More than fifty women killed in 2025 alone. Fourteen women assaulted every hour. Nearly 4,000 of more than 11,000 temporary protection orders breached. When the system is failing so demonstrably, and so early on, why do you see changing the language as a priority? Shouldn't it follow much tougher institutional reform?
The two go together. Changing the language doesn't compete with institutional reform. They are different interventions, working at different speeds and in different ways, and they can and should happen at the same time.
A protection order that isn't enforced, a complaint that isn't taken seriously enough, or a risk that is assessed incorrectly can have devastating consequences. That is the state's direct responsibility, and institutional reform is absolutely necessary.
But the people making decisions in policing, the courts, politics, and newsrooms live in the same society as the rest of us. If, year after year, we describe violence as something that simply "happens to" a woman while the person who did it disappears from the sentence, that pattern helps create a way of understanding these cases in which responsibility becomes less visible. Almost imperceptibly, attention shifts from the perpetrator's actions to the victim's experience and behaviour.
Changing words alone won't end violence. It can, however, help change a culture in which violence is sometimes ignored, minimised, excused, or treated as inevitable. Legal and institutional reform, education, prevention, support for victims, and the way we talk publicly about these acts can all reinforce one another.
The figures in your question speak for themselves. This is a serious, complex problem, and the response has to match it. We need to approach it from every angle available to us, at the same time.
Give me a Romanian headline from the past 12 months that, rewritten according to the campaign's principles, would have changed how the public perceived the case. What was the original wording, what would yours have been, and why does that particular change of subject matter?
One headline read: "A woman was raped at knifepoint in Sector 2. How she escaped." It was changed to: "A man held a woman captive and raped her in Sector 2."
That is what we're trying to explain through the campaign. We don't change the facts. We don't add anything. We simply avoid making the woman subjected to violence the protagonist of the action.
In the first headline, the reader sees "a woman was raped" before anything else. In the second, we learn who acted. For me, that is the shift that matters: from "What happened to the woman?" to "Who did this?"
Linguistic research shows that passive voice in news reports can reduce the responsibility attributed to the perpetrator. But there's a long way from "readers interpret this differently" to "fewer women are assaulted". What evidence is there that systematic changes to newsroom language can change behaviour?
I think we have to be very rigorous here. There is no evidence that would allow us to say that, if the press systematically switched from passive to active voice, assaults would fall by X per cent. That would claim more than the research can support.
What we do have is evidence for the steps in between.
Research shows that the words we use can affect how people assign responsibility. One US study found that passive descriptions of violence against women led male participants to assign less responsibility to the perpetrator. Both male and female participants also showed greater acceptance of violence when the text was written in the passive voice. In short, passive phrasing can influence how people perceive the perpetrator's responsibility and the harm done to the victim.
Another study found an association between passive descriptions of rape, acceptance of rape myths, and assigning more responsibility to the victim and less to the perpetrator.
Of course, many other factors lie between perception and behaviour. That is precisely why this campaign cannot be the only intervention contributing to a reduction in violence. What we can say is that norms and attitudes matter when we talk about prevention.
As I said, we have evidence for the intermediate steps. The final link has not yet been demonstrated. But we have enough evidence to take the effect of language on perceptions and attitudes seriously, and for me, that is a very good reason to act. I would also love for our campaign to help research the next question: what happens when this change moves beyond an experiment involving a few sentences and becomes widespread editorial practice?
A common counterargument: by insisting that newsrooms say "a man assaulted a woman" instead of "a woman was assaulted", don't you risk turning every report into a template and losing the editorial nuance that good writing needs? What would you say to sceptics who see the campaign as advocacy disguised as a style rule?
If I were asking every headline to begin with "a man", I'd agree with them. That would be very poor journalism, and very dull journalism too.
But that isn't what we're asking for.
You can write a headline ten different ways and still make responsibility clear. You can have style, nuance, context, and a strong editorial voice without making the person who acted disappear. In fact, I'd say that takes more journalistic skill, not less.
