I did read your post, and I disagree, the writer presented the speculation of the two main characters¹ as to the nature of the 'relationship' between the prison warden and Bernice.
Basically, the writer related to us what those two men believe about this event. There are two independent sources for this belief, and to me that's acceptable journalistic practise.²
He is helping the two men tell their story, you are free to disagree with their speculations, but that's what they told the writer.
1: And other relatives.
2: Now the subhead, does contain the word 'rape', and that's maybe the only thing I can fault the article on. However, headlines aren't typically written by the journalist, but rather by a copy editor. I'm not sure what Buzzfeed's practises are on this.
But if you can only fault the headline, then I don't think you read the article very thoroughly, because the writer explicitly states it was rape multiple times throughout the article. I'm not sure how you rationalize stating falsehood as any kind of "acceptable journalistic practice", but nothing else matters if the writer is making false claims. And if the cop-out is that this is "storytelling" and not "journalism" then it's a whole other issue of duplicity in publishing this clickbait with false information under the buzzfeednews.com URL. But I suppose this is the difference between Buzzfeed and legitimate journalism.
> I'm not sure how you rationalize stating falsehood as any kind of "acceptable journalistic practice"
You're just being obtuse¹ now, it's such a reasonable inference given the circumstances that it's petty of you to place such a high burden of proof on the writer.
Also you're denying one other important piece of evidence in favour of rape. Why did the mother never speak about it?
If she had had a joyful affair with such high ranking member of society, wouldn't she be proud of it?
I assure you it wasn't a personal attack anymore than gerbilly's "obtuse" comment (and again, giving that person the benefit of the doubt, as I have throughout this thread). You and I are definitely on different wavelengths, but ignoring for a moment that someone flagged multiple of my comments (and not making any assumptions about that), nothing approaching spite or malice went into this thread.
Basically, the writer related to us what those two men believe about this event. There are two independent sources for this belief, and to me that's acceptable journalistic practise.²
He is helping the two men tell their story, you are free to disagree with their speculations, but that's what they told the writer.
1: And other relatives.
2: Now the subhead, does contain the word 'rape', and that's maybe the only thing I can fault the article on. However, headlines aren't typically written by the journalist, but rather by a copy editor. I'm not sure what Buzzfeed's practises are on this.