Edit: A Monster Did Not Assault A Public Toilet
The Adelaide Advertiser (a News Corporation publication) reported that a man charged with raping a child inside a public toilet block had his identity revealed in late August this year.
Permission being granted for the man's identity to be publicly [known] was a small part of what took place in legal proceedings for the case. Rather than placing focus on the procedures of the justice system, through which the man accepted a plea deal that allowed him to sidestep two charges of rape—instead pleading guilty to the lesser charges of aggravated indecent assault and unlawful detention—the paper leaned instead towards sensationalism by focusing on the unveiling of the man's identity.
The front page headline, "Sex Fiend Unmasked", has the word "sex"—broadly defined as sexual activity for pleasure between two consenting adults—wrongly applied to the context of a man raping a child. A person who rapes a child is not a "sex fiend"—a term for which one definition is a person who loves sex very much. Rape is not the same as sex; rape is a crime.
Using the term "sex" anywhere in a story about the rape of a child implicates the child in the act, lessening the responsibility for violence that should rest solely on the shoulders of the adult (in this case, the man). Sex requires consent, something that a child cannot legally or morally give. Jane Gilmore has written extensively about this.
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The secondary headline is similarly problematic: "Man pleads guilty to attacking young girl in park toilet block".
At this point, the two headlines in combination have given a picture of something to do with "sex" and an "attack". If sex is a consensual act, what is a sex attack? Media companies seem afraid to name incidents of sexual violence accurately, to tell the truth of what actually happened: accurate terms like rape, sexual assault, and child abuse are available for use.
For a second time, Advertiser editors chose sensationalism over the basic details that belong in the headline: a man was charged with rape after being accused of raping a 10 ten-year-old child in a public place and pled guilty to lesser charges as part of a plea deal. Instead: a mention of the child's gender, and the location where the sexual assault took place. If a reader skimmed only the headlines, they would not have learnt much of the general truth of the story.
Using the “toilet block” location of the crime as headline fodder attempts to differentiate the case from the many, but no less awful, cases of child sexual abuse that happen every day in ordinary places by distracting from the act of violence itself, making it [difficult] for those cases to receive equal attention. “Girl” is a term used to describe women at many stages of life, as is “young”—is she fifteen? Twenty-five? Five? Using language outside of the precise term “10 year old girl” muddies the truth and contributes further to sensationalism of the case.
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The story continued on page 6 of the newspaper with a third headline: "Monster unmasked over public toilet sexual assault."
The male perpetrator did not sexually assault a public toilet block; a child is not a public toilet. The man raped a 10 year old child after luring her inside a public toilet block. Mentioning the location in the headline instead of the victim acts to make the victim invisible.
There is a common myth about perpetrators of sexual violence: they are “monsters”, different from normal men and human beings. The truth is that humans who perpetrate sexual violence run countries and companies and schools and sports teams; they could be friends of your friends; they are ordinary people in ordinary communities. The man who raped the child in this story is not a monster; he is just a man.
