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Oct
3
Mail Bag: What Do I Think About the West Virginia Hate Crime Coverage?
Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Gender and Sexism, Media Praises and Critiques, Race and Racism, Uncategorized by Rachel
Last week I received an email from a woman who is a journalism student at NYU. She asked me how I felt about the coverage of the case of a Black West Virginia woman, who was tortured, raped, and help captive. I wanted to use this post to respond to her questions. (I’m not reprinting her name since she wrote me off-blog.)
From the time this case was released in the media, something about the coverage troubled me. The first thing that bothered me was how quickly the AP released the victim’s name. If a person had been severely tortured for at least a week1 and was currently in the hospital being treated for serious wounds, would this person be psychologically ready or able to give consent. I think a responsible reporter would have waited. Moreover, nearly every report by the AP (and some other organizations) mentions that young woman and her mother gave permission for her name to be released because her mother wanted people to know about her daughter’s ordeal. I think her mother meant well, but unfortunately, in a case like this the victim is going to become a target for white supremacists and rape apologists. I think a reporter should use their better judgment and delay releasing the name of the victim until the victim herself (NOT her mother) has had time to heal.The other issue that I’m concerned about is the fact that the victim has a disability. Having watch a few videos with the victim, it is clear that she has a cognitive disability. While I would not say, she cannot consent to have her name released, I do worry that her disability may make it difficult for her to understand what could happen to her2 . Furthermore, I’m concerned that her disability may have made her more vulnerable in the first place, and she may be further victimized with the media attention swirling around her. How is she going to be able to protect herself when she already seems to have some cognitive difficulties?
Which leads me to one of my other concerns, I’m piecing things together, but from what I’ve read this young woman has probably had a very difficult life, and her background may have made her extremely vulnerable. I made a brief list of a few things we know about the young woman:
- her name, age, race, and gender
- she was adopted as a 16 year old
- she has some kind of learning disability
- she is accused of writing bad checks
- she filed some kind of charges against her parents that were dropped and presumed to be untrue
- she had some sort of relationship with one of the torturers (it’s hard to know if it’s a friendship a dating relationship or something else)
- we know some of her injuries and some of the brutal things that were done to her
- some of her neighbors said she was too “trusting”
- she lived on her own, and didn’t see her parents everyday
- We didn’t hear from any friends only her mother.
I’m piecing things together here, but I think it’s fair to say that she has had a troubled childhood. There’s a high likelihood that she may have spent some time in foster care. Now this is none of our business, but it is related to one of the problems with media coverage in this case. Often when we see middle and upper class white victims, you get to hear from several friends and relatives. They become advocates. The humanize the victim. In this case we have only seen her mother, not a single friend, and not much from her father. The only article that I found that even attempted to place a relatives (excluding her mother) perspective in a way that humanized the victim was this story from the Wilmington Journal. I’ve read articles from this journalist in the past, and he has a way of covering stories about African Americans in his stories that is much different from most other journalists.
I also think this post over at What About Our Daughter’s is on to something:
Megan Williams’ statement is in the news. Is that her mother giving reporters the middle finger? I know there are folks with differing viewpoints on revealing the names and faces of victims of sexual assault, but something about how this woman is appearing in the media just doesn’t sit right with me. I have not nailed it down. I am not saying she does not need to speak out, that is her right, but either she is A) developmentally challenged or B)extremely unsophisticated. Under either scenario, she is in a position of being exploited and I don’t get a “we’re protecting her” vibe from anybody.
And I also have a hard time putting my finger on just what it is.
Perhaps one way to fix this problem is for her to be presented as a sympathetic person.? They put irrelevant information like whether or not she had a job in some of the articles, and then the next story we see is a about her writing bad checks.? Suddenly, she’s the subject of more scrutiny than the perpetrators.? Rather than showing her in court, holding a teddy bear, they need to remove her picture and her name and give us a more detailed biography.? Again, I’m reading between the lines, but I think the young woman has been through tremendous amounts of trauma even prior to this horrible crime.? If her anonymity was protected, it may be easier to show her in a sympathetic light without violating her privacy.
What do you think? I’m still having trouble pinning it down.
- It looks like more than a week. [back]
- Honestly, I don’t think anyone in a high profile sexual assault case will know what kind of horrible attacks will be leveled at them, but her disability may make it more difficult for her to know. [back]
Comments
13 Responses to “Mail Bag: What Do I Think About the West Virginia Hate Crime Coverage?”
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When googling for news and blogs for this case, enclose “Megan Williams” in quotes, otherwise Google will return quite a bit of porn of the dirty-story variety.
Oh, we’ve certainly got problems with the coverage in this case as well. I”m a bit concerned that her check-writing and other “story” will be used to discredit her and get the animals off that did this horrible thing to her.
I’m also a bit concerned about Ms. Williams’ cognitive functioning. I live in the area where I get local TV news coverage of the events, and she does not look like she is functioning at the level of a normal young woman in her 20’s. Yes, I’m concerned that her mother gave permission way too early, but I’m also a bit concerned that she be deemed competent to release any additional information. I don’t think she realizes the potential repercussions of what she’s doing, whether as a result of the horrible things she endured or some kind of pre-existing condition.
On the local news, I’ve seen a bit of her father, though not nearly as much as her mother. He seems genuinely concerned about her.
