A discussion about victims of violence was named the most useful session conducted at the gathering of the Organization of News Ombudsmen here last month.
The ombudsmen, who came from as far away as Japan and Israel, selected the session in a poll conducted after the convention. The panel featured Patsy Day, director of Victims Outreach in Dallas, and Donya Witherspoon, a former journalist who now practices law in Dallas.
For the purpose of this discussion, we need to understand that we do not confine the definition of victims of violence just to those who are actually murdered, or beaten, or raped, or robbed. Their families also can become victims.
Both Day and Witherspoon, I think you will soon agree, are victims. While the focus of their talks was on how the news media treat victims, they also told how victims have been treated insensitively by police, medical personnel, prosecutors, the courts, even friends who make inappropriate statements.
That is why I think their stories are important to all of us.
Day and Witherspoon were treated very differently by journalists — one was virtually ignored, the other was harassed.
Witherspoon’s mother was raped and beaten to death with a hammer 12 years ago in her home in Ardmore, Okla. Witherspoon said she learned of her mother’s death when some residents of Ardmore called to inform her there was “yellow police tape” around her mother’s home and a body had been carried out.
She said she was insulted that no official ever called her about her mother’s slaying, which remains unsolved. She was later insulted because no one in the news media contacted her about her mother.
Witherspoon said that reporters were content to talk to neighbors who “hardly knew her….The media never talked to anyone who really knew her.” She described her mother as “an incredible human being with a lot of accomplishments that were never mentioned by the media.”
Day, on the other hand, said reporters “descended on me like sharks in a feeding frenzy” when her teenage daughter was abducted from a north Dallas doughnut shop in 1985. Her nude body was found four days later in Plano.
Before her daughter’s body was found, she recalled, one TV cameraman kept insisting that he be allowed to photograph the teenagers’ bedroom.
Shortly after the girl’s body was found, Day said, reporters “were banging on our door….They camped out on our lawn. They interviewed people entering our house and those who were leaving.”
She said that when members of the family asked reporters to leave their property, they crossed the street and camped out on a lawn in front of a vacant house.
When the Day family arrived at the cemetery to bury their daughter they found news photographers perched in trees near the grave, Day recalled.
She described the entire experience as “excruciating.”
The murder has never been solved.
When no suspect was arrested, Day said, her family was confronted by what she called “the blame-the-victim syndrome.” She said reporters asked if she and her husband had violated child labor laws by permitting their daughter to work at the shop. She said it was quickly determined that no law had been violated.
She said the other thing that most upset her was “the fact the media refused to look at my faith….My faith carried me through that period. God sustained me…
“But when I would say that to reporters, they didn’t know what to do with it so they just ignored it. But it was very important for people to know.”
Witherspoon said there is another side to the religion issue.
She said she gets upset when she sees us quoting a person saying it was God’s will that a loved one had died violently. She also gets upset when she hears survivors of a disaster credit God with saving them.
She said she frequently heard survivors of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City so quoted.
“Why didn’t God save all of those other people?” she asked. “They were just as good as those who were saved….So let’s not speak for God….
“It’s bad enough being a victim without being told God didn’t love your loved ones.”
Day said she was surprised at how young and inexperienced were the reporters assigned to cover the kidnapping of her daughter. She said it was evident that many of them needed “sensitivity training.”
“They really didn’t listen to me,” Day recalled. She said it was quite apparent most of the journalists “didn’t have much life experience.”
But she feels most acted out of ignorance, not out of maliciousness.
Both Day and Witherspoon think there has been much improvement in how journalists and others treat victims now. These changes have come about because victims such as Day and Witherspoon have spoken out.
Today, they noted, many news organizations:
- No longer print or broadcast the home addresses of victims of violence.
- Withhold the name of the hospital at which a victim is being treated when the culprit is still at large.
- Do not send staffers to the cemetery without the permission of the family.
- Provide sensitivity training for members of their staff.
They also offered a number of suggestions and reminders for the ombudsmen, including:
- Never say a criminal suspect was found innocent by a jury. Always say the person was found not guilty. “Innocence is only one of the reasons people are found not guilty,” Witherspoon said.
- Never say you understand “because unless you lived it you don’t understand it.” Just say you are sorry.
- Remember people react differently to tragedy. Some go into shock; some become very “businesslike” as they go about making the preparations to bury a loved one; some are stoic; some cry a lot. They said journalists should be careful not to make a determination how a person really feels based on their external appearance or behavior.
- Remember victims of violence are often stripped of their dignity, their privacy, even their safety.
- Let the victims talk about their own concerns and their loved ones. This can be therapeutic.
- Permit the victims to arrange interviews on their terms. “If you were covering the hostile takeover of a bank,” said Witherspoon, “…you wouldn’t knock down the bank president’s door. You would call his office and ask for an interview. So why can’t you call a crime victim and ask for an interview?….Give them an opportunity to have some control.”
It was apparent Day and Witerspoon relived pain in telling their stories.
Witherspoon said it would take her “a few days…to recover from this talk today. I may have a nightmare tonight or whatever.”
But the pain she experienced that day probably will lessen the pain of other victims of violence in the future. For that, all of us owe Day and Witherspoon our thanks.
