Letter Provokes Controversy About Rape Article

The following was an unsigned letter sent to me, WalpoleNews.com, and The Walpole Times, about an article that appeared in the Times regarding Martin Grealish raping his young daughter.  Because it was unsigned, the Times declined to publish it.

To the Editor,

Tonight I had very little to do (other than tending to my four small children) and had been thinking about one of my dearest friends.  I asked my husband to watch the kids and drove around the block to my friend's house, where she and I cried in her driveway for half an hour and never felt cold once.  She did not have to elaborate on the horrible things that had been going on in her life--I had the good fortune, along with a cast of thousands, to read all about it in the Walpole Times.  Perhaps if this article had been about her as a victim, we would have talked about having faith and overcoming adversity.  Keep your head held high, I would tell her, you have done nothing wrong.

 

But this article was about her 7 year old daughter, who was sound asleep inside the house--I can only pray she felt peaceful and safe.  We stole glances up at her darkened window as we talked, keeping our voices low on the off-chance she woke up, found us outside, and overheard a single sentence of our conversation.  She doesn't know, and I pray that she will never know, that the terrible circumstances of her life were laid out in front of her whole community today.  She is an unnamed victim, referred to only as the "7 year old daughter" of Martin Grealish.  Or, as her mother told me, simply, "She's my baby." 

 

Oh, you have to protect the victim. I get it. But Martin Grealish only has one 7 year old daughter, so that description really narrowed it down for me.   One can just hope that it manages to escape everyone else.    Are children's records not sealed?  Is there any decency in this world towards a child--and that child's family--who has endured a nightmare that most of us cannot even begin to fathom?  This mother and her children have lived in quiet agony for months, and thanks to your comprehensive (and--oops! maybe illegal)  news coverage, now they get to suffer in public, too.  Because watching your children lose their childhood, along with the loss your family's sense of peace and security, is just not enough torture in life, now you must lose your privacy as well....on page 4, to be specific.

 

After my friend and I had visited a bit, I went to a few stores that sell the Walpole Times and was more than a little surprised to see that they had not been pulled off the shelves.  Although I see where they could not be pulled out of mailboxes after distribution, did there really still need to be 50 copies of the Walpole Times for sale at Stop & Shop?   Couldn't someone have had the common decency to pull them for their clear violation of the privacy rights of a 7 year old?  You cannot access the article on-line (even if it is accessible as a link, it goes to a non-working page), but you can stroll in to the Mobil station and buy 14 newspapers and read about Martin Grealish raping his 7 year old daughter. Even if I didn't know and love this family, I would be disgusted by your lack of ethics.  There will be people who can clear up and take care of the legality in this case, but who will take care of the lack of morality that causes a town newspaper to elaborate on devastating crimes committed against a 7 year old by a person who shares her last name? What ever made you think that was OK?

 

This child is a member of our community.  She deserves to go to school and play with her neighbors and friends without being the "7 year old daughter" of Martin Grealish. Although her father's arrest is public record, your paper could have stopped at the police log, which was brief and factual and made no mention of the victim or the specifics of the crime, which you were able to access through court records. You chose sensationalism, pure and simple, at the cost of a family who has endured tremendous pain already.  I have 84 papers in my dining room, and tomorrow I will go get more.  I will buy them until you stop distributing them or pull them from shelves, which is what you should have done today.   I will call the managers of the stores that carry your paper and ask them not to stock any replacements of this week's edition.  I hope to buy every last one.  And after that,  I will never purchase, advertise in, or even glance at your newspaper again.