Planet’s article on rape case?
A skeptic must have written it

I was looking over the Police Blotter of April 9 (in the Daily Planet) and was slightly disturbed.

It’s interesting how each is told in a matter-of-fact tone, even when reporting witness accounts, but in the blurb about the “alleged” rape — the reader is reminded constantly — more often than in any of the others which are all longer — how “alleged” or “questionable” the charge is.

Even in the title: “Police probing alleged rape by man met over Internet.” The wording ... a report from a woman who said she was raped at gunpoint ... by a man she met MORE THAN a month ago online ... the incident, which allegedly occurred during the man’s visit to her apartment ... the man has no criminal record in the area, police said. ...

The whole blurb just reeks of a skeptical author. It isn’t that some of those things are not relevant, and I’m sure I sound sensitive, but this wouldn’t be as big a deal if the same language was used consistently in the other blurbs.

In the “Man shot in Leicester” blurb, it doesn’t say “After four men WERE SAID to have rushed into his apartment” or “SUPPOSEDLY the assailants knocked on the door of the man’s apartment ... and then ALLEGEDLY ran inside when it was opened ....” It says, “After four men rushed into his apartment” and so on — the witnesses and the victim’s role and credibility are not questioned at all — why is the rape victim’s?

Both incidents happened in a private apartment where police were not present ... is it because the “alleged” rape was done by a man that this woman led on by talking to him for all that time on the Internet? Or was it because she had no sense but to let him in for a “visit?” Why would she let him in if she wasn’t inviting sex, right?

Sounds to me and all your readers like she had it coming, huh?

It may seem like an overly emotional reaction, but I can’t help but be emotional to reporting so obviously and destructively biased.

I also can’t help but react emotionally to something that I’m sure, if I were raped, or if you, your daughter or mother were raped — even if it hadn’t been proven in a court of law yet — it would be insulting and degrading to be “protecting the assailant’s rights” then.  I simply mean to suggest that you should watch for those inconsistencies.

KATIE TOUMAZOU
Asheville

Reducing citizen participation, exercising censorship termed scandalous in Fairview

I was part of a small group to organize the county Democratic forum in Fairview recently (April 16 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.). I had a tough job to keep the “forum” definition viable: from Latin “foris,” out of doors.

“We don’t want citizen participation,” I was told when I suggested a question oriented on the subject [of] promoting transparency, or adding an e-mail [address] to the ad in our town paper so the citizens could send their questions in advance for us to study and prepare for, or even proposing a bipartisan forum.

I had to insist in order for the matter of citizen participation to be taken into consideration, but it was turned down by e-mail after a member of the group, who was supposed to take our drafted questions and rewrite them, wrote to me that my question was not “well written” enough to be considered.

I feel like I have been censored — my questions pushed aside — and that the Mountain Spring community was not represented   because we have serious concerns about our water, wells and springs, due to the arrival of the giant Cliffs golf course and its five tons of chemicals a year in our watershed.

Fairview is under a spell or a paralysis, as no one wants to speak up or act in order to sleep better, comfort each other and make no waves. Self-censorship is common. With years of neglect and inattention, we are starting to hear such incredible statements as: “We don’t want citizen participation.” And this is, for me, the sign that our local democracy and our party is in danger.

Intentionally reducing the citizen participation and using censorship at such a basic level of participatory democracy is scandalous. ... [We need] scrutiny and questioning of the real intentions at every level of the system. We should not muzzle citizen participation or dictate the destiny of a community that easily. We should be their  representative, conducting business in their name with integrity and devotion.

FRANCOIS MANAVIT
Vice Chair DEM 39.2
Fairview