talk to me.

Investigator Akridge won't talk to me.

It's very frustrating.

In Virginia,

no one will give me an interview.

I don't know what else to do.

I really just hit like a big wall.

We have no police right now

talking to me.

Um What about Cotto?

Cotto, maybe.

Cotto, maybe. Perhaps.

Okay.

My name is Detective Cotto

of the Bridgeport Police Department.

As I read through these cases,

the one detective who I keep thinking

about is Detective Cotto.

He's the one

who investigated Nikki Yovino'scase

and is the reason why

I got started on this.

Nikki Yovino originally

claimed two Sacred Heart football players

had pulled her into a bathroom

and then took turns raping her.

In both Emma's

and Dyanies cases,

the police won't confirm whether

the videos were used as a ruse,

but Detective Cotto

is pretty open

that he does use ruses to get confessions.

Uh, as part of your job as a detective,

um, you lie to people

that you are interrogating, right?

Uh, yes. It's called a ruse.

What you try to do is get to see

if, uh, you know, you suggest things

to see what their responses are

and where they're gonna lead to.

Yesterday was her

sentencing hearing, and she was sentenced

to one year behind bars,

and she got a lashing from the judge.

After Nikki's case,

five people submitted citizen complaints

about Detective Cotto's treatment

of sexual as*ault victims.

None resulted in a ruling against him.

Cotto was still the lead detective

in the Bridgeport unit

that investigates sexual as*ault.

After three years of trying

to talk to Detective Cotto,

he finally said yes.

-Hi, Detective Cotto. Im Rae.

-How are you?

-Nice to meet you.

-A pleasure.

Thanks so much for having us here today

and taking the time out of your day.

-I really appreciate it.

-It's okay.

Tell me about what this job is like.

My job is a fact-finding mission.

Okay, so I have to be unbiased.

Criminal investigation is quite difficult

because you have toprove

that a sexual as*ault

did, in fact, happen.

And a lot of it is the interrogation.

I was privileged to take interview

and interrogation courses.

How are we gonna get a confession?

What's a confession?

There are

numerous training techniques

that police use to elicit confessions.

One of the most famous is

the Reid technique.

Through extended research

and years of experience,

John Reid and Associates has developed

a nine-step interrogation process.

There's been

a lot of controversy around Reid

and false confessions.

When you have a combination of an officer

who has learned tactics that are designed

to elicit confessions from suspects

and that person has skepticism

of, uh, sexual as*ault victims,

thinking that they're lying,

then they will often turn

to those interrogation tactics

that they've learned in order

to try to elicit an admission

from the victim that they're lying.

In an effort to increase the suspect's

feeling of internal anxiety and guilt

at this stage of the interrogation,

we begin to move closer,

shortening the distance

between the suspect and ourselves,

moving into their personal space.

Listen. I I'm sorry.

I'm not trying to embarrass you.

In her interview,

he touches her knees several times.

- So--

- You're in the bathroom?

Yeah.

He's an adult male,

and she's an 18-year-old who was recently,

according to her,

led into a bathroom by two men

where an unwanted sexual act took place.

So, they didn't pull you

into the bathroom, correct?

No, but they did grab my arm

at first.

Sure? I mean, and and

and who wouldn't grab your arm?

Look, you're a pretty young lady.

You You really are.

You're a pretty young lady.

You're a nice young lady.

Can you walk me through

as much as you can?

- Mm-hmm.

- The, um, technique that you used.

So for an example, I'm I'm gonna

I'm just gonna use you right now.

Okay, you are, um,

engaged in what I'm saying.

How do I know that?

You were sitting back,

and I was mirroring you

in how you were sitting.

Right? So my hands were here.

You were holding it. You were like this.

So you're studying body language

as you're

I am. I'm breaking down

psychological barriers

to the point where

You know, and you can use ruse.

A ruse.

-You know, I give it

-What is that?

A ruse is a tool that allows

that aids law enforcement

to get to the truth.

-Okay.

-It's actually not being truthful to them.

Oh. Like what?

Saying a lie. Saying like like,

"What if I tell you

that the intersection

this intersection at this particular time

um, you know, record was recording."

But you don't have this footage.

- Maybe not.

- Maybe not. Okay.

We use ruse every single day.

Everybody does.

What if I tell you

I was able to obtain

phone video

that shows you at the wall

speaking to them at the party.

Who was the first person

that walked out the bathroom?

'Cause this is also videotaped.

He repeatedly tells Nikki

that she made up the whole thing,

that she went into

the bathroom willingly to have sex.

