Since writing “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence,” I have started paying more attention to how the media reports on sexual abuse and rape cases, the ways the media frames these issues, and how they report on the victims. I’ve noticed that there is often some kind of qualification about the victim (and certainly, this is not new), where we learn about what the victim was wearing or drinking, or that it was late at night or that there was partial consent or that the victim comes from an economically depressed community—information that should bear no relevance whatsoever. These qualifications often seem to imply that criminal acts are somehow justifiable. It is disconcerting, at best.
It’s been about a year since I wrote that essay and I’m still thinking a lot about language, its limitations, and how we often stumble when trying to find the right language to write about the complex issues of sexual abuse and rape.
I’ve been following the growing sexual abuse scandal in Los Angeles at Miramonte Elementary School with real sadness.
What’s unfolding in that school is the kind of horrifying scenario that makes you want to wrap your child in bubble wrap and home school them in perpetuity from the concrete safety of an underground bunker. Schools are supposed to be safe. That’s what we hope even though many of us know this to be untrue. Still, when a parent sends their child to school, there is a certain amount of trust placed in teachers and school administrators. It is difficult to accept this trust can be broken and so irreparably and it is unlikely that any gesture can truly repair a trust broken in this manner. There are the repulsive incidents of abuse, the lack of communication from school officials who knew there was a problem and didn’t communicate effectively with parents, the number of children affected, and the veteran teachers involved. The more the story is reported, the more the horror builds. Today, I learned they are replacing the entire staff at the school, at least temporarily, to try and determine the extent of the abuse. The move is also a step designed to rebuild trust. That may not be possible.
I am not a journalist, though, over the past year, I have learned journalists sometimes use the language they do because they are supposed to be unbiased. Our justice system is predicated on the presumption of innocence and it should be, so incidents of sexual abuse and rape must be framed by journalists as alleged until the courts adjudicate a case. I have also learned that the language used to denote different kinds of sexual crimes is often based on legal definitions which are inadequate. That is reasonable enough though it can be infuriating to those of us outside the profession.
Scandal, itself, is an awkward word. I generally associate scandal with political figures having sex in highway rest areas or divorcing sick wives or doing interesting things with cigars. There’s a certain glee, more often than not, in discussing a scandal. Did you see? And did you hear? And my goodness, do you know?
There’s no glee where Miramonte Elementary and what has taken place is concerned. Is scandal the best word to use when we talk about allegations of sexual abuse or rape? I’m not sure. It may be the only word we have. One definition of scandal is, “a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it.” When fleshed out in that way, scandal starts to feel more appropriate for explaining the terrible situation at Miramonte. Unfortunately, we cannot trot out that definition each time we need to such matters.
Time published an article today about Miramonte, offering a brief overview of what is known about the “scandal,” and exploring the question of whether or not it is possible for children to fully recover from sexual abuse of this nature.
For the most part, the Time article was fine until I stumbled on this paragraph:
Most of the students at Miramonte are Spanish speakers. The school, situated in L.A.’s Florence-Firestone zone, serves a low-income area in which many families are from Mexico or Central America. Ninety-eight percent of its 1,400 students are Hispanic, 56% are considered English-language learners and some are from migrant families. All students at the K-6 school receive free or reduced-price lunches. Miramonte did not meet its proficiency target rates for standardized test scores in language and mathematics last year, according to its website.
The first few sentences clearly provide context and illustrate the additional vulnerability of the children who were abused, but I fail to understand the relevance of the last sentence. What does the school’s standardized test scores have to do with a sexual abuse scandal? It reads like yet another qualification of the victims. This Los Angeles Times article also mentions the school’s poor academic performance, as do a number of other articles in several publications. The information has little bearing on the reportage of incidents of sexual abuse. Low test scores don’t mitigate sexual abuse. The information doesn’t enhance our understanding of what took place. It is strange, perhaps, that I trip over this kind of carelessness, but once I started really paying attention, it became hard to stop. When I see statements like this, I am reminded that a lot of time is spent discussing what we know about the victims as if by understanding the victim, we can understand the crime. In reality, what we need to know is more about the alleged abusers. Did they attend schools in an impoverished area? Did they attend schools with low standardized test scores? Did they eat lead paint as children? Is that why they committed depraved acts?
In addition to thinking about the limitations of language, I’m also starting to consider what information is necessary when reporting or otherwise writing about sexual abuse and rape. What do readers need to know to be well-informed about these cases and the people involved? It’s worth thinking about what we need to know and what we want to know and what our personal biases make us think we need to know.
