Rape Victims Need Privacy to Regain Power

Last week, I watched the televised press conference in which it was announced that basketball star Kobe Bryant was being charged with felony sexual assault. As I watched, though, I was much less concerned about Bryant than I was about someone else: the alleged victim.

Mark Hurlbert, district attorney for Eagle County, Colo., said: “Please respect the victim’s privacy.” He has repeated this sentiment several times since. But her privacy has not been respected. The Times and other major media outlets follow self-imposed policies of not identifying by name alleged victims of sexual assault. However, we know this woman’s age, where she worked, where she went to high school and which clubs she had belonged to there. What more will we learn about her in the days, weeks and months to come? Her tenuous anonymity -- her name has been all over talk radio -- is about all she has left now of her “privacy.”

But why should her privacy even be protected? Why should alleged victims of sexual assault be treated differently from alleged victims of other types of crimes? And, if these people are treated differently, doesn’t this special treatment, these (however ultimately ineffective) protective policies, implicitly acknowledge and then make even worse the stigma of rape? Perhaps. So, then, shouldn’t The Times and the rest of the media change these policies? No.

I was raped 14 years ago. It is an experience I have discussed with my family and friends, the police and the district attorney. My attack, like the majority of sexual assaults in this country, was not publicized. I have chosen, though, to write about my experience and have published essays about it. These discussions, these publications occurred because I decided that they would. And that has made a difference in my life: I have had, at least, that power.

There are still those in our society who, sometimes out of malice but more often from ignorance, denigrate rape survivors simply for what has been done to them. And certainly some rape survivors do feel shame about their experiences.

But it’s not to patronizingly protect rape victims from social stigma that I think they should remain anonymous. It’s to give them back some of the power that they have lost. If the newspapers and TV news programs publicize a survivor’s name, it robs the survivor of the chance to make her (or his) own decision about who, when and how much to tell. It denies the victim that right.

Seeing her name in the paper may make a survivor feel that this is just one more aspect of her life that she has lost control over; it may make her feel more vulnerable, and it may even delay her recovery. Whether her co-workers, neighbors -- or, for this particular young woman, the rest of the world -- find out who she is and what she has experienced should be a decision she alone makes.