Big, Dans' Gang Rape

IRGIN AMP By the same author Portraits in Print A World Like This (a novel) Safe, Strong, and Streetwise Recovery: How to Survive Sexual Assault IRGIN AMP How the Press Covers Sex Crimes HELEN BENEDICT New fork Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta M adras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1992 by Helen Benedict First published in 1992 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1993 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Benedict, Helen. Virgin or vamp : how the press covers sex crimes / Helen Benedict, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-19-506680-4 i. Sex crimes in the press—United States. 2. Press—United States—Public opinion. 3. Public opinion—United States. 4. Mass media—United States—Objectivity. 5. n-us. I. Title. PN4888.S49B46 1992 364.i'53—dc20 92-3821 ISBN 0-19-508665-1 (PBK.) The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint excerpts from: Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller. Copyright © 1975 by Susan Brownmiller. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Time magazine, with permission. The Oregonian, with permission. "Oregon Husband-Wife Rape Law" by Betty Liddick, December 23, 1978. Copyright © 1978, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission. The Village Voice, with permission. "Leap Up Social Ladder for Woman in Rape Inquiry," by Fox Butterfield and Mary Tabor, April 17, 1991 and "Darkness Beneath the Glitter: Life of Suspect in Park Slaying," by Samuel G. Freed- man, August 28, 1986. Copyright © 1986/91 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. "Ain't love grand?" by Mike Royko. Reprinted by permission of Tribune Media Services. "East Side Story" by Michael Stone, New York, November 10, 1986. Copyright © 1992 K-III Magazine Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of New York magazine. 2468 10 97531 Printed in the United States of America Preface I first took an interest in how the press treats sex crimes as a result of my twelve years of research on rape. As a magazine and newspaper reporter, I had written articles and, later, two books about how rape affects the victim and her loved ones and how teenagers and children can protect themselves from assault. I had also trained as a rape coun- selor at St. Vincent Hospital's Rape Crisis Center in New York. I learned from the dozens of interviews I conducted with women, men, and children who had been raped, and with their counselors and families, just how deeply terrible a crime sexual assault is. I learned how it destroys the fundamental sense of autonomy and privacy of the victim—one's body is used as an object, one's humanity degraded; how it introduces trauma and distrust between the victim and those close to her, often destroying marriages and families; and how little the police, the press, and the public at large understand or even sympathize with these trou- bles. I learned how rape victims become trapped in a cycle of injustice: having fallen victim to a violent crime through no fault of their own, they are blamed for it, sometimes mocked for it by neighbors, friends, family, and the law. I also learned that, even after two decades of fem- inist attempts to educate the public about rape, women are still screamed at or even beaten by their fathers and lovers for having been raped, are still stigmatized or run out of town for it, and are still commonly por- trayed as promiscuous liars by the press and the public, as the rape case against William Kennedy Smith recently illustrated.* When I became a professor of journalism, I began to look at the subject from a different view. Knowing all I do about rape, I became * See Helen Benedict, Recovery: How to Survive Sexual Assault (New York: Doubleday, 1985), for cases illustrating these points. vi Preface concerned about the lack of such knowledge in the press. Indeed, the press, it seemed to me, was a prominent part of the cycle of injustice that traps victims. My journalist colleagues, I found, tended to perpet- uate rather than debunk the myths and misunderstandings that so hurt victims, not intentionally, perhaps, but through habit and ignorance. With this hypothesis in mind, I set out to research this book, by both analyzing press accounts of sex crimes and by interviewing the reporters and editors who worked on the original stories. My research would not have been possible without the help of var- ious institutions and individuals. I thank the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Gannett Foundation's National Research and Publications Program for Journalists in Education for time and money to pursue my research; to the Cummington Community and School of the Arts for summers of peace and support; to the research assistants who have helped me so diligently over the years: Marego Athans, Viva Hardigg, Claire Holt, Molly McCarthy, Twig Mowatt, Emile Wilbekin, and Ken Wolf; to Regina Freitas for her translations from the Portu- guese; to the reporters who gave of their time and consciences, allowing me to interview them, often at length; to Bell Gale Chevigny, so generous with her time, knowledge, and encouragement, who helped me so much with the history chapter; to Rachel Toor, the first to believe in and help me with this book; to my duaghter, Emma, who had the grace to be born as I finished writing this book, reminding me, as her brother Simon had done, that there is innocence and joy; and, above all, to my husband and perennial editor, Stephen O'Connor, who has endured this disturbing subject for many years with unceasing faith and encouragement. New Jork H. B. February igg2 Contents INTRODUCTION, 3 1. Rape Myths, Language, and the Portrayal of Women in the Media 13 2. Sex Crimes in the Press: A Recent History 25 3. "A Policeman in Every Bedroom": The 1978-1979 Greta and John Rideout Marital Rape Case 43 4. "She Should Be Punished": The 1983-1984 New Bedford "Big Dan's" Gang Rape 89 5. "How Jennifer Courted Death": The 1986 Killing of Jennifer Levin 147 6. The Jogger and the Wolfpack: The 1989-1990 Central Park Jogger Case 189 7. Conclusion: How the Press Should Cover Sex Crimes 251 NOTES, 267 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 295 INDEX, 301 This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank IRGIN AMP This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank Introduction This book is first and foremost a critique of the way the print press covers sex crimes. In it, I will demonstrate that the pervasiveness of rape myths and the habits of the newsroom have led the press to con- sistently cover these crimes with bias and, sometimes, even cruelty. I have chosen this subject not only as an exercise in press criticism, however, but as a way of examining public attitudes toward women, sex, and violence, and the role the press plays in establishing or rein- forcing those attitudes. Sex crimes have a unique ability to touch upon the public's deep-seated beliefs about gender roles. Whereas people may put on a tolerant front when discussing those roles in marriage or the job market, their true opinions are often shocked out of them by the news of a rape or sex-related murder. For example, the very person who declares that a woman has a right to be paid as much as a man for the same work might well blurt out, "Well, what did she expect?" upon hearing of a gang rape in a seedy bar. Sex crimes have the ability to evoke such beliefs because they involve aggressive, sexual interaction between men and women, and call into play age-old myths and as- sumptions about rape and sex. As has been well documented (Ericson, Graber, Gitlin, and others), the press both reflects and shapes public opinion.1 Sometimes, by reporting events and echoing what is said out in the field, it merely rein- forces established opinions by mirroring them.2 At other times it takes a more active role, suggesting new views and challenging old ones.3 It 3 4 Virgin or Vamp usually does both, in a constant give and take with the public. When the press reports a sex crime, therefore, it is also reflecting the public opinions elicited by that crime. In this book, I will show how sex-crime reporting exposes the press and the public's view of both the crime4 and of sex roles and women in general. Method The book is based on an examination of four specific sex-crime cases, all of which were among the most prominent of the past decade. Each case became a major event for print and television, and they were all either analyzed in books or magazines after they were over, or turned into motion pictures.5 The fact that these crimes were so widely re- ported and therefore so frequently discussed make them particularly useful as vehicles for public opinion about sex roles.6 The cases are the 1979 Greta and John Rideout marital rape case in Oregon, which provoked national debate about the rights of husbands over wives; the 1983 pool table gang-rape of a woman in a New Bed- ford, Massachusetts bar, which resulted in clashes between feminists and local residents; the 1986 sex-related killing of Jennifer Levin by Robert Chambers in New York, which outraged feminists and press critics; and, finally, the 1989 gang rape and beating of the Central Park jogger in New York, which divided men against women, blacks against whites in the furor that accompanied it.

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