On the systemic issues in our legal system in handling rape cases

I knew very clearly as I was writing the book that the deck is stacked so high against sexual assault victims. I’m a firm believer in due process, the bill of rights, the fourth amendment…and I’m not advocating we change it. I think unfortunately this is the system we’ve got. But as I point out, people like David Lisak and his amazing organization End Violence Against Women International, they have figured out ways to improve the conviction rate of rapists. So I’m not saying we’ve got to overhaul the system because…I’d love to but I don’t think we can. I think the adversarial system of justice is fucked. I think it would be way better if we had a different system. But this is ours for better or worse.

Still, you can do things like David Lisak and End Violence. They have these teams that go around the country training prosecutors, police departments, and whole cities. Ashland, Oregon, is one city they really transformed by showing: OK, you’ve got this problem, you need to know that most rapes are committed by a small number of serial predators. And once you start thinking about that, you realize — you need to take this way more seriously, because there’s a 90 percent chance that any given rapist is a serial rapist.

You can’t blow off cases and say he’s just a frat boy or it was just, you know, a bad hookup. Each of these serial rapists on average sexually assault six people, women generally, but each one is responsible for 14 crimes of violence of other kinds — domestic abuse, child abuse. You need to go after [each case], because they’re probably a serial predator. And you need to educate your cops and prosecutors the way trauma effects testimony, so they can educate the jury.

So yeah, I think it’s systemic as hell. You know, Missoula really is typical unfortunately. There’s a lot of good cops and good prosecutors, but even female detectives, having listened to their audio recordings, it’s just this feeling of resignation, like…you know that the prosecutors are never going to prosecute this guy, what are we wasting our time for…literally if they didn't have a confession, pretty much, they weren't going to refer it for prosecution. So there’s a long, long way to go.

And as David Lisak travels across the country giving these seminars to police departments, he’s realistic and pragmatic. He says You know, as I’m giving this lecture I can see in the back of the room those old-school cops, nudging each other and rolling their eyes, like ‘oh boy, listen to that, believe the victim, hah’— because cops are the most skeptical people you will ever meet. They’re cynical and skeptical…and not in a bad way, but one of the things you learn is that if cops start believing the victim that’s when you get the best evidence. By just listening.

Lisak and these other groups train cops and detectives on how to question victims the first time, the kinds of questions to ask so you let them tell their story. For instance, how did you feel about it, as opposed to well, really? You were wearing what? It’s like just tell me what you remember. And that’s how you get the best information, even if it’s a false accusation, or if that’s going to help you exonerate the accused, that stuff is just good police work that isn't being done now.