Should we name rape victims?
There is a scene in the 1981 movie “Absence of Malice” that still haunts me. Sally Field plays an aggressive newspaper reporter who finds out that Paul Newman, who has been accused of a crime, isn’t guilty because he has an alibi: He was at an abortion clinic, holding the hand of a close friend. But he steadfastly refuses to tell investigators in order to protect the friend’s privacy.
Field’s character, concluding that since abortion is legal it ought to carry no stigma, publishes the scoop, along with the name of the woman who had the abortion. In the early morning mist the following day, the distraught woman, still in her nightgown, scurries from driveway to driveway, gathering up her neighbors’ newspapers.
I thought about that scene in the wake of a radio talk-show host and several Internet sites naming and publishing photos of the young woman who has accused basketball star Kobe Bryant of raping her in a Colorado hotel room.
The case reignited debate in journalism circles about the long-standing policy of not naming rape victims. Some ask if we believe rape victims shouldn’t feel any more shame or guilt than other crime victims, aren’t we reinforcing and prolonging the stigma of rape by treating it differently from other crimes?
There is also the “unfiltered” journalism argument. The job of the media is to report the news as accurately and completely as possible. We are reporters, not social workers or therapists. “Openness serves society as a whole,” one former editor wrote recently, arguing in favor of naming victims.
The arguments are reasonable.
But they couldn’t be more wrong.
The issue here is what rape victims do feel, not what we think they should feel. The issue is what society actually understands about sexual assault, not what it should understand by now. The issue is what naming rape victims will do to discourage women from reporting assaults, thus allowing more rapists to roam free.
Diane Beynon of Bay Area Women Against Rape in Oakland has been a rape crisis counselor since 1978. “Rape is about degradation and humiliation,” she says.
Thus, most victims feel degraded and humiliated, at least for a time. When everyone around the victim knows she has been raped, she reads judgment and even revulsion into every look from friends and co-workers because that is what she is feeling herself.
More than other crimes, rape still invites scrutiny of the victim: Did she ask for it? Beynon has a client now who is a successful businesswoman. She wants neither her employer nor her employees to know she was raped “because of all the shame and guilt she feels,” Beynon explains.
Because of the feelings of shame and humiliation, sexual assault is a tough enough crime to report. The examination to collect evidence is painful, invasive and embarrassing. The investigators’ questions are painful, invasive and embarrassing. That’s why only about 20 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
If the media began printing names of victims, the number would drop even more. Here’s one sure bet: No woman would ever again come forward to hold a famous man accountable for raping her.
Some women want their names published. It provides a sense of empowerment. Rape counselors say they’re seeing more teens willing to speak out publicly. “I think we’re raising a generation where there is less shame around rape,” Beynon says.
I hope so. But we’re not there yet. What little might be gained in printing the names of rape victims is dwarfed by the intolerable losses it would inflict on the victims and on our justice system.
(Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is [email protected].)