I am forwarding this because it proves that our efforts against sexual
assault need to be continued on college campuses, and in the community.
To follow, please find a picture of a women being sexually assaulted by an
out-of-control gang of men at Marti Gras in Seattle.
Tolerance.org spread the word about this picture and wrote an article about
it.
The article is below.

Discusted and shocked!

Debra Lafler
Manager, Health & Prevention Program
Lehman College Student Health Center
Bronx, NY

------ Message from "Tolerance.org" <[log in to unmask]>
Thu, 18 Apr 2002 09:39:43 -0700 -----

http://www.nppa.org/bestofpj/ethics.htm

SEXUAL ASSAULT PHOTO WINS AWARD: SHOULD WE LOOK?
The National Press Photographers Association has awarded the picture of a
male mob's vicious assault with a Best of Photojournalism Award.
Tolerance.org's director asks: Should we look?

http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=493

EDITORIAL: Sexual Assault Photo Wins Award, But Should We Look?

by Jennifer R. Holladay
April 16, 2002 -- There is a photograph on the Internet of a throng of men
five rows deep sexually assaulting a woman.

And it doesn't live on the smut side of the Web.

Instead, it lives in the most respectable of venues -- at the National Press
Photographers Association (NPPA) site. The image of this male mob's vicious
assault has won one of NPPA's Best of Photojournalism Awards.

Mike Urban, a staff photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, snapped
the picture at Seattle's 2001 Mardi Gras celebration, from atop a fire
escape. He says that he heard men ask the woman to show them her breasts,
and, when she refused, they attacked her.

The Post-Intelligencer shunned the photograph then, invoking its "rape
shield" policy, and instead ran a page 1 story describing the incident
without the gruesome photograph.

As executive editor Ken Bunting said, "If the intent in not publishing the
name of a rape victim is not to subject her to further trauma and
humiliation, certainly publishing her likeness, her partially unclad body,
is taking it several steps too far."

But, now, thanks to NPPA's award, the woman's violation is available for all
to see. Not only does it live on the Web, but it will soon sparkle on the
pages of a new book and jump from computer terminals via a CD-ROM.

"No Means No"
The woman never came forward. She did not file a police report. She
disappeared into the crowd and has remained silent. She has chosen
anonymity.

NPPA honored that choice, at least symbolically, by obscuring the woman's
face in the published photograph.

Without a face, her body becomes an object -- its identity, its personhood,
its pain masked from view, ostensibly for her protection. Yet, those who
peek at the picture can't help but view her in the same way those grinning,
violent men did. One can't help but gawk at breasts indented by the firm
hold of fingernails or at genitalia barely covered by a sea of hands and a
shred of cloth.

But to debate only the implications of her missing face deflects attention
from the other issues at hand.

"There's this sense that sometimes photographers should be more than just
witnesses," Urban told Poynter.org. "And, given the circumstances of the
photo, I was obviously unable to do something. But I think what I'm doing,
after having taken this photo, is raising consciousness."

Urban says that the events unfolded so quickly that he had only seconds to
act on his instincts: to take pictures. He had no time to react beyond a
photojournalist's primary call.

But, he did have time afterward. Months later, Urban submitted a single
frame -- one that had never seen newsprint -- to the NPPA awards.

At what cost does Urban's supposed quest to "raise consciousness" come? Who
pays the price? Who benefits from it?

The woman pays a heavy price: losses of privacy and her right to choose. The
hundreds of millions of people with access to the Internet now have access
to her violation, too. And, they have access to her body. What little
privacy she managed to hold onto is now, in large part, gone.

It's not a decision that the woman made. She didn't come forward and say:
"Yes, please, educate others about sexual assault by using this image of
me." She remained silent.

And not hearing her silence, a man chose to make the decision for her.

Perhaps, Urban believed that the distribution of his picture served a
greater public good than would honoring the woman's right to privacy, or her
right to choose how she and her body are portrayed publicly.

After heated debate, the majority of the NPPA judging panel found that the
value of distribution outweighed the woman's interests. Sexual assault,
after all, is a problem of epidemic proportions, affecting millions of women
in the U.S. each year.

"It is tough to look at," Brian Storm, MSNBC director of multimedia and
contest judge, told Poynter.org. "But it is about what journalism is. We
have a responsibility … to show people the reality of this horrible act."

But, do we really need to see an image of men brutally violating a woman to
appreciate the enormity of the problem or to understand what sexual assault
is? If so, what does that say about us as a society? Is our need for
"indisputable proof" worth the costs to the woman involved? Whom do we value
more -- ourselves or our sister?

Publishing the photo may serve one redeeming purpose: to hold the involved
men accountable for their actions. Without a complaint from the woman whom
they attacked, police cannot prosecute them.

The men are clearly depicted in the photograph -- faces visible, smiles and
grins all around, one slightly obscured by a video camera jammed into the
woman's crotch.

I want to shame these anti-woman men and denounce them for what they have
done. Imagine a billboard campaign or an online photo gallery right here on
Tolerance.org, with each face and a tag line asking: "Do you know this man?
He sexually assaulted a woman."

But, if I did so, would I be putting my own needs above my sister's needs?
Would I be telling her story out of turn? Would I, too, be making decisions
for her?

In dealing with this photograph, the question before all of us is: Do we
possess the moral authority to use this image for our own purposes, whatever
they may be?

The only person with that authority remains silent. Unless the woman who
endured this brutal attack comes forward and chooses to share herself with
us, we should honor the last word that she is reported to have uttered
publicly: "No."

<Jennifer Holladay is the acting director of Tolerance.org>

[FORUMS: Tell us what you think abut the publication of this photo in our
Community Forum. New to our Forums? Register here.]

http://www.tolerance.org/

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