And it could be seen locally in 2006. Dominique Samuels, whose badly burned corpse was discovered in Franklin Park this spring, dominated headlines until police arrested an acquaintance of hers, and alleged that the attack began as a sexual assault at the end of a night of socializing. With this explanation, coverage of the story immediately disappeared.
Annalicia Perry was likewise big news when she was shot on the anniversary of her brother’s murder, while visiting the spot in the South End where he died. Later, when police determined that an angry ex-boyfriend of Perry’s was behind her death, interest in the story waned. The alleged shooter was arraigned last week, with no media coverage.
Meanwhile, two other women murdered in Boston this year, who were immediately tagged as victims of domestic violence (the husbands were quickly arrested), never reached the front pages in the first place.
By comparison, the story of Imette St. Guillen, a Dorchester native killed in Manhattan, made headlines — and affected policy — long after the alleged perpetrator was caught. In that case, the suspect was a nightclub bouncer, charged with abducting St. Guillen before killing her. Not only did reporters continue to delve into his story, but advocates recently introduced legislation in Massachusetts seeking to protect women from ex-con bouncers.
And when Kerry Healey wanted to scare Massachusetts residents, she chose to grab their attention with a fictionalized re-enactment of a random, unknown attacker, even though she knows perfectly well such imagery is at overwhelming odds with reality.
The fiction that women are often savaged and killed in bizarre, unique circumstances is more gripping. That’s why it’s so prevalent on prime-time television, which is increasingly dominated by crime shows featuring a wildly disproportionate number of female victims. For instance, brief plot summaries for the 24 episodes of top-rated CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that aired this year reveal at least 15 women killed, few by domestic violence, according to a Phoenix review — and that’s just one of three series in the CSI franchise. Similar rates can be found on the three Law & Orders, Cold Case, Without A Trace, and many more, not to mention true-crime shows like those hosted by Nancy Grace and Rita Cosby. But by losing ourselves in that unreality, we may be losing sight of the truth sitting right before our eyes. Many activists believe that’s one reason it remains so difficult to recognize domestic violence when it is happening to someone we know, or even to ourselves.
Women’s-rights activists were appalled by Healey’s ads, and not just for perpetuating the false perception of stranger-danger. The ads also contradicted what they have been trying so hard to get people to understand — that because the attacker is very often someone the victim knows and trusts, she often feels conflicted about him, and might find it hard to take steps that could lead to his arrest and prosecution.
According to the Healey ad, no such conflicted women exist — and if they do, they should presumably be “ashamed.”