I wondered as well about the early statements of her mother, saying that Ms. Williams would often disappear for a few weeks and was always fine. Maybe my folks were overprotective, but when I was living on my own in my 20s and 30s, they wanted to know where I was, not every minute, but they wanted to know if I took a trip out of town, and I wanted to let them know. It seems like a different parenting model from the one I’m used to.
I’m not sure how much sense any of this makes, but it helps me to pin down some of the discomfort that I have with parts of the story.
Actually, you HAVE pinned it down; it is all of these things combined, to create a certain racist, misogynist erasure of the facts.
If the media can present her as individually “weird” enough, it then becomes an “individual” case, about this ONE strange person, who is then just ‘coincidentally’ black and female. If she “had a relationship” (of whatever sort) with these people, then the story is suddenly deemed not about racism or misogyny, but about the bizarre interpersonal dynamics between this woman and these ‘hillbillies’.
My take on it. Excellent post, Rachel.
Rachel, thank you. The publicity surrounding the victim’s name and identity has bothered me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. You’ve clarified this completely.
From where I sit, there are two stories here…the media is largely incapable of dealing with both stories.
First, the question of law enforcement’s role in handling these career criminals is abysmal. In multiple instances, these individuals were involved in cases ranging from assault to murder – and the law enforcement/social service community never closed the net. Six persons with their accumulated records should not have been “free” to prey upon anyone. I could go into gory detail, but I’ve done it over at P6.
The challenge before the media is to connect the dots in building the backstory of law enforcement and social services. I don’t need to know her story. I need to know why the county, the attorney general and all these other folks (judges, statewide CBOs’, etc.) passed the buck on these persons with whom they’ve had an intimate relationship. The victim’s story need never have intersected with the story of these 6 criminals if those charged with protecting the public good actually did their job. They failed miserably.
The victim’s access to justice is contingent, in some measure, on a broader public discussion of those state-sponsored failings. Frankly, there should be no easy exoneration for anyone in this case. And it precisely this area where the media will be confounded. Questioning the extent to which state and local judges/cops do their job is tantamount to professional suicide. Doing such on behalf of a Black women with diminished capacities is tantamount to insanity.
Second, the healing of the victim – and her long-term restoration of self is critical. That’s the other story – but it is secondary because it should be a private process. I don’t want to know about it…I don’t want to ask about it. I’m not delivering healing services on the ground. It’s not my business. And, Rachel, you are quite right in acknowledging the importance of friends providing humanizing narratives – but honestly, no one should be talking about anything beyond evidence collection, case building, and an inquiry about light sentences and a permissive acquiescence to criminality in Big Creek, West Virginia. That’s my business – that’s our business.
Hey Rachel:
I think the coverage of this case has been poor. Check out my blog, read some posts and make a comment. I’d appreciate you input.
Thought Merchant
http://www.thoughtmerchant.wordpress.com
I echo Daisy Deadhead.
The online coverage (news, not op-eds) on FoxNews and CNN for this case reads like both are cribbing from the same AP releases. The only difference seems to be that FoxNews has not posted any headline articles on the check incidents or that the complainant knew the defendants. CNN however did — no surprise there, they have Nancy Grace.
All reporting seems accurate, if not all that precise. This case suffers the same pattern of most crime reportage: newsworthy events occur days and weeks apart. Once the shock value of the crime and the arrests are over, very little real news value remains until the actual trial.
I see many blogs asking where’s the news media, but I have to wonder what exactly do people want reported that hasn’t been already.
As for keeping a complainant’s identity secret today, forget it. If the case is sensational enough, the race will be on among original-research bloggers to be the first to release her name, and the wikipedia editors will be hot on their heels to find a credible source and verify it. This web of extreme historians has bred a new type of dispassionate gonzo journalism that thirsts for cold, hard fact and has no ethics (or politics) regarding investigating and reporting, particularly those facts some group wants kept silent.
Any attempt to pass laws against this will slam directly into the First Amendment.
Some of the local media (NPR) here in WV have publicly engaged in discussion about the decision to release the name and details since the story broke, and have revisisted the decision in public fora since then. Honestly, the reporter who I heard talking about this and about having reservations recognized that this was an exceptional decision, to release the information, and said that one of the primary factors in making the decision was the insistent position of the victim’s mother.
While in hindsight (or even a couple of days afterward) the facts you portray above, taken all together, give plenty of reasons why the victim’s name and details should have been withheld, the decisions made on the fly didn’t have a full appreciation of that context. Now, the question of whether they should have is another matter, and I agree that restraint until they had more of the picture would have better protected the victim.
When this story broke, it seemed that the local reporters were in shock… remember, this is a small community, and I’m not sure that they thought it through with clear heads. The local paper prints who was arrested for public intox the night before. Drug busts get front page photos above the fold. Something this awful, this shocking, couldn’t not be the main story in this media market. Combine that with the shock, the inexperience in dealing with hate crimes and torture, plus the insistence of the victim’s mother, and the recipe for intemperant disclosure is made.
The good news, while no help to the victim in this case, is that there appears to be some serious soul searching going on in the media here about the way they handled this.
[...] Mail Bag: What Do I Think About the West Virginia Hate Crime Coverage? – Rachels Tavern “it is clear that she has a cognitive disability. While I would not say, she cannot consent to have her name released, I do worry that her disability may make it difficult for her to understand what could happen to her” (tags: rape disabled hatecrime) [...]
trvolk:
“I see many blogs asking wheres the news media, but I have to wonder what exactly do people want reported that hasnt been already.”
You’re kidding, right?
No, I’m not kidding. What hasn’t been reported?
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