Rape Story Spurs New Debate About Naming Victims

Two months ago, a 29-year-old Iowa mother of two challenged the way Americans view victims of rape.

She did it by allowing a newspaper, the Des Moines Register, to print the story of her Nov. 19, 1988, rape and its aftermath--her struggles to overcome her fear, tell her children, make love with her husband.

And she allowed the newspaper to print her name--Nancy Ziegenmeyer.

Ziegenmeyer’s decision, and her story, which was printed on five consecutive days in excruciating detail, prompted a flurry of debate about media coverage of rape. In the following weeks, Ziegenmeyer, who operates a child-care service in Grinnell, Iowa, has appeared on “Donahue” and “Nightline.”

The crux of the debate is the argument that by not printing or broadcasting rape victims’ names--by treating rape differently from other violent crimes--the media perpetuate a stigma of guilt, of shame.

The dilemma is not easily resolved, for it weighs what some see as the good of many against the rights of the individual--the rape victim who may feel a compelling need for privacy. Ironically, it has put many journalists in what must seem an alien position of arguing on the side of withholding information.

Editors at papers such as the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News find themselves at just such odds.

“The policy is to always try and maximize the amount of information you can give to the reader,” says John Darnton, metropolitan editor of the New York Times. “I find it undesirable to say to the readers, ‘We know but we aren’t including it.’ I find it almost arrogant.”

On the other hand, disclosing the names of rape victims, he says, is “a fine principle in the abstract, but it becomes very sticky case by case.”

James I. Houck, managing editor of the Baltimore Sun, expresses similar sentiments: “Though identifying rape victims may help remove a stigma, I am not sure that I want to make that decision for a rape victim who has undergone substantial trauma and will continue to undergo substantial trauma.”

Generally, he says, the Baltimore Sun does not print the names of rape victims.

But for at least 25 years, the Shelton-Mason County Journal in Washington state has routinely published the names of sexual assault victims, male or female, when they appear in court.

Managing Editor Charles Gay views the policy as part of fair trial coverage. The act of withholding a victim’s name while identifying the suspect implies the latter’s guilt, he says.

“Even if the person is the victim there should be no reason why she should be ashamed of what’s happened to her, although that’s the way society apparently feels she should feel. It is sad that she cannot get on the stand without fear.”

The complexity of the media’s dilemma has been illuminated by the case of the jogger raped last year in Central Park. Despite the extraordinary amount of publicity surrounding the case, most newspapers and television stations have refrained from identifying her. But, asks Darnton, what if that restraint ends when the case goes to court and some news organization discloses her name?

“What do we do if she takes the stand? . . . If all the papers identified her, and the TV stations, you might reach the point of looking like an absurdist holdout” for refraining.

Three states--Florida, Georgia and South Carolina--have laws that prohibit identifying victims of sexual crimes. But even those laws have been in legal limbo since a 1989 Supreme Court ruling overturned a $97,500 damage suit verdict against the Florida Star, a small Jacksonville paper that published--inadvertently, the paper said--the name of a rape victim after the name had been included in a police report.

To some, these laws are a symbol of the stigma.

“Maybe they are a Southern embodiment of views on women,” says George Rahdert, a First Amendment lawyer for the the New York Times and Florida’s St. Petersburg Times who represented the Florida Star in its case.

In other states, withholding rape victims’ names traditionally has been left up to newspaper and television editors. And to some, that is part of the problem.

“We have a lot of men, white men, who are making decisions for women,” says Irene Nolan, managing editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I do think that by not printing the names we are treating the rape victims differently and that we are helping to perpetuate a stigma and that we are being patronizing.”

Still, the Courier-Journal doesn’t publish names of rape victims without consent.

“The emotions (about rape) run very deep and we have not changed the policy, and I don’t think that society is ready for it,” she says.

The reality is that the stigma exists, says Cecilia Carroll, executive director of Baltimore’s Sexual Assault Recovery Center. “I don’t think that the media is buying into a myth. They are recognizing the fact that there is a stigma.”

Until the myth is dispelled, naming rape victims will deter women from reporting the crime, says Wanda Robinson, chief of Baltimore’s sex offense unit in the state’s attorney’s office.

“Rape is a crime of violence. Society sometimes forgets that and thinks of it as a crime of sex, of intercourse,” she says. “Until people get past that element--that rape is ‘sex’--then I don’t think that rape victims can or should be revealed.”

Nancy Ziegenmeyer chose to step forward despite--or perhaps because of--that stigma. Months before Ziegenmeyer’s story was written, Geneva Overholser, editor of the Des Moines Register, wrote a column urging rape victims to come forward. “As long as rape is deemed unspeakable--and is therefore not fully and honestly spoken of--the public outrage will be muted as well,” she wrote.

The column found its mark. Ziegenmeyer read it, called Overholser and told of her rape nine months earlier. In late February, one month after her assailant, Bobby Lee Smith, was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Ziegenmeyer’s story was published on the front page.

In Des Moines, reader response was positive enough for the paper to change its policy for reporting rapes, David Westphal, managing editor, said. Still, a name is not printed without the victim’s consent.

“Our present tack is to try to be more aggressive in inquiring of victims whether they wish to have their names printed,” he says. The new policy is based on the belief that “the stigma of rape is extremely powerful in part because of the mystery.”