9 responses
Nice examination Roxane. Seems it’s time for Time, the Times, and all the other Times to start vetting their editorial styles for bias.
I thought the very first paragraph of that Time article set an inappropriate and oddly biased tone, with word choices like “assailed,” “demanded,” “with an angry look,” and particularly “one mother griped.” GRIPED? Anything any parent of those children has to say on the steps of that school is not a fucking “gripe.”
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just bad writing, but something about it makes me angry. You should see my angry look right now.
I completely agree with you and I agree with the prior comment. Your examination of the news article and the tragedy (not scandal) is well done.
The news of this horrible, ongoing violation of the students is too hard to comprehend. I shake my head with every article I read and every news story I hear.
Shanna, absolutely that language is troubling and biased. A parent complaining about sexual abuse at her child’s school is certainly not griping.
Roxane, Thank you for pointing out the horrible blaming language in the LA Times. I hope you write more. I participated in Susanne Lacy’s “Myth’s of Rape” performance here in LA just a couple of weeks ago which was enlightening. And her piece from the 790’s is timely as ever. I work for an afterschool program for teenagers at a school(like Miramonte) with a low graduation rate. That has nothing to do with rape or sexual abuse. They are not connected. I’m trying to teach them to write. We’re building a magazine-theirs. I hope to show teenagers a constructive outlet for their creative energy, help them build confidence and skills to take with them. The story is not a scandal. It’s horrendous.
This school not meeting proficiency test targets should not be taken as a sign of anything but the school–from the principal down–not doing its job. One teacher abusing/molesting/raping children is an ugly crime; two suggests poor management; and this happening at an elementary school that is one of the largest in the district despite having a poor and disadvantaged student body suggests that the management problem is beyond the individual school.
The problems in the California public school system are complex. A lot of good people are doing good work in this system, but system is not working in important ways. Pushing the blame down the levels of the system, blaming immigrant students or tenured teachers, is not the answer.
It doesn’t really matter what type of socio-economic background or ethnic background those children from Miramonte came from does it? What occurred was horrendous to say the least. I had worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for several years inside and outside of the classroom. I have had to deal with several incidences in which I have had to contact the Department of Children and Family Services, and one incident in which I had to call for an immediate pick up and handling of a child due to safety reasons. Thank goodness none of those incidences were ever connected to anybody at the school that I had worked at. The school district has become negligent in its hiring. They need to perform updated background checks on their staff. There is mismanagement and at times there is a sense of fear in reporting incidences that may cost one one’s job.
You are right in pointing out that we need to know more about the abusers in this case rather than the perfomance level of the school. Maybe what the public needs to know more about is the staff and the adults that stood by while these sexual violations were taking place on the school grounds. These children were violated beyond their comprehension. At this point there are definitely more important things to focus on regarding this case and it is the care, the recovery, and the privacy of the children whose lives are forever changed by this most horrible incident.
I teach a First Amendment Rights class and I make a point to cover two things — the way in which offensive language is primarily directed at females, and the other extreme in which when a boy is raped it is most often labeled a sexual assault.
When I heard the comment about Spanish-speaking in relationship to the LA school abuse, I shook my head. I knew it was a thinly-veiled reference to economic status, thus, dismissive. Penn State should have taught us all that sex abuse has no boundaries. It is predatory, period.
For a variety of reasons I hate reading, discussing or writing on this topic, but find myself compelled to because of the way it’s often discussed.
Personally I don’t like the fact that the ethnicity and the income level of the children involved were discussed at all, I feel as if it gives certain members of the audience an excuse not to care.
When I was a kid there was a child at school who would act out sometimes, the kind of child that is really more mischievous and really shouldn’t be labeled “bad”. Then one day I heard a parent say: “well you know she was raped when she was seven”, but she didn’t say it as “let’s have some compassion” more like “what trash”, as in “She’s always been a bad kid, she got raped when she was seven”
This kid was from the poor part of town in a town that some pretty clear economic divisions, I was 14 when I heard this but it turned my stomach and I couldn’t grasp the true meaning of the situation.
SO I hate it when it’s brought up that the kids in the Penn St., or this case were at risk, foster kids, etc, as it’s often noted that many of the kids in the Penn St. case were at risk, being mentored by Sandusky, poor, etc.
WTF
Why does that matter?
Are we supposed to think: “Oh, well, but they needed a father figure, so…”
WTF?
I get the idea of noting how vulnerable certain populations of kids are, but……….
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