In rape cases in close-knit communities, it often seems best to leave judgment to those charged with that task. This story out of New Jersey in which a 19-year-old deaf male is charged with the rape of a 16-year-old deaf female classmate at Mountain Lakes High School is probably no exception.
Still, it’s hard not to get angry after reading this story, even leaving aside the he-said, she-said qualities of this story, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the case itself.
For one, the deaf factor in this story is taking center stage. “Deaf” is the first word in the headline (usually, copy editors are advised to put the most important or eye-catching words first). The news of the rape charge is buried between descriptions of the defendant’s deafness and his “special class for the hearing-impaired” in the first paragraph alone. Whether this is a sensationalist tactic on the part of the journalist, or the de facto influence of those dealing with the case, I’m not sure. Either way, for those directly involved with the case, the issue is primarily deciding whether a rape happened and whether the defendant needs to be sentenced. Seems to me the journalist’s views on just how interesting Deaf people are have skewed the way this story needs to be told.
For another, the defendant’s lawyer has capitalized on the clear bias some people hold toward viewing deafness primarily as a pathological and isolating disability.
“He was an A-plus student. He is a poster boy for how to overcome handicaps,” said defense lawyer Paul Faugno. “What’s really very unfortunate is that this boy has overcome so much adversity in his life. To have this adversity presented to him now is really a shame.”
Certainly, in some places this mythology ends up being true (usually because the belief in deafness as a debilitating quality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy), and I don’t know enough about the school, the community, local culture, and/or the individual students involved to appropriately throw in a defense of deaf people as perfectly capable of living lives as variable as any other human life. But none of that is the issue here.
The issue, according to Faugno, is that an A-plus student is being faced with “adversity” in the shape of rape allegations. There’s a number of inferences you can draw here, none of them appropriate for him to make about a deaf defendant or about this particular case. One possible inference is that students who earn better grades are less likely to rape other students. Or that a deaf student who earns an A has overcome some insurmountable obstacle, represented, of course, by the fact that his ears don’t perform the way his hearing audience expects. Or a that a student who has to face criminal charges and be deaf at the same time is really a pitiful shame, a double tragedy. Regardless of his own understanding of his deaf client, it’s pretty easy to see what assumptions about his audiences’ views Faugno is relying on.
In The Record’s story, details about how the alleged assault happened and the defense’s response comes chronologically after all of this. Since this story is primarily formatted as a hard news story, it’s not hard to determine which information editors felt was more important to readers. Definitely not issues of consent, age, or the law, it seems.
And the kicker in this sob-story: Mommy’s playing sign language interpreter at the court hearing.
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The court *should* have had an interpreter available for him.
But its not unheard of for some deaf people actually preferring family members to serve as interpreters. It’s almost always a bad idea, but if the guy preferred to use his mom, that’s his perrogrative.
Welcome back, Allison! =)
John S., having a family member interpret for defendants should be ILLEGAL! I don’t even see any family members of other defendants participating on the jury or even acting as legal counsel. I’m no lawyer but I’m pretty sure that the court would not allow that. Too bad that the courts can’t see past the “disability” to slap that policy on deaf defendants.
Hey, the story in the NJ paper is December 18, 2007! This makes it 2 MONTHS old! And you finally comment on it NOW?
Whether this story occurred two days ago, two months ago, or two years ago really is besides the point. The fact remains that we in the Deaf Community often get portrayed in an unflattering light by the press, who will often play the “pity card” that so many of us have seen time and again… how unfortunate it is that those poor “deaf-mutes” have to live in a world of silence, and how much adversity they have to overcome to make it in this world, yadda yadda yadda. This is the point Allison was trying to make with this post.
Frankly, the fact that this kind of attitude is still going on in our society as recently as two months ago is frustrating (although not surprising), and that such an attitude is being perpetuated by the press is disturbing (although again, not all that surprising).