Nor is the passive voice itself the enemy. Sometimes it has a perfectly legitimate purpose. The problem is using it in a way that repeatedly moves the focus of the story away from the person who acted and towards the person acted upon.
As a journalist, I don't see this as advocacy in disguise. Journalism already has standards concerning accuracy, identification, the presumption of innocence, and the treatment of vulnerable people. None of those standards destroys editorial creativity.
Ultimately, the campaign is asking for accuracy in expression: if we know who did something, let's write the sentence so the reader understands who did what to whom.
In recent years, statements by many Romanian politicians have been described as sexist, aggressive, or inflammatory towards women. How many politicians have joined the campaign? How many have publicly opposed it? And what does the cool political response to this issue say about Romania's current political class?
So far, no politician has officially joined the campaign, and I'm not aware of any politician who has publicly opposed it. I wouldn't claim that there is political opposition to Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume in Romania. We simply haven't had that kind of engagement yet.
But I'd qualify the premise of the question a little, because something very important has happened in Romania in the meantime. The law on preventing and combating femicide received broad political support. It was initiated by hundreds of parliamentarians from almost across the political spectrum, passed the Senate with 97 votes in favour, seven abstentions, and one vote against, and was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies with 284 votes in favour, two abstentions, and one against. President Nicușor Dan signed it into law on 23 April 2026.
In that context, I think it would be unfair simply to say that the entire Romanian political class is indifferent. We have proof that, when public pressure and the work of civil society become strong enough, political consensus is possible.
What I want now is for that engagement to extend beyond passing a law. I'd like politicians to apply the same standards to their own language, to respond when colleagues use misogyny as a political tool, and to support the less visible cultural changes too. That means no longer normalising misogynistic jokes, refusing to use a woman's appearance or personal life to discredit her, challenging those remarks even when they come from their own party, and speaking about violence against women responsibly in every case, not only when it makes the front page or attracts public pressure.
Because voting against femicide is fairly easy, especially when the pressure from outside is so visible. Looking at the culture that precedes violence, and accepting that you have a part to play in changing it, is harder.
You've observed that, in the UK, a public misogynistic statement brings reputational consequences almost immediately, while in Romania it doesn't. Beyond language, what social infrastructure is missing in Romania: pressure from advertisers, accountability among colleagues, influential civic organisations?
I'd be careful about idealising the UK. I live there, and I can say without hesitation that misogyny exists, that politicians sometimes get away far too easily with outrageous statements, and that the British press has serious problems of its own.
But yes, there is a difference I can feel. In the UK, reputational consequences can come from more places: the press, someone's own party, employers, the public, organisations, or brands that don't want to be associated with certain things.
In Romania, we often have an explosion of outrage that lasts two or three days, and then we move on to the next scandal. I think what we lack most is consequences that last.
And I don't think Romanian civic organisations lack influence. Quite the opposite. The adoption of the femicide law shows what civil society can achieve through sustained pressure. Organisations worked for years to document the problem and push institutions to change.
Perhaps the question is how we turn a reaction into a lasting system of accountability. How do we stop a statement from disappearing after 48 hours? Who remembers it? Who follows up? Who says, "No, this person cannot pretend nothing happened"?
That is where I think Romania still has work to do.
Before a headline is written in a newsroom, there's often a press release from the police or prosecutors: texts that are almost always passive, with no clear perpetrator and no clear attribution of the act. Have you spoken to the Romanian Police, the Prosecutor's Office, or the Ministry of Internal Affairs about their institutional language? Have they responded? And if the press simply repeats the official wording, is your campaign targeting the wrong link in the chain?
The problem is real, and I've seen many examples of institutional language in which both the action and responsibility become difficult to follow.
In Romania, we haven't yet had a formal, sustained discussion with the Romanian Police, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or the Prosecutor General's Office about introducing national language guidance. They are absolutely among the institutions we want to work with.
That is why the campaign isn't addressed only to the press. It is addressed to the media, authorities, and organisations. If the wording is poor in an official press release and then copied by 20 publications, we have a much bigger problem than one editor choosing a poor headline.
