One Netflix Documentary You Need To Not Watch

Victim/Suspect is a film about women who claim to have been raped or to have suffered lesser sexual assaults then recant. The theme of this film is that these recantations are not really recantations, rather they are the pitiful cries of victimised young women who, faced with disbelieving police officers, withdraw their allegations and are then branded false accusers, often being tried and convicted as such.

Netflix has won acclaim for this film; this, it should be remembered, is the same company that released a sympathetic sham documentary about Casey Anthony then went one better lying gratuitously about the so-called exonerated Central Park 5.

Victim/Suspect was released earlier this year but it is back in the news, so too is one of the women behind it. Lisa Avalos is a full professor. Unfortunately, her idea of law – her subject – and what she actually professes – are in stark contrast to reality. She joined YouTube only on July 6, unless she had a previous account, and has uploaded a series of videos – in reality one video in 12 uneven segments – about the case of Gail Sherwood.

Sherwood is a Gloucestershire woman who claimed to have been harassed, kidnapped and raped by a man who is best described as a wraith, because he left no unambiguous evidence of his existence. According to Avalos, he was a police officer, or was in some way associated with the police, not only that, he had an equally ectoplasmic accomplice – who may even have been a woman.

Sherwood’s case was reported by the UK media following her arrest and later her conviction, which resulted in a two year sentence for perverting the course of justice being handed down at Bristol Crown Court on March 4, 2010.

This isn’t the first time Avalos has tackled the Sherwood case; previously she considered it in an academic paper, which speaks volumes for the poor quality of peer review in American universities. She also inserted her proboscis into another case on this side of the Atlantic. Eleanor de Freitas was a prostitute who falsely accused Alexander Economou of rape. 

Economou comes from a very wealthy family; for this reason and others he was a very eligible bachelor. He met de Freitas socially and they spent a weekend together, but possibly alerted by her strange behaviour, he ran her name through his search engine, and, horrified by what he found, cut off all contact with her.

Out of spite she went to the police and accused him of drug-facilitated rape. He was arrested and bailed, but decided to carry out his own investigation which led to the retrieval of CCTV evidence of them shopping together after this phantom rape. The case against him was dropped but he brought a private prosecution to clear his name. Eleanor de Freitas committed suicide three days before she was due to stand trial.

Avalos has written at length about this case and insinuated (without naming him) that he really did rape her. Professor Avalos is hot on what are called rape myths, which can be summed up as “Believe women”.

If a woman claims to have been raped two years ago by a man she was dating last month, believe her. If a woman claims to have been raped while people are watching TV in the next room, believe her. If a fourteen stone weightlifter claims to have been overpowered and raped by a seven stone cystic fibrosis sufferer, believe her. Why would a woman lie?

Returning to her video about Gail Sherwood, when this case was reported by the press, it did not include a great deal of detail. Avalos claims her analysis vindicates Sherwood, in fact it does just the opposite, because it makes it clear – something earlier reports did not – that Sherwood was living with her three daughters. She was a dog owner (plural), and she had if not a husband then a partner, who appears to have been living with her at least part of the time.

Add to this the fact that she lived in a far from urban area, how could this wraith have materialised then vanished without a trace? Although she was allegedly raped at least twice, there was no forensic evidence, no DNA, nothing. We are not told if she submitted to a rape kit. Her phantom violator is said to have turned up at her home and threatened her. She has allegedly been raped several times since being released from prison, but is too terrified to report these further outrages. Avalos swallows all this pap hook, line and sinker. If she had been an investment banker instead of an academic, she would have lost billions.

What she doesn’t say in her video is just as important as what she does say. There is no mention of the helicopter search the police made, something they would surely not have done had they not believed her initially. Nor is there any mention of the innocent motorist who was arrested and held for twenty hours before being released without charge.

Do you really want to watch this Netflix documentary? One woman who appears within claiming to have recanted falsely due to police pressure is Emma Mannion, a student airhead who said she was forced into a Jeep and raped by two Hispanic dudes. Again, no physical evidence either of rape or of such a vehicle caught on CCTV, leaving aside the fact that she had been drinking at the time, and she is so adipose that it would have taken at least three men to hold her down.

Does this film have any merit? In the first place, there have been cases in which rape victims have not been taken seriously, and have been prosecuted. The most notorious such case is arguably a young woman known as Marie who was raped by Marc O’Leary, a serial predator who is serving a three hundred year plus sentence in Colorado. This was a sad case, but due to difficulties in her personal life, it is understandable why she was not believed initially. The case of Marie demonstrates the need for a thorough investigation, as does the case of Gail Sherwood.

One other thing about this film, and perhaps the only factually correct and important thing about it; in the United States, police officers are permitted to lie to suspects, while suspects or witnesses who lie to police can face criminal charges. Lying should not be permitted because it can induce not only recantations but false confessions, especially from vulnerable people.