Crime reports

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 18

Crime reports

Sir,—Your report headed “Youths ignore rape, beating” (June 13) is the kind of reporting that women get enraged about. It is a prime example of the use of rape victims as headline material, only to ignore their suffering in the actual report which follows. Your report notes, practically in passing, that a “girl” (not a woman) was raped. It then implies that more importantly a man (not a boy) was seriously assaulted. We get details of his condition and we get told of the concern of the police on the seriousness of assaults with "people kicked in the face.” Compare such reporting with the massive media coverage (sympathetic, of course) one man gets when he is merely tied to a tree by a group of women and called a rapist. The media has had innumerable opportunities to learn ways to avoid capitalising on rape, and to avoid trivialising women’s constant suffering of rape, incest, batterings and sexual harrassment. Apparently reporters choose to maintain silent collusion with the perpetrators of violence towards women. — Yours, etc., VERNA STEWART. June 12, 1984.