'Plain Dealer' Staffer's Rape Story Brings Other Victims Out

By: Joe Strupp When Joanna Connors of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland agreed to tell the story of her 1984 rape in the paper's pages, she expected strong reaction.

But even she was surprised at how many of the 220 or so e-mails and voicemails responding to the special section in Sunday's paper about her experience were from women who had been raped, but had never told anyone.

"Two people at the paper came up to me and said they had been raped and one had never told anyone," Connors, 54, told E&P today. "So many of the people in the voice mails and e-mails said so, too. We really absorb that message [as victims] that it is uncomfortable for everyone."

Connors was actually raped while on the job during her stint as a Plain Dealer theater critic. She writes, in graphic fashion, in the first of several stories that ran Sunday about being attacked at the student theater of nearby Case Western University by a man who cornered her in the empty backstage area.

For years, she never wrote about the incident, which resulted in the eventual conviction and imprisonment of the rapist. But, as she writes in the first of the stories that made up the 16-page special section last Sunday, she wanted to reveal her story after taking her daughter on a college campus tour in 2005.

As she began to write about the experience and do research for a book on the subject, Editor Susan Goldberg approached her with the idea of writing it for the paper. "Joanna had this story to tell and we thought it was important and only she could tell it," Goldberg recalls. "We decided to put it out there and the response was overwhelming and overwhelmingly positive."

Connors said she had to think long and hard about whether to put the story into the paper first: "It was a process for me that was cathartic. I really had to think about it."

One stipulation Connors put before Goldberg was that if either of her children, a 22-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter, objected to the package when it was done, they could veto it. She also required approval from her husband, fellow Plain Dealer writer Christopher Evans, who is mentioned in the stories.

"Even though their last name is different form mine, Cleveland is in some ways a small town and everyone would know this is their mom," Connors said. "I did not want them to suffer for this at all." As for Evans, from whom Connors has been separated since last year, she said he has been most supportive and she wanted him to feel right about it as well. "He read it and told me it was wonderful," she said. "He told me not to change anything."

Connors said the paper set up a special e-mail and voicemail line for reaction, which received a combined 220 responses as of Monday night. "I would say there were maybe a total of five bad ones," Connors said. "It has been amazing." She said that at least one person, a black man, commented on the racial aspect of the incident, given that Connors is white and her attacker was black. "He said he was sick of 'all of us bearing the brunt of what one person did.'"

But she said the majority were positive and a surprising number were fellow rape victims admitting their personal stories for the first time. Others were long-lost acquaintances.

"I heard from a guy who worked with me at the University of Minnesota and a guy who read it online," she said. "I also heard from a person who was on the jury."

At first, the plan was to make it a five-part series that would run over several days. But, about a week before it ran, the change was made to put it in a special section that ran with no advertising.

"I loved that idea, I thought it was good because it is tough to read the first part, but you get redemption in the end," Connors said. She added that her willingness to do a feature project about herself came about after she stopped doing theater stories in 2006 and did a piece about the child of two psychiatrists dying of a Heroin overdose, which led to other serious feature projects.

"I wanted to do those kinds of stories more and I was ready to drop the theater beat," she said. "I began doing longer projects and being a feature columnist."

Connors said she still hopes to write a book about her experience and rape victims in general. "I am going to send this to a couple of agents and there is a lot more about it to write," she added. "We cut a lot and there is more I didn?t even put in the draft."

Given her own experiences and the reaction from readers, Connors said she still believes that newspapers should not print the names of rape victims, at least not without their permission. "Because of the fear that the guy would come after them," she says. "That unintended consequence is very powerful."

To view the package, click here.