Jesse Dirkhising
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Jesse Dirkhising (May 24, 1986–September 26, 1999) was a 13-year-old boy who was raped and tortured by two men in 1999. Dirkhising died soon after as a result of his torture. Controversy ensued over the lack of coverage in mainstream media outlets of Dirkhising's murder. This lack of coverage was attributed to the homosexuality of the perpetrators.
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[edit] Death
On September 26, 1999, police in Rogers, Arkansas, responded to a 911 call and went to the home of David Carpenter, 38. They also found Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old boy from nearby Prairie Grove, tied to a mattress. Also present was Joshua Brown, 22. Police determined that Dirkhising had been repeatedly raped over a period of several hours.
Dirkhising's ankles, knees and wrists had been bound in duct tape and he was gagged and blindfolded with his own underwear, held in place with a bandanna that was also used as a gag. He had been administered a sedative. He died in hospital shortly after being discovered, apparently as the result of positional asphyxia. The affidavit [1] has much more detail on the Dirkhising's death.
[edit] Aftermath
The Arkansas State Police recorded in their affidavit a statement by Brown that he was Carpenter's lover and that he had been involved in molesting Dirkhising for at least two months prior to Dirkhising's death.
In March 2001 Brown was found guilty of first-degree murder and rape. He was sentenced to life in prison, and this sentence was upheld on appeal by the Arkansas Supreme Court in September 2003. In April, Carpenter pleaded guilty to similar charges and was also sentenced to life. Subsequently, Carpenter claimed on the Fox News Channel that Brown was solely responsible for the rape and murder of Dirkhising while Brown claimed that Carpenter was the director.[2]
[edit] Comparisons with the murder of Matthew Shepherd
A central element of the treatment of the case by conservative commentators was the comparison of media coverage of Jesse Dirkhising's death with coverage of the murder of Matthew Shepherd.
On October 22, 1999, The Washington Times, ran a story headed: "Media tune out torture death of Arkansas boy." The story contrasted the lack of coverage of the Dirkhising case with the treatment the murder of Matthew Shepard received. The story quoted Tim Graham, director of media studies at Media Research Center, a watchdog group that documents what it claims to be liberal bias in the media, as saying, "Nobody wants to say anything negative about homosexuals. Nobody wants to be seen on the wrong side of that issue." [citation needed]. Brent Bozell, the Director of the Media Research Centre, accused the media of deliberately spiking the story.[3]
This theme was then picked up by other media outlets and commentators. Bill O'Reilly wrote:
The question is stark and brutal. If the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man, by two drunken thugs in Laramie, Wyoming, was a national story and a heinous hate crime, why wasn't the killing of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising publicized the same way? Jesse was tortured, sodomized and finally killed by a gay man as another homosexual watched in the small town of Rogers, Arkansas. Yet the national media ignored the crime, causing outrage among those who see hate crimes as a tool being used to hammer the agendas of special interests. The two men who murdered Shepard have been convicted and, most likely, will spend the rest of their lives in prison. But the two men allegedly involved in the killing of Jesse Dirkhising have yet to be tried, and when they are, you may not even hear about it.[citation needed]
The most salient difference between the Shepard case and this one is that while Shepard's murderers were driven to kill by hate, the boy's rape and death was a sex crime. It was repulsive, unconscionable — and the predictable pastime of perverted criminals... Matthew Shepard died not because of an all-too-common sex crime, but because of prejudice. Essentially, Shepard was lynched — taken from a bar, beaten and left to die because he was the vilified "other," whom society has often cast as an acceptable target of abuse; Dirkhising was just "another" to a pair of deviants. And while child abuse is unfortunately no big news, lynching still is."
In the month after Shepard's murder, Nexis recorded 3,007 stories about his death. In the month after Dirkhising's murder, Nexis recorded 46 stories about his.[citation needed] However, once the media seized on the story, this count rapidly rose into the thousands - unlike many other child killings.[4]
[edit] Accusations of homophobia
Gay conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote an article in The New Republic accusing the "liberal media" of caving into political correctness and using the opportunity to attack the Human Rights Campaign for its support of hate crime legislation. Sullivan also criticised some aspects of the conservative coverage of the Dirkhising case equating gay sex with molestation as "ugly nonsense".[5]
On November 14, 1999, E. R. Shipp, ombudsman at The Washington Post, noted that: "readers, prodded by commentators who are hostile to homosexuals and to what they view as a ‘liberal’ press" had raised questions about the Dirkhising case. She noted that the Post had run a story from the Associated Press on the Dirkhising murder. Shipp, said however, that she "made a clear distinction" between the Dirkhising and Shepard cases: "Matthew Shepard’s death sparked public expressions of outrage that themselves became news," she wrote. "That Jesse Dirkhising’s death has not done so is hardly the fault of the Washington Post." This stance by Shipp led to a journalistic exchange between her and Joseph Farah of the World Net Daily. [citation needed]
[edit] Accusations of bias
On 4 November 1999, Jonathan Gregg addressed the issue in Time magazine. He asked: "Could it be because we in the media elite were unwilling to publicize crimes committed by homosexuals because it didn't suit our agenda? The next stop in that line of reasoning was clear: That news is controlled by a bunch of gay-loving liberals only too happy to wield a double standard."
In his opinion, Gregg wrote that the discrepancy in media attention was:
because it [Dirkhising] offered no lessons. Shepard's murder touches on a host of complex and timely issues: intolerance, society's attitudes toward gays and the pressure to conform, the use of violence as a means of confronting one's demons. Jesse Dirkhising's death gives us nothing except the depravity of two sick men. There is no lesson here, no moral of tolerance, no hope to be gleaned in the punishment of the perpetrators."
[edit] Notes
- ^ Online copy of the affidavit: "The Affidavit in the Jesse Dirkhising Case (Parental Discretion Advised)"
- ^ Edge with Paula Zahn, The (FOX News), May 16, 2001 Accessed through Ebsco, 17 June 2006
- ^ Brent Bozell, Media Research Centre, Human Events 4 September 2001 pages 16-17 accessed through Ebsco, 17 June 2006
- ^ Andrew Sullivan The New Republic 04/02/2001, Vol. 224 Issue 14, p8, 1p Accessed through Ebsco, 17 June 2001
- ^ Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic Ibid.
