Publishing heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974 by the notorious Symbionese Liberation Army and, it was later disclosed, locked in a closet and repeatedly raped during her early captivity. Hearst has since spoken out on the stresses of such treatment and the need for privacy for victims of such crimes.
The daughter of a Miami real estate mogul, Barbara Mackle, was taken from an Atlanta hotel room in 1968 and buried under the red clay of northern Georgia in a fiberglass and plywood coffin. Eighty-three hours after she was lowered into the earth, she was found by FBI agents and other law enforcement officers — many of them crawling around on the ground and digging into the dirt with their hands — alive, and, surprising to many reporters who covered the case, relatively well.
Hearst was criminally charged with aiding and abetting her captors in crimes, found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Eventually she was pardoned.
Mackle is now married with a family and living in south Florida.
Now comes before the courts the case of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. Found alive in Sandy last week, prosecutors say the girl, now 15, was kidnapped at knife point from her bedroom last June 5, and, according to charging documents, was sexually assaulted the first night of her capture. Police have verified she was held in a hole in the ground covered with boards.
Any details of this horrible crime cause parents to shudder involuntarily. That Elizabeth Smart was found alive and in good physical condition amazed law enforcement officers and reporters who, after nine months, accepted that, statistically, she probably was dead.
That said, let us observe something about human nature: It’s easy to be a legend in your own mind when no one is shooting at you — or locking you in a closet or abusing you.
And, many members of the newspaper-reading public and some in the news media seem quite clear on how they would behave if they were 14 years old, had been kidnapped at knife point out of their own bedrooms, abused and then buried in a hole as Elizabeth Smart apparently was last June.
Within hours of her recovery, some TV reporters — and members of the general public — started asking, “If she had these opportunities to escape, why didn’t she?” One reporter asked officials if they intended to give Smart a lie-detector test.
Pretty damn presumptuous, I say.
Then came the filing of criminal charges against the two suspects — folks who look like poster children underscoring the need for psychotropic drugs — including aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Under Utah law, the charge of aggravated kidnapping involves a victim under age 18, detaining or restraining the victim for a substantial period of time, or in circumstances exposing a risk of bodily injury, or moving the victim a substantial distance and across a state line, and possessing, using or threatening to use a dangerous weapon, or . . . intending to inflict bodily injury on or to terrorize the victim or intending to commit a sexual offense. It is a charge that can put a defendant away for life.
Coverage of the charges by The Salt Lake Tribune drew phone calls and e-mail from readers who believe we should have not printed the information about alleged sexual assault.
This is a tough call in light of the news media’s historical policies to protect the identities of those sexually assaulted unless the victims ask to be identified. One criminal case in Utah involving an underage girl brought forth the victim in a second trial and she insisted on being identified because she wanted the public to understand the story.
The news media, including The Salt Lake Tribune, normally do not name such victims. But this case is different. The victim was identified when she was kidnapped. The media were instrumental in her being found alive. There is no way to “un-identify” her. The charging documents are horrifying. Suffice it to say that reporters for The Tribune boiled down the details in the reporting on court hearings. There have been serious talks in the newsroom about what details to include.
No one in this newsroom wants to further harm Elizabeth Smart.
Official concern about the victim came out during a news conference on charges in the case when Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom asked reporters to be careful in covering the trial. The Smarts, Yocom said, asked the news media to refrain from asking questions about the sexual assault counts.
But reporting the sexual assault counts is important. In a country where court proceedings are open so that they do not become corrupt, the way a criminal case proceeds gives the public information it needs to decide if defendants are given fair trials and sentences.
James E. Shelledy, editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, noted: “The difficulty here is that everyone knows the victim’s name. You can’t put that back in the bottle. But there’s a limit to how many details you need to print and how many times you repeat them.”
Rest assured, I will be counting.
