Despite the way jury trials abuse rape victims and exacerbate their trauma, Krakauer implies that Montana’s Rape Shield Law shows that improvement is possible. The law’s desired effect is to keep a rape victim’s previous sexual history from becoming the subject of a trial. The rapist should be the one on trial, the law asserts, not the victim. Nonetheless, Pabst is able to invent any narrative she wants to describe Washburn. The defense’s strategy is to create an alternative narrative, no matter how false, and hope that members of the jury will be taken in or confused by it. Even before Pabst’s statement, however, Krakauer has systematically dismantled Pabst’s version of events. Cecilia Washburn, according to Krakauer’s account, was definitively raped. In the days leading up to her encounter with Johnson, Washburn never expressed interest in being Johnson’s girlfriend. Attention from the media and from federal investigators has helped silenced victims to report their rapes and forced unwilling prosecutors to take difficult cases to trial. And, finally, contrary to Pabst’s story, Krakauer has shown how the attention victims receive after reporting high-profile rapes is anything but desirable.

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