Witness says there was no rape attempt on Euphrates
Sometimes in reporting the news, the real story is not necessarily the one you see in the headlines. Rather it is in the story behind the story, that is, the way an event is reported may be more important than the event itself. Such appears to be the case with an incident that occurred last week in Belize City. With much of the community already up in arms over a number of unsolved child rapes and murders, the Reporter newspaper seemed to express the nation’s collective outrage when it headlined and apparently barbaric act of attempted rape on a seven year old girl on her way home from school. Not content to sensationalize the crime the Reporter also took the police to task for allegedly failing to solve the crime and charge a prime suspect. But there was a problem with the Reporter’s reporting. It was false. As News Five’s Janelle Chanona discovered, what started as a minor assault by an apparently mentally unbalanced man, was turned, by the newspaper, into a monstrous act of sexual depravity.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
On Tuesday, February 15th, Arthur Sewell told Channel Seven he saw a man pick up and carry a little girl. He repeated his story to us today, still declining to show his face.
Arthur Sewell, Eyewitness
“A guy come singing and making a lot of thing on the street and when he passed us, the little girl was coming from school.”
Janelle Chanona
Where was the little girl?
Arthur Sewell
“Right here. And he picked up the little girl. But I saw him pick up the little girl but I thought it was a family member or something like that, so we didn’t say anything. He continued to hold the little girl and he was walking, coming toward us. When he got in front of us with the little girl, the little girl screamed and started to kick up and we realized that the guy was trying to take her. So we started to yell at him with bad words and he dropped the little girl and ran across the street.”
Two days later, on Friday the Reporter newspaper ran a byline story by Gary Ayuso, but as you probably read, it was quite different. The headline reads, “Child molester freed after rape attempt.” Right below the headline is a clear picture of the little girl with her older sister. The story says the man tried to rape the little girl in the bushes and goes so far as saying Arthur Sewell and his assistant saw a man with his pants halfway down “behind some overgrown bush in an open yard” with “a small child struggling in his grasp.” The story states that “attacker” had the child grasped by both her hands and he was trying to drag her further into the abandoned yard. In a companion editorial the Reporter also referred to a “sex crazed madman” who was released by “do nothing policemen.”
Arthur Sewell
“I don’t know where the Reporter got that story from. No Reporter people didn’t come here to us. So I don’t know where they get the story from. They shouldn’t write things like that because then whether the man is a criminal or not, you can’t write things like that that ain’t so.
His pants wasn’t off. I tell you he was a well-dressed guy. His pants was low, all the down, below his waist anyway. But the pants wasn’t off or nothing.”
Janelle Chanona
So there was nothing with no bushes?
Arthur Sewell
“Nothing with bushes?nothing at all with no bushes. Just what I tell you, that’s what happened.”
Although the writer Gary Ayuso could not be reached for comment and did not return our phone calls, his General Editor and Publisher Harry Lawrence stands by the story.
Harry Lawrence, General Editor/Publisher, The Reporter
“Mr. Sewell did not give a…his assistant, the lady who works in the shop did.”
Janelle Chanona
You all have that on record?
Harry Lawrence
“Absolutely.”
Janelle Chanona
I just need to clarify that because they are saying that they didn’t.
Harry Lawrence
“No, we do our work and we do our work well, I must say.”
Janelle Chanona
They also have a quote from the lady who works with you in the store, did she speak with anybody from the reporter?
Arthur Sewell
“No, no, she didn’t speak to nobody. She not here now or she would tell you the same thing.”
In reporting on what appears to be a case of shoddy journalism and unjustified sensationalism we are not trying to excuse the actions of a criminal. Harold Smith was today charged with common assault and fined $150. Despite the Reporter’s charges of police negligence it appear that the police’s family violence unit acted professionally, based on the facts and not on hysteria. And then there’s the question of the picture of the young girl, victim of an alleged rape attempt, which appeared on the front page of the Reporter. We’ll have more on that tomorrow.