Let’s not get off track here - the focus should be on the fact that the press is still using terms like “deaf mute,” lawyers are still showing a decided bias when it comes to defending “handicapped” people, and courts are still using family members to serve as interpreters.
[…] Hat tip to Alison Krafton of DeafDC.com DeafDC Blog » Deafness Trumps Rape in New Jersey Newspaper […]
Allison, how would you write the headline? And if it wasn’t rape but, say, an act of heroism, how would you write that headline?
Possibly “Student Denies Raping Classmate.”
The other headline would depend on the act itself: “Student Pulls Classmate Out of Fire, Saves Life”
Allison, you’re gonna love the headline of Section D on today’s edition of the USA Today.
Deaf Matlin dances in Mills’ footsteps on next round of ‘Dancing’
http://www.usatoday.com/life/t.....tars_N.htm
I wonder why they didn’t go with “Deaf Matlin dances in One-legged Mills’ footsteps…” Perhaps they didn’t have the space for it.
Personally, I agree that the focus on deafness distracts from the alleged crime.
But … As a deaf copy editor currently working at a newspaper with an all-hearing audience, here’s my journalistic point of view:
As a copy editor, my job is to take a reporter’s story and lay it out on a page in such a way that it catches the reader’s interest. I have to chase all of those eyes and try to attract their attention to each page. This means, for each story I lay out, I need to find an unique, attention-grabbing twist to include in the hed to make readers want to read a story a reporter just spent hours chasing and writing.
Whether I’m deaf or not, I might have written a headline for this story with ‘Deaf’ in it, because it’s one of the most surefire ways to catch eyes. Sadly to say, in today’s society, “Student denies raping classmate” can be a bit ho-hum. A lot of readers are going to glance at that and think, “nothing new, yet another rape story, same old, same old.” But, “Deaf rape suspect says he’s innocent” has a twist in it. Readers see “Deaf” with “rape,” and they go, “Oooh, this is new. I want to read this,” and they do.
A large part of the reason copy editors need to write compelling headlines is to not only draw eyes to the story, but also to the page in general, with all its ads. Advertisers pay to put their ads in front of readers, and the more readers we can get to look at a page, the more value advertisers feel they are getting for their money. Ad dollars pay for your morning newspaper, whether in paper or online form, and they pay for our paychecks. Newspapers and news Web sites can’t survive without ad dollars, and as a copy editor, it’s my responsibility to help attract those dollars.
Yes, journalists gain (and probably deserve) a reputation for being sensationalistic. Sometimes, in the chase for ad dollars and readers, we throw PC-ness and common sense to the wind. But, sometimes it can be unintentional. Keep in mind, copy editors are working on deadline and with limited hed space — sometimes I have to describe a story in two words, sometimes I get lucky and get space for five to seven words. It’s all dictated by the space left after ads are placed on the page, and by story hierarchy (top story gets a bigger hed size; bottom, smaller). So, on a tight deadline, I may have no more than a minute or two to scan the story and come up with a hed. Sometimes I hit the nail on the head, sometimes I bomb and commit a serious gaffe (a recent one prompted a volley of phone calls and letters to my editor!).
Whatever the story or people involved, whoever writes the headline is looking for something to make it unique. Deaf, blind, wheelchair-bound, Mexican, Chinese, Muslim, Jewish, pastor, politician, teacher … you name it, odds are the copy editor will pull that out of the story and play it up in the hed. Sometimes feelings get hurt, sometimes people get offended. But newspapers need the eyes and ad dollars, and a lot of the time, that’s all it comes down to.
According to http://www.ada.gov/policeinfo.htm, it is “illegal” for family members to act as interpreters due to the emotional factors involved.
Plus, deaf people can do anything including rape except hear. Nothing news. Allison wrote about the close-knit community. Well in deaf community, deaf people won’t snitch to the police against other deaf people for fear of being labeled deaf. I saw this at Gallaudet. Some deaf people were arrested at Rock Festival in 1989/1990 and the charges were dropped since no deaf witnesses came forward. Anf the were rewared with fraternity/sorority membership.
