Should Film Makers Never Choose Myth Over Fact?

In a recent film, “The Accused,” witnesses to a gang rape cheered on the rapists instead of coming to the aid of the victim. The witnesses were tried for “criminal solicitation”; the climax of the movie pivoted on whether or not they would be convicted. Would the jury feel that the victim had “asked for it” because before the rape she had behaved toward the rapists in a sexually provocative manner?

In the actual case on which the film is loosely based, the behavior of bystanders was also a central issue. In March, 1983, a 21-year-old woman, new to a Portuguese neighborhood in New Bedford, Mass., stopped at Big Dan’s tavern for cigarettes and a drink at 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening. She emerged after midnight, screaming for help, bruised, her clothes partially torn off. She told the police that she had been hoisted onto a pool table, held there against her will and raped repeatedly by a group of men. The bar patrons stood watching, taunting her and cheering on the rapists.

The newspapers reported public shock at the indifference of the bar patrons. Big Dan’s tavern closed the day after the crime, “voluntarily” surrendered its liquor license and went out of business. A week later 2,500 silent protesters marched through New Bedford carrying lighted candles and banners with the words, “Rape Is Not a Spectator Sport.” The march, which drew support from women’s groups throughout the Northeast, was covered by television and the print media.

A year later, six men were tried for the rape, and four were convicted and sent to prison. Trial testimony clarified the circumstances under which the cheering had occurred. One of the two men acquitted of complicity admitted on the stand that he shouted to the rapists, “Go for it! Go for it!” According to the evidence, the only encouragement came from them. Except for the bartender and part-owner, one patron, and a drunk asleep in a corner, the victim was alone with the six accused rapists. The bartender had asked the sober customer to call the police on the pay telephone, the only telephone in the bar, but the patron got a wrong number. Seeing that one of the rapists had a knife and seemed to be watching him, he was afraid to try again. Apparently, neither the patron nor the bartender intervened further.

Because the media relied on the terrified victim’s unverified account of the crime to the police, initial reports of the rape incorrectly described a large group of bystanders who actively encouraged the rapists. But stories about the rape and the reaction to it were reported for more than a week. Why hadn’t editors tried to verify the initial report? Apparently, editorial judgments about newsworthiness overwhelmed normal editorial skepticism about cheering spectators at a gang rape. Editors predicted--correctly--that the public would be outraged.

By the time “The Accused” was written and filmed, the trial of the rapists had taken place. News stories in 1984 showed that the widely believed account of a bar full of cheering patrons was a myth. True, the film does not claim to be a documentary, but weren’t the producers concerned that viewers in Europe or Asia might recall the New Bedford rape and think America was a jungle where, if someone attacks you, bystanders typically cheer the perpetrators on? Wouldn’t “The Accused” have been more effective if it had stayed closer to the facts of the New Bedford case?

Probably not. A founding father of sociology, Emile Durkheim, realized that reports of the trials of offenders and of their punishments were not ho-hum events. They were of great interest because they aroused public indignation. Press and TV reports of the rape at Big Dan’s were as much concerned with public indignation over what happened as with the details of the crime. The account of cheering spectators in the initial stories explained this indignation, fed it and helped make public condemnation more unanimous. After 2,500 people were shown on television protesting against indifference to the rape of a young woman, rape of anyone, anywhere, became less acceptable and therefore less doable.

Straitlaced Durkheim might have found the graphic portrayal of the cheering in “The Accused” shocking. But he would probably conclude that the film mobilizes public indignation against rape even more effectively perhaps than the distorted newspaper and TV accounts of the real case. Furthermore, as fiction, nothing except plausibility prevents a film from inventing incidents to reinforce its theme. The theme pounded in by “The Accused” is that a woman, regardless of her previous sexual behavior, has the right to say “no.” The public indignation about the cheering not only encourages potential rapists to think twice; it could make bystanders more likely to intervene.