Sir, – I am sick of seeing rape coverage where the practical effect of a woman waiving her anonymity is that she becomes more exposed, while the man who raped her remains comparatively invisible.
Women waive anonymity for a reason. It is usually done to speak openly, to be believed and, more often than not, to ensure the perpetrator is publicly identified and held to account.
Yet the opposite repeatedly happens. The victim is named, photographed and remembered; the convicted perpetrator is mentioned briefly and then disappears from view.
Waiving anonymity is not a surrender of privacy, nor is it consent to become the public face of the crime.
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It is a choice made, in many cases, precisely so that attention will fall where it belongs – on the person who committed the offence.
Instead, the result is often a cruel inversion. The exposure follows the victim long after the case is over, while the identity of the perpetrator fades back shielded by editorial decisions that serve no ethical purpose once a conviction has been secured. Waiving anonymity does not automatically mean that the identity should be revealed.
This is not about denying victims a voice. It is about where emphasis and responsibility are placed.
At present, too many reporting decisions ensure that victims carry the visibility, and perpetrators carry the silence. That balance is wrong, and it deserves to be challenged. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN Ó RIAIN,
Virginia,
Co Cavan.
