Dear Diary: When is a Secret Not?
August 21, 2001
There
are those citizens among us who are dedicated to keeping our government
on the straight and narrow path designed by the framers of our
Constitution, and I applaud them. I'm not one of these tireless
keepers of the flame but I do trust it will never go out.
This trust turns to shaky confidence when a man is convicted and
sentenced to 10 years in prison for what he writes in his private
journal: made up stories about molesting children. If these stories
were about goons and dragons, he'd have a best seller on his hands;
but, because they're about children we are repulsed, we swallow
in disbelief that such images could fill his mind and occupy his
thoughts as he makes them up and writes them down. If he could
think it, he could do it, we reason.
In
Franklin County, Ohio, prosecutor Ron O'Brien considers the case
of Brian Dalton a breakthrough in child pornography cases. According
to Associated Press reporter Liz Sidoti, lawyers specializing
in free-speech cases and obscenity laws believe this is the first
time anywhere in the United States a conviction of this crime
concerned writings and not images.
It's
no secret people have thoughts none of us would want written on
our foreheads, and sexual fantasies -- whether a frolic or perversion
-- keep a multi-billion dollar industry on solid ground.
"Who
knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."
And that Shadow, to those of us recalling the days of radio drama,
was just a character but the beginning of my interest in the fictional
sub-genre, police procedurals.
The
law against invasion of privacy is so firmly placed that police
are constantly frustrated in knowing "whodunit" yet are unable
to prove it because information picked up during a routine interview
is inadmissable.
"The
smoking gun was under a pillow, the police had to look for it
and they didn't have a search warrant," claims the defense attorney
in his motion to dismiss.
"But,
but, but, we know he did it -- his fingerprints were all over
it," stammers the frustrated detective.
If
the law can not lift a pillow, how can they open a book, turn
a page, read the contents, of a private diary? Where is the enforcement
of the Privacy Act?
When
Senator Bob Packwood was forced to turn over his private diaries
revealing his proclivity for young campaign workers as well as
his sexually abusing dozens of female employees, the issue of
privacy was denied him. Although he tape recorded his journals
each evening, they were then transcribed by a secretary over the
course of 20 years, thereby negating his claim that his thoughts
were private and extremely personal.
In
the case of Dalton, First Amendment issues were defended by the
American Civil Liberties Union. "His thoughts may be disturbing
and repugnant, but he has a right to have them and write them
down for his own use." Dalton's writings were kept to himself
and were neither published nor made known.
The
First Amendment, disallowing "...abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press..." doesn't seem as appropriate in this case as
the Fifth Amendment, "...nor shall be compelled in any criminal
case to be a witness against himself." What can be more self-incriminating
than allowing prosecutors to use your personal diaries, your thoughts
on paper, thoughts of what you would like to do -- if it weren't
against the natural law, the moral code, and the dictates of society.
In
California, a schoolgirl named Paula thought she was just handed
an easy assignment: Keep a journal for a week and then hand it
in to be graded on writing style. Paula kept a diary anyway so
thought she'd just copy out what she wrote for the next seven
days.
The
teacher was impressed with Paula's writing and along with a few
other students, posted Paula's diary entries on the school's webpage.
Because Paula believed the teacher would keep the entries private,
she wrote a line or two about how she felt about a few friends.
"It
never occured to me that anyone would see my diary entries," she
said. The teacher was so excited about the writing style, she
neglected to notice how personal the words were.
Diarists
have a right to believe no one would ever invade their privacy.
A journal is sometimes necessary to understand your experiences,
your observations, your attitudes. And, these are personal.
Although
I deplore the thoughts in the head of the 22-year-old who had
been walking among us, and our children, I hate worse the idea
of "thought police."
It's
curious, to me, that Vladimir Nabokov got away with publishing
"Lolita," first banned in France for it's depravity, then elevated
to art somehow.
In
a review of the book in The New York Times, August 18, 1958 Books
of the Times, Orville Prescott wrote:
"'Lolita'
is not crudely crammed with Anglo-Saxon nouns and verbs and explicitly
described scenes of sexual violence. Its depravity is more refined.
Mr. Nabokov, whose English vocabulary would astound the editors
of the Oxford Dictionary, does not write cheap pornography. He
writes highbrow pornography. Perhaps that is not his intention.
Perhaps he thinks of his book as a satirical comedy and as an
exploration of abnormal psychology. Nevertheless, 'Lolita' is
disgusting."
If
I seem inordinately concerned about diarists being able to assume
a sacred trust exists protecting their jottings from prying eyes,
well, I am. From my early days of Keep Out: This Means You, to
teenaged years with lock and key, right up to today with leather
binding and gilt edge, I write expecting the words to be protected.
They were not always so.
I
was 11 in 1942 when Errol Flynn, swashbuckling movie star and
hero to us all, was arrested for raping a girl. I didn't know
what the word "rape" meant but knew better than to ask. So, I
looked it up: "to take a woman by force," it said.
Frankly,
I didn't know any more than I had before. I did put the incident,
as far as I knew it, in my journal. "Errol Flynn raped a girl."
That's all I put down in my childish scrawl, my "a" looking exactly
like my "o," not caring because I would be the only one reading
it.
Oh,
how they laughed, those big brothers and sisters of mine. Even
my mother joined in. "Errol Flynn roped a girl," they all teased.
"Was she a cowgirl?" they taunted.
I
never found it funny. It didn't matter that I wrote something
wrong -- what mattered was that they read what I wrote. It still
smarts.
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