At the same time, the press cannot simply say, "That's what the press release said." A police press release is a source, not an article ready for publication. The journalist is still responsible for understanding it, checking it, and writing it for the public.
I don't think we're targeting the wrong link. I think we'd be making a mistake if we targeted only one.
You founded Outcry Witness, an anonymous platform for survivors of sexual violence. How do the two projects inform each other? Do aggregated data from the platform shape what you ask of newsrooms? And how might changing the words used in newsrooms change how survivors understand their own experiences?
I need to correct part of the question: we do not use accounts on Outcry Witness to produce aggregated data about survivors' experiences.
Outcry Witness allows people who have experienced sexual abuse to keep an anonymous record of what happened, so they can decide in their own time whether, and when, they want to report it to the police. The records are encrypted, and we cannot access their contents. That is essential to me. I don't want anyone coming to the platform under the impression that their story will become our research material.
The connection between the two projects is different and, in a way, much deeper.
Working in this area, you see how difficult it can be for people to say clearly what happened to them. Sometimes it takes months or years. Throughout that time, society offers them a vocabulary. The press offers them a vocabulary. So do the police, friends, family, and social media.
If that vocabulary keeps saying that a woman "ended up in a situation", that a man "lost control", that jealousy explains what he did, or that we need to examine the victim's behaviour, those ideas begin to shape how people interpret their own experiences.
I want someone who has experienced abuse to be able to open a newspaper without finding another reason to wonder what they did wrong. Responsibility should stay with the person who chose to cause harm.
Five years from now, when you look at how the Romanian press reports a case of violence against women, what will tell you that Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume has succeeded beyond a changed headline? What would be the deeper sign of success, and what would make you say you got it wrong?
I'll probably know we've succeeded when we no longer have to make quite so much noise.
If, in five years, a journalist sees a headline that hides the perpetrator and their first instinct is to say, "That isn't right", that will mean more to me than persuading a publication to change one headline.
I want to see internal editorial guidelines that people actually follow. I want editors asking the question before publication, rather than after we contact them. I want journalism students to learn this as part of the job. I want better press releases from institutions and, above all, I want readers to notice for themselves when the person responsible has disappeared from a story.
That would mean we are no longer talking about one campaign's mission. We are talking about a standard.
And yes, there is an outcome that would force me to say we aren't where we hoped to be. If, in five years, newsrooms have learnt only to switch mechanically from passive to active voice, but still romanticise jealousy, turn abuse into entertainment, look for explanations in the victim's behaviour, and dig up irrelevant details of her life for clicks, then all we've changed is the grammar.
That wouldn't be enough for me.
The campaign is called Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume — because our mission goes beyond active and passive voice. At its heart is a question I learnt as a journalist, and one I keep coming back to: who did what to whom?
If, in five years, the answer is obvious from the way we report violence, without us having to prise it out of a headline, I'll say we've made an important step forward. In the meantime, we'll keep working on everything else that needs to change.
About Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume
Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume is a national campaign for accurate, responsible language when reporting on violence and abuse. It encourages wording that names what happened, identifies the person responsible, and avoids vague or passive phrasing that can blur responsibility. Through guides, resources, and work with the media, public institutions, and professionals, the campaign aims to make reporting clearer and more rigorous, while treating victims with care. For more information about the campaign and how you can support it, visit the Spune Lucrurilor pe Nume website.
About Outcry Witness
Outcry Witness is a UK platform for survivors of sexual abuse who are not ready, or are unsure whether they want to report the crime to the police. It offers a secure, completely anonymous space where people can organise and document their experiences at their own pace. This preserves details that may become important if they choose to make a report later.
Outcry Witness does not influence people's decisions, steer them towards a particular choice, or replace the police, counselling, or legal support. Months or even years can pass between an experience and the moment someone feels ready to speak about it. Outcry Witness has a simple purpose: to keep their options open until then.
Interview conducted in writing, in Romanian. Translated into English by Andreea Groenendijk-Deveau.