She actually never says that.

At some point,

she just doesn't disagree with him.

You didn't get r*ped

in the bathroom. You knew that.

And you know, afterwards you just wanted

to distance yourself from it.

- Right?

- Mm-hmm.

This happened to you,

and now somebody is accusing you

of lying about it

and fabricating the whole thing.

I'll be right back, okay?

In that situation,

they need to get out of that encounter.

Countless women, especially young women,

have been talked into

and cajoled into recanting

because that's how they

can get out of that situation.

I mean,

if you read my investigation,

everything I do is fact-based.

I dont have an opinion in here.

There's not one opinion

anywhere in my investigations.

Did you ever interview the two men?

I did not.

No, they didn't want to be interviewed.

- Oh, but you asked?

- Oh, absolutely I did.

Oh yeah, absolutely I did,

but they just didn't want to.

One gave a written statement

to his school

Okay.

but none gave me, uh,

a statement personally.

Okay. It did come out recently

that one of the men had previously

been accused of a sexual as*ault

while at Sacred Heart a month

before Nikki reported it to you.

And I I need to know if you knew that

while you were investigating Nikki's case.

- Who are we talk--

- About

- No, it's on there.

- His name on there

Was it from And And that's from where?

- Sacred Heart University?

- Yeah.

Yeah, no. So I

So during it, I was not aware.

Does this change anything,

you think?

No, because I'm going

to explain something to you. So, um

So there was an individual,

um

I'm positive I didnt see it

and then it I

I'm positive it was not in the, um

the, uh you know, wasn't

of any evidence that I obtained.

Okay.

Okay. So let's do this.

Can you Let's stop this,

and then let's look.

Okay.

Why not? Let's look.

Thank you.

Detective Cotto sayshe couldn't find

the man's name in the system.

A thorough investigation

would have included looking

into the suspect's past.

Cotto interrogated Nikki

but never interviewed

either of the two men

who have since insisted

the sex was consensual.

Ultimately, Nikki plead guilty.

The physical check.

Now, let's see it.

In the false reporting

cases I went through,

in almost half of them,

it's not clear if the suspect

was even interviewed or was identified.

Which is, like,

a really big deal.

It's, like, a very key part

of an investigation.

I'm just like, wow,

there's so much more they could have done.

There's just so much more

they could have done.

There have been

several investigators involved,

and we have done

a very, very thorough investigation.

In Emmas case,

both the suspects weren't even identified.

There were other friends

that possibly knew him

or other witnesses that that knew him.

Did they go to that school?

She had a video that one

of the suspects were on.

I mean, they they would have been

It would have been easy to find.

I mean, if you're gonna do anything,

you need to identify them two.

In Emma's police report,

the surveillance video appears to be

this really critical piece of evidence

to justify her arrest.

And if they just completely

misidentified her,

I would think that they'd care.

Folks like Emma's family reach out

to lawyers like myself,

uh, because we have a certain perspective.

Uh, we understand what it's like

to be at the bottom of the boot.

We're essentially claiming that

they withheld, uh, this video from us.

We think it clearly exonerates Emma.

There is now an opportunity

to overturn the case,

meaning that this could just

be completely wiped from her record

as if this false reporting charge

never happened.

And if we win that and they determine

that there was a constitutional violation,

uh, then yeah,

the case will be overturned.

I'm so used

to seeing her documents

as the State of Alabama

versus Emma Catherine Mannion.

Now it's Emma Catherine Mannion

versus the State of Alabama.

All right.

- Thank you, guys.

- Thank you, Emma.

-Uh, we'll be talking to you soon.

-Thank you.

The last few years

have catapulted my healing.

Aw, it's good to see you.

Because Rae's taken my word for my word

and not just done it blindly

but gone and done the legwork

that the police should have done.

They have a tough job, you know.

I would dot your I's and cross your T's.

Okay.

I'd like to run through the questions

and see if it lines up

with what I'm looking from for you.

So my first question would be,

what are some of the reasons

that a sexual as*ault victim

might recant a legitimate report?

It can be

how she's treated by officers.

Um, if, uh, they used deception on her.

You know, it's not strong,

confident, middle-aged women

that experience being charged

with false reporting.

- It's young women, vulnerable.

- Right.

So she's somebody that is easy

to take advantage of.

-A perfect target.

-Yeah. Mm-hmm.

If If she "false reported," then

the sexual as*ault didn't happen, right?

So they just completely forget about

the sexual as*ault portion of it.

I just want to really get her exonerated.

- That's really the biggest thing.

