A False Report and the Shame of a Police Department
Since I read it over two years ago, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning story “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” has never been far from my mind. Reported by ProPublica and the Marshall Project, it involves a 2008 case in Lynnwood where an eighteen year old woman reported to have been raped in her apartment but was disbelieved by the police and prosecuted for the false complaint. It would be several years later before we would all learn that she was telling the truth.
What I cannot escape is the cruelty built into our criminal justice system when the powerful arbitrarily decide they don’t want to believe someone. If Camus’ The Stranger was about “the nakedness of man when faced with the absurd,” this is how it might be told as a true crime story in 2018. For me, it’s the case even the most craven apologists for unrestrained police power can’t explain away. It was a complete failure for the Lynnwood PD and something that is absolutely impossible to defend or excuse. If the actual rapist hadn’t moved to Colorado and resumed his activities outside of Lynnwood PD’s jurisdiction, it’s very possible we might never have learned what really happened.
This story was reported by ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller and the Marshall Project’s Ken Armstrong, and their reporting was expanded into a book that came out this week called A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. Ken Armstrong, a former reporter with the Seattle Times, came by Elliott Bay Book Company on Wednesday evening to read from, and talk about, his new book.
Armstrong said that this is the third different way the story has been told, first as the piece online that won the Pulitzer, then as told on “This American Life.” A fourth telling will be when it’s adapted into a Netflix series from Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant and married authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.
Ken Armstrong said early in his talk that there had been some physical evidence that would corroborate “Marie,” but when presented with some doubt by people close to the victim, the police changed strategy and bullied Marie into confessing to inventing the crime. That’s not me saying that they bullied this woman into confessing to a crime she didn’t commit when one was actually committed on her. The Snohomish County sergeant who conducted the internal review concluded:
The manner in which she was treated by Sgt. Mason and Det. Rittgarn can only [be] labeled as bullying and coercive. It is painful to read, and difficult to understand how this type of behavior on the part of experienced police officers can happen in a professional police department. If this hadn’t been documented in their reports, I would have been skeptical that this actually happened.
The next paragraph in Armstrong and Williams’ book notes Det. Jerry Rittgarn “threatened to book Marie into jail and recommend that she lose her housing.” This was all because Marie didn’t follow the “correct” pattern of how law enforcement (and civilians) believed people should respond to trauma, or have the stable childhood people who prosecute sex crimes would prefer she have.
The failures of the Lynnwood Police Department, massive and unforgivable as they are, is not the sole focus of this article, though. It is also about how the dogged police work in Colorado led to the capturing of a serial rapist, Marc O’Leary. Those are twin narratives that run through the piece and how they’re told individually is captivating. Armstrong’s appearance at Elliott Bay Book Company provided some insight into how this remarkable piece came to be.
Armstrong said that it was a coincidence that he (for the Marshall Project) and T. Christian Miller (for ProPublica) were reporting on the same case in 2015 and that they agreed to report the piece together when ProPublica could have rushed their story to print. Miller handled the reporting and writing in Colorado and Armstrong handled the Lynnwood portion of things. He said they shared writing duties, so the piece reflected their different writing and report stories. I think it came across beautifully because Armstrong laid out his case in a very matter-of-fact sense and let the facts speak for themselves. Miller’s parts are more exciting because you’re following along as good police officers unravel the mystery.
Even though Armstrong and Miller are two men reporting on a crime that overwhelmingly affects women, he said during the Q&A that there was a lot of input from editors, copy editors, and early readers that were women and that had a big impact in crafting the story. One example, he noted, was using the word “groped” instead of “fondled” because “groped” is more likely to be read as non-consensual.
Ken Armstrong said that he and Miller interviewed everyone still working with the Lynnwood PD, and that they were all very concerned with how they failed Marie and wanted to ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else again. He said it’s “not common for police to talk so openly about a a mistake they’ve made.”
One person they didn’t talk to was one of the two officers who were tasked with investigating the case, Detective Jerry Rittgarn, who looks to have scrubbed almost everything off of his LinkedIn profile but who is a private investigator in San Diego. It’s a pretty impressive feat for Rittgarn to have his cruelty noticeable in a book about searching for a serial rapist. I asked Armstrong about him during the Q&A and he said he couldn’t comment on him, only saying that he’d only agree to an interview if he was paid for it.
Another thing Armstrong talked about is the implicit bias against victims of sexual assault built into the criminal justice system. That is, unfortunately by design, with Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in 1786, that he thought rape shouldn’t be punished as severe as other crimes “on account of the temptation women would be under to make it the instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover, and of disappointment to a rival.” Yikes.
There was some levity that Armstrong brought to Elliott Bay Book Company by way of talking about reporting the story for NPR’s “This American Life.” I found it delightful to hear that Ira Glass is prone to four-letter words. “That wonderful voice is dropping one f-bomb after another,” he said. He also said that he had to correct an error in the piece about fifteen minutes before it was to air for the first time on WBEZ in Chicago.
This is an incredibly timely and important story because it hit at the same time the broader culture is talking about these exact issues. The implicit bias against sexual assault victims is a national embarrassment that extends far beyond the Lynnwood borders. Noting the Lynnwood police failed Marie and further victimized her instead of investigating what she reported had happened to her is very important and it is essential we ask about who else might have been failed. What is alarming, though, is that it is easy to imagine something like this happening inside any police department, not just ones that are hilariously inept (like Bellevue).
A False Report is very much a book that came at the right time, as our culture continues to reckon with its conclusions. It’s an important and instructive book that has the potential to improve policing across the country, and contrasts good and bad policing. I’m thankful for the hard work and skill Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller put into their reporting. What happens next is of monumental importance, and I hope the right people take the right lessons from this book.
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