It's hard not to feel sympathy for Caitana "Tanya" Threats of East Providence, who, according to police, was repeatedly struck with a hammer during a May 5 domestic dispute. Her husband, Daril C. Threats remains at the ACI after being arrested and charged with attempted murder. According to a May 27 story by Karen Lee Ziner in the Providence Journal, Daril Threats was being held at the state prison on a three-year sentence -- and had a record of assaulting four women -- when Caitana (after being informed of this record) married him there in June 1999. But to hear Caitana Threats tell it, she was also victimized by Ziner's coverage of the situation.

Threats achieved the improbable by having Ziner taken off the story - a surprising journalistic lapse that led some 80 staffers to sign a letter of protest to executive editor Joel P. Rawson. The situation was all the more unusual since Ziner's editors apparently didn't find any fault with her two stories on the case. But Caitana Threats, who recovered after being hospitalized for weeks, remains disgruntled and says she's considering legal action against the Journal.

According to Threats, two details in Ziner's coverage -- that she was nude when police found her, and "was shouting for `God' and the doctor," after being brought to Rhode Island Hospital -- are inaccurate. Both details, however, are supported by police affidavits in the case (a subsequent affidavit indicates Threats was partially clothed when she was discovered by police). Threats also claims that Ziner harassed her 73-year-old mother, allegedly calling her four times in succession, after being told not to contact the family by other relatives, and triggered a flood of other media inquiries by identifying the mother's name and hometown in Massachusetts.

It's difficult to measure the veracity of this last complaint. "I'd like to speak with you about this," says Ziner, a 21-year Journal veteran, "but my editor has requested that I not do so." Rawson has declined to comment to the Phoenix about the situation. But this much is clear: although calls from reporters are sometimes unwelcome after a loved one has been the victim of a violent crime, the press still has a responsibility to report the news. Ziner's two stories represent not only the most comprehensive account of the May 5 assault, but a public service.

Calling on the relatives of crime victims is some of the most unpleasant work in reporting. Such efforts can certainly be gratuitous and exploitative. But detailed coverage of crime and tragedy -- as in the case of the attacks on the World Trade Center -- can illuminate our shared humanity and even put events in context. It was through this process, after all, that domestic violence, which was tacitly tolerated by many Americans, even police and judges, well into the '80s, was transformed into a widely recognized social ill of disturbing prevalence.

Issue Date: September 21 - 27, 2001