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

Summary

She Said meets Lucky in Michelle Bowdler’s provocative telling the story of her rape and recovery while interrogating why one of society’s most serious crimes goes largely uninvestigated.

The crime of rape sizzles like a lightning strike. It pounces, flattens, destroys. A person stands whole, and in a moment of unexpected violence, that life, that body is gone. Award-winning writer and public health executive Michelle Bowdler’s memoir indicts how sexual violence has been addressed for decades in our society, asking whether rape is a crime, given that it is the least reported major felony and least successfully prosecuted, with fewer than 3% of rapists ever spending a day in jail. Cases are closed before they are investigated ,and DNA evidence sits for years untested and disregarded.

Rape in this country is not treated as a crime of brutal violence but as a parlor game of “he said / she said.” It might be laughable if it didn’t work so much of the time. Given all this, it seems fair to ask whether rape is actually a crime.

In 1984, the Boston Sexual Assault Unit was formed as a result of a series of break-ins and rapes that terrorized the city, of which Michelle’s own horrific rape was the last. Twenty years later, after a career of working with victims like herself, Michelle decides to find out what happened to her case and why she never heard from the police again after one brief interview.

Is Rape a Crime? is an expert blend of memoir and cultural investigation, Michelle’s story is a rallying cry to reclaim our power and right our world.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books