Franky Dean’s story highlights the moral dilemmas of crimes with ‘unknowing victims’

A year ago, Franky Dean, a 24-year-old documentary film-making master’s student, decided to make a phone call she’d been avoiding nearly half her life. She was sitting in a dark computer room in New York University’s journalism institute in Manhattan when she FaceTimed her parents. They were in the living room at her home in the UK, where she grew up. Franky told them she’d just filed a police report about something that had happened more than a decade earlier. When Franky was 12, she had been sexually abused by a close friend’s dad.

And then her mum said two words that would change her life, again, for ever: “We know.”

It was meant to be a climactic moment – a revelation that Franky had been building up to for years. Instead, it was the beginning of another story – the unravelling of a shadow narrative that spanned half of Franky’s life. It’s a story about what happens when police assume survivors of sexual abuse to be “unknowing victims” – a series of misinterpretations and missteps that amounted to Franky spending 12 years hiding her abuse from her parents while they spent 12 years hiding it from her.

  • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    3 months ago

    Informed consent is mandatory for any health care. “Not telling someone to protect them” is an attempted mental health action that cannot possibly be valid without informed consent, which is impossible.

    Not telling the victim, for any reason, makes you complicit in the assault. It is not a valid approach to “health”. Denial does not work and is not capable of working. The victim has to know, and cannot possibly have the information required to “choose not to know”.

    Anyone with knowledge that a person was raped without their knowledge who doesn’t take steps to make sure they were informed is a monster who deserves many years in prison.

    • Saik0AEnglish
      21·
      3 months ago

      That’s like your opinion man. Good thing you’re not my doctor, nor my kids doctor.

      The victim has to know, and cannot possibly have the information required to “choose not to know”.

      Literally already been explained to you. Yes you can. If I don’t want to hear information from you, I can choose not to. Just like I will now. Welcome to the block-list! See how easy it is? Now you can choose to try to tell me all you want about your opinions and I won’t hear any of them! It’s like it’s a choice that I can make with all the free-will that I have.

      Several people have told you it’s possible. Even given you examples of cases where it exists. But you stick your fingers in your ears and scream all you want. I’m not listening anymore.

      https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/ama-code-medical-ethics-opinions-informing-patients/2012-07

      Withholding medical information from patients without their knowledge or consent is ethically unacceptable. Physicians should encourage patients to specify their preferences regarding communication of their medical information, preferably before the information becomes available. Moreover, physicians should honor patient requests not to be informed of certain medical information or to convey the information to a designated proxy, provided these requests appear to genuinely represent the patient’s own wishes.

      American Medical Association says you’re full of shit.