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As I’ve written about in the past, like many women my age, I’m a true crime junkie. It’s not something I’m proud of, of course, but as I wrote about in that post, this addiction (and why so many more women are fans of true crime than men) is really about wanting to be in control and finding an audience that will believe these unbelievable stories when no one else will.
Last week, when I was down and out with a cold, my comfort go-to was watching true crime documentaries. As an aside, lately, I’ve been getting suggestions for buzzy shows to watch from my TikTok FYP. I used to get these recs from Twitter, but after that ship started going down a terrible whirlpool of hate and bigotry, I moved my social media consumption to Threads and TikTok. Threads has yet to find its social buzz threshold for me, but TikTok has definitely entered my media consumption radar. And last week, the buzz was all around Netflix’s new true crime documentary: American Nightmare.
Spoiler Warning Because this is not a review and because I want to talk about the societal implications of this story, this post will contain spoilers. Be warned! Spoiler Warning
American Nightmare is a three-episode series that presents the highly sensational and nearly unbelievable story of the kidnapping of Denise Huskins. In 2015, Denise was kidnapped from her boyfriend’s Northern California home in the middle of the night. After a night of terror and confusion, her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, contacts the Vallejo police department.
And here is where the true crime story takes a turn for the expected. The police don’t believe Aaron. Whenever trouble a suspected crime involves a woman, her husband or boyfriend are always the first prime suspects. Remember, though, this is a story about a kidnapping, not a murder. If Aaron was involved with his girlfriend’s kidnapping, why would he go to the police? It’s the start of many baffling theories that the Vallejo police department forms about the case. Investigators go hard on Aaron until his girlfriend reappears 48 hours later, 400 miles away.
And here is where the true crime story takes a turn for the unexpected. With Denise’s return, the police department’s theory of Aaron as a murder suspect evaporates. A logical person would expect the police to start looking for Denise’s kidnappers, right? Except, that isn’t what happens. Instead, the cops look to a Ben Affleck movie, 2014’s Gone Girl, for an explanation of what happened. In a maddening turn of events, rather than tracking down the kidnappers, the cops proclaim to the public that Denise lied about her kidnapping in a bizarre attention-grabbing plot. In fact, the cops say that they think Denise should apologize to them and the community for wasting resources.
What the hell?
I won’t give the rest of the documentary away, but this became a story about the ultimate failure of law enforcement to believe women about being victimized. For me, the most poignant moment of the documentary occurs when Denise asks what exactly would it have taken to get the detectives to believe her. Even with the kidnapping and sexual assault, she asked what exactly needed to happen to her for her to be believed. It’s a question that many victims of stalking ask. A US Department of Justice report finds that when it comes to stalking, “An arrest is unlikely unless there are visible injuries to the victim or a protective/no-contact order is involved.”
The salt in the wound comes in the story when we find out that multiple instances of peeping tom events had occurred in Aaron’s same town with the same police department ignoring and not investigating these events.
Utterly heartbreaking.
I understand that policing is a hard job. You see the worst of humanity and have to put your life on the line each and every day. But, what happens when you go to the police for help and over and over again you’re ignored or you even become the suspect? How does that instill confidence that this is where you should go for help?
We are a nation of laws, and if we believe they have been broken, we should feel confident that we can go to the police and get their help. According to a 2018 study reported on in The Conversation, Shima Baughman, professor of criminal law at the University of Utah, less than 2% of reported federal crimes ended in an arrested person being convicted. That is an abysmally small number.
In my humble opinion, communities should be investing more in education and healthcare. We need better social safety nets and better mental health services. The criminal in this particular crime pled to having an untreated mental disorder. Wouldn’t we be better off spending more of our tax dollars on community services that will lead to a better than 2% success rate at solving reported crimes?
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