Newspapers routinely publish the names of people who’ve been murdered, or assaulted, or kidnapped, or had any number of other horrible things done to them. But when a woman is raped, most have policies banning the use of names.
This came to a head yesterday, when the two teenaged girls who were kidnapped in California were found. CNN and the rest had been running the girls’ names and photos all day (in the absurd overkill way we’ve gotten used to — but that’s another complaint). Then, when the girls were rescued and they told investigators they’d been raped, suddenly their names and photos disappeared.
(For instance, this is today’s New York Times story — no names. Yesterday’s, which included names, seems to have been taken down from the web site. This is the AP story after the girls were rescued but before they said they were raped — complete with names; this is the story after — no names.)
Anyone else think this is absurd? To me, this just dates back to the old premise that a woman who’d been raped was somehow spoiled and shamed, that she was somehow at fault. Is being raped somehow more shameful than being beaten or murdered? Not publishing the name (and thus treating it like every other crime) just increases the stigma attached to being a victim of the crime.
Here are a few other pieces on the topic.
13 thoughts on “publishing rape victim names”
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Just happen to be in L.A. right now, and this is a huge topic on the air waves. In this case, like you said, the parents released the names first in hopes this would help find the children, and only after was it realized the rapes had occurred.
Here, I believe, it’s tough to blame the media for holding onto its old policies. They’re simply not prepared for the occurence – I can’t remember any other time something of this nature was realized after the fact… can you?
Perhaps this will open up your discussion at the appropriate editorial meetings.
I’m confused as to why the media feels it necessary to report that the girls were raped. It’s none of their business (or ours). Beyond the fact that the girls are safe and the man has been killed, I don’t see why the rape should be reported. If the girls speak out to the press, perhaps that’s different, but from what I understand they only told the police (??) And they are minors…shouldn’t their parents have some say in the matter as well?
I don’t blame the press for freaking out and taking down the names. I just disagree with the policy in the first place.
Karen, do you think the media should not report the rape of a child? How about the murder of a child? Is that no one’s business, either? Is it different if it’s a 24-year-old woman being raped, or a disabled man, or a 83-year-old grandmother?
I think there’s some room for debate on how much the media should report on the victims of crime. But my point is that rape victims shouldn’t be treated any differently than murder victims, assault victims, or any other victim of violent crime. To treat them differently is to tell the reader that being raped is more of a stigma and more shameful than being a different sort of victim.
I’m with you on this one, Josh. I found it ridiculous that my old paper stopped using the name of an 8-year-old who was abducted only after she escaped and it was discovered she’d been sexually assaulted. I, too, think such policies reinforce the notion that a sexual assault somehow tarnishes the reputation of the female victim in a way that some other assault doesn’t.
In 2002 America, I don’t think this has anything to do with stigma. Do you think a woman is less worthy because she’s been raped? I don’t know anyone who does, either. But to say rape is the same as robbery or murder is absurd. The symbolic, let alone physical, horror of being raped is very different — at least when you’re dead you don’t have to read about the deed in the paper. I’ve been beaten and robbed before (thank you, Washington, D.C.) and got over it in about a week. Rape is just different — perhaps this can only be grasped if you’re a woman (?). I encourage women who’ve been raped to not be victims for too long, sure, and it can be done. But I agree with Karen on the level that the public doesn’t have to know the names of rape victims, but it does need to know that the crime has occured. And if this is a double standard, then we should go an alternate direction of not naming the victim of any crime (unless they want to be named), instead.
I’m sure hundreds of crimes happen everyday that the newspapers don’t report – how do you decide in a newsroom what gets reported anyhow?
In this particular case, I don’t think that *I* needed to know that the girls were raped. The guy is no longer a danger to society – he’s dead. I can only say that if it was me and I was raped, I would NOT want my name reported. That’s irrational, I realize, and your point is definately more logical. I’m sure the policy will eventually change. But at a gut level, would you want everyone in your office to know you had been raped if it happened to you?
Christy – you make an excellent point – rape IS different. It is a personal violation in a way that assault, battery, even murder isn’t.
this is exactly the kind of catch 22 that has a lot of people hating us media types. well, that and fox news.
Obviously this is a complex issue. I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Josh, I completely agree with you that the policy of withholding information about a rape is disturbing insofar as it perpetuates the view of the victim as tainted.
On the other hand, I do at some visceral level agree with Christy and Karen that rape, and sexual battery more generally, are fundamentally different crimes from murder and battery and the panoply of other non-sexual crimes. I realize that there’s no bright-line distinction between these categories. Of course murder can be sexually motivated. But, in my gut, I feel there’s an intuitive division. It’s a different kind of invasion, a different kind of harm.
So I guess I do think it makes sense to give the victim or her (or his, since forcible sodomy and forcible oral-genital contact can involve men and boys, and while these crimes are less common than male-female sex crimes they do happen) family the option of keeping the name out of the papers. But I’ll admit that the counter-arguments are compelling.
Good thoughts.
Here’s something, though: rape is, by its nature, something that could potentially happen in any sexual encounter. Rape is sex gone wrong, in some ways. (Obviously, it’s a crime of power, not sex, but the physical act has the same dynamic of otherwise healthy sex– in the nuts-and-bolts sense only, of course.) These girls will hopefully eventually be able to have sex with loving, willing, nurturing partners someday. And maybe they won’t see their assailant’s face on their partner– but I bet there will be moments when it’s just too close, too familiar. Getting stabbed or beaten is something that is always wrong, always unfortunate, never questioned. Same for getting mugged, robbed, etc. And you don’t have to turn around and have “similar” experiences with loving, nurturing people and be expected to handle it– enjoy it, even!
All that to say that these girls will understandably have some big issues with sex in the future. And it would probably be easier if it weren’t public knowledge.
So what’s the solution? Obviously, it was important to have their faces everywhere until they were found. But can’t the police department (and media, in the stories that followed) practice a little more discretion? If they had been stabbed, I wouldn’t need to know that… how about “they were assaulted?” That would suffice, I think.
It seems appropriate. You remove their names from online sites and databases and news stories, they can get on with their lives a little faster – the public has a short memory.
Nothing personal Josh, but I don’t think newspapers naming names will have any effect on the way rape is seen as opposed to a mugging.
Besides, these girls were minors. In B.C. juvenile victims of crime are almost never named. And that seems like a good policy to me. How “the community” reacts when it’s your high school is pretty different from the community at large.
I believe in most European press, names and pictures are NEVER used except in the rare case of a missing child that the media thinks may be helped by publicising his or her name and photo. Adult victims of rape, robbery, assault – whatever – simply are not named. It has no bearing on the news being reported, and EU privacy laws are MUCH stronger than US ones (a good thing, I think.)What does it matter if you know it’s “John Smith, 34, of Portsmouth” or “a 34 year of man from Portsmouth?” It makes no difference to anyone, unless you know the person personally. In that case, it should be up to the victim to decide who he or she wants to tell about it. I guess it’s only the weak personal privacy protection laws of the US that keep papers and TV stations from having their shirts sued off of them.
That being said, I think it’s OK to separate rape from other crimes in a naming policy. It’s more personal than other crimes, and has more physical and psychological consequences. For instance, maybe a girl gets pregnant and wants to keep the baby, or maybe she ends up with HIV or hepatitis. That shouldn’t be anyone’s business but hers. I do understand your “shame” arguement, but here I think the possible negatives of our closed society outweigh the possibility of the media being able to transform it into a more open one by trying to de-stigmatize rape in this manner. Like I asid, I don’t think names should ever be used in reporting run-of-the-mill crimes with non-famous people.