Rape Publicity Strikes a Nerve

This week, the nation’s most famous young rape victims stare out at us from the cover of People magazine. And our hand-wringing over whether to name them or not seems quaint; our concern for their privacy misplaced.

Still, the ordeal of the Antelope Valley teens who were kidnapped and raped, then escaped, continues to stoke emotional debate among a public divided over whether the girls should have been kept hidden and whisked into therapy, or allowed a public forum to share their tale.

“You have teenage girls, Sandy. Do you feel you would have wanted them in front of the cameras almost before the body of the rapist had been removed?” wrote the outraged mother of two adult daughters, in response to my Sunday column, in which I suggested that victim anonymity only contributes to the stigma of rape.

“These two girls had their bodies violated, their lives threatened and had to attempt to kill their abductor. If that had happened to me, as an ‘older’ adult, I know for certain that I would not have been ready to face yet another horror, that of endless questions, constant cameras in my face and the frenzy to get the best story.

“I would want some private time to sort out my feelings, come to grips with what has happened, get some professional help in dealing with my emotions. Then I would get on with my life.”

I’m not sure how much public scrutiny I would allow my daughters to face. But if this saga has made anything clear, it’s that there is no straight line from rape to recovery. I don’t imagine I’d want my girls on TV, but neither would I presume that a few days at home alone would make anyone forget what had happened to them.

Rape strips survivors of a sense of control and replaces it with vulnerability. These girls seemed to need to tell their story. Perhaps they knew, better than we do, that a show of strength would do more than a shrink to restore their stability.

“I never asked for an interview and frankly never imagined she would grant one,” e-mailed a television reporter who spoke with one of the girls in an interview broadcast on TV. “She wanted to talk. She was so disappointed that the news reports were not including the fact that [the girls] fought back, that they never gave up, and that they used their brains to negotiate with their captor the entire time.... They wanted other women to know that it’s possible to survive such an experience.”

One mother wrote to me said that she wishes her 20-year-old daughter had such role models when she was raped several years ago. Her daughter went for years without telling a soul, until her life began to fall apart and she landed in therapy. “If my daughter did not feel the shame or guilt or whatever stopped her from telling someone about this, she would not have had to go through what she has gone through these past several years,” she wrote.

“I think high schools should talk about it more--not just how to protect yourself from it but if it does happen, who to talk to. I think society has to start talking about it more. We finally talk about domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse and that has saved many lives ... It would have been easier for my daughter if she did not feel she had to hide.”

But many readers, particularly rape survivors, had mixed feelings about the girls’ bold stance and the openness it seems to reflect.

“I am glad those two young women felt comfortable with going public. I also believe that at some point in the future they will deeply regret it,” wrote a woman, who likened public identification to pouring salt in a wound. “If you had published my name as a rape victim that would be part of my identification by the rest of the world for the rest of my life....I want to be known for something good I have done, some accomplishment or contribution I make. Not for the sheer notoriety of a crime I couldn’t prevent. Isn’t it enough that I have to live with the knowledge of what that monster did to me, without having all my teachers, co-workers and fellow citizens looking at me with that sad, piteous look, knowing about my trauma.”

Some pointed out that, unlike the girls, many rape survivors don’t have the freedom that comes with the rapist’s death.

“My attack occurred over 20 years ago, and the legacy of that horrible afternoon has stayed with me,” wrote a woman who was attacked by a serial rapist, who is due to be released soon from prison. “And I still worry that he’ll find me and rape me again.”

Fear, not shame, is the legacy most victims carry, she said. “We were there. We know that it’s not our ‘fault.’ It’s the public that persists in its notion of rape as a wild, dangerous form of sex, made more exciting by the fact it’s been stolen. We don’t need the public’s prurient interest to help us come to terms with rape, much less ‘recover’ from it, as you suggest we must.”

One thing the public discourse has made clear: We have come a long way from the day when short skirts and tight dresses were blamed for rape.

“Times, they are a changing,” wrote an elderly woman, who was raped in 1940 when she was 14. “Him, they let go. Me ... well, I was charged with ‘enticement’ and spent 14 days in Juvenile Home until a social worker got me out. I don’t know what scared me most, the rape or the jail. And until I left town 6 years later, my name was ‘mud.’ Don’t ever let anyone say ‘the good old days.’ They weren’t.”

But others say the pendulum may have swung too far, that we have taken such pains to separate rape from sex that we have obscured the true nature of the crime.

“You appear to be taken in by a politically correct, but factually incorrect notion that rape is a crime of violence but not a sex crime. This is a misconception espoused by those that have never experienced the male libido,” wrote one man. “Rape is a crime of violence committed for the purpose of sexual gratification.... This has nothing to do with blaming the victim, but it is necessary to understand the motivation of the criminal to prevent the crime.”

And in our zeal to insulate victims from blame, we may be missing a chance to talk to young women about their responsibility to conduct themselves in ways that limit their vulnerability.

The Antelope Valley girls were out after midnight, parked in a desolate spot favored among young couples because it is so remote and dark. That made them easy pickings for a kidnapper looking for a target.

Their story sent shivers through one reader, who was raped 30 years ago when she was 19, after a night of drinking with a fellow she hardly knew. “My experience taught me something that most rape victims don’t seem to express,” she wrote. “It taught me that I needed to be more careful in my life, and that I needed to be more responsible for decisions I was making about what people to be with and what places to go.”

And that’s something I hope those girls--and their parents--will also say as they continue their media rounds.

Sandy Banks’ column is published Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes .com.