Also some Deaf people see rape as normal and confused it as sex unlike some deaf people.
Ew - another one, this one from USA Today: “Deaf Matlin dances in Mills’ footsteps on next round of ‘Dancing.’”
I’ll allow the “Deaf,” since that IS the gimmick, I suppose… but now Matlin’s being cast as the token “Ooh, let’s throw the disabled person in and see if they can do it” role. Props to Matlin for her endurance and repeating the “deaf people can do anything except hear” line ad nauseam.
You beat me to it by a couple minutes. Moebius would be proud. :)
Back to the headline, I’d be ok with Deaf Actress, Deaf Hollywood Star, Deaf Oscar Winner, or just Matlin, but Deaf Matlin is ridiculous.
To be fair, the USA Today announcement shows that the tokenism is not limited to the “differently abled,” to use that ridiculous euphemism.
The article quotes a Chilean-born actor, Cristián de la Fuente: “I guess they needed one Latino per show. They went down the list and said, ‘Let’s call Cristián.’ I don’t want to let them down.”
It seems to be a game that implicates actors from across the spectrum of minorities. Yet these particular actors are fully cognizant of what they’re getting into. People like De la Fuente and Matlin are also more than capable of pulling off this gig with a touch of class.
It could be tempting to dismiss “Dancing with the Stars” as an unrepentant freak show, and perhaps we should do just that. But so much on television is a freak show, and the freaks are almost exclusively hearing and white.
But so much on television is a freak show, and the freaks are almost exclusively hearing and white.
So does this mean that non-hearing and non-white people are not freaks?
I’m deaf, therefore, I’m a not a freak… I’m normal!
Woocha!
(Disclaimer: the above comment is meant to be entirely in jest, with liberal amounts of humor and sarcasm.)
JS, it’s how the headline was written in the newspaper. It has nothing to do with the show.
Silent Observer: I’d say that the USA Today headline was fully in the spirit of the television show. To simply say that Matlin happened to come onto the program, with no reference to her…er…um…”special” quality, would be a formidable act of pussyfooting around the reason why Matlin was included.
Hilary: My statement did not exclude the reality of non-hearing or non-white people being served up as freaks in the entertainment industry. But the fact remains that the freaks are almost uniformly hearing.
Your statement, however sarcastic it may have been, holds more than true for me. It reminds me of that one scene in The Family Stone, where the deaf character Thad Stone is told at dinner by the mother of his hearing family, “You are more normal than any other…******* sitting at this table.” (Thanks to a participant at SeekGeo’s website for that citation.)
If hearing people can be freaks on television or in the newspaper, so can deaf people!
JS - love your comment. Thanks for adding it. It’s important to look at the bigger picture and see how the microcosm we’re looking at plays a role.
In regards to Marlee Matlin and the USA Today headline, while I’m not thrilled with it either, what made me squirm even more was the comment left to the on-line article by marc1 on the first page, where he says
“I hope Marlee proves me wrong but how is she going to do difficult ballroom and latin dances when she can’t even hear the music. It sounds dangerous to me for her to be attempting this show.”
Ohhh… so Deaf people dancing is supposed to be dangerous??? What about Deaf people skydiving, rock climbing, and walking on fire - all of which I have done at one time or the other?
And frankly, I agree with Marlee… walking down stairs in high heels in infinitely more dangerous than ballroom dancing.
grins. Well, if all else fails, I’m sure they’ll give Marlee a helmet or something.
If Christopher Reeve were alive, do you think he would be on the program, Dancing With the Stars?
Marlee Matlin is on the program for PC reasons as others have asserted.
a perfect example of crab theory at work, pulling down a deaf person who going on a dance show by the Deafs who can’t hack it in the real hearing world.