The Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault during its annual awards ceremony in Augusta on Thursday recognized Erin Rhoda, editor of the Bangor Daily News’ Maine Focus team, for her dedicated coverage of stories that affect sexual assault survivors and the systems the hold perpetrators accountable.
The organization presented her with an award it created to honor her work over the years: The Erin Rhoda Excellence In Reporting Award.
Since she joined the BDN in 2012, Rhoda has become an authority on stories related to sexual violence and prevention, raising awareness and deepening the public’s understanding of a subject that has only continued to generate significant public interest.
But her body of work is also a testament to her skill as a reporter. Reporting a story is a process of gathering evidence, but one of the greatest challenges to holding perpetrators accountable for sexual violence or misconduct, let alone writing about it, is just that: There is often little proof of what happened.
And yet, in her time as a reporter, Rhoda has documented, step by step, how Maine schools have mishandled cases of campus sexual assault; exposed sexual predation and lienent accountability mechanisms at Bangor’s county jail; revealed the deeper, darker story behind a sexting scandal that forced an Oxford County sheriff to resign; and highlighted how gaps in the state’s oversight system for police allowed sexual harassment to go unpunished.
Early in her time at the BDN, she was the lead reporter on a project about how the lack of proof impedes rape investigations, and more recently, she wrote about a surgeon who advanced in his career despite repeated sexual harassment complaints.
In addition to stories that hold public officials and systems to account, Rhoda has regularly written stories that raised awareness about the nature of sexual violence and how it impacts survivors.
Her work has resulted in impact across the state as well as in the BDN newsroom: over the years, she has coached other reporters about how to handle topics related to sexual assault with sensitivity and nuance, and taught the reporting techniques that bring these hard-to-reach stories to light.
The award recognizes what Rhoda’s sources have long known about her: They can trust her with their stories.
