New Atlantic Voice doc explores how to expose harm done to victims without adding to it

Journalists' work gives the public insight into how society works, and that includes what happens inside our courthouses. But when it comes to sexual assault trials, the details of what goes on behind those closed doors can be particularly distressing.

In a new Atlantic Voice documentary, Making the Private Public, we explore why one journalist's reporting of a sexual assault trial in Nova Scotia was met with both praise and condemnation. 

In 2017, two football players at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish were charged  with sexually assaulting a first-year student in a campus dorm room. Two years later, the case went to trial at the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Antigonish, and the two men were acquitted, but not before the complainant was made to recount extremely personal and disturbing details from the alleged incident. 

Chronicle Herald reporter Aaron Beswick covered the case. One of his articles garnered a mixed range of responses based on his decision to include raw language from the cross-examination of the alleged victim. 

If I softened that story, if I didn't put in the details of what she was put through, then that would be inherently protecting the way that we treat alleged victims of sexual assault on the stand.- Aaron Beswick

For weeks after his article was published, Beswick had to defend his decision to use graphic details. He said it's important to understand the often gruelling process complainants are put through during sexual assault trials.

The public has a right to know, he said, because if the public is going to hold its institutions and its individuals to account, they need all the information.

"If I softened that story, if I didn't put in the details of what she was put through, then that would be inherently protecting the way that we treat alleged victims of sexual assault on the stand," he said.

Some readers applauded his decision to open the doors of the courtroom to closer public scrutiny. Others, like reader Whitney Dignan, did not.

"The level of detail in this article left a pit in my stomach … because of the thought that thousands of people are probably going to read this article over a cup of coffee in the morning and form their own opinion about the most intimate and traumatic chapter of this young lady's life," Dignan wrote in a letter to the editor published in the Chronicle Herald.

How much harm do we cause victims, even when trying to give their side of the story? According to experts, a lot.

Johannah Black works with the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre and teaches women's and gender studies at St. Francis Xavier University. She's also a survivor of sexual assault.

"Unfortunately, having that level of detail can sometimes be extremely retraumatizing. Not only to the survivor involved in the case, but also for survivors in general who are reading the paper," Black said in an interview.

Hope Jamieson, a former St. John's city councillor who is also a survivor of sexual assault, agrees.

"I see why someone without this kind of experience might see it as valuable to report the facts of the case, but I also don't know what that adds to the public discourse about it," she says.

Jamieson asks why it wouldn't be sufficient to refer to it simply as a violent sexual assault.

"When I experience something that triggers that trauma response, it's days or weeks before I'm OK again and probably months before I'm 100 per cent back to feeling normal and not having that dark cloud hanging over me," she says.

Listen to the full Atlantic Voice documentary to hear more about the considerations journalists must make when covering sexual assaults.

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