In Seattle, A Rapist's Housing Status Overshadows Horrific Crime

SEATTLE, WA - A horrific crime happened in Ballard on Monday morning. A 24-year-old man followed a woman into a bathroom at the Carter Volkswagen dealership, ripped her out of the stall, and raped her there on the floor. The attack stopped only when a dealership employee heard her cries.

But if the crime itself wasn't bad enough, there was one detail that tipped the story over the edge: The attacker was apparently a homeless man.

That detail has been included - even trumpeted - in news coverage, and homeless advocates have pushed back, saying that it feeds negative stereotypes. News outlets have approached the issue differently, some believing that the homeless detail is a necessary fact, no different than listing someone's age or the city they're from. Others are more restrained, or would choose to leave it out.

Adding to the uproar, the crime happened on the morning of the controversial vote over Seattle's head tax. When stories began appearing about the rape on Tuesday, the headlines almost served as a rebuke of the head tax, which will fund services for the homeless. Many opposed the head tax believing that the money will be squandered.

"Homeless man arrested for raping woman in Ballard car dealership restroom," KOMO blared.

"Homeless man suspect in Ballard rape case," read MyNorthwest's headline, leaving out that the crime happened at a landmark business in broad daylight.

So is the issue that someone was raped, or is it that someone was raped by a homeless person? News stories almost never describe a person's economic situation - "Man With Multiple Student Loans Robs Bank" - unless they happen to be extremely rich or extremely poor. The poor seem to be called out more often.

"The quickest way to expose that sort of framing and coverage is to substitute the word 'homeless' with 'black,'" Sara Rankin, director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project and a Seattle University law professor, said. "That would make it immediately clear to people: it would be inappropriate to say a black person had raped."

Rankin said a person's housing status has "zero informational value" in a news story. To link the word "homeless" with someone accused of a crime, she said, feeds the stereotype that homeless people are all criminals.

"The action or the underlying crime is not a reflection of the person's housing status," she said.

In followup coverage of the rape, some news stories reported on "concern" among Ballard residents - about the homeless, and the perception of rising crime.

On Thursday morning, KING 5 ran a story with the headline, "Rape in car dealership bathroom raises questions about nearby homeless shelter." The story was about a tiny house village for women and children set to open in Whittier Heights on May 31. KING's story mixes footage of the rape scene with footage of the tiny house being built, but fails to mention the tiny house village is almost 2-1/2 miles north of where the rape happened. The village is "low barrier," the reporter notes several times, but fails to mention it's only for women and children.

KING also interviewed a Whittier Heights man named David Moody, whose feelings about the homeless are bracing.

"The people that don't want to get off the street are actively using drugs and are in the sex trades," he says, the tiny house village in view behind him. "Those aren't people we want to be giving shelter in our neighborhood when their sole intention is continuing that lifestyle."

Amy Clancy, a veteran crime reporter at KIRO 7, was the first to break the news of the Ballard rape on Tuesday morning. She found the story while combing through King County jail logs. Many local reporters look at the most recently arrested inmates to find stories.

She didn't find out the suspect was homeless until she read the attacker's arrest report. Including the suspect's housing status in her article was necessary, she said, because he had an outstanding warrant and had been living in the former Nickelsville encampment in Ballard. In any case, she would include any necessary details about a suspect, she said.

In news, it's routine to say where a suspect lives - a "Renton man" accused of robbery, for example. But certain descriptors carry a stigma. It's one thing to point out the city someone is from (even that can carry a stigma if the city is lower-income), but why go further into a suspect's economic situation?

"If he's homeless, if he lives in an apartment nearby, if he's a dealership employee, if he's a barista - yeah absolutely," Clancy said. "The more information you can provide, the better."

Clancy doesn't think mentioning the man's homelessness next to the criminal accusations is particularly influential.

"Is it my goal to inflame to get a better story? No, my goal is always to report the truth. I don't ask, 'how afraid are you?'" she said.

Other outlets handled the issue differently. The Seattle Times ("‘Just sickening’: Man accused of rape at Ballard car dealership") and My Ballard ("Woman raped in car dealership bathroom) did not use the word "homeless" in the headline - but did in the story.

"We did talk about it and felt that, no matter how emotionally and politically charged the issue of homeless right now, at this point we don’t know that this suspect’s housing situation had anything to do with the charges," Seattle Times Deputy Managing Editor Ray Rivera said of the paper's choice of headline.

Aaron Burkhalter, editor of Real Change, said it's "risky" to link the rape to the attacker's economic status. Plus in the #MeToo era, he said, we're seeing far more rich, powerful men committing these crimes.

"As an editor, I think it's always risky to draw a line between a person's identity or class status and the crime that's being committed," he said. "For anyone to focus on someone's housing status a reason that the crime was committed is ignoring the same crimes being committed again and again by people who are wealthy and housed."

So far in 2018, there have been 79 rapes in Seattle, according to police statistics. Capitol Hill, the University District, and downtown have the highest numbers. The number of reported rapes has risen in Seattle over the last few years, jumping from 141 in 2015 to 235 in 2016 and 242 in 2017 (the increase is likely due to increased reporting, not more incidents, according to police). But those numbers are probably low since only about two in three rapes ever get reported, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Seattle police also came under fire over reporting on the Ballard case. The incident did not appear on the SPD blog, which is where the department publicizes major crimes. Because the rape happened Monday morning, some have speculated the police were hiding it because of the head tax vote - a charge the department denies.

Police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said the incident didn't appear on the blotter for several reasons: the suspect was in custody, and therefore there wasn't an imminent threat to the public; and the department does not "proactively" post news about rape, child abuse, or domestic abuse. Last August, for example, the department publicized an incident where a woman said she was raped by a rideshare driver. But they posted about it because driver was at-large.

If the department were to post about the Ballard rape, they would not include the details about the man being homeless, Whitcomb said.

"We wouldn't have because he's in custody," he said. "Sometimes we get asked 'how come you didn't include race? If he's in custody and we're not looking for him, it's not relevant to the committed act."

The accused rapist, Christopher E. Teel, was captured on Monday by Carter Volkswagen employees. They held him until police could get to the scene. The victim, a woman in her 40s, was treated at Swedish Ballard. Teel is facing charges of rape, assault, and involuntary imprisonment. He is also facing charges in Seattle Municipal Court for assaulting a detective, and for an old criminal trespass warrant. He's being held on $1 million bail.

"The person who committed that rape is a person who committed that rape and they should be punished accordingly," Rankin said. "Focus on the horribleness of what happened and report it like any other crime that was committed."

Note: Patch has used the word "homeless" in connection to crimes before. See examples here, here, and here.

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