TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040990/0409620.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                ETHICS, Page 71

Going Public with Rape


Should victims be identified when the crime is sexual assault?

By JOHN ELSON -- Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York


    Not in years had the Des Moines Register published anything
that drew such passionate national response. For five days
beginning in February, the Register (weekday circ. 210,000) ran
meticulously detailed stories about a 29-year-old mother who
had been abducted and raped. The series contained a graphic
account of the assault and the woman's subsequent experience
as a witness at her assailant's trial. To many Iowans, the most
riveting fact about the series was that the victim chose to let
the Register use her real name. By going public, said Nancy
Ziegenmeyer, she hoped to focus attention on this underreported
crime and thereby prevent other women from being raped.

    The Register's editors, who expected a torrent of canceled
ads and subscriptions, were surprised by Iowa's overwhelmingly
favorable reaction. Even more calls of support poured in after
a story about the series was front-paged by the New York Times
last week. Geneva Overholser, the Register's editor, believes
strongly that the American press should be franker in reporting
sexual assaults. "We are participating in the stigma of rape
by treating victims of this crime differently," says
Overholser. "When we as a society refuse to talk openly about
rape, I think we weaken our ability to deal with it."

    The Register series appeared at a time when the U.S. press
seems to be abandoning its largely self-imposed rules about
protecting individual privacy. The press once routinely
shielded the identity of juvenile defendants. Now stories often
name youths who have been arraigned on offenses major enough
to warrant their trial as adults. Even mainstream publications
have begun to practice "outing" -- that is, disclosing the
homosexual preferences of closeted celebrities. Most papers now
clearly state in obituaries that individuals died of AIDS.
Within days of Malcolm Forbes' death, several journals noted
rumors about the publisher's gay affairs.

    Rape has long been treated by the American press as a
special situation. Hiding the victim's name, the argument went,
protected her from the secondary trauma of exposure to prurient
public attention. Journalistic policy elsewhere varies. The
Code of Practice, drawn up by Britain's Press Council,
prohibits newspapers from naming rape victims without their
consent. In France, on the contrary, adult rape victims are
usually named. In the U.S. three states have confidentiality
laws that protect the identity of rape victims. But these are
in limbo, largely because of the 1989 Supreme Court ruling in
Florida Star v. B.J.F. The court overturned a $100,000 damage
judgment against a Jacksonville weekly that had been charged
with violating Florida's law by printing the name of a rape
victim, even though she had been identified in a police report.


    Although few favor mandatory disclosure, there seems to be
an emerging consensus that women should be encouraged to admit
that they have been victims of a form of assault for which they
need bear no guilt. "There's still a tendency to blame the
victim," says Sarah Burns, of the NOW Legal Defense and
Education Fund. To help demythologize the crime, some prominent
women have openly acknowledged that they were victims of sexual
assault. In a law-review article, Susan Estrich, Michael
Dukakis' campaign manager, admitted she had been raped. So did
actress Kelly McGillis, co-star of The Accused, a grimly
realistic film based loosely on the 1983 gang rape of a woman
in a New Bedford, Mass., bar.

    Deni Elliott, director of Dartmouth's Ethics Institute,
contends that "ultimately we're doing women a disservice by
separating rape from other violent crimes." A celebrated case
in point is that of the Central Park jogger, three of whose
alleged assaulters go on trial this month. Because she was
raped, newspapers and TV stations have generally refrained from
using her name. "If she had merely been beaten and left for
dead," Elliott notes, "she would have been named." One journal
that did name the jogger was the black-oriented Amsterdam News.
Editor in chief Wilbert Tatum argues that the city's mainstream
press is guilty of hypocrisy for guarding the identity of a
well-to-do white woman while it "stigmatized" the lower-class
black youths accused of raping her by naming them even before
they were indicted.

    There are, of course, dissenters from the idea of greater
disclosure. Los Angeles psychotherapist Nancy Kless, who
specializes in treating crime victims, contends that the
"secondary injury" of being named can impede patients'
recovery. Irene Nolan, managing editor of the Louisville
Courier-Journal, wishes her paper could name rape victims but
concedes that such a move might deter some women from reporting
assaults to police. "I would like to change the paper's
policy, but I don't think our community is ready for it," says
Nolan.

    In an imperfect world, rights inevitably conflict. There can
never be an absolute way of determining whether the press's
right to the truth has priority over a citizen's right to
privacy. In the case of rape, it may be that the traditional
policy of reticence, even if quaintly motivated, still makes
sense. Many women applaud Ziegenmeyer's courage. Not every rape
victim can be expected to possess it.