GUIDELINES FOR ACCURATELY COVERING MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Do not imply that a survivor of VAWG might be somehow, even partly, to blame for the violence she experienced, nor assume/imply that any of her behaviours might have triggered/avoided the abuse.
Do not blame something or someone else for the violence (e.g. substance misuse, sexual history, family background, the assumed negligence of parents, marital status, culture, religion, appearance).
Most newspapers articles reporting on gender-based violence focus on the way an abused woman behaved before the attack. This attention to ‘what she did’ and ‘why she did it’ inadvertently suggests that she is (at least partly) to blame for what happened to her and that had she behaved differently, the abuse could have been avoided. Thus, the responsibility for the violence automatically shifts from the abuser to the abused. Alternatively, some reports blame a third person (quite often the woman's parents) for causing the abuse.
Sometimes external factors, such as alcohol, drugs or clothing are held responsible for the violence.
Such reporting benefits neither men nor women. Blaming women for their own victimisation also implicitly casts men as not responsible for their own behaviour, helpless in the presence of a mini-skirt and compelled to rape should an opportunity arise. This is insulting to both men and women and only benefits rapists.
The following reports are problematic because they respectively focus on how the victim was dressed, how much she had been drinking and the victim's mother negligence, instead of firmly placing the responsibility with the perpetrator. Moreover, they suggest that different behaviours might have averted the violence.
Alcohol, in particular, is often blamed for women's victimisation and it becomes one of the main factors to judge women's credibility.
On the night she died, she was wearing a white crop top, short blue denim skirt, white high heels and carrying a white Prada handbag.
(The Daily Telegraph, 23.02.2008)
Certainly , Hayley Jordan had been drinking too much. In fact, the 20-year-old had become so tipsy while attending a neighbour's afternoon barbecue with her two small sons that she had been grateful when three new friends had offered to make sure that she and her boys got home.
(The Independent, 13.08.2008)
Alcohol is neither an excuse, nor a cause for domestic or sexual violence. In cases of domestic abuse, for example, responsible journalists could point out that men bear the responsibility for their actions, not alcohol, and that violent men use violence towards their partners even when they are sober.
The following excerpts clearly imply that rape and murder were the victim's mother's fault (and partly the victim's fault because she had been taking drugs and drinking heavily), the cumulative effect is that these reports completely obscure the responsibility and culpability of the perpetrator.
But isn't there an even better chance that Scarlett would still be alive if her own mother had not abandoned her for several weeks after an argument and recklessly continued her own holiday? Instead the blonde teenager, as tempting as a ripe peach , was left in the care
of a 25-year-old tour guide a local man she'd only recently met. (Daily Mail, 12.03.2008)
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He had spent seven months in custody after the 15-year-old was found dead in the resort of
Anjuna following her mother Fiona MacKeown's decision to continue a six-month holiday by travelling in the region without her. […] The barman says Scarlett was a tragedy waiting to happen due to what he claims was her mother's negligent attitude to her upbringing. He claims Mrs MacKeown was fully aware that Scarlett was drinking heavily and taking drugs
throughout their family holiday in Goa. (Mail on Sunday, 28.09.2008)
The focus on the victim's appearance (‘a blonde teenager’) is not only irrelevant, but it is also implying that the appearance and/or the behaviour of a woman might be the motivating factor behind the violence.
Adding irrelevant details has an ideological significance and in this case it suggests that by behaving less promiscuously or dressing less provocatively, women can avoid being attacked. This completely ignores the prevalence of rape within cultures where women are rarely seen with any flesh on display and are only infrequently in the presence of men to whom they are unrelated. It would be more accurate to focus on the abuser's behaviour and his responsibility, instead of highlighting irrelevant details.
The following excerpt shows how sometimes the blame is put on social changes, which, all too frequently, refers to the higher levels of freedom that women enjoy today and once again, implicitly blames women for being victimised.
Promiscuity among young people and the failure of police and prosecutors to put enough effort into investigating cases are two of the principal causes in the collapse in the number of rape convictions, the country's top law officers say today. […] ‘ There is a lot of drinking and a lot of casual sex. Young people are drinking heavily and are pretty promiscuous,’ he said. ‘You have social and sexual complexity, misunderstandings, taking advantage, and ambiguity.’ This, he said, was making the criminal justice system ‘quite a blunt instrument’.
[...] ‘We have only partially driven through the cultural change. It's attitudes that are stopping the police and the CPS attacking cases with vigour : because they think there's a
low chance of conviction, they don't put much effort in’. (The Guardian, 15.01.2008)
These comments assume that rape happens only among young and drunk people, which is factually incorrect. Moreover, there is a total shift of responsibility for low conviction rates from the police and the institutions to young people and their behaviours.
Of course, this article is reporting the words of an interviewee rather than being the words of the journalist. The following excerpt from The Daily Telegraph, commenting on the same statement shows how this can be done:
I think what the pair of them were trying to say is that, because girls are now prone to getting drunk all the time and occasionally consenting to sex before marriage as a result, they shouldn't expect the law to take them seriously if, on the odd occasion, they don't consent to it. Which can be broken down further to: women are all drunken sluts and only a fool would believe one who says she didn't want to have sex. […] Going out and getting blind drunk may make one vulnerable to crazed sex attackers, but alcohol does not make the violent act of rape any more excusable than, say, wearing a low-cut mini-dress does. Sir
Ken and Miss Baird are looking at ways to shake up the way in which we treat rape victims.
Thank goodness for that. Because, at the moment, we seem to treat them with the kind of
suspicion normally reserved for criminals. (The Daily Telegraph, 17.01.2008)
Do not make the perpetrator invisible by using passive tenses (e.g. domestic violence does not kill two women a week, male partners do).
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Another common way of obscuring the perpetrator's responsibility for the crime is to use some linguistic strategies which manipulate the readers' attention and which distort the gendered nature of abuses against women.
‘A TEENAGE girl suffered an horrific sexual assault in a church car park early yesterday.’
(The Sun, 01.01.2008)
Harriet McCormick, 20, was a happy woman until she was attacked on a night out with friends, her mother Cheryl told Cardiff Coroner's Court. Mrs McCormick, of Radyr, Cardiff, said that her daughter was raped in a car park in Cardiff in 2006 by a man she had met earlier that night . (The Times, 26.01.2008)
In the excerpts above, the fact that violence flows from the male to the female is backgrounded and what is foregrounded is the goal (the woman) and the act (the attack). The agency of men is deleted or it comes into the picture later in the text, as if it were a minor detail. Expressions such as ‘she was raped’, ‘the attack happened’, remove the male agency from the incident.
SCARLETT KEELING, the British teenager found dead in Goa, was murdered by having her head held under the sea for up to 10 minutes, her mother's lawyer claimed last night. (The
Sunday Telegraph, 23.03.2008)
MacKeown had been travelling with her boyfriend and other children in the neighbouring state of Karnataka when her daughter, who had been allowed to stay in Goa, was killed .
(The Guardian, 12.04.2008)
When she was 12 Emma ran away, and was abused into prostitution on the streets, where
she slept rough. (The Guardian, 23.07.2008)
The examples above show how, in some cases, the abuser is absolutely not present in the report.
In some cases, the abuse is represented as a mere misunderstanding between two people or a failure of the woman in making herself understood.
Women always retain the right to say no whatever condition they are in. But if they have been drinking, they may not be able to make that clear to someone stronger than them who doesn't wish to hear it . (Daily Mail, 13.08.2008)
In this excerpt, if a man ‘does not wish to hear it’, and is ‘someone stronger than them’ he is not going to listen to her ‘no’ whether she is sober or not. As such the inclusion of alcohol is an irrelevant distraction and serves only the function of excusing the perpetrator.
Avoid referring to a person who has been abused as ‘victim’ or ‘accuser’. Many women who have been abused refer to themselves as ‘survivors’ rather than ‘victims’.
