That’s what Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, explained to me in a conference call last week. He was giving a handful of journalists throughout the country advice on how to work with sources who have experienced trauma and how to take care of ourselves as reporters.
When an individual goes through a traumatic experience, they can lose sleep, experience depression and fatigue, and lose the ability to concentrate, among many other symptoms. With Ferguson and the aftermath of the Jason Stockley verdict, that individual experience was multiplied by thousands, he said.
The call with Shapiro came two days before Stanford professor Christine Blasey Ford tearfully told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both high school students more than 35 years ago. Kavanaugh denied the allegation.
Since then, I’ve witnessed several women and men become overwhelmed with emotion. They can’t sleep; they can’t concentrate. Some are angry; some are depressed; some are both.
Many in this country are experiencing symptoms of trauma.
They have been traumatized watching the manner in which the U.S. Senate has been investigating the alleged sexual assault charge against Kavanaugh – a man who could go on to rule in the nation’s highest court for the rest of his life. Traumatized watching the way men at high levels of our government shame a woman for “waiting so long” to come forward. And traumatized by the way they then apologize profusely to the man being accused for the inconvenience and the pain he must be going through – even after this man displayed a disturbing amount of rage in his testimony.
For those who have been victims of sexual assault and harassment, the high probability that Ford’s charge will not get a proper investigation is all too real.
Many have spoken about coming forward immediately and receiving worse treatment.
And it extends beyond the investigation. Moments after Kavanaugh’s testimony, someone went on Wikipedia and changed the definitions of “Devil’s Triangle” and other terms that Kavanaugh wrote in his high school yearbook to reflect the definitions that he provided. When asked to explain the terms in the hearing, he stumbled and said it was a drinking game similar to quarters. Devil’s Triangle is not a drinking game, as many people will attest (along with the Urban Dictionary; it’s a threesome between two men and one woman.
This kind of cover-up is terrifying. It’s especially traumatic that Kavanaugh has the power and resources to try and bend reality to his definitions.
Shapiro wrote about Kavanaugh’s praise for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s ruling in United States v. Morrison. In 2000 in a 5-4 ruling, the deeply divided justices, led by Rehnquist, gutted key sections of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
“We may never know if Judge Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual assault,” Shapiro wrote. “We do know that he is the latest in a line of ideologically driven, far-right judges who refuse to see sexual violence as a national problem, deserving federal civil-rights intervention. And we know that when it comes to discussing a real rape case involving a real woman, Judge Kavanaugh’s lack of empathy can fairly be described by one word: pathological.”
In the conference call, Shapiro said journalists can play a powerful role in times when communities or the nation overall are sharing a roiling sense of systemic failure. When there might never be real justice, Shapiro said, “We can offer narrative justice.”
He also gave these coping tips: Shut down your news feeds after 8 p.m. Get lots of exercise. Talk to someone. Spend time with family or friends because feeling isolated can worsen the symptoms.
Please, take care of yourselves and each other.
Rebecca Rivas is the senior reporter for The St. Louis American and a 2018 Ida B. Wells Fellow with the Investigative Fund.
https://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/guest_columnists/america-is-traumatized-by-kavanaugh/article_9f3fff94-c663-11e8-b770-0774ed0252ed.html
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