The documentary series An American Nightmare seems like a bizarre fictional story from start to finish. A couple is attacked in the early hours of the morning by intruders dressed in diving suits, tied up, forced to take sedative drugs, and having their eyes covered with sunglasses. All orders were given with a pre-recorded message that said the woman would be kidnapped and released 48 hours later for ransom. When he woke up the next day, he received messages demanding two payments of $8,500 for his girlfriend to be released. He risked everything and called the police. The worst was about to begin. Instead of taking the crime seriously, including the accusation that she was raped, the police – like us, let’s admit it – distrust the victims because it’s all so implausible that it can only be a setup. And it’s not. And truth. It’s a nightmare.

I have long been openly and severely critical of the wave of documentaries that Netflix selects and makes available on its platform. 10 out of 10 are partial, with unique sources and pure propaganda. It demands from its audience a curiosity to compare what is presented with the research that documentaries do not present. And so is more or less the case with An American Nightmare, whose story is, without exaggeration, unbelievable.

The synopsis is this: “A couple suffers a home invasion and a kidnapping, but the police don’t believe their version. Why did the victims seem so calm? Was it all a hoax? From the team behind “The Tinder Scam,” this three-part docu-series examines the consequences of a society that jumps to conclusions too quickly and the damage caused when authorities decide the truth can’t be real.”

Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn were victims of one of the most intriguing cases that fiction could ever come up with. The two, because they were calm, logical, and detailed, gave a “wrong impression” to the police, who expected the couple to have a more emotional reaction to the trauma. Therefore, he took time and ignored any opportunity to really investigate the crime, solved by the chance and dedication of a woman from the police from another city. But I get confused here.

The narrative of the documentary leads us to initially have the same reaction as the police. Aaron called to report the kidnapping hours after it happened, calmly, without emotion. When Denise reappeared 48 hours later, she was equally calm. Although the two accounts of the kidnapping were the same, suggesting veracity, what she told of the captivity and rape came up against the machismo and prejudice of a patriarchal society. Under fear and pressure, she submitted to the two times she was forced to have sex with the kidnapper, and – because there was no physical attack – he was treated as a suspect on her side! And it gets worse.

In 2012, Gillian Flynn‘s best-seller, Gone Girl, was so successful that just three years later it was turned into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Rosamund Pike (Oscar nominee for the role) and Ben Affleck. The story of a man who returns home and discovers that his wife has disappeared, becoming the main suspect in the crime, although everything is set up by his wife. She reappears days later, claiming to have been kidnapped and raped, but it was all just revenge against her husband. Unfortunately for Aaron and Denise, Gone Girl was still showing and in the spotlight when they experienced the despair of being attacked, so when the police made the connection, they were judged as scammers. Even if that made even less sense than the violence they were victims of, to begin with.

The documentary explores all the reasons why people who should be trained to ignore them fall into the trap of prejudice. The legal error cost the couple their reputation, increasing the trauma for Denise, who was already a survivor of sexual abuse even before the kidnapping. When the truth comes out – they were actually telling the truth – you feel ashamed, frustrated, and penalized.

After the two are humiliated and prosecuted for fraud, the answer comes from a police officer from another city, Sergeant Misty Carausu, who investigating another crime not only arrested the real perpetrator, Matthew Muller, but also solved (part of) the mystery. Muller was sentenced to 40 years in prison and Aaron and Denise, now married with two daughters, received compensation of US$2.5 million for defamation. None of the officers involved in the case were punished, and worse, the lead detective on the case, Mat Mustard, was awarded Cop of the Year in 2015. Which is the point of An American Nightmare: Who’s to blame?

When fiction has such a strong impact on justifying prejudices and errors like this, how can we resolve the issue? Force the pieces to make sense in a narrative pre-determined is the translation of injustice. That’s why it’s important to watch this documentary because it is frighteningly real, current, and desperate. Unfortunately, it also triggers a new wave of popularity of sexist fiction that created a manipulative (and crazy) female character, who distorts the truth of rape just to achieve her goal of revenge. The story of Gone Girl is heavy and it is implausible. The nightmare is seeing how inverted and confused our values are. Scarier still.

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