A week ago the Salt Lake Tribune used an Associated Press story about a Utah National Guard sergeant who reported she was raped in the tent of her Saudi airman boyfriend by one of his friends during Desert Storm.
AP says the woman gave permission to be identified, and the story did so by name, age and her Guard unit (144th Evacuation Hospital).The story is another landmark here in the shifting attitudes toward a longtime taboo. The traditional posture of the press has been to withhold identification of a rape victim unless it is inescapable, as when she is slain. It rests on the belief that the harsh light of publicity could compound the stigma and traumatize the woman anew, while the fear of exposure could keep many from prosecuting.
Now we are hearing more of the countering argument, that openness can be healthy, in fact is needed to erase the stigma of rape and help us as a society to deal with this repulsive crime of violence.
The Des Moines Register, whose woman editor subscribes to the latter view, won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its groundbreaking series of articles in which a rape victim detailed the crime and her resultant sojourn through the justice system. That series was the most discussed ethics case among editors and reporters in at least a year.
- SEVERAL PROMINENT WOMEN who have suffered rape have since come forward to tell their experiences. These include the actress Kelly McGillis, whose story, "The Healing," was in Parade magazine last February.
Hillary Groutage, a reporter in the Salt Lake bureau of AP, wrote the soldier's story. She says the woman called AP asking that her experience be publicized not because she wanted to bring charges but because she wanted women soldiers to be better trained against harassment and attack.
One argument for disclosure that figured prominently in the AP's decision to ask for permission to use the name was that the victim should not be granted anonymity or consideration that the rape suspect does not enjoy. (The AP did not use the accused man's name but did inexplicably and unnecessarily use the name of the Saudi airman.)
AP gave the victim a nudge toward disclosure. "We made it clear that it was important that she be forthright and shouldn't be throwing around accusations she wasn't willing to stand behind," Groutage says. Once she decided to come forward with her experience, the soldier did so widely, to her chaplain and commander and in a "very detailed" letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, Groutage says. The AP story said the woman admitted her relationship with the Saudi airman was "probably unwise and that by telling her story she is leaving herself wide open to second-guessing. So be it, she says."
- AND USE OF THE VICTIM'S NAME without her consent will continue certainly for the foreseeable future to be a fringe practice open to wide condemnation, as was the case when many prominent media publicized the name of the complaining witness in the William Kennedy Smith rape case earlier this year.
Meanwhile, both the press and the victims will continue to exhibit some confusion and ambivalence about the new openness.
As a case in point, two dailies in Albuquerque differed in the ways they identified a victim, one using her name but not her picture, the other her picture but not her name. The woman had given permission for use of her picture, which showed her testifying in a hearing. She argued that by doing so she was standing up for all women. But she says she "felt violated" when her name was printed.
Furthermore, the public doesn't appear to believe that the media really agonizes over this issue. A survey by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press this summer found that 70 percent of respondents rejected a policy of revealing rape victims' names, period. Moreover, 80 percent said they thought that media that did use names were impelled by no noble motive, but only to sell more papers.
Because the issue is so volatile, editors are going to need a lot of understanding, patience and discernment in judging individual cases.
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A partial reprint
The New York Times, which has shown much interest in Utah and Mormonism, devoted in its Sunday edition a week ago a front page story, a full page on the inside, two related stories, five pictures and a chart to the growth of the LDS Church and the problems growth was bringing.
The Deseret News reprinted part of the Times' main story and one of the sidebar pieces. In a precede to the main article the News said, "The following article appeared Sunday on the front page of the New York Times." It did not tell the reader that the story it carried was a pruned version of the Times article. The second story, about missionary tracting in New York City, was carried in its entirety.
Articles picked up from news services or syndicates are not sacrosanct and can be and often are routinely cut down to meet space and makeup requirements, usually without explanation to the readers. Because of the sensitive nature of the information to a large part of its readership and to its church ownership, the News should in this case, however, have indicated that the story was a condensation of the Times article.
Overall I found the Times positive and fair. Much of even what the News chose to retain was, however, by no means particularly flattering and must have touched a nerve with the paper's ownership. To me some material in the News story seemed more critical than points that were excised. The deleted paragraphs included mention of Mark Hofmann's forgeries, the church's attitude toward the Equal Rights Amendment and comments by the editor of Sunstone, a journal of liberal Mormon thought that the church leaders scorn.
The best and most responsible option was to run the story in full. If the News did not wish to include these issues it had still other options than the one it chose: It was under no compulsion to run the story at all and could have ignored it. It could have simply written a news story on the Times coverage. Or it could have explained that its article was a condensation. It also might have run the article in full with a response from church authorities on the accuracy of its facts and adequacy of its interpretations.
Whatever course it chose, it should not have left the reader with the idea that the article was a verbatim reprint of what appeared outside our area.