- Okay.

When we got that guilty verdict,

Melissa was like, "It's okay.

We're going to appeal."

I'm hoping that

it's a different outcome this time,

but do I have the same faith

in the criminal justice system

like I did before?

No, I don't.

How are you two feeling?

Nervous.

I just

This place doesn't bring me good memories.

-Were you here for the last hearing, the--

-Yeah.

Yeah, and it was

It wasn't good.

Yeah, I just felt so powerless,

you know what I mean?

I felt in a way that I never felt in

almost my 30 years being in this country.

I think I feel what other people say it

when they say that sometimes the

justice system is not made for everybody.

I was the one who said to her, you know,

"Baby, you need to go the cops."

You know, "You need to report this."

So I feel like, you know what I mean,

like, I I sent my daughter

to these freaking people here.

You know what I mean?

I could easily say, you know what?

Don't worry about it, you know.

It's just hard wheneveryou do

everything that you're supposed to,

and things like that happen, you know?

I'm Laura Dunn, counsel for defendant.

The judge believed me.

That's all I wanted from the first place

uh, the first time around,

and I'm just

I'm still out of words for it,

but it meant a lot more than anything

when he said not guilty.

This was a huge ruling.

False recantations happen

when law enforcement

don't approach victims the right way

and don't support them

and don't believe them at every step.

And I hope that changes,

just this county and perhaps even broader,

and you'll be part of that.

You'll be the reason for that.

Dyanie, you did the hard work,

for real like

It feels so good to have to have won,

but there's so many pieces

to still pick up of her.

Like they left

a lot of damage in the wake.

It's not so simple.

She wants to be a law enforcement officer.

She had wanted to intern at the FBI

right before this happened.

They took that from her.

They took all of it from her.

Before the story comes out, we, you know

we want to reach out to them again.

Like, just so you know,

-this is what we're saying in our article.

-Yes.

The question

with the headline is,

how do you accurately portray the story?

She reported her r*pe to police,

and when they didn't believe her,

or something, you know, just a

She reported a r*pe.

She ended up in handcuffs

or something like--

-Yeah.

-Or we could play with something like

when a victim flips to a suspect.

Mm-hmm. Or police charged her

with lying after they lied to her.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

What does it take to fight one

of these charges? To get justice?

So, for Dyanie to get justice,

it took, you know, at least half a dozen

people that she had to bring on board,

hundreds of hours of work,

and it would have been

tens of thousands

of dollars of legal help.

For And that's one case.

As I get closer to publishing,

there's one question

I keep coming back to.

I just

I just have this question.

So if police aren't believing someone,

why not just dismiss the case?

Why go through the trouble

of making arrests?

Those are easy.

All If I can get her to recant,

I'm done.

I I I get an arrest

and don't have to do a full investigation,

and that's just another one off my desk.

Or they cleared the sexual as*ault

with an arrest,

and that's the arrest of the victim.

And then you you go out,

and you shame her.

They're gonna teach

that person the lesson.

When a false report's made like this,

then the person that makes

a report such as that,

you know, they

they need to suffer the consequences.

The main effect is

the chilling effect.

They are chilling the reporting

of sexual as*ault

because other victims

are going to be afraid to come forward.

So the message they send

to all the sexual as*ault survivors

in their community

is that if the police don't believe you,

they might prosecute you.

First, you report

being sexually assaulted,

and then you have the police

calling you a liar.

Then the police

will sometimes post about this

on their own social media accounts.

The sheriff's office

says Dyanie Bermeo also reported the

Journalists pick

this up and republish it

without their own investigation.

'Cause you're no longer

a sexual as*ault victim,

you do not have that right

to privacy anymore.

Once your name is in the press,

it's everywhere.

You can't put it back.

To Mrs. Yovino,

I really hope you get the full two years

'cause you f*cking deserve it.

These young women have no idea,

when they go to report an as*ault,

what could happen to them.

Most of the victims

in sexual as*ault are

between ages of 14 and 26.

So you're dealing

with somebody that's really young,

and they just don't understand

how it works.

Even adults don't know how it works,

but, um

Yeah.

Why do you care so much?

Uh

Good question. Um

My sister was sexually assaulted.

Twice.

The first time she was 13.

She came home,

my mom called the police, they did zero.

They didn't even take a report.

And my sister got heavily into dr*gs,

and, um and I a lot of that

was from what happened to her.

And, um she became addicted,

and then when she was 17 years old,

she was r*ped by two two males

and, uh, two suspects.

Cops came out.

Did nothing.

