The Rape Victim and The Reporter

How Journalism Can Inadvertently Harm Those Who Have Been Sexually Assaulted

Around this time three years ago, I was raped by the man I was dating. I was 19 at the time and a fledgling journalist attending college in the Bay Area.

To say it destroyed me would be an understatement. Despite the trauma, I kept my job as an editor of my student newspaper. I began freelancing in between classes, drinking myself into a coma, and trying to gather enough courage to throw myself off the Golden Gate Bridge. I am missing large gaps of time in the six months that proceeded my assault, but I still won a student journalism award that year.

There hasn’t been a day where I don’t think about what happened, but I’ve healed since then with the help of therapy.

I currently work as a news writer for a site that values the number of clicks over original, in-depth reporting. It’s a decent paying journalism job for a recent grad, but on my first day of work I was asked to write about a rape.

Prior to this, I had thought about how I would handle my first rape story because I knew it was inevitable. I wasn’t prepared for how my hands shook as I tapped my keyboard or the nausea that ripped through me as I browsed reports of what happened to the victim. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I don’t think she survived.

I made it through the story, but my employer’s business model places an unusually strong emphasis on the maxim that if it bleeds, it leads. The vast majority of my days are spent wading through the details of murders, beat downs, animal abuse cases and rape.

Though I’m now better about handling the abject horror that comes with writing wildly popular click bait, writing about rape cases is still hard and my own experiences have shaped both how I report on sexual assault and how I view other journalists’ work on the subject.

Often, reporting sexual assault is skewed based how closely the victim fits the societal idea of how a survivor should act during and after trauma.

When I dig through articles about whatever story on sexual assault I’m piecing together, there’s a peculiar tendency to judge victims on how they react. The quality of a person’s character and the validity of the violence again them is not contingent upon how they handle being raped.

I wasn’t drugged or pulled down a dark alleyway. My rapist was someone I’d had consensual sex with before. I begged, but I didn’t scream. I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t seek help. I didn’t tell anyone for four months. Like so many others, I am not the ideal victim.

The distinction between “good” victims and “bad” rape victims is often hidden in the language of reporting on sexual assault. When a crime is perhaps more violent or a victim is considered more sympathetic, it’s referred to as what it is — rape. However, when the victim is deemed as somehow less pitiable — like me — the language is softened to a more nebulous term like “sexual assault” or “attacked.” It often isn’t made explicit that someone was raped.

Male rape victims frequently receive the latter treatment, especially when the perpetrator is a woman.

The issue with using terms like that is that they’re frequently used in relation to other crimes, reducing the gravity of rape. It not only tends to dismiss or, in some cases, demonize “bad” victims, it’s poor journalism. There are obviously times when it’s entirely appropriate to use the term “sexual assault” or just “assault,” but it should not be at the expense of the victim or accuracy in reporting.

By not using the right words to describe a crime, the reporting is less reliable. Though some assaults are more physically violent than others, it’s wrong to ignore the actual act of rape by softening the language around stories that may lack the gore of other narratives. There are other words that can accurately describe the nuances of an assault, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of truthfully reporting on the impact or act of sexual violence.

Perhaps more disconcertingly, some stories place more emphasis on how the victim reacted to being raped other than the fact that someone committed a crime that’s so intimately destructive, it’s hard for me to put into words. The duty of journalists is to report on relevant information, but details like whether or not the victim screamed, physically fought back and how quickly they went to the police are sometimes implicitly used to discredit them.

Though reporters have an obligation to be critical and false rape claims do happen, albeit rarely, those details aren’t indicative that a victim is lying or distorting the details. Being raped has a profound stigma attached to it and by routinely undermining the narratives of victims who don’t fit an idea of how they should be, we’re doing a greater disservice to people who have already been put in harm’s way. One of the main roles of journalism as the fourth estate is to shed light on injustice and let those who cannot speak have a voice, so why does reporting frequently undermine rape victims?

There are many conscientious and articulate journalists who work hard to ensure accurate reporting on stories about rape. However, every time a victim reads a story that discounts another sufferer or quietly passes undue judgement, it hurts. My portrayal in the media would have likely skimmed over the atrocity of what my rapist did to me because I was so slow to admit someone had made me feel powerless. Those stories serve as a reminder that when I was raped, it didn’t completely sink in that I’d been the victim of a violent crime because I was so overwhelmed with shame and guilt.

Journalism shouldn’t harm those who have already been traumatized, but by avoiding the word “rape” or focusing on the sufferer’s reactions, or lack thereof, it reduces the credibility of both the reporter and the rape victim by perpetuating the stigma of sexual violence.