Too much info in missing child case
I just read Saturday’s front page news story with the headline, “Police: Suspects admit to crime”, and I am so angry right now that my fingers are trembling a little as I type this.
I realize that the way this whole story played out, with a 12-year-old girl first being reported missing and later found in the company of a couple of alleged child molesters, it was surely very difficult for you to decide how to go about reporting on something so sensitive and possibly damaging to the victim. Or was it?
Did any of you stop to think for even a moment how she would be affected by what you were printing? There were details in that article that simply should not have been made public knowledge, considering the fact that everyone in Terre Haute and the surrounding area knows exactly who the victim is — we know her name, we saw her picture, we know who her family is and it wouldn’t be hard to guess what school she goes to.
In Friday’s newspaper you stated that you were not using the girl’s name because of a newspaper policy in which it does not identify the victim of an alleged crime. What good does that do this young girl now? The next best thing to not identifying her would have been to protect her as much as possible by not printing details of what happened while she was in that house. We didn’t need to know.
I am praying that God gives her the strength to deal with what she has been through, and with whatever her future holds. Also, praying that everyone with whom she comes into contact understands that she is just a little girl who made a very foolish decision to meet up with a strange man. What happened after that was beyond her ability, as a child, to control or to stop. It could happen to any of our children, and if, God forbid, it ever happened to my soon-to-be 12-year-old daughter, I certainly wouldn’t want the whole world to know the details.
Please be more careful in the future.
— Belinda Gonzalez
Terre Haute
Motorists throw trash along road
We live in North Terre Haute along Park Avenue.
I am writing in reference to the informative Tribune-Star column by Mark Bennett about the problems with trash.
There is a tremendous amount of litter thrown out by inconsiderate motorists along Park Avenue, Otter Creek and Mill Dan. We try to keep it clean — it’s not just the small trash, but sometimes heavy items like large old rugs that are thrown out.
This busy road is not a safe place for anyone to be walking or picking up trash. There are too many high-speed motorists who ignore the 30-mile mph signs which are posted right by our pasture gate. Perhaps they are traveling so fast, they fail to even see the sign.
Just this week, I retrieved three 5-gallon buckets full of trash.
— Curtis Culver
Terre Haute
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