Some people are taught to believe the justice system will be waiting for them.If somebody hurts you, tell.If you have evidence, save it.Go
Some people are taught to believe the justice system will be waiting for them.
If somebody hurts you, tell.
If you have evidence, save it.
Go to the police. Cooperate with prosecutors. Tell the truth in court. Let the system do its job.
Mandy Boardman did those things.
Her case forces us to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the justice system women are told to trust and the justice system they actually encounter are not always the same system.
This is not an argument against reporting sexual violence.
It is an argument for building institutions worthy of the courage it takes to report it.
1. 🏠 The crime happened inside a marriage. That did not make it less serious.
Mandy Boardman said that for years she knew something strange was happening to her body while she slept.
Eventually, she found something horrifying on her husband’s cellphone: videos showing sexual activity she did not remember and to which she had not consented. She testified that she once woke with a pill dissolving in her mouth.
Her husband, David Wise, was eventually convicted by an Indiana jury of one count of rape and five counts of criminal deviate conduct.
Marriage did not turn an unconscious woman into an available woman. A sleeping wife still has a body that belongs to her.
2. 💊 Drugging someone does more than remove her ability to resist.
There is another violation inside this story that deserves language.
When someone secretly drugs another person, he can alter what she is able to perceive, remember and understand about her own life.
Boardman described knowing that something was happening to her body without knowing exactly what. The videos eventually gave her evidence of a reality that had been concealed from her.
Think about what that means. She was living ordinary days while information about what had happened to her own body was being withheld from her. That is not merely deception around the edges of sexual violence.
The deception helped make the sexual violence possible.
3. 🎭 He created a false reality for her to live inside.
There was the reality she could see:
I went to sleep.
I woke up.
This is my husband.
This is my home.
And there was another reality that he knew.
Sexual acts were occurring while she was unconscious.
Recordings existed.
She did not know.
That kind of deception can interfere with a person’s ability to make decisions about everything that comes afterward: sex, marriage, medical care, sleeping arrangements, personal safety and whether to remain in a relationship.
You cannot make fully informed decisions about a reality someone is deliberately preventing you from knowing.
4. 📹 Recording the violation adds another layer.
The videos weren’t simply evidence that later helped expose what happened.
The recording itself meant intimate images of an unconscious woman existed because the person violating her chose to create them.
Boardman later copied the videos and took them to police.
The very thing created during the violation ultimately helped her prove it. She had to discover evidence of her own experiences because she had been deliberately prevented from experiencing them consciously.
5. ⚖️ Then the system believed her.
This is where this case becomes particularly important.
We often discuss sexual violence cases where evidence is limited, prosecutors decline charges or jurors cannot reach guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
That is not what happened here.
There was an investigation.
There was evidence.
There was a prosecution.
There was a trial.
And there was a conviction on six felony sex-offense counts.
The question was no longer:
Did something happen?
A jury had answered that question.
The next question was:
What does our justice system believe something like this deserves?
6. 🚪 The prosecutors asked for prison. The judge sent him home.
Prosecutors sought 40 years in prison.
Instead, Marion Superior Court Judge Kurt Eisgruber imposed a 20-year sentence with 12 years suspended and eight years of GPS-monitored home detention, followed by probation. Wise could leave home for work. Contemporary reporting also noted that therapy was not required as part of that sentence.
Boardman had watched the system establish that serious crimes had been committed against her.
Then she watched the man convicted of committing them walk out.
She described the sentencing as a “punch to the gut by the justice system.”
7. 🏡 Look closely at where he was sentenced to serve his punishment.
The crimes occurred against his wife within their private life.
The sentence initially allowed him to serve eight years at home.
Deputy Prosecutor Courtney Curtis pointed directly to the contradiction, saying prosecutors would not seek a home sentence for a crime committed in the home.
That is a striking institutional message. The home had been part of the environment in which his wife was violated. And home became the place selected for his punishment.
8. 🕊️ Then came forgiveness.
Boardman said the judge told her she needed to forgive her attacker.
Judge Eisgruber later explained that his remarks were offered in the hope that she might eventually forgive Wise because he believed reaching that point could help people heal.
But forgiveness is not a criminal sentence.
Forgiveness does not determine dangerousness.
Forgiveness does not establish accountability.
Forgiveness does not protect another woman.
And forgiveness belongs to the Survivor.
A courtroom can require an offender to answer to the law. It should be exceedingly careful about telling a Survivor what she should do with her heart.
9. 🔄 Watch how quickly responsibility can shift back toward the woman.
Something subtle happens when conversations about serious violence turn toward a Survivor’s forgiveness.
The original question is:
What did he do?
Then another question quietly enters:
What will she do with what he did?
Will she forgive?
Will she heal?
Will she move forward?
Will she let go?
Suddenly, there is another assignment waiting for the woman.
She has already survived the crime.
She has already discovered the truth.
She has already reported.
She has already participated in prosecution.
Now she may be asked to demonstrate grace. Women do not owe offenders emotional rehabilitation.
10. 🚨 Violence against women does not have to be denied to be minimized.
This case teaches a difficult lesson.
A system can believe a woman and still minimize what happened to her.
