I was about 30 years old when I wrote my first letter to an editor. I wrote the newspaper in the Massachusetts town where I was living, taking them to task for their reporting of a rape case. A woman in the community was walking to her home when two men abducted and gang-raped her. That newspaper provided lurid details about the woman’s love life, implying that because she worked in a discotheque, had a couple of drinks after work, and had been seen in conversation with one of her attackers, she had asked to be raped. In that letter, I made the point that no matter what kind of personal life a woman has, nobody ever asks to be assaulted.
Forty years later, I am saddened to be again writing about the same subject. This time, the victim did not escape with her life. Kathleen Henry was murdered in a most brutal manner and we must all do our best to honor her memory.
The original reporting in a recent story on this tragic murder in our state’s leading newspaper was appalling. Negative information about the victim’s life that had absolutely nothing to do with the crime was published. In ADN’s defense, I must say that the editor responded to my complaint within hours, the negative wording in the article was subsequently removed and an apology added. The damage, however, was already done. The victim had been blamed.
Reporting by KTUU on Oct. 11th had similar issues: their report began by telling us negative information about Ms. Henry thus coloring the remainder of their piece.
So, what must we do to make sure that we do not continue blaming crime victims for another 40 years?
When the authors of the ADN article reached out to Ms. Henry’s community for information, they said they were grieving and didn’t want to respond right away. The ADN also searched Ms. Henry’s court records and her Facebook page, and included some of that information in the article. At this point the reporting went off the rails. There was no logical reason to share the court records of a murder victim. Nothing in those records would ever be of any use to the public. News media must avoid publishing irrelevant and hurtful information. Always.
[Giant qaspeq shines light on missing and murdered indigenous women]
We can decide what the public really needs to know about a victim by asking what purpose that information will serve. Knowing where the victim is from lets us reach out to help and send condolences to the right people. All victims have relatives, and we should assume that those family members care. Knowing if the victim had children helps because those children may need extra support. If knowing that the victim was a member of a specific group would protect others in that group from becoming targets by alerting them to an ongoing pattern of assaults in a certain area, then that information could be relevant, provided it was not used to point fingers at the victim. Beyond this, unless the family wants to share more information, there is nothing we need to know. We do not need to know the victim’s financial status, employment status, history of incarceration, living arrangements or things they shared on Facebook that were never intended for the public. Unless there is a kind and useful reason for providing information, don’t provide it. Ever.
We must agree that all murders are tragedies, no matter who the victim is. When reporting on a murder victim, we should place ourselves in the shoes of the bereaved family. How would they want to see their loved one represented? If their choice is to say nothing, then we must respect that. If we can find nothing else good to say, then say nothing at all. The victim’s family members are already suffering: Avoid words that will wound them further.
Remember, nobody ever “asks” to be assaulted or murdered. Never.
Sharing negative information about victims diminishes them. It may poison the future jury pool. Worse, it sends a subtle message to perpetrators of violence that certain people can be victimized without consequences. It feeds the culture of impunity. When my friend in Massachusetts was raped, the perpetrators were so confident that they would get away with it that they did very little to cover their tracks. They assumed that because the woman had a “reputation,” there would be no consequences. In the 2018 Schneider case in Anchorage, the perpetrator apparently felt himself to be so entitled and protected by this impunity that he took time to explain himself to his victim after assaulting her. Ms. Henry’s murderer filmed his crime. We must end the culture of impunity. Forever.
Today there is a little more awareness. Forty years ago, the newspaper in Massachusetts offered no apologies. This time, the editor responded my complaint, apologized and made changes. But we still have work to do to make this kind of follow-up unnecessary. As long as victim blaming — however unintended it may be — continues, so will the culture of impunity and the assaults and murders. We must decide that we want it to end and take action. Now.
Jenny Bell-Jones is chairwoman emeritus of the Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This work represents her own opinion and not that of the department.
The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.