Safety
Key Principle: Keep yourself and others safe
Establish and maintain safe physical, emotional and cultural environments for victims and survivors and media professionals. Clarify personal and professional boundaries and ensure support networks are in place.
Strategies to keep victims and survivors safe:
- Ask the interviewee what they need to make them feel comfortable and safe.
- Be flexible and considerate throughout the interview and editorial process.
- Have on hand information about relevant support services that you can give to the interviewee.
- For guidance on interviewing victims and survivors, see ‘Guidance for interviewing victims and survivors’.
- Keep defamation law in mind when reporting details, including images that may inadvertently identify victims and survivors or their families, or alleged perpetrators (unless express permission has been provided). For more detail see ‘Advice for court reporters’.
"The hardest, consistently the hardest stuff that I've had to deal with, ever, has been child sexual abuse...the vicarious trauma is just so overwhelming and if you've got any empathy at all, you're going to have a very strong emotional response."
(Journalist)
Strategies to keep yourself and colleagues safe:
- Be aware of vicarious trauma and its effect on journalists who report on child sexual abuse.
- Colleagues who may be affected by vicarious trauma can include other journalists, sub-editors, camera operators, photographers, sound recordists and production personnel.
- Manage your relationship with victims and survivors by establishing clear boundaries (in consultation with your editor, experienced colleagues and/or professional counsellors) with victims and survivors. A journalist’s limitations should be made clear: they can’t give legal advice and/or counselling.
- Seek support for yourself if or when needed. Your organisation may have access to an Employee Assistance Program. You can also contact 1800RESPECT for help and advice. See support services for more information.
- Check on the wellbeing of colleagues who are reporting on court cases, commissions and inquiries.
- Senior colleagues should mentor and support younger journalists in reporting on child sexual abuse.
"Victim survivors identify as many different things. Most people have a preference. If you don’t know someone’s, ask. Sexual assault takes away choice, so it’s especially important to respect choice of terminology. For many, articulating identity in relation to sexual assault is fluid. If moving from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ is a process, it isn’t linear or progressive. It might be cyclical, we might be both at once, and we might not end at one term or another. There are many reasons, many of which are personal, as to why a victim and survivor will identify as a ‘victim’ or a ‘survivor’… it is okay that they be one or the other, or that they are both. And a journalist should always ask."
(Sarah Rosenberg, Director and Co-Founder of With You We Can)