Newsworthy rape

I am often reminded of the case of Giles when I read newspaper reports of sexual assault and sexual murder. Such cases are nearly always reported in “Briefs”, or in “News in Focus” as the similar section is called in the Herald.

In 2004, for example, a brief report in the Herald (171 words) noted the sexual assault and murder of a young woman who was 15 when she was killed by Christopher O’Connell, who identified himself as her boyfriend. She was killed with a savagery that would move anyone who read the case to tears and anger. A reader of the report in the Herald, however, would know almost nothing of her lonely death or of the identity of her assailant. Neither Giles nor O’Connell was identified in the media by his ethnicity or his religion. Neither made the headlines.

When sexual assault does make the headlines, as in the case of Geoff Clark, it has little to do with the identity of the victim, or of solicitude for her suffering (or in some cases, his suffering).

Martin Giles’ victim was described by one judge as bright, effervescent and good, and loyal and hardworking. The women who survive to courageously testify in other rape trials are no different. The courage and dignity of Carol Stingel and Joanne McGuinness quite literally takes one’s breath away.

What makes a rape newsworthy is mostly something not about the victim but about the perpetrator, or about the community from which the perpetrator comes. In cases that are reported only in “Briefs”, the community of a rapist is never asked to take a good hard look at itself or to take responsibility for itself.

Briefly put, if white men rape, they are generally taken to be acting on their own. They are “bad apples”. What they do is generally not characterised as a hate crime, even though that is what it is. If men from a Muslim or Aboriginal background rape, it seems that their entire community took part in what they did.

To be quite clear: the trials of men of Muslim background or of Aboriginal men on charges of rape should be on the front pages of major newspapers. Such crimes are savage and contemptuous. But it should not be only their trials that make headlines. And it should not be only their community that needs to look at itself and take some responsibility for the actions of its members.

Only when rape makes front page news whatever the ethnicity of the rapist, can we begin to talk of justice under the rule of law for its victims.