Referring to a woman who has been abused can be a tricky issue. The mainstream media usually use the word ‘victim’. Although, for legal purposes, this can be understandable, journalists might want to take into consideration some of the implications related to the use of this word before using it. A victim is by definition helpless and vulnerable, a victim is deprived of autonomy. Reports often fail to remind readers that women do not expect, nor do they accept male violence against them and an abused woman can resist, seek help and actually cope with and survive the attack. Unfortunately, if a woman shows any sign of recovering from what is represented as the crime that women (are expected to) fear most - even more than murder - they are very likely to be labelled as unreliable or not legitimate ‘victims’.
The following excerpt focuses on the words of the defence lawyer who casts doubt on the woman's credibility:
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Rape victim upset? Well she's smiling on Facebook said lawyer (headline)
A BARRISTER has caused outrage by suggesting a rape victim could not have been upset by
her ordeal because there were photos of her on Facebook looking happy. (Daily Mail,
13.10.2008)
Newspapers reports often convey the voice of authoritative sources like judges or lawyers, who often tend to make sensationalistic statements, either about the survivor or about the perpetrator. Such comments, like in the report above, can be biased and should therefore be avoided or at least not presented as headline, since they are very likely to channel readers' interpretation of the story into one direction, which is actually simply the defence strategy for the perpetrator and definitely not the whole story.
What the mainstream press often does is to represent women as ‘ideal victims’ of men. As such, they are likely to be portrayed as ‘terrified’, ‘shocked’, ‘devastated’, ‘distraught’,
‘defenceless’, ‘poor’, ‘horrified’, ‘immobilized’, ‘innocent’, ‘petrified’, ‘traumatized’, or even
‘blood-soaked’ victims. If the woman shows on her body the signs of violence, she is more likely to be considered a ‘reliable victim’, that fits the still too popular myth that women are ‘lured’ by rapists and ‘dragged behind a bush’ and ‘subjected to appalling ordeals’. Too many articles about gender-based violence seem to be only interested in sordid details, and the more the better. The following is an example of an almost perfect victim: extremely young, terrified and, above all, a virgin, i.e. not promiscuous.
He didn't return and six days later pounced on the terrified 16-year-old virgin after sleeping
rough in Cumbernauld in August last year. (The Sun, 23.02.2008)
Instead of focusing on such irrelevant details, what journalists should do is explain that abuse can trigger several reactions and there is no such thing like the ‘ideal reaction’. A woman can be too paralysed with shock or fear to react, whilst others may be able to fight (at the cost of experiencing more violence), but under no circumstances should a report imply that one reaction is better than the other and that, if a woman does not ‘cry’, ‘sob’ or is not ‘hysterical’ after the attack, then she loses credibility. Likewise, if a survivor shows signs of recovery, this should be applauded rather than used to cast doubt on her truthfulness. In reality, women react in a variety of ways, cope in a variety of ways and heal at different rates. There is no ‘right’ way. For this reason, journalists might want to consider the possibility of using the word
‘survivor’ instead of ‘victim’ when referring to an abused woman, not because the abuse was not traumatising or appalling, but because in doing so the press would contribute to representing gender-based violence as something which is not inescapable and that women are not doomed to be forever defined by the experience.
The word ‘accuser’ is also worth a remark. Legally speaking, someone is an ‘accuser’ and not a
‘victim’ until the accused is proven guilty. However, referring to an abused woman as ‘the accuser’ means shifting the attention from the actions of the perpetrator to the survivor who is now doing something to the accused. It is a matter of shifting the perspective from the crime being committed and the act of accusing someone of committing it.
Do not write the story assuming that she is lying and he is innocent.
In cases of false allegations, provide facts and figures to show that they are a small minority of cases.
Although false allegations of rape are only about 2% of all rapes reported, they tend to get a lot of media attention, again, supporting the myth that women go around making up rape
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allegations in order to cover up an affair or to take revenge against men. It is worth bearing in mind that only around 10-15% of rapes ever get reported; indeed all forms of violence against women and girls are chronically under-reported to the police. When a finding has been made of a false allegation, in the interests of accuracy and fairness, journalists could point out that these cases are the exception rather than the rule and they could provide figures, statistics and/or experts' voices about all the rapes that never go to court, the effects of sexual and domestic violence, how distressful and humiliating a rape trial can be, the reasons why a woman would rather avoid reporting abuse, the huge economic, social and health costs of gender-based violence to society and how much of it is hidden. These figures are too often not eported in the news, while, in comparison, incidents of false accusations are highly over-reported. The following example totally reverses the reality of facts:
The judge wondered why the case had been brought before him, so patently innocent was
Gillett. The answer, of course, is that the government has got it into its head that too few men are being convicted. There is political pressure to prosecute and convict. In fact the number of prosecutions for rape and sexual assault has remained pretty much the same over the past decade -it is only the proportion of convictions that has dropped. This might be because more fictitious cases are brought before the courts . As usual, Gillett's ‘victim’
remains anonymous and unprosecuted. (The Sunday Times, 09.03.2008)
The words ‘rape’, ‘victim’ or ‘violence’ are often written with inverted commas in news reports.
‘Girl 'raped' by student’, for example, gives the impression that the allegation is untrue, especially when we compare how other crimes are reported. You would hardly see a headline such as ‘Man 'burgled' by gang’, or ‘Man 'assaulted' by thugs’.
Likewise, journalists should carefully consider the use of the word ‘allegedly’ to avoid suggesting that it is the survivor's words which will need to be proven, thus shifting the burden of proof onto the woman. Whilst not always inappropriate, it is interesting that few publications consistently use ‘allegedly’ across all crime types.
Warren Blackwell, 38, spent three years in jail as a convicted sex attacker until his ‘victim’ was unmasked as a fantasist . (Daily Mail, 01.01.2008)
An original inquest found that Miss Kercher, a Leeds University student from Coulsdon,
Surrey, was the victim of ‘sexual violence'' after she refused to take part in a sex game.
(The Daily Telegraph, 01.02.2008)
They DID attack me, says girl in rugby 'rape' case. (Daily Mail, 05.07.2008)
Expressions such as ‘wicked’, ‘evil’, ‘minx’ or ‘cry-rape girl’ should be avoided. On the contrary, if allegations have been dropped, journalists should explain why, instead of delivering a judgemental and biased interpretation. Considering that many rapes or domestic violence cases consist of one person's word against another's, if the complainant retracts her allegation, journalists should not assume or portray the story as if the original allegation was false. What journalists should avoid is the omission of fundamental details which would cast a different light on the situation. In particular, a good report would explain whether the allegations have been withdrawn by the complainant (and if possible why), whether the trial did not lead to a conviction for lack of evidence or whether the woman admitted to lying about the abuse.
Moreover, it is common that a woman who withdraws her allegation and/or denies that the abuse ever took place does so not because she wants to pervert the course of justice but because of intimidation, pressure, fear of not being believed, the depth of the traumatic responses being experienced and so on.
Rape is not to be associated with ‘sex’ or ‘love’, as if consent was present. Likewise, domestic violence is never a ‘crime of passion’ caused by ‘too much love’ or ‘excessive love’.
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One of the persistent myths about gender-based violence (and in particular about rape) is that this kind of abuse is lust or desire ‘gone wrong’. Media coverage is particularly inaccurate and problematic when contributing to this stereotype.
