The Horrific Way The Media And The Perpetrators, Even Some Attorneys Re-Victimize The Sexually Assaulted

Reporters Ask victims why they waited so long to come forward. The media believes their job is to ask the toughest possible questions regardless of how humiliating, irritating, degrading, agitating or victimizing. Reporters, in our culture especially, generally ask these terrible questions more to impress their peers in journalism all the while knowing they are terrifying, re-victimizing, re-assaulting and constantly reigniting the victim’s suffering.

The perpetrator asks this question because they know it automatically discredits the victim’s words and behaviors and shifts blame to the victim. The media goes right along. It’s how perpetrators protect themselves. And, how those around the perpetrator who remained silent sometimes for decades, shift doubt and blame to the victim while protecting their own cowardice and shameful behavior in not reporting the assaults and the perpetrator.

The silent, the fearful, those who turn a blind eye by remaining silent condemn the victim to yet another level of shame and personal disgrace. Meanwhile, the perpetrator, amazed at first, by not getting ratted out is encouraged and emboldened to continue being a predator.

Predators know their actions are observed. The predator minister/priest, the predator senior executive, the predator producer, the predator pediatrician, the predator parent, the predator relative, the predator public official, the predator movie star, the predator athlete, the predator college professor all are aware that their position of power and influence draws attention to themselves, which is the very factor that attracts victims and draws observers.

No one speaks up, no one steps in, no one helps out. Blind eyes flourish. The media waits for the bigger scoop. In one case with which I’m familiar a major newspaper’s college athletics reporter became the target of a predator, she reported it to the papers HR department who took no action, likely for fear of losing their contacts in the athletics department. This went on for more than a year until the reporter could write her own story as a part of a much bigger University athletic scandal. Imagine how many more victims there were during that year because the newspaper failed to immediately identify and out the predator thereby letting the perpetrator hunt for an additional year.

Everyone but the victim gets to move on with their lives as though nothing happened. The victim’s life from the moment of the first assault never moves forward. Every day begins like that first assault day. Literally, the girl or boy assaulted at age 15 (or any age) remains that 15-year-old, suffering every day until they finally, if they ever do, decide to come forward, say at age 40.

That’s 25 years, 9125 days, 219,000 hours, 13,140,000 minutes, 788, 400,000 seconds of terror, suffering and reliving the unspeakable. The perpetrator? Zero suffering plus protection by those who knew, ignored or covered up and didn’t speak up.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator is continuously hunting and terrorizing. That’s 25 years, 9125 days, 219,000 hours, 13,140,000 minutes, 788, 400,000 seconds of victim selection, seduction and assaulting.

The media tends to first make heroes out of all criminal perpetrators and terrorists through tremendous, sensational coverage, relentless analysis by publicity seeking ‘experts’ both completely oblivious to victim re-suffering. Then, as almost an afterthought the victim situations may be handled in some minimal palliative way.

So the next time you hear someone asking why a 40-year-old woman waited 25 years to come forward, you need to put that 25 years, 9001 and 25 days into the context of human suffering, fear, frustration and terror.

The victim’s needs seem achievable:

• They want validation, acknowledgment that what they’re saying and suffering, the story they are telling, is true.
• They want visibility to tell their own story, and to correct, clarify or at least comment on all the surrogate opportunists, lazy reporters and sensational storytellers.
• They want vindication, perhaps some credit for bringing a perpetrator down and exposing or revealing some of the cowards and blind eyes; perhaps for giving other victims the fortitude to take the risk to step out of the shadows.
• They want public acknowledgment, perhaps an apology, the perpetrators and the cowards stepping up and admitting responsibility for the damage done, the pain and suffering.
• They want their life back, wouldn’t you?

Some thoughts on reducing the victimization.

• Recognize that the pattern of sexual assault and abuse is clear and repetitively consistent. The questions asked ought to have more to do with discovering the blind eyes and the cowards.
• Perpetrators are extraordinary con artists, tenacious fabricators and storytellers. Just as they hunt their victims, that charisma makes them powerful, attractive, interesting and tends to draw non-victim followers and disciples, many of whom have plenty of opportunity to witness but remain silent.
• Perpetrators and terrorists should be referred to only by age, sex, cultural background, no name, no pictures, no family history, nothing but the description of the crime, and hopefully the punishment. Let the police have all the other details for prosecution.
• If your organization has had someone step forward five things are extremely important to recognize:

1. There will be more. Maybe not for some time, but there will be more, perhaps many. Time to get ready with a plan to receive and care for them when they do come forward.
2. You’ll need a perpetrator removal plan. The presence of these individuals once exposed is terribly negative for the victims, but unless removed, the individuals will continue to terrorize, simply by their presence, other victims, or witnesses who might come forward. Yes, well stop worrying about litigation. The fact is there are plenty of lawyers ready and waiting to help you as well as defend the predator. Your focus has to be on the welfare and the return to life of the victims. The rest will work itself out.
3. Prepare for a vigorous defense of perpetrators. Predators are experts at building loyal followings of totally innocent, sincere but deceived disciples. The focus must remain on the welfare and protection of the victims trying to regain their lives after decades of terrorism and fear; and a sense of safety and receptivity or witnesses who have remained silent.
4. Many victims believe they are the only one. That’s very rarely true because we know that the sexual abuser and assaulter is a serial predator with many victims. They are always hunting, even when under extreme scrutiny.
5. Organizations affected by the disclosure of sexual assault sometimes behave in the most bizarre way. Once this problem surfaces there is often a split of opinion based on little more than the desire to stay out of it. Once you’re in it, you are in it. It does usually take an actual circumstance to trigger the readiness I am proposing here. I like to think, based on my experience in this field that your organization will break down into three general groups: The Prompt Responders: the 20% who generally are future minded want to be ready for anything; The Resistors, the 30% who pretty much want everything to stay the way it was; and, The Fence Sitters, the 50% who either don’t especially care or are simply waiting to go with whichever way the majority goes.

Then there’s the big-time lawyer, a Fox News Commentator who has stepped down from her law firm management role after saying in a recent Fox News segment that women frequently lie about sexual harassment and that actual victims are “few and far between,” Law.com and Above The Law report.

It’s my impression that the extensive nature of sexual assault has likely penetrated the news media as widely as it has in other places and institutions. Those reporters doing stories on this subject should disclose their own experiences, or the experiences of other they have witnessed, before anyone else along with the perpetrator’s names to set an example for what they are asking everyone else to disclose.

The places to hide from this are getting harder to find.

Jim Lukaszewski is a prominent American Crisis management expert. [email protected], www.e911.com, America’s Crisis Guru?