Fix that headline…
As a project committed to fighting sexual harassment and sexual violence in Northern Ireland, part of our work is to hold workshops with women of all ages, all backgrounds, urban and rural, all across Northern Ireland. In those workshops we share a video from Nexus NI, a sexual abuse organisation, on victim blaming and we do an exercise called “Fix the headline”, where we use screenshots from reputable media sources and clippings from major newspapers to draw attention to the fact that the way sexual offences are reported in the UK media and indeed the worldwide media. Many of these relate to the reporting of domestic homicide and domestic abuse, but the majority relate to sexual crimes.
We did not have a difficult time finding headlines that fit the bill, there are so many that they are in fact hard to choose between. We believe that the media has a responsibility to do better, and that the frequency of victim blaming and the use casually sexist language and/or stereotypes is so common in the media that it perpetuates the perceived acceptability of the attitudes that lie behind it, which has an immediate impact on the consumers of this media who are also our partners, our friends, our colleagues and sometimes the jury of our peers in a sexual assault case.
CONTENT WARNING: Some of these headlines contain disturbing messaging around sexual assault and rape.
“Women urged to avoid walking alone following series of sexual assaults in west london”
“Father who killed wife and three sons pinned note to door warning visitors to call gardai”
“‘BRILLIANT ACADEMIC’ JAILED FOR MORE THAN FIVE YEARS FOR RAPE”
“Troubled teenage girl at risk of sexual exploitation placed in secure care’
Fiona McGarry has said:
Here is my alternative headline "15 year old Child sexually abused by multiple Paedophiles in Dublin hotels rescued"