Mr Thompson enslaved his ex-lover, forcing her to have sex with men against her will . On another occasion, her boyfriend could not afford to pay to use a computer in a London cyber cafe, so agreed to a member of staff having oral sex with her instead. (The
Independent, 03.012.2008)
Teen sex victims 'not all naïve'. (The Sunday Times, 09.03.2008)
' Quickie rape' by TV's Ben. (The Sun, 17.10.2008)
A MALE nurse was jailed yesterday for having sex with a teenage girl who was taken to
hospital after a drug overdose. (The Sun, 19.01.2008)
Rugby: England players face the possibility of sex case remaining open indefinitely: No time-limit for police to bring charges over claim: Extradition threat if new evidence is
uncovered. (The Guardian, 21.06.2008)
Braithwaite, from Shepherd's Bush in West London, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to murder and sexual penetration without consent . (The Times, 28.06.2008)
The above examples use ‘sex’ as the motivation behind the violence. It would have been more appropriate to replace them with the word ‘rape’ or ‘abuse’ or ‘violence’, in order to place the incident within the framework of power-related abuses rather than sexually-driven attacks.
Journalists should avoid using ‘sex urges’, ‘sexual gratification’, ‘sex pleasure’ ‘sexual frustration’ or ‘sexual fantasies’ to explain rape. Moreover, expressions such as ‘sex scandal’,
‘sex session’, ‘sexual intercourse’, ‘sex act’, ‘sex case’, ‘sexual encounter’, ‘sex games’, ‘sex charges’ fail to point out a fundamental difference between sex and rape, sex involves consent, while rape does not.
Other expressions can be problematic, even though they imply the presence of violence and abuse. ‘Sexual assault’, ‘sexual attack’, ‘sex crime’, ‘sexual murder’, ‘sexual violation’, ‘sex terror’, while framing the incident as ‘violent’, place the attention on the sexual aspect of it, thus diverting readers' attention from the motivations which underlie rape, that is the intention of humiliating another human being and, in the case of gender-based violence, a way for men to force their will and control over women. Rapes of heterosexual men against other men do exist and they are very unlikely to be sexually-driven crimes. On the contrary, in those cases the other person is being punished and humiliated through the use of force, showing how rape is not really about sex. Therefore, once the crime has been framed as rape in the beginning of the article, there would be no need to use the word ‘sex’ later on, considering that the above-mentioned expressions perfectly work even without this pre-modifier. ‘Assaults’, ‘attacks’, ‘murders’,
‘violations’ are the crimes, not sex. Euphemisms such as ‘forcing someone to have sex with someone against their will’ should be avoided, ‘rape’ should be preferred instead. And, finally,
‘rape’ and ‘quickie’ should never occur in the same sentence.
The association between sex and rape leads to a mentality where the rape of a virgin is considered to be far more serious than the rape of a woman considered promiscuous. On this continuum based on women's chastity, the rape of a prostitute is considered the least serious, because ‘sex’ is her job anyway (see page 9 for more details on reporting abuses against prostituted women). Media coverage is inaccurate when it perpetuates myths and stereotypes about violence against women and it does so when it fails to identify rape as one means to maintain power and control of men over women.
When reporting on cases of sexual violence, avoid focusing on the morbid details of the violence
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and presenting rape as soft pornography/titillating news. Add a ‘sexually violent content’ warning.
A direct consequence of reporting rape as a ‘sexual intercourse’ is that many news reports contain irrelevant sexual details and descriptions of the abuse, whose cumulative effect leads to the feeling that reporters are describing a soft-core pornographic story rather than an incident of rape and the line between the two is often blurred.
The gang beat the teenager before taking turns to rape her in an empty house in
Tottenham, North London. One detective said: ‘ After they had finished raping her , the gang
poured caustic soda over the girl to try and get rid of DNA evidence. (The Sun, 15.01.2008)
Her shorts and underpants had been removed and her bra-top pushed up around her neck ,
according to local people who found her body. (The Times, 03.03.2008)
Paul Watson, 18, floored his 27-year-old victim before ripping off her trousers and underwear and trying to remove her bra . (The Sun, 26.01.2008)
TWO men were last night facing life sentences for murder after a charity worker was strangled in a kinky sex game . Robert McCarry, 36, claimed Nicola West, 34, died accidentally after she asked to be throttled to heighten her pleasure as they had sex in a car . But a jury heard he killed Nicola to avoid being charged with raping her as his friend
Paul Waters watched from the front seat . (The Sun, 04.01.2008)
The examples above are filled with sex, violent sex maybe, but still sex. When journalists focus their attention on such details, they fail to represent rape in the wider context of gender-based abuse, which should be treated as a problematic issue beyond single incidents (see page 13 for more details on contextualization of gender-based violence as a social issue).
Journalists should keep in mind that narrating all the particulars of the attack is not necessary and that, in fact, such details can be extremely disturbing to read (for the survivor, her family but also for other readers in general, many of whom will also be sexual violence survivors).
Therefore, if journalists still feel that it is absolutely necessary to include such details because the word ‘rape’ itself does not evoke enough pain and humiliation, they should add a ‘sexually violent content’ warning to the article, so that people are prepared and can avoid reading it, if they feel it would negatively affect them. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a common consequence of sexual violence and attacks can be terrifying and debilitating.
In addition to a detailed account of the attack, journalists often concentrate their attention on women's appearance, describing them in terms of their physical attributes. Thus an abused woman becomes a ‘beauty’, a ‘blonde’, a ‘redhead’, a ‘brunette’ or a ‘slim’, ‘attractive’
‘female’.
A BEAUTY has accused two England rugby stars of rape after having sex with them
WILLINGLY, it was claimed last night. (The Sun, 19.06.2008)
One of the witnesses is David Strettle, who bedded blonde Sophie Lewis, 22, in another
room. (The Sun, 23.06.2008)
As mobs set fire to a nearby petrol station and police opened fire in the air, three young men took advantage of the mayhem to grab a slim woman of about 20, dressed in white jeans and a blue top, who appeared to have been inadvertently caught up in the violence.
(The Daily Telegraph, 04.01.2008)
Mr Altman added: ‘The idea that in one and the same place in the early hours of the morning of September 25, 2004, there was not only a homicidal maniac who motivelessly stabbed a beautiful young woman to death but also a sex offender is a ludicrous claim
borne out of desperation’. (The Times, 06.02.2008)
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Instead of focusing on how an abused woman looks, how beautiful and slim she is/was, journalists should illustrate how gender-based violence is not a phenomenon which only affects beautiful, young women and that there are no links between her (lack of) beauty and her odds of being assaulted.
A valid alternative to an unnecessarily detailed account of the assault could be explaining the nature of the crime. Interviews with experts and practitioners might be used in order to deliver a wider picture of this widespread phenomenon and to explain how it is not about sex but about power and domination.
Do not refer to the abuser as a ‘monster’, ‘fiend’, ‘maniac’ or ‘beast’, implying that abusers are an exceptional deviation from the norm.
When the line between rape and sex is not clearly drawn, the next step is the identification of the perpetrator as ‘monster’, ‘fiend’, ‘beast’, ‘maniac’, ‘pervert’, ‘predator’. Men who rape or commit sexual violence or domestic abuse are nothing like that, in fact most rapes are committed by someone known to the complainant, perfectly ‘normal’ people. Stranger rape is relatively rare, while friends, colleagues, relatives or partners are those who are more likely to abuse women. Yet, the vast majority of newspapers reports are stories of (young, attractive, possibly drunk) women dragged behind a bush and raped by an unknown ‘sex beast’.
Earlier this year a police insider said: 'David McMillan is a very, very dangerous individual.
He will strike again. He is a sexual deviant who has carried out his fantasies with horrific
consequences for his victims. (Daily Mail, 01.08.2008)
He was an obedient small-town citizen and family man who joked with neighbours and turned up at work with shining shoes and a fastidiously arranged necktie, but also a domineering, violent and secretive individual who went on sex trips to Thailand and had
‘lost control’ of his libido . (The Independent 30.04.2008)
Motivated by his own sexual gratification , Dixie stabbed the victim at least seven times, possibly with one of the knives that he used in his job as a chef, said Brian Altman, prosecuting. Then Dixie had had sex with her bloodied body , biting her savagely, before
leaving the scene. (The Guardian, 06.02.2008)
A common alternative offered by the press to the sexual beast is the picture of abusers as psychopaths, disturbed men who should be almost pitied for their condition. In a report about gender-based violence, saying that a man has ‘learning difficulties’ and had ‘fallen out with his girlfriend’ is not only irrelevant, but it is also (and above all) almost an attempt to justify and excuse the perpetrator for his actions.
