Fixed It: Raping a child is not a “tryst”

The Cairns Post reported that police charged a 25 year old man with three counts each of rape and supply dangerous drugs, and one count each of using the internet to procure a child under 16, possess dangerous drugs, possess utensils and breach of bail.

According to the article, the man allegedly groomed the 13 year old girl online and persuaded her to meet him at a hotel, where he allegedly gave her drugs and raped her. 

The trial has not started yet and the man is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Only the court can determine whether he is legally guilty or not guilty and any public commentary that could influence the outcome of the case (including comments on social media) could be grounds for a mistrial.

As far as reporting on this type of crime goes, the article itself is quite well done. It clearly identifies the alleged grooming and the context for the alleged rape. It also includes the context of the investigation by the taskforce set up in 2022 to investigate the alleged grooming and exploitation of vulnerable young people in the Cairns area. 

Apart from the first paragraph references to a “seedy hotel” and “plying her with drugs” the article doesn’t use sensationalising language – which suggests to me that the person who wrote the headline and the lead paragraph was not the journalist who wrote the article. 

Whoever wrote this headline went searching for a word to describe a man raping a child and came up with “tryst”. The dictionary definition of tryst is “a meeting between lovers in a quiet secret place”. So, not only does the headline writer think of child rape as a romantic secret meeting between lovers, but they also believe that’s how the people who read the Cairns Post think too. 

I make as many jokes about Queenslanders as any other Victorian, but even I don’t believe they would think the alleged rape of a 13 year old child is romantic.

This is also a good moment to remind everyone that people who have survived sexual violence often read new reporting about their case. Sometimes they scour news and social media sites for any mention of it. They’re often trying to understand what happened and find some clues for how the people in their community will react to them. I can’t imagine what it would feel like for that girl or her family to read, in the news service supposedly dedicated to their community, that the alleged grooming and rape was a “seedy” “hotel tryst”. 

Ignorant, damaging, misleading and unethical reporting like this does real harm. Not only to the people directly involved in the alleged crime, but also to the public understanding of sexual violence against children. Such crimes have lifelong consequences and it is utterly abhorrent to see them trivialised, romanticised or sensationalised.