Dawn's Tragedy

EVER SINCE rich, white Jennifer Dawn Levin was raped and murdered in New York's Central Park by a prepschool "friend," the city's tabloids have kept her story on the front page.

But instead of focusing on the tragedy of the gruesome event, the dailies have asked utterly irrelevant questions, somehow insinuating that she got what she deserved: what was she doing in the park with Richard Chambers at four in the morning? Hadn't they been sexually involved before?

The only appropriate answer is one resounding "who cares." To say that one shouldn't go to the park with an acquaintance is to say that a woman is tempting fate any time she does the slightest thing to make a man believe she is available.

Implicit in this attitude lies the idea that male sexuality is natural while female sexuality is dirty. Any time a woman fails to repress that sexuality she is putting candy in front of a baby and must accept the consequences. Perhaps that is why the press continually harps on Chambers' "charming good-looks." Overcome by this handsome young man, Ms. Levin simply lost control and followed Chambers to the park, sealing her own fate.

EQUALLY IRRELEVANT is whether the couple had been sexually intimate before. Are we to assume that once a woman sleeps with someone she is rightfully his thereafter? This attitude is only a more modern version of the one exhibited by those who oppose the criminalization of spousal rape. Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton couldn't have put this offensive idea more eloquently: "When a man gets married he expects he's going to get a little sex."

The amount of concern showered on Chambers and his family further emphasizes the notion that he was the victim, not Levin. The poor chap never got enough attention from his parents, the tabloids tell us; and, what's more, he had the grave misfortune of shuttling from prep school to prep school because of failing grades. Not only did the New York Post run a front page picture depicting the grief of his parents, but it also gave top billing to an interview in which Chambers said, "I have no ill feeling toward Jennifer or her family."

Unfortunately, it is naive to look at this incident as simply an isolated case of insensitive journalism. Tabloids cater to the whims and prejudices of their readers. The Daily News knows it can sell papers that read "HOW JENNIFER COURTED DEATH" because that's what the readers want to believe. And Richard Chambers knows, at least unconsciously, that only in a society that views female sexuality in the way ours does is it possible to plead innocence because Levin "got rough during sex."

Alibis such as these indicate that this tragedy is not an isolated one. As long as our society harbors these attitudes about violence against women, we can expect the number of Jennifer Dawn Levins to grow.