A young immigrant woman, lacking privilege and money, alleges that she was raped while on the job. She reports the incident soon after it takes place. There is semen on her clothes and bruises on her body. She tells her story with such conviction that, according to The Times, seasoned investigators cry when they hear it.

The man she says raped her — wealthy, famous and powerful — is on an airplane about to depart for his native land. This is the same country that, for decades, helped shield Roman Polanski from being prosecuted for statutory rape in the United States. The man in the current case appears to have left the hotel where the rape allegedly occurred in some haste. He even forgets to take one of his cellphones.

With no time to spare, detectives lure him off the plane and arrest him. When he is questioned, he refuses to talk about the incident, having already “lawyered up.” He is forced to do the “perp walk,” and spends the next five days in jail, at which point he is indicted. (Under New York law, if prosecutors don’t indict him within five days, they have to release him on his own recognizance.) Once out on bail, he is placed under house arrest, in a $200,000-a-month TriBeCa townhouse. The New York tabloids mock him mercilessly.

Now that the man can’t flee, prosecutors turn their attention to the alleged victim. They begin investigating her background, knowing that the case hinges on her credibility. In just six weeks — an extraordinarily short time, as these things go — they put together a devastating profile of her past, filled with troubling inconsistencies, outright lies and the possibility that she hopes to profit from her alleged ordeal.