Personal testimony is a powerful tool in any struggle to increase public awareness and to fight injustice. When that testimony is as searing as the one given by Megan Stephens in the Observer Magazine last week it deserves to be heeded, but it raised some questions in the minds of several readers.
Megan (not her real name) told a horrifying story of six years of forced prostitution, years of appalling physical and sexual abuse that began when, at the age of 14, she met a pimp in a bar in Greece. Now, many miles away from her exploitation and leading a new life, she has published a memoir, Bought & Sold. Rather than reproduce some of that book, the Observer chose to interview Megan, giving her the chance to tell her story while at the same time gently testing her account.
To some readers, however, the piece appeared to accept her story without any independent verification, a point some attempted to make in comments posted online – only to find them removed by the moderators. They wrote to protest. “While I appreciate that standing up a story like this is difficult, I think it’s poor simply to accept the word of a charity presenting a case study. As the story is written, it asks a great deal of the readers and their trust,” wrote one complainant.
She added that concerns over verification were raised several times by commenters in the thread. “My first post has completely vanished: it expressed concern that previous posts raising questions about the journalistic underpinnings of the piece had been deleted and raised the issue of trust. I am particularly unhappy about that post being taken down without a placeholder noting its removal. I always find the total deletion of a post troubling: transparency surely demands that readers can see if the moderators have removed a number of posts. Looking back through the comments thread now, I see gaping holes where a number of people politely challenged the narrative.”
I asked the senior community moderator manager why his team had removed so many. “We are very sensitive when an article is about sexual abuse,” he replied. “We have a duty of care towards the victim, which means we allow a less robust examination of their experiences than we would on a less personally sensitive and triggering subject.” He added that the guidelines warn that when a comment or post is removed, it is often necessary to delete subsequent posts that refer to or quote from the original removed comment, to preserve some notion of conversational thread. In such cases, not every deletion will be marked individually, as this then clutters the comments.
The author of the piece said she was given no reason to doubt Megan’s story, which had been independently verified by the publisher HarperCollins, a charity and their lawyers. “The most contentious part of the piece would seem to be her claim that she had sex with 110 men in one night which, while shocking, was verified by the research I did into the operating tactics of Greek brothels as being entirely possible.”
The magazine’s editor added: “This was not a case offered by a charity alone – where we would have been more sceptical – but instead the subject of a book. The combination of reputable publisher, ghostwriter, charity and the opportunity to speak to Megan face to face meant we felt confident in reporting the story. Our first response here wouldn’t be to say ‘prove it’, but instead to listen until we were satisfied.”
HarperCollins told me it sought reassurances from several sources and was “very confident and satisfied” that that the book was a truthful account of Megan’s experiences.
It strikes me that had the publisher’s confidence been spelt out in the piece it might have gone a long way to quell readers’ scepticism and prevented their subsequent offence at having their comments removed.
John Redmond of Standards Against Female Exploitation wrote this under the story: “Wake up those of you who have posted cynical comments in this thread. Why can you not accept that there has been much effort and activity by countless professionals underpinning this girl’s story. Those of us that work in this field can assure you that [this] is not an altogether uncommon experience for those from the most vulnerable sectors of our society.”
reader@observer.co.uk