Meh. I think the last Dateline I watched was called something like Kelly’s Ordeal.
It was about some teenage girl who was allegedly raped at a party and couldn’t get justice – except, as you watched the program, it became abundantly clear why nobody was rotting in jail – she had zero credibility.
She’d lied about where she was going that night to her parents, who’d gone and picked her up in the small hours when they found out what she was up to. She wasn’t traumatized beyond being caught out whooping it up. The mother heard through the grapevine in the coming weeks that the school gossip was that she had been seen having sex with two different boys. The daughter denied that anything had happened, until the mother suggested that maybe she was raped. “Ooh, okay, I’ll take door number two, Monty.” So, off to the police station to report the crime. The boys said it was consensual, the girl’s own story had her going willingly with them (separately) to a parked car to have sex, and witnesses described seeing her on top.
(One boy admitted having sex with her again later, after she’d passed out, and he was charged with that, as well he should have been. He pled guilty.)
But still the family was after getting both boys charged as adults with rape, and crossed jurisdictions. Never got anywhere (for the obvious reason that no prosecutor in their right mind would advance this ridiculous case.)
The best part came when they reported, without irony, that the ordeal confused the girl so much that she’d (falsely) accused her parents of physical abuse so that she could be emancipated.
The whole thing was fascinating and infuriating. There was so obviously no story there at all, and yet they filled up the entire program block with it. Argh.
Rape is, (I hope I’m not overstating this,) not very nice. I think it does a real disservice to rape survivors to present something that someone with all the discernment of a lobotomized War At Home fan could spot as an obvious fabrication at a hundred paces as some terrible miscarriage of justice. Don’t show us a transparent liar and call her a “rape victim.” Jesus.
Sorry for the hijack.
I just really hate Dateline. It’s so sensationalist and angrymaking.