Senior officers have admitted that the Met could have done more to catch Napper, the paranoid schizophrenic who killed Ms Nickell in daylight on Wimbledon Common and then
went on to murder the Bissetts after breaking into their home. (The Independent,
20.12.2008)
Cops found Watson, who has learning difficulties , sitting close to the scene. He said later he had fallen out with his girlfriend . (The Sun, 04.01.2008)
Journalists who wish to seek out the truth should never foster the impression that men who do not fit these stereotypes cannot be real rapists. This belief is dangerous since it implies that sexual assault is the inevitable consequence of men lack of control over their ‘urges’ when women tempt them, thus automatically shifting the blame onto women.
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Instead the blonde teenager, as tempting as a ripe peach , was left in the care of a 25-year-
old tour guide a local man she'd only recently met. (Daily Mail, 12.03.2008)
It is important to explain how very unlikely it is to be attacked in a public place by a stranger and how a rapist is not a sex beast. Journalists should explain that a rapist can be any ordinary man, someone's father, husband or brother who is using rape as a ‘form of control’ rather than someone who has ‘lost control’ because of his male sexual urges and/or fantasies which ‘need’ to be satisfied. A fair portrayal of rape should not encourage the myth that this crime is about lust and sexual desire, but it should inform readers that sexual behaviours are just the means to commit a crime of violence and degradation of another human being.
Finally, journalists should not fall into the trap of easy explanations. Labelling a rapist as a different ‘other’, a ‘monster’ or a ‘psycho’ is a dangerous shortcut because it does not need further investigation and explanations for the violence, it does not need to dig out the social roots of the problem, because the motivation for the crime lies in the diversity of a single person. In a way, this explanation is reassuring, because it assumes that rapists and abusers are not ‘normal’, so they cannot be among ‘us’. Unfortunately, this is just not true.
When reporting about domestic violence, avoid using expressions like ‘volatile relationship’, as if the abuse was between two people.
When reporting on incidents of domestic violence, journalists should avoid ambiguous adjectives such as ‘volatile’, ‘abusive’, ‘violent’, ‘troubled’ to refer to a relationship or marriage; domestic abuse should not be defined as a ‘relationship problem’. Such expressions imply that the abuse occurs between two people and they obscure the fact that the abuser bears the responsibility for the violence, thus making male agency invisible. Moreover, most articles tend to prefer the word ‘violence’ to the word ‘abuse’ which obscures that in most physically violent relationships, other forms of abuse are also present. It is often assumed that physical violence must be the worst yet extensive research has shown over and over that most survivors of domestic violence define the emotional or psychological abuse as the most damaging, even where there has been life-threatening or permanently disabling physical violence. A possible alternative to these problematic terms would be the expression ‘coercive control’, coined by Dr. Evan Stark.
Plagued by these feelings, she went to her local rape crisis centre where she is being helped to deal with her abusive relationship . (The Independent, 16.08.2008)
Accurate coverage should also avoid referring to domestic abuses, especially to domestic homicides, with expressions like ‘tragedy’ or ‘drama’, thus conveying a sense of helplessness and implying that there is nothing that people can do in order to prevent these inexplicable or unpredictable incidents. Domestic-abuse crimes are not inexplicable, often a relationship shows visible signs of controlling behaviours which tend to escalate and can then degenerate into homicides; some might even have documented history of domestic abuse. Journalists should try to illustrate these aspects, and, at the same time, avoid blaming the abused woman for staying in the relationship or accusing her of provoking the attack.
If the woman is into prostitution, this is not her whole identity; avoid referring to her as ‘lady of
the night’ or ‘hooker’.
Women who are involved in prostitution are not ‘hookers’, nor ‘slags’, ‘tarts’, ‘whores’ or
‘bitches’. They are real women and they should be represented as such. The majority of women in prostitution do not enter into it out of choice. Most women are often forced into it by their partners/pimps or by a drug habit. When they are not forced by someone else, they might knowingly have entered prostitution, but that might be the choice out of no choice, especially
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when these women are trying to escape poverty and/or war. The majority of women involved in prostitution wish to exit.
Journalists should, therefore, avoid using derogatory and judgemental terms to refer to these women. To do so increases the social stigma attached to them and dehumanizes them even further, does not acknowledge their status as a human being and identifies them only through one aspect of their life, obscuring the fact that they have feelings, they have a life, they have a story. For this reason, whenever a prostituted woman is abused, accurate coverage should avoid expressions such as ‘prostitute raped’ or ‘murdered prostitute’. The same is true for any other woman involved in the sex industry, like lap-dancers or escorts, who should not identified with what they do but with what they are, that is women. They are women first of all and they should be identified as such and the fact that the abuse is against them does not make the crime less serious. Journalists might also want to reconsider the use of the expression ‘sex worker’, which implies that prostitution is a profession rather than a form of oppression.
In reporting on abuses against prostituted women, journalists should be even more careful in not confusing sex and rape. The following excerpt, for example, indulges in descriptions of the
‘services’ offered by an escort, including rate per hour. Interestingly enough, the words rape and/or abuse do not occur at all, it only occurs at some other stage in the article, when referring to the legal charge against the perpetrator. Moreover, the woman is just identified as
‘the escort’, while previously in the same report the rapist had been described as a ‘respected
businessman’.
The escort told the court Keogh was one of the clients sent to her room at the Tower Hotel in Waterford. She said he agreed to pay Euro 150 for half-an-hour of ‘ regular sex with a condom, no kissing, no licking ’. But Keogh soon became aggressive and started to choke her, demanding she take off the condom she had put on him . He also tried to kiss her despite her asking him not to. She said when she refused to take off the condom he took it off himself and said: ‘ That's a better f ***. You're f***ed up now.’ Before he left he said: ‘I'm
the guards, you're f***ed up’. (The Sun, 31.03.2008)
Clearly, labelling a woman as a prostitute undermines her credibility. This is why, if journalists decide to include this detail in their report, they should at least avoid the descriptions and language used in the example above, thus contributing to further dehumanizing the woman and encouraging a stereotyped interpretation of the abuse.
The following excerpt, for example, is also problematic. It strengthens the popular belief that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world (it isn’t: farming almost certainly came first) and that it is therefore ineradicable and we have to accept it because ‘men need sex’, and hence they ‘need’ prostitutes.
Smith is a brave woman attempting to overturn, as she puts it, over 2,000 years of history .
Herodotus talks about sacred prostitution in Babylon, where each woman had to have sex with a foreigner as a sign of maturity. In the book of Joshua, a prostitute in Jericho assisted
Israelite spies in conquering Canaan. The Ancient Greeks encouraged prostitution as long as they paid taxes. In Britain in the Middle Ages, all forms of sexual activity outside marriage were seen as sinful by the Church but prostitution was tolerated because it was held to
prevent the greater evils of rape, sodomy and masturbation. (The Times, 20.11.2008)
Instead of portraying stereotypes as absolute truth, a fair report should include interviews with experts which can challenge the myths surrounding these women, like in the following excerpts:
Ms Smith takes a different view and made it clear in interviews: ‘We need to send a message to men and to society in general that most women do not choose to be in prostitution, whereas the buyers have free choice.’ Suppose for a moment, however, that
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Ms Smith's opponents are right. Say that the majority of women selling sex on the street are not dependent on hard drugs, even though the Home Office believes that almost all of them are problem users; say that police chiefs are exaggerating when they suggest there are between 6,000 and 18,000 trafficked women in this country. If selling sex is as voluntary as its defenders suggest, why are so many people furious about Ms Smith's announcement?
