Vermont newspaper sees all police blotters - including domestic abusers and accusers - as important community information, despite protests from women's advocacy groups

What was designed three and a half years ago to complement our daily court coverage has managed to maneuver its way into the realm of the sensational. The hot topic was the paper's commitment to printing the names of alleged abusers and accusers (the victims) in final relief-from-abuse orders.

Printing these names drew inordinate attention to the Caledonian-Record, a daily with a circulation of 12,000 in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Furthermore, it landed us right smack in the center of a controversy that appears never-ending. I thought then, and think now, that much of the hoopla came about for the wrong reasons.

This portion of our court report attracted the attention of a national talk show and a popular women's magazine. The subject escalated to almost tabloid proportions. It garnered us such epithets as cruel, callous and insensitive.

The flip side was that many responsible publications in the trade focused on the controversy of printing the names of victims, and launched a significant dialogue. As a result, we discovered a wellspring of support for what we were doing.

It's unsettling to be written about, when the paper's prime function is to write about others. It's more disturbing to be asked to comment on what is a basic component of our daily news coverage. The topic of battering was taken out of a journalist's perspective and placed in the "oh my" category.

In 1993, our court reporter noted that we were not addressing the final abuse orders that were issued monthly. When we looked at the cases, we were shocked to learn of the abuse many in our community endured.

Domestic battering was real. Who were we to hide it from our readers? In fact, if we addressed the subject with real names and real instances, could we lessen the horrorific instances of domestic violence in our community? These were our thoughts. We recalled some murders that had occurred in our region, and wondered if we had printed the abuse orders back then, would we have made a difference. Perhaps.

After I addressed the issue in the magazine and on the talk show, I learned that domestic abuse is everywhere and knows no social or economic boundaries. I received a deluge of phone calls and letters from people all around the country - most of them cheering us on. "You're doing the right thing," they wrote. And then their stories unfurled. Their accounts of abusive relationships were graphic and not unlike the ones we hear about in our community.

Our commitment to printing the abuse cases became akin to printing the names of rape victims. The popular media's fascination with the subject resulted in a sensational response. The fact that women's advocacy groups and victims' advocates saw us as the devil incarnate and that law-enforcement officials were quick to give short shrift to First Amendment matters got lost in the shuffle. And that was the point of it all.

At issue is the listing of whose rights are restricted, who wants them restricted and why, as well as the judge's ruling. We believed (and still do) that the community would react constructively to violations of an abuse order. Hopefully, informed residents would call law-enforcement agencies - and additional battering or worse might be prevented.

Advocacy groups suggest we are holding victims back from filing for restraining orders because these women fear their names will appear in the paper. We maintain that such a listing should be the least of their worries after surviving an abusive relationship. Our listings (that began with one or two names from one court) are longer now, with 10 or more listings from three courts each month. Clearly, more people seem to be seeking final relief-from-abuse orders.

A few accused abusers have objected to the inclusion of their names in our paper. We'd like to hope they will be shamed into adopting new anger-management techniques. Few of those abused have complained about their being named as victims. Some said it was a good thing because it gave them credibility with their families or made their employers more sympathetic. Very few have told us that they live in fear that the listing will spark more abuse. No one has called to report increased battering since their names appeared.

Still, we have an adversarial relationship with the women's advocacy groups around the state. At one point, spokespeople from those groups threatened to approach the Legislature and try to seal all court records in which victims' names were printed.

We worry a lot about where this could go. We're now hearing from the same people that we shouldn't be listing any victims' names. It's none of anyone's business who was burned in a house fire (or who was hurt in a head-on collision), they say. We think differently, especially when publicly funded agencies are involved and someone's life may be at stake.

We worry that this "spare the reader the painful news" mindset might indicate a trend toward newspapers' printing less and less information to which the public has a right and need to know. We worry that this obsession - keeping people's tragedies under wraps until they're dead - will have a chilling effect on journalism.

Do you agree or disagree? Mail your thoughts to Craig Branson, Letters to the Editor, The American Editor, 11690B Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston VA 20191-1409.

Dixon is managing editor of the St. Johnsbury, Vt., Caledonian-Record.