When Fiction Delivers Justice
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Dream Count" reimagines a high-profile sexual assault case, giving a voice to a victim the legal system failed
Originally published on my blog in Medium on August 12. My full archives are available at www.judicialjunkie.com.
Who do we believe?
It’s a foundational question of our justice system and one that has been at the forefront of the Me Too movement. For a long time, the answer has been alarmingly predictable: we believe the powerful. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Dream Count, this painful reality is put under the microscope. Inspired by the real-life case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the story follows a hotel housekeeper who is assaulted by a powerful man and then disbelieved by nearly everyone.
It makes me ask a critical question: would things be different now, in the Me Too era? Would people finally believe a housekeeper over a powerful man?
I’ve been thinking a lot about a quote from civil rights attorney Kenneth Thompson, who represented the real-life housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo: “It’s a fact that the victim here has made some mistakes. But that doesn’t mean she’s not a rape victim.” This quote cuts to the heart of Adichie’s book, a devastating exploration of how the justice system fails long before a trial can even begin.
The Case, Recast: A Trial in the Court of Public Opinion
The novel revisits the explosive 2011 sexual assault allegations that dominated the headlines. I remember following it closely at the time. Each interview, each new development, every scrap of information was covered by a breathless press. But for Diallo, justice never showed up in the courtroom.
Dream Count is not a courtroom novel. There is no trial, no dramatic cross-examination. Instead, the trial happens in the court of public opinion — and in the endless cross-examinations of her personal life. And that, I believe, is what makes this book so legally rich and so devastating. It’s a powerful reminder that the justice system often fails victims long before they ever set foot in a courtroom.
This post focuses on the legal and justice aspects of the novel, but it is a far richer dive into many subjects — friendship, immigration experience, love. The novel is dazzling, riveting, propulsive, compelling, and thought-provoking — all the words book reviewers, influencers, and friends use to describe novels they love. But I’m concentrating on the legal stuff for this blog.
Adichie’s fictional survivor, Kadiatou, experiences this same betrayal. Her story becomes a test case for how the legal system treats women like her: immigrant, Black, and poor. The novel follows her life as it unravels, her story dissected not by a judge, but by media narratives and public doubt.
In her fantastic concluding author’s note, which I actually read first (and recommend doing so!), Adichie explains why she wrote this novel: “With the case dropped, with lawyers publicly calling her a liar with no court of law to vindicate her or not, she became, in my imagination, a symbol, a person failed by a country she trusted, her character mutilated by false stories in the press, the fabric of her life forever rent.”
The Unraveling of Credibility
In the real case, forensic evidence supported Diallo’s claim — investigators found semen in the hotel room. Yet, the Manhattan DA’s office dropped the case, not because they disproved the assault, but because they couldn’t trust her as a witness. Diallo had lied on her asylum application years earlier, and that lie — completely unrelated to the assault — was used to weaponize her credibility. She became a symbol not of victimhood, but of unreliability.
Adichie tracks these events in Dream Count. Kadiatou knows what happened in the room, but the prosecutorial team — the very people she thought were on her side — hones in on her past. “This case depends entirely on your credibility. Do you understand that?” an investigator demands. When Kadiatou asks, “But what does my asylum application have to do with this?” she is met with a terrible silence. In the novel, she is forced to rehearse her past more than her assault, told she must “get ahead” of any inconsistencies.
The Lawyers, the Press and a Silent Defense
The defense attorney (in real life) was Benjamin Brafman. He is a legend, the kind of slick, top-tier criminal lawyer you’d see on TV shows like Suits or Boston Legal, known for representing celebrities and billionaires. If Brafman was retained, the client was rich and, to my jaded cynical mind, often guilty. Yet, he never appears in Dream Count. He’s not fictionalized, not even named.
This omission is a fascinating choice by the author. But why? He’s such a rich character. Perhaps it’s because Brafman is alive and might not take kindly to being fictionalized? Or maybe it’s because his power operates so far outside the housekeeper’s sphere that he doesn’t need to be seen. The best work of a criminal defense lawyer, Adichie suggests, may be done behind the scenes, quietly pointing out the weaknesses in a case to ensure a trial never happens at all.
On the other side, Diallo was represented by Kenneth Thompson, a civil rights lawyer who later became Brooklyn’s first Black district attorney. Thompson had cut his teeth successfully prosecuting the 1997 case against NYPD officer Justin Volpe, who had brutally assaulted immigrant Abner Louima. Thompson believed Diallo and publicly defended her, forcefully arguing that her credibility was being distorted by law enforcement leaks and mistranslations. After the criminal case was dismissed, Thompson continued his fight, bringing a civil suit against Strauss-Kahn and a separate suit against the New York Post on Diallo’s behalf, both of which were settled for confidential terms.
When reading this novel, I went back to the news stories from the time. I was shocked to see how biased the reporting was. Someone was clearly leaking from the DA’s office or law enforcement. While the New York Times seemed to be acting as a stenographer for the prosecution’s dropping the case, a British paper like The Guardian gave more space to Thompson’s point of view. Thompson appeared frequently in front of the press to defend his client, often directly challenging the anonymous “well-placed law enforcement officials” who were shaping the public narrative.
What Is Justice?
This book’s deepest legal question is not about guilt or innocence, but about the very nature of justice itself. What does justice look like for Kadiatou? Very early in the book, she isn’t thinking about a verdict; she is thinking, “How will I get a job again after this?” The kind nurse who examines her tells her they must gather evidence “so that can help with the prosecution of your case… to make sure you get justice.” But Kadiatou is more concerned about losing her job as a housekeeper.
Reporters shout at her door, “Kadiatou, this is how you can get justice!” But her friend, Omelogor, scoffs at this notion: “I hate how Americans think money is justice. Winning money in a civil case isn’t justice. How can the government drop the criminal charges? Goodness, everybody in America has lost their bravery.” Kadiatou herself is terrified of testifying, of being disbelieved and of the media frenzy.
The moment the prosecution dismisses the charges is quiet, bureaucratic, and final. In both life and fiction, the rationale is the same: not that the assault didn’t happen, but that the witness could not be trusted.
While the real Diallo was devastated, Adichie imagines a different outcome for Kadiatou. In a heart-wrenching scene, her daughter explains that Kadiatou is actually relieved. “She’s been dreading the court case… she just cries and cries at night.” Justice, it seems, can be an unbearable burden.
Justice, Redefined
The court of public opinion failed Kadiatou. The criminal justice system failed her. But in Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives us a different kind of justice: a powerful, fictional truth that stands in for the verdict that was never rendered.
As Adichie herself put it, “The creative impulse can be roused by the urge to right a wrong, no matter how obliquely. In this case, to ‘write’ a wrong in the balance of stories.” She succeeded.