Clients have nothing to fear unless they think they are likely to encounter women who have been encouraged on to the streets by drug dealers and pimps, or forced to work as sex slaves by traffickers. And that's the brilliance of the proposed law: as well as protecting vulnerable girls and women, it challenges the notion that there is such an entity as ‘fair trade’ prostitution. […] And the fact that sex-trafficking goes on worldwide - it's the third largest illegal industry after drugs and guns - suggests a severe shortage of women going
into prostitution of their own free will. (The Independent on Sunday, 23.11.2008)
In the book, Matthews describes most women he has met on the streets as ‘extremely desperate, damaged, and disorganised’. ‘Many of these women, who are supposed to be
'working', are obviously off their faces with drugs and drink,’ he says. ‘Which other
'profession' would that be tolerated in?’ He has interviewed women who have carried on selling sex immediately after being stabbed, raped, beaten, and in once case, hours after giving birth. ‘Entry into prostitution is often as a result of physical and sexual abuse, parental neglect, a history of local authority care, and drug addiction,’ says Matthews. ‘I think that speaks for itself.’ As one of the few men doing research in this sector, do his views on the women involved ever prompt charges of paternalism? Matthews is resolute.
‘The women involved in prostitution - particularly street prostitution - are not only among the most victimised group in society, but many of them are multiple victims. If the term
'victimisation' is to have any meaning, then those involved in prostitution must be prime
candidates.’ (The Guardian, 29.02.2008)
Be thoughtful of the positioning of the story and of the use of images.
The use of powerful images associated to gender-based violence can be a double-edged weapon.
On the one hand, in a culture where the threshold of acceptable violence is going up by the day and where rape is normalised and women's bodies violation and objectification is a daily reality, the use of pictures can be a powerful tool to convey the seriousness of the crime, on the other hand, though, it can be problematic in various ways.
Showing pictures of women who have been abused can reinforce the perception of an intrinsic female victimhood towards men. A woman who has experienced physical violence is perceived as weak, passive and helpless, which is exactly what a good report should not communicate, not to mention the effect that the sight of these images might have on the survivor. Moreover, despite the prevalence of psychological abuse, it is difficult to represent pictorially. Additionally, showing pictures of women involved in prostitution or in the sex industry can distract readers from the point of the report, at the risk of falling into judgemental interpretations and into the rape-equal-sex trap. Finally, the representation of women as mere bodies, passive entities with no chance to act nor react to the abuse is an objectification itself.
One more thing to take into consideration is the positioning of the story in the newspaper.
Placing an abuse story beside Page 3 in The Sun is probably the wrong choice. The portrayal of a woman as a weak entity or as a sexual object are two sides of the same coin, they are both harmful, as they contribute to dehumanizing women, who become mere objects at the mercy of or in the service of men.
Avoid giving gratuitous advice to women on how to dress, behave, when (not) to go where and with whom. Address men and explain how a change in their behaviour is required to prevent abuse.
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The rape culture we live in teaches women (badly) how to avoid rape, it does not teach men not to rape. This mentality is reflected in the paternalistic attitude of the mainstream media of dispensing advice to women on how to behave and, in particular, how to dress, when (not) to go somewhere and with whom. Such pieces of advice are not only superfluous, but they also imply that, if women do not follow them, then they are willingly taking risks and if something happens to them, then they will have to accept to be (at least partly) blamed for it, for their failure in taking good care of themselves. Moreover, they are paternalistic in the sense that they assume that women, like children, need someone to teach them how dangerous the world can be and that they are not aware of risks, forgetting the fact that women grow up in a culture which continuously teaches them how to avoid rape.
The following reports, in particular, warn women about the risks of heavy drinking and hanging out with strangers. All are problematic in various ways.
The first excerpt shows how, thanks to the warning of the Foreign Office, the number of sexual attacks has gone down and that, therefore, this is the proof that women have an alternative to the assault.
The first problem in this report is that it implies that before hearing/reading these warning women were not aware of the risks. Once they heard/read them they decided to follow the advice and thanks to this ‘awareness campaign’ there were less sexual assaults.
Secondly, addressing women by asking them to ‘be careful’ is a way of normalising gender-based abuses, of making them a mere fact which must be accepted and with which women should learn to live, if they want to avoid troubles.
Thirdly, saying that women have a choice implies that those who still decide to drink should be blamed for their choice of not following the warning which had been clearly and loudly spread.
Finally, the choice they are talking about is actually a ‘choice’ between being free (to drink and have fun) and thus take the risk (of rape and blame) or not being free and be safe (forgetting to mention that the vast majority of abuses happen indoors and are perpetrated by known people and not by strangers). Clearly, this is not really a ‘choice of not being assaulted’ and journalists should avoid reporting such dangerous and inaccurate statements. They should instead ask whether men would accept such limitations to their freedom of movement, why are such limitations deemed acceptable (almost necessary and natural) for women and why, if men are the ones who abuse women, the curfew is not on them but on women?
But interestingly, Foreign Office warnings to young women in Greece about the risks of losing control and wandering off drunkenly with strangers seem to have cut the number of sexual assaults. What does that tell us? It tells us that women have a choice . (Daily Mail,
13.08.2008)
The second excerpt is also problematic, although it presents some positive aspects. In this report
‘young teens have been warned they could be raped if they get drunk’, this is quite obviously addressing women and not ‘teens’ in general. As the warning about the dangers of getting drunk is directed to women, when ahead in the article we read that the ‘night has become associated with heavy underage drinking and anti-social behaviour’ it is quite easy to associate the ‘antisocial behaviour’ with the heavy drinking of women rather than with the crime of rape.
In essence, this article is criticising women for getting drunk and it is suggesting that women do have not the same right to celebrate as their male counterparts and that their drinking is more dangerous because they might be raped. A fair article should have pointed out that rape is antisocial, not drunk women and it should have stated that ‘young teen might get antisocial and rape women’.
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Fortunately the article improves in the second part, reporting an interview with the director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre who addresses men and warns ‘potential perpetrators’ that ‘sex with a person under the age of consent is a crime’. This could have been improved by pointing out that rape is a serious crime at any age and heavy drinking cannot be considered a mitigating factor for perpetrators.
YOUNG teens have been warned they could be RAPED if they get drunk celebrating their
Junior Cert results tonight. More than 56,000 students will this morning find out their grades in the State examinations for 2008. But in recent years results night has become associated with heavy underage drinking and anti-social behaviour . And the Dublin Rape
Crisis Centre has urged students to be extremely careful about boozing tonight. DRCC boss
Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop said: ‘It is terribly sad to see young people absolutely devastated after experiencing a rape or a sexual assault while celebrating exam results. We are issuing a warning to potential perpetrators that having sex with a person under the age of consent, which is 17 years of age, is a crime .’ (The Sun, 10.09.2008)
The third report is openly addressing only women, accusing their drinking of being a peril, thus at the same time blaming them for the violence which they may experience and removing the responsibility from men, who are totally absent in the warning. A good report should remind men that alcohol is not a mitigating factor for them and warn them that they should control their drinking if they feel they will not be able to control their actions.
Interestingly enough, the number of campaigns against binge drinking and driving has been on the rise, with a big effort from the media and successive governments to increase the awareness, to encourage people to either stay sober and drive or drink and use public transport.
Some campaigns have been addressing young people to look out for their friends to promote road safe behaviours. The mainstream media could put the same effort (and the energy they invest in warning women about perils they are sadly already aware of) into a campaign which addresses men, reminding them that they are responsible for committing abuses against women and they are therefore very much part of the problem. A good report should remind men of such responsibilities, encourage responsible behaviour and possibly encourage friends to ‘keep an eye’ on their male pals.
