7 thoughts on “NYT and the Rape”

  1. When I read the piece I didn’t have the feeling at all, as suggested by the XX people, that the part objected to was “put in the voice” of the Times. That seems at least a bit unfair as a reading to me. (If anything, it seems easier to read that part as “look how the trash in this town try to legitimate what happened.”) The question about the mother (if in fact the kid had been staying with friends for three months) are also clearly legitimate, though they don’t excuse what happened at all, of course. (Nothing could, so this couldn’t.) If things are as described, wouldn’t you want to know what the mother was doing? If the story is accurate is seems plausible that she shouldn’t be taking care of a kid.

    Like

  2. I guess what people are objecting to is the way the Times framed the article. The most troubling problem in this case isn’t the girl; it’s the boys. Why are people wondering about the girl’s parents? Why aren’t people wondering what the parenting was like for these rapist boys? Why aren’t they asking why they grew up to be such assholes? What kind of a culture exists in this town that can create such a large quantity of assholes in one place?

    Like

  3. The only quote in the NYT article that wonders about the future for those involved is one from a woman who wonders what will happen to the boys because “they have to live with this for the rest of their lives.” Wow. What about the girl who was a victim of vicious, violent, shockingly intrusive attacks?

    Like

  4. The first time I read the article, I was mostly struck by the rather lurid tone chosen by the author. This is exactly the sort of article that has been a milepost on the NYT’s long and undignified decline. Then, the next time I read it, I noticed that all of the really bad quotes come from one member of the community, Sheila Harrison, who knows several of the defendants. The school seemed to have handled the discovery properly, ditto the police, and “Churches have held prayer services for the victim. The students who were arrested have not returned to school, and it is unclear if they ever will.”
    The NYT article is pretty weak on context (like the exact mix of ages of the defendants), although this paragraph suggests that quite a few of the teenagers and young men involved were out of school and weren’t model citizens beforehand:
    “Five suspects are students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member. A few of the others have criminal records, from selling drugs to robbery and, in one case, manslaughter. The suspects range in age from middle schoolers to a 27-year-old.”
    A few more points:
    1. So much for 1970s nostalgia about how kids just used to run around and make their own fun.
    2. The NYT story is oddly vague about the victim’s family life or position in the community, except for repeating Harrison’s remarks about the girl being undersupervised. With all the wealth of detail they gave about the abandoned trailer, couldn’t they have both respected the family’s privacy and given the reader a general idea about the family’s place in the local hierarchy? It’s not like everybody in town doesn’t already know exactly who they are.
    3. Another interesting lacuna that I noticed was the absence of any mention of race, either of the victim or the defendants. Although one of the Cleveland, TX, high schools is 93% white (according to greatschools.org), the other one is 55% white, 30% Hispanic, and 14% black. If the crime involved people from the community served by the second high school (let’s say we have at least a 50% chance), the victim and the defendants will represent a glorious mosaic of diversity. Normally, the NYT is all over race stories, so it’s a bit odd that they skipped this opportunity to discuss their favorite subject. While it’s certainly proper to not mention the names of underaged defendants, isn’t it peculiar that none of the older defendants were named?
    This is a much better article and gives a much better picture of the victim’s family (mom a cleaning lady, dad a carpenter):
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7459716.html

    Like

  5. Looking around the internet, there are six mug shots of adult defendants in the case. All of those pictured are African-American males, which may or may not be true of the rest of the defendants.

    Thursday: Little Girls Do Not Cause Men to Rape Them


    That blog post has a round-up of similar news stories.
    Here are a couple more points:
    1. From the Houston story (which some complain improperly uses the girls Facebook information), the girl’s family is getting threats and she herself is living elsewhere in a safe house. I would assume that the threats are directed at the family for seeking prosecution. The “stop snitching” culture may be a factor here, as well as the girl’s race. Here’s a very good CBS story on “stop snitching” and the ideology it promotes of not cooperating with police to identify criminals:
    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/19/60minutes/main2704565.shtml
    In the first page of the CBS story, 25 people witnessed a man’s murder, but nobody was willing to cooperate with police to help identify the murderer.
    2. This is another new media story. There’s the girl’s Facebook page and there’s the fact that cell phone use by the defendants to take video both made the crime more horrific, but also ensured that the perpetrators would be caught.
    The more I think about it, the worse the NYT story looks. They had to really work at it to miss so many obvious angles. I can only imagine that they were hoping for a “look at the awful rednecks” story, but then the facts on the ground failed to cooperate with the story they wanted.

    Like

  6. The Houston Chronicle story says that the girl’s mother’s first name is Maria, which along with the parents’ work, suggests that the family is Hispanic. That suggests further questions:
    1. Was the girl’s family new to the area or well-established?
    2. Were the defendants’ families well-established in the area? (It sounds like they are.)
    3. Is the Hispanic population of the area growing? Are African-American residents resentful?

    Like

Comments are closed.