Evil flourishes in the darkness

At least once a year, our reporter assigned to cover crime and the courts has something like a mini-crisis.

How much reporting do we do on sexual assault cases, especially those involving minors? We look at these cases as objectively as we can, because at the end of the day when we leave the office, we’re parents, too.

It’s not just that the details of these cases are some of the most difficult things a reporter reads during the course of the day. There’s a public interest worry here as well.

Part of the awfulness of these crimes is the shame and embarrassment they cause the people such crimes are committed against. It’s easy for us to say survivors have no reason to feel that way, and it’s the perpetrators who should be shamed and embarrassed. But it’s also true that these feelings are amplified when the most intimate details of the worst thing that’s ever happened in your life — usually a young life — are published in the local newspaper.

One such recent case left our reporter asking if this is really worth it. What good does this reporting do?

By retelling these stories, we mean to make it clear that we stand with those who survive these crimes. And we oppose people who sexually or otherwise assault others, particularly our children. Harm done to children ripples back through our community in countless ways. Our children are our most precious treasure and as a community we have a responsibility to protect and nurture each of them. Harm done to our children is harm done to all of us.

Beyond our show of solidarity, we also have a role here to observe and report on the perpetrators of these crimes as they receive the punishment society deems they should. We are here to document that as it happens.

That’s our part, shining the light of public scrutiny into some of the darkest corners of our local society. If a person is vindicated, that will be reflected in these pages, too. But the majority of those accused of sex crimes are found guilty, and part of the punishment they receive is the public shame of having the details of their crimes recounted for your neighbors to read in their community newspaper. Even after their eventual prison sentence is served, they’ll forever be required to register as a sex offender in a publicly available database.

The notion behind this registration process is the idea that having people know the details of your crimes helps keep people safe by further deterring that behavior. It’s the idea that evil flourishes in the darkness, and if we can be a part of the light that disperses some of that evil, that’s reason enough to keep writing these stories.

Though we feel a responsibility to report these stories, we will continue to keep victims’ identities as obscure as possible and to keep the more painful details of their cases out of our stories. We admire their courage in coming forward and will do our best not to make their experience any harder than it already is.