The report, British Behaviour Abroad, highlights the perils of excessive drinking by women on holiday that could leave them more vulnerable to rape . (Daily Mail, 12.08.2008)
Media portrayal of gender-based violence presents several double standards, especially if compared to the way other crimes are reported. Among these inconsistencies are the warnings addressed to women, which sound even more inappropriate if we consider that we are hardly warned by the press about the risk of being stabbed, strangled, robbed or set on fire. Yet, women are quite often warned that they might be raped, if they do not behave ‘appropriately’.
Therefore, a fair report should make sure that there are no misleading statements which could imply that the abusers can somehow be justified by women's provoking or carefree behaviours.
They should point out that stranger rapes are quite unlikely to happen and above all journalists should avoid psychological terrorism on women and should not contribute to instilling a culture of fear and plain acceptance of freedom limitations for half the population. Finally, news reports should not imply in any way that women should change their behaviours to avoid attacks, thus removing the responsibility from the man who committed the attack.
Do not treat a single incident of violence in isolation. Always contextualise it within the broader framework of VAWG, adding facts, figures and experts’ opinions, in order to increase the depth of understanding of the problem.
In most news reports, gender-based violence is rarely contextualised within the broader
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framework of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and only a few articles discuss the problem as one of community security and as the result of a continuum of violence and discrimination against women; VAWG is usually reduced to the specific case in point, which is discussed in isolation and according to a specific narrative (the beast who rapes the virtuous woman, the drunk girl who is raped by a stranger and so on).
In those few cases when gender-based violence in news reports is not portrayed as episodic, but as connected to wider social and structural problems, it is usually related to the wrong ones.
Most articles reporting on incidents of VAWG are quite short in length. The ones which are longer usually diverge from the topic of violence to discuss other issues which are considered more urgent. The violence is often backgrounded or even totally deleted already in the headlines (see examples below) of many articles, making it difficult to understand what the report is about. In such cases, the violence is simply the inspiration to discuss other topics.
 It's law and disorder. (The Sun, 25.01.2008)
 Law cannot protect kids and women from beast... why? (The Sun, 09.01.2008)
 Churches, schools and charities braced for flood of claims after ruling on Lotto
rapist. (The Times, 31.01.2008)
 Rape victim hails victory for Muslims as Hindu assailants are jailed for life. (The
Times, 23.01.2008)
 Inquiry ordered after girl raped by inmate on run from open jail. (The Times,
25.01.2008)
The issue of violence should be the real concern of journalists in reports about gender-based violence, they should use the space they have at their disposal for an in-depth analysis of the problem and not as the excuse to focus on another agenda; journalists should highlight the gendered nature and root causes of VAWG in all reports. At the same time, avoiding diversions towards a different agenda does not mean focusing on the details of a specific incident and journalists should pay attention not to fall into the trap of episodic reporting, which would be too narrow to convey an accurate analysis of the problem. The following excerpt is an example of a step by step narration of the event, of how the perpetrator approached the victim and how she tried to resist. Rather than encouraging critical thinking, it sounds more like fiction for the entertainment of readers.
The victim was in court yesterday to hear the prosecution describe how she was walking home in broad daylight after having collected new contact lenses when Foye attacked her.
[...] When Foye asked her for the time, she said she did not know and continued walking along the path. Seconds later he seized her and, with one hand over her mouth and his other arm round her neck, forced her into the woods, punching her several times.
When she screamed, Foye ordered her to be quiet and pressed his hand tightly round her mouth.
Miss Bain said: 'She tried to claw his hand away from her face so she could scream again but his arm was still round her neck, crushing her and restricting her breath.' Miss Bain told how the girl pleaded with Foye not to have sex with her but he went on to rape her.
Afterwards he walked away, telling the girl, who was covered in bruises and scratches, not to leave until he was gone. But she ran away through a field hoping he would not see her.
(Daily Mail, 24.01.2008)
This kind of detailed account is quite sensationalistic, but its limit is that it does not go beyond the specific fact. A fair report on gender-based violence should not focus on irrelevant details.
Explaining how the woman was dressed, how she looked, whether she was married or not,
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whether she was a mother/sister/friend, how the perpetrator approached her, how he overpowered her, how and how many times he assaulted her are issues which may be relevant during a trial, but not in news reports. These detailed accounts convey a sensationalistic picture of the abuse and they are potentially harmful, considering that they may lead to (indirectly or inadvertently) blame the survivor for what happened or they can end up stereotyping the perpetrator. Moreover, such reports divert readers' attention from what is the core of the issue, that is, the contextualisation of such cases of abuse within a framework of VAWG, which should be present in all news reports. It should serve as a platform for journalists to convey the broader
picture with facts, figures, interviews with experts who can explain the roots of a social problem, which has several facets and a single case of abuse is just one of them. Including helpline contacts, phone numbers, contact details for support services can be one way of contextualising, acknowledging the seriousness of the issue, and at the same time provide immediate support for women who may have been abused.
The following excerpt is a good example as it mentions the difficulties experienced by many women in reporting abuse.
The other big problem is the culture of disbelief which is experienced by so many victims of gender-based violence, a category which includes rape as well as domestic violence and honour-based crime. When the rape conviction rape rate is as low as 5 per cent, why should we expect women who are being stalked and harassed to be treated any better by the authorities?
Despite the Government's efforts, there is entrenched scepticism about levels of violence towards women. I suspect that rank-and-file police officers are as sceptical as the rest of the population, and demoralised by their dealings with a cautious and ineffectual Crown
Prosecution Service.
Bearing in mind how many women have correctly predicted their own murders, however,
the case for abandoning this habit of doubting victims' testimony is overwhelming. (The
Independent, 05.06.2008)
Even though the excerpt above points out the problems related to a culture of disbelief towards women who have experienced abuses, any reference to the root causes of violence against women is still missing.
Do not use faux concern for women and their rights in order to go to war or to fight terrorism.
Do not assume some cultures or classes are violent, and others are not.
One of the social matters with which VAWG is often related, when it is not treated as an episodic incident, is that of immigration and internal security policies. In many cases of violence against women perpetrated by foreigners, the responsibility for the abuse is attributed to his culture and/or religion and in such cases, the abuse becomes an excuse to legitimise racist comments against specific groups of immigrants and requests for stricter immigration policies. Thus, news reports end up losing sight of the point of the report, i.e. the abuse.
The following news article from The Sun is an example of how the responsibility for the rape is put on the lack of controls of foreign immigration, suggesting that, if the man had not been allowed into Ireland, the woman would not have been raped, normalising the crime, while what is considered ‘devastating’ and ‘disgusting’ is the Irish immigration policy.
Who let beast into Ireland? (headline)
‘We are devastated and disgusted that he was allowed into this country. I really don't know
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what can be done to stop this sort of thing happening, but something should be. Nobody
should have to go through what we went through and what Sharon went through’. (The Sun,
23.01.2008)
In such cases, it should be noted that the country of origin of the perpetrator is irrelevant, considering that gender-based abuse is a cross-cultural phenomenon, with no geographical or cultural boundaries. It would have been appropriate to explain that gender-based violence is the result of a misogynous culture spread across continents, cultures, races, classes and religions and, as such, it is a community problem, not a private one.
Representing gender-based violence as a problematic issue only in specific cultures, religions and/or countries has two major shortcomings. Firstly, it relegates the problem to a limited group of people, thus relieving ‘us’ from the need to face the issue in ‘our’ civilized societies. The rapist as uncivilized foreign criminal or as a sex beast are two sides of one coin, they both deny the fact that gender-based violence is a social issue (not an individual one) and it is present in all societies and as such it needs to be identified and analysed. Linking violence against women to a ‘cultural thing’ obscures the fact that the majority of attacks are perpetrated by men against women of similar backgrounds who are known to them. What journalists should avoid, is representing violence against women and girls as the problem of underdeveloped regions of the world or of a few sick individuals against whom the only solution is ‘caging the beast’. Genderbased violence should be portrayed as a structural issue involving systemic injustices and a gendered practice of power and control.