And my sister just struggled

for the rest of her life.

And I I know it came from that.

So, I

I look at my victims, and I see

I see her.

That's why.

I want to thank you

for coming in today.

I'm here to help you. Okay?

- You went to the party?

- Yeah.

- Okay. Okay.

- I got too drunk.

And I got sick.

I should have just gone home.

What I think needs to be done is,

obviously, training.

You have detectives

who've never been trained in sex crimes,

especially in smaller agencies.

If you asked a question twice,

then the victim feels, you know,

you're doubting them.

Just bear in mind,

if you do it too much, down the road,

she's gonna be thinking you know--

- You don't believe me.

- Right.

- Or even paying attention.

- You're not paying attention.

You're not listening.

A lot of detectives will come up to me,

they're like, "Yeah, we really want

to work these cases but no training."

But I'm telling you right now,

if you continue to lie to me,

this is about to go south.

I'm not lying. I'm not.

They were treating the victim

in the same interview as a suspect.

Of course

there's gonna be inconsistencies.

Which we already established,

the inconsistencies.

They automatically started kind of putting

the burden of proof on the victim.

We've been talking all day today

about, uh, two survivors

that are gonna come in

and do their, uh, impact statement.

And they're here today. Uh, honestly,

I've been training a long time,

and to get survivors to come in

to talk at on any level,

uh, is a really tough thing to do.

Do I want to go up in front

all these cops and tell them this?

No, not really.

I don't wanna hear, "I'm sorry."

- Yeah, that one.

- Like I like

Like you didn't do this to me.

- I've had enough

- Of I'm sorry's.

- like, of pity cries for Emma.

- Yes.

I That's not

That's not where I'm at.

And And I know that

case to case is different,

longevity is diff

Like, this is year five for me.

To the right.

I was 18 years old.

I was r*ped

in the back of a vehicle by a stranger

with his friend

who stood outside the car watching.

I walked through my statement

and was bluntly told by the detective

that they did not believe me.

That he wanted to help me,

but he couldn't help a liar.

I fell victim to a r*pist

and was never given

the privilege or dignity

to process my as*ault.

If a survivor is coming to you,

and they need your help,

and you don't help them,

there's a monster walking around free.

If you assume immediately

that they're lying,

if you feel like your job would be easier

if it was swept under the rug,

or if you're tired of all the paperwork,

find a new career.

I thought they were coming down

to the campus to help me,

but in reality, they came down

ready to interrogate me.

There is a law saying, like, you know,

police officers can lie to people,

and it's okay.

I'm very sorry,

and I'm telling you right now,

I don't think you should lie

to sexual as*ault survivors.

I applaud you all for being here,

but I think this should

be standard practice across the board.

This is a problem we can solve.

We need to ensure

that police departments are not relying

on a victim recantation as their evidence

that no crime was committed or attempted.

If they close a sexual as*ault case

without a thorough investigation,

if they accuse the victim

without evidence,

then they should be held accountable

and risk losing federal funding.

So much of my investigation

was focused on police process.

But it's also the prosecutors,

legislators, the judges, even the mayors.

There is an institution of people

who allow it to happen.

I've been working

on this story for four years

and found about 200 cases so far

where alleged victims of sexual as*ault

were turned into suspects.

It's impossible to say

how often law enforcement is doing this,

but here's what we do know.

There are

more than 460,000 sexual assaults

in the United States every year.

Only 30% of those

are reported to the police,

and only 1% of perpetrators

are ever prosecuted.

There's so little justice for victims,

and when law enforcement

turns them into the suspects,

it demands the question,

is reporting worth the risk?

This was

my first big solo investigative piece.

It's nerve-racking.

I mean, I don't know if I'll sleep

the night that this comes out,

to be honest with you.

There's a lot of power

that stories like this can have.

Look, I'm sorry if I'm, you know,

pestering you at this point,

but I it's really important

that I speak with you.

Anybody in my story,

I want them to be aware of it.

That it's coming out.

Gonna be quite a few people

that won't like this story,

but that's you know, that's journalism.

That's journalism, baby.

The footage shows Emma

walking with the alleged assailants

moments before her alleged as*ault.

It corroborates exactly her description

of where she was and with whom.

It was just myself, Steven,

the guy in the blue shirt, and.

From the Center

for Investigative Reporting and PRX,

this is Reveal.

Today, we're talking with reporter,

Rae de Leon

about her yearslong investigation

that raises troubling questions about

how police investigate sexual as*ault.

- Hi, Al.

- Hey, Rae.