Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991                   TAG: 9104140154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PALM BEACH, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

RAPE VICTIM'S PRIVACY UNSETTLED BY THE MEDIA

Advocates of disclosure say the law is also sexist and unfair to the suspect, William Kennedy Smith, a medical student and nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"It's outrageous, it's unfair, it's sexist," said Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz. "If you publish the name, you will be constitutionally protected. I guarantee it."

But supporters of the law charge a media circus publicizing the woman's name - common knowledge in this high-society enclave - could be emotionally crippling.

David Roth, attorney for the 29-year-old woman, said last week that his client chooses to keep her privacy.

For Dershowitz, the issue of secrecy for rape victims is one thing, and a law making it a crime to publish a name is another.

But Franye Coverman, a West Palm Beach social worker who counsels adults molested as children, said the personal blame and shame attached to rape is traumatic. Publicizing the woman's name in the Kennedy case before she has dealt with the conflicts "could ruin her for life," Coverman said.

Robyn Blumner of the American Civil Liberties Union in Miami sees the state law as improper prior restraint of the press but also recognizes the argument on the other side - the "devastation" that publication may cause the victim.

The publication or broadcast of a rape victim's "name, address, or other identifying fact or information" is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by a 60-day jail sentence and a $500 fine under Florida law.

The Palm Beach Post, the county's largest daily, has a policy against publication unless the victim agrees to be named - except under extraordinary circumstances, Managing Editor Tom O'Hara said.

"I hate to be real cynical. I guess maybe the tabloids are the type of publications that will bulldoze the path on some of this."

Allan Siegal, an assistant managing editor of The New York Times, which has closely covered the story, says the Times "considers these things case by case."

"Ordinarily, the Times doesn't name victims of sex crimes unless there is an extraordinary public interest in identifying them or we have strong reason to doubt their account," he said.

In 1989, a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned a $97,500 verdict against a Jacksonville weekly newspaper that had claimed it inadvertently published the name of a victim.

The decision said that newspapers may be punished for publishing names of victims obtained legally from court records only when such publication would violate "a state interest of the highest order." That language basically left it to court interpretation when publication was justified.

The debate comes as society's attitudes toward rape and rape reporting are evolving.

Some say people need to get the sex out of rape and treat it as a violent assault - not a sexual act.

Others say the victim should have the right to come forward and not be propelled into the spotlight.

The sensitive telling of a stranger-rape case by a woman who wanted her story known produced a Pulitzer Prize for The Des Moines (Iowa) Register last week.