Learn How to Cover Sexual Assault

Perhaps no task is as daunting for reporters than interviewing a survivor of a sexual assault. A panel of experts addressed how best to avoid pitfalls that could compromise a good story or unnecessarily harm a survivor at a National Press Club Journalism Institute event on Jan. 8, 2016. Panelists included journalist Kristen Lombardi of the Center for Public Integrity, author of an award-winning investigation of sexual assaults on campus; Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center at Columbia Journalism School, which offers guidance and training to journalists covering trauma; author and activist Liz Seccuro, who was brutally raped at UVA in 1984, and was only able to obtain some accountability more than two decades later, when her attacker wrote and apologized to her for what he had done; and Jennifer Marsh, Vice President for Victim Services at RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, overseeing the National Sexual Assault Hotlines and coordinating services and communication with1,000 affiliate sexual assault service providers nationwide.