News Journal Takes Public To Task For Responding To Their Reporting On Hedgeville Rape?

Who hasn't been following the story about the rapes in the Hedgeville park in horror? The crushingly painful quotes from Wilmington's Chief of Police and an absurd-in-its-face Our View editorial [Beware of neighborhood gossip circulating fear] warrant my publishing some comment rescues ~

-  Take some responsibility for your reporting before blaming readers for responding to what your reporters are writing.

-  I completely disagree with your editorial. I’ve only received information about this heinous crime from your reporters…no rumor mill here. Did you just admit to the information in your original article being “guided more by fears than details?” Quoting from your editorial, “But the truth always has a consistent home in the factual accounting from gathered evidence by professionals. It provides the public with clarity about our own sense of safety.” I think the News Journal failed on this one as you led with the headline "Teen boys suspected in Wilmington rapes; Two women: Group of 10 to 12 involved in park attack." Your original article also gave the ages of the victims as 32 and 24. Today’s editorial tells us the victims were a mother and daughter. Do you realize that would make the mother 8 when she gave birth? Factual accounting by professionals????
It was also reported in the original article that Cpl. Jamaine Crawford would not describe the crime as a “gang rape” because authorities did not know how many of the teens actually committed the sexual assaults. Why don’t we get to the bottom of what “gang rape” is…I contend that if a woman is raped by more than one person, that’s gang rape. I also contend that if one person rapes a woman while others stand around and watch that, too, qualifies as gang rape. Those teens that observed this attack on these women and continue to remain silent are just as complicit, both during and after the attack, as those that actually did the deed.
Now, let’s discuss Chief Dunning’s remarks. You made an unfortunate correlation between what the public wants to hear and what the Chief said. What the public wants to hear are the facts in the case. They could have been presented without Chief Dunning making a statement that mitigates the trauma these women endured. Her words made me think that the Wilmington Police Department, through direction of its Chief, will not seriously investigate any rape that is not “brutal” (because the victim wasn’t beaten). You position is that it is unfortunate that the public outcry is more about her words than the facts of the case. Not true, but her words come at a time when there is much said by some political leaders about “legitimate rape” and her choice of words makes one ponder whether she thinks this was a legitimate rape or not. Rape is brutal no matter what!
All in all, this was one of the worst editorials I have ever read. You attempt to blame the public and its (implied) prurient need for information along with the obvious support of Chief Dunning is wrong. I’m still wondering why you felt it necessary to tell us the Chief is also a mother and grandmother. You are grasping to make what she actually said (at least you reported it in quotation marks) into something else. But, hey, you already admitted that what you originally reported was not factual so maybe she really did say something else. Yes, the public has an obligation to distinguish between fact and rumors in a breaking story but The News Journal has an obligation to present the verified facts sans rumors, innuendo, or suppositions, and when you fail don’t blame the public.

 Here's the Our View in question ~

Despite the understandable alarm at the daytime rape of two women in Kosciuszko Park a week ago, the public has an obligation to distin­guish between fact and rumors of a breaking news story that has gar­nered national attention. So far what we know is that much of what drib­bled out in the first new cycles was guid­ed more by fears than details deter­mined by the ongoing investigation of Wilmington police.

Unfortunately, such fictional cir­cumstances are still guiding a story that is much different than what was originally described. The gang of black youths that supposedly num­bered between 10 and 12 has been trimmed to one or two juvenile as­sailants. Supposedly other yet un­identified companions watched the attack on the mother and her daugh­ter.

As with most horrendous crimes, the fiction of neighborhood gossip and unchecked breaking “news” plays to our fears making the alleged crimes more believable. But the truth always has a consistent home in the factual accounting from gath­ered evidence by professionals. It provides the public with clarity about our own sense of safety.

At the very least in this case it’s aided the city police reducing fears of marauding youth gangs attacking vulnerable women in public with no impunity. This is what Wilmington Police Chief Christine Dunning said she was attempting as she relied on medical evidence and the witnesses when she told our reporter: “People think it was some really brutal at­tack and it was not.” She said the victims had only cuts, scratches and bruises, but were not beaten.

But unfortunately those words – not the facts of the women’s condi­tions and relationships with Chief Dunning – has set off outrage and a viral Internet campaign that pegs the city’s first female police chief as un­caring about the victims’ trauma.

She purposely chose to rely on evi­dence from the victims that their phys­ical condition was not as brutal as the rumor mill suggested. And she was attempting to stop the lie that they were left for dead. If anything Chief Dunning, also a mother and grandmoth­er, is a victim of her own public rela­tions ignorance about what many in the public want to hear about such cases still under investigation.

Unfortunately, that says more about us than it does this chief.

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