Police can believe her.
Prosecutors can believe her.
Jurors can believe her.
A conviction can appear on the record.
And the institutional response that follows can still communicate something entirely different about the seriousness of the crime.
We sometimes imagine disbelief as the great dividing line in sexual violence cases.
It isn’t the only one.
There is another question after belief:
Now that you believe her, what are you going to do about it?
11. 🧩 Every stage of justice is a separate gate.
Women are often told simply to report.
But reporting is only the beginning of a long institutional chain.
Disclosure → Investigation → Charges → Prosecution → Conviction → Sentencing → Enforcement → Protection
Success at one stage does not guarantee success at the next.
A woman can make it through almost the entire chain and still reach the end wondering where justice went.
Mandy Boardman’s case reached a point many sexual assault cases never reach:
a jury conviction.
And she still publicly said she felt she had received no justice at sentencing.
12. 🏛️ Women are sometimes told to trust a justice system that has not yet been fully built for them.
There are people within our justice systems who take violence against women very seriously.
There are dedicated investigators.
There are prosecutors fighting difficult cases.
There are judges imposing serious sentences.
There are victim advocates walking beside Survivors through terrible days.
Women and Survivors themselves fought for many of the laws and institutions we have now.
But those pieces do not yet guarantee a system where a woman can reliably expect violence against her to be understood and treated according to its gravity.
The promise is still larger than the infrastructure.
13. 📣 “Why didn’t she report?” is often the wrong question.
Before asking why another woman did not report, look at what women who did report sometimes encountered.
Some reported and were doubted.
Some were believed but saw no charges.
Some saw charges but no conviction.
Some obtained convictions and still encountered consequences they considered profoundly inadequate.
None of that means reporting is pointless.
It means society has work to do before casually demanding:
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
The better question may sometimes be:
“What happened to the women who did?”
14. 🔍 Evidence cannot solve an institution’s values problem.
People often say sexual assault cases are difficult because there is not enough evidence.
Sometimes that is true.
But evidence was not the central problem at the end of this case.
There were videos.
There was testimony.
There was prosecution.
There was a jury verdict.
Evidence can help establish what happened. Evidence cannot force an institution to respond to what happened with the seriousness a Survivor expects.
Those are two separate problems.
15. 🧠 The false reality did not end when she discovered the videos.
There is an unsettling parallel running through this story.
For years, Boardman said she knew something was happening to her body without having proof.
Then she discovered the hidden reality.
Afterward came another expectation many of us have been taught:
Once authorities know.
Once there is evidence.
Once a jury convicts.
Surely then the gravity of it will be reflected in the response.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Women should not have to discover that the justice system they imagined would be waiting for them has not yet been fully built.
16. 🌿 We can tell Survivors the truth without telling them not to seek justice.
There is a temptation to believe we have only two choices.
Either tell women the justice system works.
Or tell them there is no point in reporting.
Neither is honest.
Survivors have every right to report.
They have every right to pursue criminal charges, civil remedies, protective orders, compensation and institutional accountability.
They also deserve truthful preparation about what those systems can and cannot presently guarantee.
Hope does not require misinformation.
17. ✊🏾 And women have every right to keep righting wrongs.
Justice is not only something handed down from a bench.
Sometimes justice is also the Survivor who keeps speaking after the courtroom disappoints her.
Boardman did exactly that.
After sentencing, she spoke publicly about what happened. She said she wanted other women who had experienced similar violence to know they were not alone and should not be ashamed to come forward.
That is not failure. That is a woman refusing to allow an inadequate institutional response to become the final interpretation of what was done to her.
The concluding truth
We have spent generations telling women what they must do when someone violates them.
Tell someone.
Save evidence.
Report.
Cooperate.
Testify.
Trust the process.
Mandy Boardman gives us reason to turn some of those instructions around.
What must institutions do after a woman tells?
What must police do with her report?
What must prosecutors do with the evidence?
What must courts communicate about the seriousness of sexual violence?
And what responsibility does the rest of society have when a Survivor does everything we told her to do?
The burden cannot forever remain with women.
The justice system that consistently understands violence against women with the gravity these crimes deserve does not yet fully exist.
That is not a reason to abandon justice.
It is a reason to keep building it.
And women have every right to keep naming where it fails until what we were promised and what actually exists finally become the same thing.
📺
If you want to learn more about Mandy Boardman’s story
Mandy Boardman and David Wise’s story was covered by Investigation Discovery in Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?, Season 6, Episode 3, “Dangerous Game,” first released in 2015. The episode description identifies Boardman and Wise and follows her discovery and decision to go to police.
Her contemporary interviews are also particularly valuable because they preserve her own explanation of what the conviction and sentence felt like, rather than reducing her story to a summary of the offender’s crimes.
Ind. woman upset over ex-husband’s spousal rape sentence – WLWT
Indiana judge blasted for not handing out prison time in wife’s rape – Los Angeles Times
Should All Rapists Go to Prison?
A Brief Timeline: Marital Rape Laws in the West – WE Survive Abuse
Grooming by Environment: When the System Softens the Ground for Abuse – WE Survive Abuse