The second problematic aspect of this representation is that gender-based violence becomes a vehicle in the service of another agenda. In some cases, gender-based violence is instrumentalised and marginalised in the service of themes like law and order or the security of the country. Demonising a dangerous foreign ‘other’, moves the attention to other issues, depriving the crime of the attention it deserves. In such cases, rape, domestic abuse, murders, become just an excuse to introduce other issues, which then become the focus of the report. A news report about gender-based violence should stay as such.
Avoid showing empathy with the abuser and his life after the incident.
In some stories where the alleged perpetrator is acquitted (or where he appears likely to be acquitted) the press tends to show a level of empathy with the alleged abuser, which is not justified by any evidence that the man has been falsely accused. Sometimes this can even happen before the trial, especially if the alleged perpetrator is a celebrity.
The following example refers to the case of a football player accused of rape. The defence strategy is based on the claim that the woman had consented and her credibility is undermined when she is identified as a lap-dancer (a claim which will be later denied). The article revolves around the statements of the alleged perpetrator's coach who describes him as an ‘outstanding’ player and he gives his own interpretation of the story, describing it as a ‘nonsense’, as something a football player ‘has to put up with’ and he convincingly states his belief that the man is innocent (thus indirectly accusing the complainant of lying).
There are several problematic issues with this kind of reporting. To begin with, the source is clearly biased towards the alleged perpetrator (see page 18 for more information). Secondly, the coach's opinion is not balanced with nor challenged by any other voice supporting the alleged victim's allegations. Finally, the alleged perpetrator is portrayed as a talented player whose career might be destroyed by a megalomaniac woman whose goal in life is that of destroying a man's life. The result is that what is simply the opinion of someone very close to an alleged perpetrator of rape is represented as a fact, as the truth.
In the second excerpt, the journalist himself uses the word ‘trauma’ referring to ‘someone in
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the England squad’, probably the alleged perpetrator. No mention of the trauma the abused woman is likely to have experienced is present throughout the report.
Evans, who was 20 on Thursday, has a rape allegation against him following United's
Christmas party at a Manchester hotel. Keane, though, said he had no qualms over resigning a player who was outstanding in Sunderland's defence after joining on loan last
January.
‘You get tested in all walks of life,’ Keane said of Evans. ‘I've been down the road myself as a player. I had two court cases, one in Ireland when I was 19 and one in Manchester a few years ago. It's not nice but you do it. You put up with a lot of nonsense as a footballer .
People want to throw allegations at you, but you're innocent until proven guilty’. (The
Independent, 05.01.2008)
THE trauma may not yet be over for some in the England squad as they arrive back at
Heathrow today with the Rugby Football Union declaring yesterday that they would consider removing any guilty player from the all-important 32-man elite player squad to be
named by manager Martin Johnson next Tuesday. (The Daily Telegraph, 23.06.2008)
Journalists should avoid depicting (alleged) perpetrators as innocent or traumatised by the allegations. The professional aspects of a man's life should be kept separate from his (alleged) criminal actions. Just as a woman's profession should not carry any weight in judging her credibility, equally a man should not be excused because of what he does in life.
Sometimes the (alleged) perpetrator is quoted at length (like in the following excerpt), which makes himself into an object of pity, a man who is struggling with putting back together the pieces of his ruined life. The following is a long quote where a man describes how awful life has been after (and despite) the acquittal.
Yet Leslie lost everything. The darkest time of all, he says, came after his acquittal. ‘That was the worst chapter, by miles. Before, at least you have something to live for, to fight for, but then afterwards the phone goes quiet and it's a massive vacuum. You're left with this hole of nothingness. You've just been picked up, your life's been turned upside down because of this massive accusation, and then it's chucked out and you're thrown on a heap, with a massive lawyers' bill to pay, you've had these horrible headlines to deal with. And for what? It is just crazy.’ His famous friends no longer called. ‘Celebrity support was nonexistent. That was one of the disappointing things. I think it was because of death by association. Everyone is so scared, and you're aware of how fragile and fickle it is.’
Although still single, he says he very seldom goes out these days. ‘I'm scared stiff.’ He has trouble trusting women, and recognises that the feeling may be mutual. Most people, he thinks, don't believe he's a rapist. ‘But you don't want to be in an environment where you might come across a drunk group of lads who might believe every word they read in the
Sun. You don't want to test that water’. (The Guardian, 09.08.2008)
Such statements are even more harmful when these men have not been tried yet or when they have been acquitted on the basis of insufficient evidence, because the charges have been dropped or for lack of credibility of the prosecution witness, like in the excerpts above and below (see page 5 for possible reasons behind allegations withdrawal, credibility issues and difficulties in showing evidence in abuse cases). Journalists should carefully ponder the decision of giving this much space to the voice of a potential perpetrator, especially when the other
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version of the story is not being told at all.
‘At midnight I got a call from my dad. He'd fallen off his chair. My dad was literally shaking .
They'd just held up the front page of the Sun on Sky News.’
And so, for the second time in his life, Leslie found himself reading tabloid accounts of a sex life he didn't recognise , with a woman he couldn't remember meeting. [...]
After 10 months, of all the lurid accusations reported by a feverish press, only one - for minor sexual assault - ever came to trial . It was thrown out when the credibility of the prosecution witness collapsed . Leslie, the judge told him, could leave the court ‘without a stain on your character’.
But the judge clearly didn't know how television works, for by then Leslie was unemployable . He moved home to Edinburgh, became a property developer, made a lot of money, and was - until his arrest - leading a relatively normal life. He seldom goes to
London these days, he jokes, ‘because whenever I do I get arrested’ .
Traditionally, stories about socialites ruined by sexual disgrace featured women, but if
Leslie's life were made into a novel it would be a peculiarly modern tale. It belongs to an age of celebrity when the law and the media have become so entwined, the story could not exist in the absence of one or the other. It can be read as a parable about the power of celebrity - or, alternatively, of its perils - for the plot hinges entirely on one question. Did fame protect Leslie from justice for years - or expose him to a terrible injustice ? (The
Guardian, 09.08.2008)
In the examples above, TV presenter John Leslie is portrayed (though his own words and the journalist's) as a man whose personal and professional life has been destroyed by false accusations of sexual assault. In his case, more than 30 women had accused him of abuse, but, as the journalist zealously points out, only one accusation had gone to trial, and that also only for minor sexual assault. Despite that, his career as TV presenter had been already irreversibly ruined, just because his celebrity had made him the vulnerable target of dozens of revengeful women.
Although, for legal reasons, journalists must exercise caution in the choice of vocabulary, they should also bear in mind (and remind their readers) that only a minor percentage of assaults against women and girls are reported and among these a short minority ever results in conviction. Therefore, a high proportion of those who are acquitted are likely to have perpetrated the crime they are accused of. The excerpts reported above would have been fairer if the journalist had at least illustrated these facts, instead of insisting on highlighting how miserable the life of a man accused of rape can be.
Partisan sources of information (e.g. family, friends) should be used only if available from both sides. If not, they should be avoided or challenged with data or experts’ opinions.
Avoid using sources which are emotionally connected to the abuser or sources that do not have significant information about the crime or those involved.
A source said : ‘They insist she was totally up for it ’. (The Sun, 19.06.2008)
A source said: ‘She was not seriously injured physically . She had bruising and was in shock.
But she must be deeply emotionally and mentally scarred’. (The Sun, 01.01.2008)
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Who are the ‘source’ in the excerpts above? On the basis of what are they saying that ‘she was
not seriously injured physically’ and that ‘she was totally up for it’? Where is the line to define a serious physical injury? Using unidentified ‘sources’ and presenting their opinion as an accepted truth is sloppy when there are many experts available.
