When Rights Collide
We live in a society where many of us have come to believe that we have a right to know quite a lot about a great many things. Unfortunately, this seems to have gone a bit over the line where it applies to the rights of children to be kept safe from emotional harm. I am referring, of course, to the recent case of the two boys who were abducted in Missouri. One of the boys was held by his captor for four years and it is this boy whose welfare concerns me the most. Not that the younger boy who was held for days rather than years doesn't concern me, but Shawn, the older boy, has been hit by the media spotlight much more vividly.
Traumatic events in our lives have, by the very nature of the emotion associated with them and the flashbacks, a way of reinforcing themselves. Anyone who has experienced anything like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) knows that only too well. So, I know that both boys must be carefully and cautiously helped to get their lives back together. It is the constant insistence, on the part of some media, that the public wants to know all the lurid details of the captivity, that causes me great concern.
The public may want to know but the public does not have a right to know just as the children have a right to not provide details and to keep this private. Asking "the questions that are on everyone's mind" does not make this right or any less abusive. These children have been subjected to something no one should experience, neither adult nor child. Framing inappropriate, invasive questioning with the phrase that "the public wants to know" does nothing to absolve the questioner from anything here.
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Technorati Tags: PTSD, Shawn Hornbeck, child abuse, privacy rights
Traumatic events in our lives have, by the very nature of the emotion associated with them and the flashbacks, a way of reinforcing themselves. Anyone who has experienced anything like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) knows that only too well. So, I know that both boys must be carefully and cautiously helped to get their lives back together. It is the constant insistence, on the part of some media, that the public wants to know all the lurid details of the captivity, that causes me great concern.
The public may want to know but the public does not have a right to know just as the children have a right to not provide details and to keep this private. Asking "the questions that are on everyone's mind" does not make this right or any less abusive. These children have been subjected to something no one should experience, neither adult nor child. Framing inappropriate, invasive questioning with the phrase that "the public wants to know" does nothing to absolve the questioner from anything here.
Related Topics:
Technorati Tags: PTSD, Shawn Hornbeck, child abuse, privacy rights
5 Comments:
Thanks for this post, Dr Farrell!
We cannot protect our children, or anybody else, from emotional harm. Emotional harm is what builds and refines wariness. It fosters planning. It assures appropriate fear responses and promotes self preservation. Regardless, the suffering of emotional harm in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, as well as other forms, multiplies when hidden away. It is the suppression of the pain and horror that feeds the syndrome and fosters the damage. The solution is not to hide it away but to expose it and address the subsequent realities. Sharing the "secret" with a privileged confidant only entrenches and legitimizes the response.
I agree with Dr. Farrell, it is not the public's right to know every sordid detail of any victim's experience. Anonymous at 10:25 is making a case for the media; legitimizing the invasion of a person's privacy with ghastly assertion that playing out sordid details somehow helps them "heal".
Dr. Farrell was not advocating that the victim hide away and suppress their experiences, but rather that they have the right to deal with it privately and seek help privately. This does not entrench or legitimize PTSD. Having one's privacy violated, the media feeding off one's most horrifying experiences, the public clamoring to see the victim, only serves to entrench the victim's confusion, horror and feelings of shame or guilt.
The victim has already dealt with the reality that the world is not safe. Once they are home though, they deserve the privacy of trying to rebuild their lives without the media.
I know that all of you can see the complexity of this situation. There is the right to privacy, the need for therapy/counseling and the ethics of journalism. All of these factors enter in here and my concern has been and continues to be the welfare of these children, not the rights of the public "to know," or which therapy is most beneficial.
I have been most disturbed by the actions of prominent media personalities who have engaged in a feeding frenzy that does nothing but victimize the families and these boys.
BTW, I would suggest a bit of research into treatment for PTSD because changes have been coming in the past few years.
thanks for this post and all your comments
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