Women’s History Month -These Women Record History in the Making
When I fall out of love with writing, when I complain about the difficulty of it all or my lack of focus, when the blank page becomes another excuse for avoidance, I realize – I’ve lost touch with the power of stories and the ability of writing to affect change. As we close out Women’s History Month it’s worth remembering – we live in historic times and there is a tier of writers, courageous women who fearlessly document the historic events happening around us. Their work has a profound effect on the lives of women and families across the nation, some of it coming at great personal cost to them, as violent threats and mental health challenges target women journalists in the field.
Julie K. Brown, investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, has been in dogged pursuit of the Jeffrey Epstein story, first breaking the news that Florida had given the accused sex trafficker a sweetheart deal after his initial conviction in 2008. Epstein, she reported, had been allowed to plead guilty to lower, state-level charges of prostitution and was permitted to leave the jail house on a work release program. Her 2018 investigation uncovered the role US Attorney Alex Acosta played in crafting a deal that allowed Epstein to evade prosecution for the abuse of the 80 or more victims Brown had discovered through her reporting. Her series for the Miami Herald, “Perversion of Justice,” won the 2018 Polk Award for Justice Reporting. It prompted the resignation of Acosta from his position as Secretary of Labor during the first Trump administration and opened new investigations into Epstein, resulting in his arrest in July 2019. Brown’s extensive research has been instrumental in the pursuit of justice for the many survivors who have been denied answers as to why their perpetrators have not faced charges.
Concurrent with Julie K. Brown are the investigations of ProPublica, as they chronicled the tragic effects of the overturning of Roe V Wade. Since the ruling in June of 2022, Lizzie Presser, Kavitha Surana and Cassandra Jaramillo (and a host of others) featured several stories in their series “Life of the Mother,” reporting on the neglect, harm and preventable deaths of women denied pregnancy care because of abortion restrictions. They documented the horrifying consequences of women left to bleed out in parking lots and others whose untreated miscarriages resulted in life-threatening sepsis. They wrote about a woman with a heart condition whose pregnancy was killing her. She was denied an abortion and died. Their reporting won both a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and the Polk Award for Medical Reporting.
There are stories coming to light over the past several years that draw parallels to the abuse by the Catholic Church. A group of powerful men are protected by a bureaucratic system. Despite allegations of abuse they return to work, or move to a new location. while the abused struggle to find justice, their complaints sometimes shelved for years. The abusers - doctors.
Rather than say these stories were broken by these journalists, they read more like an archived list of the abusers.
Ashley Hiruko, again with ProPublica, just reported a detailed story of an OB-GYN, Dr. Mark Mulholland practicing in Washington State, who’d had repeated allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Despite this, state regulators allowed him to continue to practice. By the time the accusations became public, Mulholland had 84 complaints against him.
The ProPublica story tracks closely to The Boston Globe’s own Spotlight Team who broke the story of Dr. Derrick Todd, a rheumatologist repeatedly accused of inappropriate exams over several years. The board of medicine’s failure to remove Todd from practice resulted in further assaults. In the time since the Spotlight story was published in October, 2025, 11 more women reported accusations against the doctor. In all, nearly 250 patients accused Todd of misconduct over a period of 14 years before anything was done to stop him.
One of the team reporters, Liz Kowalcyk, published a remarkably similar story ten years earlier, with the same premise – the board of medicine failed to act while the doctor accused was allowed to continue to see patients.
Why didn’t anyone stop Doctor Hardy? In college and in his medical practice, Roger Hardy left a long trail of women who said he abused them.
As disturbing as it is to read these stories, there’s an emotional toll on the writers who research and investigate them. Add to that the increasing threats of violence against women journalists and it becomes clear - reporting is an act of courage. The AP recently published the findings of a survey that found “More than two-thirds of women journalists, rights defenders and activists have reported violence online, with over 40% saying they have faced real-world attacks linked to digital abuse…”
Women journalists do the hard work. They tell the gut-wrenching stories. They give voice to the vulnerable through their writing. Let’s recognize the fearless journalists who record history in the making, every day.
And yet, she persisted…
