Dirty words and filthy language.

Last week I wrote an article about our local State's Attorney's legal opinion that so-called “happy endings” don't count as prostitution given how Vermont statutes define “prostitution.”

When reporting the news, you have to present to the reader a clear picture if what's being talked about, but that can be difficult when the subject matter is X-rated and your publication is PG-13. In this case, the crux of the story was a specific type of sex act, namely “happy ending massages” as they're called. I had approval to print “hand job” if needed, but I was able to avoid using that phrase. “...contact between one person’s hand and another’s genitals” is what we went with, which makes it pretty clear what's being talked about without being too lewd.

I bring this up because this is not the first time I've been confronted with this problem. A few years ago a teenager was charged in criminal court after he allegedly behaved lewdly in front of a younger child. I can't find a link to the original article, but the alleged act was something of a nature we wouldn't print. I wrote “lewd act” or something similar and left it to the reader's imagination.

And that's the problem I see with being vague. People's imaginations can take “lewd act” to all sorts of places, many I'll bet are worse than what actually was alleged to have happened. I've always felt that some level of specificity, even if disturbing, is better than nebulous suggestions. That said there certainly is a limit to the level of detail that should be provided and that's the kind of thing my colleagues and I discussed Friday afternoon when the “happy ending” article was written.

The problem we ran into with “hand jobs” is there's no polite term for it that really works. You could say “manual stimulation” I suppose. As opposed to automatic stimulation? According to an online dictionary, a secondary definition for masturbation would have fit, but when most people read that word they think of something else entirely.

We've printed “oral sex” in the recent past as part of a series of articles that garnered a lot of feedback from the community, and while I didn't write the bulk of them I did receive a prominent Benningtonian's opinion on our use of the phrase. He didn't care for it. To loosely paraphrase/misquote him, “We all know what prostitution is.”

Do we?

Not guilty!

Last week, or so, I got an email from a guy's mother telling me her son, who had been tried for domestic assault, was found not guilty by a jury. I knew that already and the case was on my list of things to do that day, as the jury had deliberated past deadline the day before. Later, the defendant himself came up to the office to let me know the jury's verdict. The mother's email was a little scratchy, but my conversation with the gentleman was fine, if brief.

I wish more people would contact me when their cases settle. Many times cases slip beneath my radar and their conclusions never get reported. One of the main reasons for this is how the court is organized and, to be honest, how I'm disorganized.

Monday in Bennington Superior Court Criminal Division is “arraignment day.” That's when arraignment hearings are held for all the cases where there's no imminent danger of the defendant fleeing or getting into more trouble. All the arraignments are on a list and it's a simple matter of asking the clerks for certain case files. The court also has an “extras” list. These are folks who, for whatever reason, need to be arraigned right away. Extras can come on any day, usually around 1 p.m.

There is no list of resolved cases. Sure, some are scheduled for changes of plea or sentencing, but they're not always listed as such and they come sporadically, making it easy for them to slip past the media.

I've been working on a way to track the cases I write about and perhaps it's time I doubled down on my efforts, but it would be nice if defendants, or their attorneys, let me know, politely, when their cases resolve. A few months ago I began putting the word out to defense attorneys I have a rapport with to feel free to let me know when one of their cases settles. Obviously I don't expect to hear from either defendant or attorney when there's a conviction.

We often hear that the first article “gets splashed on the front page” while the follow-up gets buried in the back, but it's been my experience that most court news ends up on page two, even the initial article. Maybe by “front page” they mean highest in our website's “most viewed” section, which is dictated entirely by readers.