The following excerpt is reporting the voice of a perpetrator's friend, who is blaming a woman,
‘a minx’, of luring him into a trap which cost him a jail term. Of course, the story is told by a biased source, whose reliability can be easily questioned. When quoting biased sources, journalists should identify them as such rather than as neutral ‘sources’.
There's no doubt that people can make potentially catastrophic and life altering mistakes in some heady circumstances . On Newstalk last week a listener told me of a 35-year-old friend , a rather naive and inexperienced man , who was bowled over by the attentions of a minx on the bus home late at night, invited her back for a coffee and ended up doing a jail term when it turned out she was only 15. Now his life is ruined, he's a convicted rapist, listed on the sex offenders' register, barred from most righteous jurisdictions across the globe . (The Sunday Times, 27.04.2008)
The press often cites comments of the judge, the prosecution and/or defence counsels and sometimes statements released by the police. Journalists should pay particular attention when quoting the police and they should think about the question to ask, making sure that the questions themselves are not biased. When dealing with domestic abuse, for example, journalists should ask whether there had been warning signs, previous attacks, instead of asking whether the survivor had been drinking.
In most cases the voice of the judge is privileged because of their authoritative position. Of those quoted in newspaper reports, most of their statements either portray the perpetrator as an anomalous, pathologically evil man or the woman as a wicked liar who has ‘damaged the
chances of securing convictions in genuine rape cases’. The effects of the decision to privilege certain voices at the expense of others may be harmful, since, for example, a survivor who reads such a statement might feel threatened if she thinks that she does not fall into the category of a
‘legitimate victim’ and she might desist from reporting the abuse out of fear. A good article should remind readers that ‘genuine’ cases of abuse are the majority and survivors should be encouraged to report them, not the other way round.
Yesterday, judge Liam McKechnie told Dublin Central Criminal Court he ‘could not think of two more gruesome crimes’, and branded them ‘ mindless, senseless, savage ’. (The Sun,
22.01.2008)
In his verdict, the judge in the lower court denounced Obara for his ‘ perverted sexual taste ’. (The Times, 31.01.2008)
Jailing her yesterday, Recorder Christopher Donnellan said Winfield's lies had damaged the chances of securing convictions in genuine rape cases . (Daily Mail, 29.07.2008)
Sometimes press reports use less authoritative voices, such as that of a survivor; these voices, though, are evoked basically for two reasons: either to strengthen the myths surrounding gender-based violence (i.e. the inherent victimhood of women presented as helpless, terrified and weak or the ‘bestiality’ of the attacker who left her scarred for life) or in order to belittle
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or discredit the survivor by turning her testimony against her. This kind of victim-blaming is more subtle than a direct accusation. The press rarely accuses a survivor directly, because that would be more open to criticism. If , however, the survivor herself can be coaxed into blaming her behaviour for the violence, the press is less likely to be attacked. Survivors' statements, then, are instrumentalised and used against them in order to support stereotypes which blame the victim for drinking too much or for not putting enough effort into the fight against her attacker.
She also blamed herself for not doing more to resist the attacks by screaming and fighting
back, but was frozen with fear, the court heard. (The Guardian, 06.12.2008)
A YOUNG woman jumped to her death from a motorway bridge after being raped on a night out, because she blamed herself for the attack . […] Speaking at Cardiff Coroner's Court yesterday, Mrs McCormick said: 'I think she felt dirty . She felt as if she'd been violated, which she had . ' She was very upset. She experienced flashbacks and insomnia, and she didn't like the dark. She felt very vulnerable and found it difficult to cope . She had never had any of these feelings before.' She found an email her daughter […] had written to the
Samaritans last May. It said: ' I'm finding life really difficult at the moment. It's even a struggle to get out of bed. The first thing I think about is dying, and I'm worried because I want it to happen . 'I've been through something traumatic. Though I hate feeling sorry for myself, it's been the hardest thing I've had to deal with in my life .' […] She blamed herself for the attack because she had strayed from her custom of staying with her friends while on
a night out. (Daily Mail, 26.01.2008)
Interestingly enough, nowhere in the reports above there is an attempt to challenge these comments, they are unquestioningly accepted. In the second excerpt, in particular, the woman killed herself a few months after the rape. She is portrayed as an ‘ideal victim’ because her suicide somehow ‘confirms’ her victimhood, but she is also being used as an example of what happens to women who do not take good care of themselves and the suicide is somehow presented as an acceptable and understandable way for women to wash away the ‘shame’ of sexual violence. Additionally, according to the woman's mother, her daughter ‘felt dirty, she felt
as if she'd been violated, she was very upset’. In an email, her daughter had stated that she was ‘finding life difficult’, that she ‘was feeling sorry’ for herself. These feelings are all very common among rape survivors, but the point here is that she actually never stated that she was feeling guilty for what had happened to her. The fact that the victim killed herself ‘because she
blamed herself’ (and not because the abuse had been too traumatic to cope with it) is sheer speculation, a conclusion drawn by the press. Yet, it is presented like a fact.
Opinions, comments and letters published by the press are worth a final remark. Sometimes newspapers publish readers' comments which can be terribly harmful to the public understanding of gender-based violence. In the name of freedom of speech and considering that censorship is not an option, the decision of publishing openly misogynist comments might be understood, but editors should think twice before publishing something like the following comment on their newspapers. Should it be a racist comment rather than a misogynist one, would they still publish it?
IT is wrong to pay lower compensation to rape victims who were under the influence of alcohol. On the other hand, it is easy to understand why this used to happen.
A man should understand that when a woman has had too much to drink he must not take advantage of her. But the hard fact is that when alcohol is mixed into a situation, some women - perhaps already dressed provocatively - can give all the wrong signals to men who have also had a lot to drink, putting themselves in a dangerous position.
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Alcohol also leads to impaired judgement and lowers inhibitions, starts jealous punch-ups and can lead to stabbings. When will people learn that alcohol is fine to enjoy with friends when having a laugh, but the joke is over when you take it too far? Irresponsible drinkers must realise this behaviour can be dangerous, as it makes them vulnerable to rape, violence, robbery and accidents. Also to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Not to mention the shame.
Alcohol changes people's behaviour so aggression is brought out. It is a danger and is not treated seriously enough.
D Holland, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire (Letter)
(Mail on Sunday, 24.08.2008)
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REFERENCES
Barter, C. et al. ‘Partner exploitation and violence in teenage intimate relationships’, 2009. http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/findings/partner_exploitation_and_violence_report_ wdf70129.pdf
Bindel, J. ‘Press for change. A guide for journalists reporting on the prostitution and trafficking of women’. http://action.web.ca/home/catw/attach/PRESSPACKgeneric12-06.pdf
Bourke, J. Rape: Sex, Violence, History. Emeryville: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.
Eaves Response - ‘CPS Consultation on the interim guidance on Perverting the Course of Justice’,
2011. www.welshwomensaid.org/35373.file.dld
Home Office Research Study 276 - ‘Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Stalking: Findings from the British Crime Survey’, 2004. http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hors276.pdf
Horvath, M and Brown, J. (ed.). Rape: Challenging Contemporary Thinking. Cullompton: Willan,
2009.
Kelly, L. Surviving Sexual Violence. Cambridge: Polity, 1988.
Marhia, N. ‘Just representation? Press reporting and the reality of rape’, 2008. http://www.eaves4women.co.uk/Documents/Recent_Reports/Just%20Representation_press_rep orting_the_reality_of_rape.pdf
van Leeuwen, T. ‘Representing Social Action’ in Discourse and Society 6,1 pp 81-106, 1995.
Zero Tolerance - ‘Handle with care: a guide to responsible media reporting of violence against women’, 2011. http://www.vawpreventionscotland.org.uk/resources/training-materials/handlecare-guide-responsible-media-reporting-violence-against-women
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