She said it was rape. He said it was a consensual sexual encounter. As is often the case with such incidents, the public may never know what happened almost a year ago in the home of DeKalb County Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones.
What we do know is that a long criminal investigation resulted from the rape allegation. When DeKalb District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming announced she was dropping that investigation because Jones’ accuser wanted to avoid further trauma to herself and her family, I heard from a few readers who believed it was time for this newspaper to drop the story.
But when the personal conduct of a public official rises to the level of a criminal investigation, it is the role of a newspaper to provide full coverage, even when doing so makes people uncomfortable.
Keyes is still looking into the question of whether a law enforcement officer improperly tipped off Jones that the woman had filed a complaint against him. The woman, now 30, claims that Jones raped her following a sexual encounter with her and another woman at his home on Dec. 28.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Mae Gentry wrote a Nov. 20 story detailing the actions of investigators and Jones’ attorney, Dwight Thomas. According to a 410-page investigative report made public Nov. 4, when the woman was at a Rockdale County hospital filing her complaint, word of the accusation spread like wildfire through the DeKalb County Police Department, prompting a series of telephone calls among high-ranking officials and an unusual police presence at the hospital. The report also shows Jones’ attorney made a call to a key witness in the investigation while the CEO’s accuser was still at the hospital.
But the story that raised concerns among readers and staff members myself included was Alan Judd’s Nov. 25 story describing in detail what Jones’ accuser said happened that night.
“It was an extremely detailed and revealing report,” said Ernest Brown of Lithonia. “To me it looked as though [the AJC] still wanted Jones to feel some pain because of getting off. I also felt embarrassed for the accuser with the salacious details coming out, especially after she indicated that she didn’t want to take her family through this.”
Like Brown, I worried that if the accuser was indeed raped, our decision to run the Nov. 25 story might have caused her more pain. Judd said he communicated with her through her victim’s advocate to “make sure she understood that we were laying out the case pretty explicitly and that all the details would not be flattering to her.”
She said through her advocate that the public deserved a fair, thorough examination of the case, especially since Jones had declared himself exonerated, Judd said.
“The backdrop to this story is that rape is always a difficult crime to investigate and prosecute,” said Kelly McBride, an ethics leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. McBride, who has spent a good deal of time analyzing how news organizations cover sexuality and sexual assault, reviewed the AJC’s stories at my request. She believes the newspaper was right to present the details even after the case was dropped.
“I side with disclosing as much as possible in these public cases about the incident itself and the investigation surrounding it because there is clearly a public interest about law enforcement accountability and justice as it relates to very powerful people,” said McBride.
Even if reporters can’t completely answer such questions, they must ask them, she said. “There’s an inherent tension here between asking these questions and the reputation of a man who is innocent until proven guilty. What compounds that tension is the anonymity of the victim.”
In discussions with Metro Editor Bert Roughton and Jim Walls, the editor who supervised Judd’s story, I became convinced they made the right call.
When a public official is accused of an impropriety, reporters should aggressively pursue the story. Recent stories about Ralph Reed, a Republican candidate for Georgia lieutenant governor, and his ties to gambling interests are just one example. Reed hasn’t been charged with a crime, but his activities have prompted numerous investigations.
“In writing and editing the [Jones] story, we took great care to minimize our descriptions to say no more than needed for a reader to grasp the context of the allegation,” said Roughton. Jones was also given a chance to comment for the story.
“People have a right to know the details of such allegations so they can come to their own conclusions about the credibility of the accusation and the public official’s denial,” Roughton said.
