But even when the victim does everything right, even when the police build a strong case against a suspect—even then, a prosecutor might decline to bring the case to trial. Prosecutors, particularly elected ones, are measured by their wins and losses and may be unwilling to spoil their record with problematic cases. “They only allow certain victims to go to trial, where they feel they have really rock-solid evidence,” Campbell says. “They’ve got to have the perfect victim, the perfect crime, the perfect witness—and anybody who deviates from that is not going to have their day in court.” Maybe the woman has a checkered past. Maybe she had too much to drink that night. Maybe she knew the suspect, triggering the nearly bulletproof defense of consent.
Sometimes, even a confession is not enough. One woman told me about a man who had been on a tour she led of her family’s organic farm. Later that night, while her husband was traveling, the man snuck into her bedroom and assaulted her. At first she thought the man was her husband, and she waited a few seconds before kicking him off the bed. Afterward, she called the police, and two weeks later, as officers listened in and recorded a phone conversation between the two, the man apologized for assaulting her. The officers were elated. But the prosecutor had reservations: No jury would believe she mistook the intruder for her husband. He declined to bring charges.

In some cases, police didn’t believe that sex had occurred at all. Consider this report by a Detroit detective, after a 14-year-old girl claimed she was abducted by two men and raped inside a burned-out house. “This heffer is trippin,” the detective wrote. “She was clean and smellin good, ain’t no way that shit happened like she said … The jig was up. She didn’t want to talk no mo. So her mama took her to the hospital, but they got the **** outta here.” That investigation warranted two pages, which ended: “This case is closed: UTEEC.” Unable to establish the elements of the crime.
To police officers who haven’t been trained to spot signs of trauma, many rape victims appear to be lying. Why was she laughing when she gave her statement? Why was she so flat and unemotional? One Detroit detective told Campbell that a victim should be “a complete hot mess. They should be crying. They should be very, very traumatized.” But research finds that many victims don’t respond in a predictable fashion. This goes for their behavior during the assault as well as after: Why didn’t she fight? Why didn’t she run? Liz Garcia used to tell people that she would fight like crazy if a stranger ever came into her house. “I don’t say that anymore. I could have had all the weapons in the world in my house. But I couldn’t grab a weapon. He was taller, bigger; there was no fighting him.” One survivor told me she offered her assailant a glass of iced tea, hoping her courtesy would dissuade him. Another tried to politely decline the assault: You don’t have to do that. It’s fine. Yet another pretended she was enjoying herself, hoping he wouldn’t kill her afterward.