Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto

by Michelle Bowdler

Searching the internet for “uninvestigated rape cases” yields dozens of recent articles where cases have been dismissed with no investigation. A 2019 New York Times article, “These Rape Victims Had to Sue to Get the Police to Investigate,” highlights a growing trend of women suing police departments for this very reason.2 The article reports on examples from seven U.S. cities: a plaintiff from Austin, for whom “police collected no evidence from the crime scene after a rapist broke into her apartment”; a college student “whose screams for help were recorded but whose case was dropped when her attacker, a stranger, claimed the sex had been consensual”; and another woman “forcibly taken to a motel and raped by three men, one of whom was not arrested even when his DNA was found in her sexual assault kit.”