Netflix’s “Victim/Suspect” can only be characterised as perplexing, intriguing, and unsettling in equal measure as a documentary that ultimately sheds light on the potential dark side of our legal system. That’s because it dives deeply into the distressing pattern of how young people who disclose sexual assault to authorities are frequently disregarded and even openly accused of lying. Investigative Journalist Rachel “Rae” de Leon is in charge of it all, so if you’d like to know more about her, her background, and where she stands right now, we have the information for you.
Who is Rae de Leon?
Rae first showed a strong interest in news reporting and all of its branches when she was a little kid, but as the years went by, this enthusiasm grew only somewhat. She naturally realised early on that she wanted to pursue a career in the same industry, which led her to secure part-time jobs at local media outlets while still a high school student. She therefore applied for a Bachelor’s in Journalism at California State University-Northridge before receiving her Master’s from UC Berkeley, having some experience under her belt.
“My first investigative piece [as a contributing reporter] was looking into a pothole and why it never got fixed,” Rae openly admitted in the show. “In actuality, it was corrected after I published it, and that was really satisfying. However, the risks were minimal. However, this inspired her to do more, leading to her employment as a Captionist at the National Centre on Deafness for 3 12 years, a Production Assistant at Current TV for a year, and a Public Affairs/Video Intern at NASA Dryden Flight Research Centre for a year. She then completed “Cab City,” a short documentary about the realities of public transit, for her Master’s thesis in 2014, and “The Dead Unknown,” a documentary about Kentucky, in 2015.
In actuality, Rae had already anchored a programme at the non-profit Centre for Investigative Reporting by this time, giving her the self-assurance to approach these topics in the first place. In the first movie, she said, “My dream as a budding journalist was to work at the Centre for Investigative Reporting just outside of Oakland. That’s the most serious place you can go, I thought. It’s sort of like this and ’60 Minutes’ or something. I was aware that the top journalists worked for this wonderful organisation. In 2013, I finally succeeded in getting an entry-level position as a Production Assistant.
Rae held this job for two years until moving up to Associate Producer in 2015 and Coordinating Producer in 2016, at which point she received an Emmy for each of her contributions to the PBS episode “Deadly Oil Fields” and the web series “The Dead Unknown.” And if that weren’t enough, she worked with her to produce five documentaries and more than 20 online mini-documentaries directed by women as a part of CIR’s Glassbreaker Films campaign throughout 2017. Her first solo report as a reporter, “From Victim to Suspect,” was the one that catapulted her into the spotlight. She also held the position of Video Producer for two years at the time.
Where is Rae de Leon Now?
Rae blatantly confessed in the documentary, “I was working on other people’s stories [for years].” Therefore, I was genuinely looking for something I could report on and own. The habit of authorities manipulating claimed rape victims’ claims before arresting them for false accusations was then, around early 2017, something she simply couldn’t fathom and needed to delve into. This is how she gathered nearly 200 allegedly fraudulent sexual assault cases from throughout the country over the past 10 years, only for it to become evident that not everything is as it looks for a variety of reasons — she actually released her written article in March 2023.
Where is Rae de Leon Now?
I’m so grateful to @EVAWintl for the Media Excellence award this year. They’ve helped me navigate this hard and painful space of reporting with their unmatched knowledge and outsized hearts. pic.twitter.com/dNZa8N6h73
— Rachel de Leon (@raeoflion) April 12, 2023
Rae is currently employed full-time by The Centre for Investigative Reporting in Emeryville, California, as a reporter and producer for the news programme Reveal. In other words, the honourable writer remains committed to publishing incisive investigative pieces about police accountability, brutality against women, and marginalised people.
Given her ten years of expertise, this member of the Reveal CIR Guild is now unquestionably regarded as an authority on video journalism, but the fact is that she’s motivated to cover even more ground in the future. Regarding Rae’s private life, we really don’t know much about it because she has taken care to keep information about it private.
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