THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• A young mom goes to the police, and they don’t believe her. She fights back, all the way to the Supreme Court.
• Some teacher training programs still emphasize a debunked theory that children can learn to read without learning how to sound out words.
• Our episode on disaster response failures in Alaska has sparked a federal investigation.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

From Victim to Suspect

Nicole Chase was a young mom with a daughter to support when she took a job at a local restaurant in Canton, Connecticut. She liked the work and was good at her job. But the place turned out to be more like a frat house than a quaint roadside sandwich spot. And the crude behavior kept escalating – until one day she says her boss went too far.

Chase turned to the local police for help. She ended up arrested. But she decided to keep fighting.

Reveal reporter Rachel de Leon spent years taking a close look at cases across the country in which people reported sexual assaults to police, only to find themselves investigated. Her work was also turned into a documentary, “Victim/Suspect,” now streaming on Netflix.

In this hour, which first ran in March, we revisit one case and hear how police interrogated an alleged perpetrator, an alleged victim and each other.

READ: ‘If the Police Don’t Believe You, They Might Prosecute You’: How Officers Turn Victims of Sexual Assault Into Suspects

One Number to Know

At least 22 states have introduced bills to overhaul reading instruction in the wake of the Sold a Story podcast, which exposed a problematic but extremely popular reading curriculum that was failing to teach kids to read.

Listen: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

Impact Update

Reporter Emily Schwing went to Chevak, Alaska, to report on storm damage in 2022 and discovered a problem with the federal government’s response: Disaster relief notices were supposed to be translated into local Indigenous languages. But Schwing found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency bungled the translations, delaying much-needed aid and sowing distrust. She brought us that investigation in a January episode of Reveal.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security is investigating FEMA for possible civil rights violations.

Listen: Listen: Drilling Down on Fossil Fuels and Climate Change
Read: FEMA under civil rights investigation after ‘unintelligible’ disaster relief application information was sent to Alaska Natives (KYUK) 

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