Taking a Story Beyond the Headlines
A story about a sexual abuse case runs on the local news. Maybe it involves a high school music teacher arrested for having sex with a student or a little league coach accused of fondling neighborhood children.
What next?
Most likely the story will quickly disappear – and with it any thorough examination of how this crime (or others like it) occurred, how it could have been prevented and what impact it had on the victims and the community. But you could dig deeper, and explain the hows and whys rarely offered in a single-hit story about a sexual abuse case.
You can start by asking the questions that haven’t been answered.
Kristen Lombardi, now with the Center for Public Integrity, wrote a series of articles between 2001-2003 for the The Phoenix (Boston), exposing a widespread clergy sex scandal in the city. Lombardi’s first story involved a pedophile priest accused of molesting over a hundred children over three decades. As she sifted through the evidence, Lombardi wondered, “Who knew what and when?”
With that simple question as a launching pad, Lombardi's single story became a two-year investigation that contributed to the resignation of a cardinal; a settlement on behalf of victims; and a state mandatory-reporting law for clergy members.
Rebecca Dube, a reporter at the Forward, a weekly national Jewish newspaper based in New York, had covered several sexual abuse court cases and legislative initiatives aimed at stopping abuse in the 12 years before she came to Forward. But she recently stepped into unfamiliar territory when she wrote an in-depth narrative, documenting one man’s emotional odyssey after allegedly being raped as a teenager by his teacher at an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in New York.
Dube discovered that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is at point similar to where the Catholic community was a decade ago, in terms of confronting and acknowledging clergy sexual abuse. The idea for her feature grew out of a series of smaller pieces on seemingly isolated cases, after she decided to step back and look at the issue of sexual abuse in the community. Her initial questions, like Lombardi’s, were basic: Why was sexual abuse a problem in this community and what were the particular obstacles for Orthodox survivors to talk about the issue?
RESOURCES
"Investigating Mental Health, Trauma," Jessica Tarbert, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma
"Investigative Reporting: What it takes," Bill Kirtz, Poynter Online
"The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook," Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE)
"Reporting Tips from Pulitzer Winners," Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ)
