Well, it seems some people are ready to burn me at the stake because I printed graphic material about a child abuse case and that may have caused the victim more damage or could cause other victims not to report crimes because it might be in the newspaper.
That may all be true. What hasn’t been discussed is how much of those reports were left out of the paper. What wasn’t touched on was the question of how no family member noticed a change in the victim for the three years the abuse took place.
I did not talk about how journalism has long wrestled with handling crimes of a sexual nature. For instance, if someone is hit with an axe handle and robbed, the first or second line of the story will name the victim.
But if the same person is sexually assaulted their name will not be used in the crime reporting. It may be used later if charges are pressed or there is testimony in open court, but it might not be disclosed even then.
One argument is that if sexual assault or abuse is to be treated like any other crime, why is the victim cloaked? Do they have something to be ashamed of?
Absolutely not. Is this somehow more hurtful to name them than to say, name the victim of a robbery or purse snatching?
Or do we keep it quiet to mask the discomfort we all feel – or should feel – when it is brought to our attention that we aren’t safe from this most personal of crimes?
At the end of the argument, sex crimes are not about sex. They about violence and attacks on the powerless by someone who wants to feel powerful.
By disclosing what was done to whom – and let me be perfectly clear, the victim was never named, only identified by their relationship to their abuser – it shows how heinous, how sickening these acts are, how sick this person is and how lucky we are the victims are brave enough to come forward and say what happened.
Let’s stop pretending this doesn’t happen here, to our kids. Let’s stop pretending that our neighbor or a city employee or a relative would never do something like that, pretending the victim got it wrong, that they simply misunderstood or imagined or made up what happened.
Instead, let’s uphold our law enforcement and courts when they arrest, prosecute and sentence these sick bastards to long terms in prison.
When it is on the front page, including the punishment, maybe then would be abusers will find a dark hole, climb in and pull it in after themselves. Or get mental help.
More likely they will head to another little town where they can hide in plain sight as just another good old neighbor, employee, pastor.
Until we are willing to face the uncomfortable truth and continue to expose – and write- about this nasty reality, it will continue to flourish in the dark under the rug where it has been swept.