Describing the crime to her husband that night-the attacker's calm and practiced demeanor, which led the victim to surmise 'he's done this before'-Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. One of her best friends created a web page branding her a liar. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating her. On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie truthfully reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her, but within days police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story. Summary (via Goodreads): Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth. (Feb.DISCLAIMER: I received a free digital ARC of this book from Crown Publishing via First to Read in exchange for my honest review. Closely examining how rape is investigated and tried in the U.S., including the development of the rape kit in the 1970s and the origins of the “Hale warning” (an instruction to jurors in rape trials to be wary of false accusations), the book shines a critical light on an urgent and timely subject. The authors use this dramatic, almost unbelievable sequence of events as a springboard to a broader survey of the disturbing ways victims of rape are treated in America. Over two years later, an investigation into a similar crime in Colorado yielded evidence that Marie was indeed raped. When questioned further by the police, Marie recanted under the impression that she had dreamt up the incident she was subsequently charged with false reporting. When Marie reported the crime, the authorities and her former foster parents were skeptical of her story. Marie had just aged out of foster care and was living on her own for the first time when a man with a knife broke into her house in the middle of the night and assaulted her. The book opens with the aftermath of the 2008 rape of an 18-year-old woman near Seattle. Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporters Miller and Armstrong excavate a disturbing strain of misogyny in American culture in this account of the mistreatment of victims of sexual assault in the criminal justice system.

A False Report by T. Christian Miller