Ashley Judd is calling for legal reform to prevent authorities from publicly releasing details of a person's suicide, following the loss of her mother, Naomi Judd.
Beloved country singer Naomi Judd died by suicide at the age of 76 on April 30, weeks after she had performed with daughter Wynonna Judd for the first time in two decades.
In an op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday, the actor, 54, revealed that she fears having the details of the multiple police interviews she felt compelled to sit for as her mother's life slipped away.
She wrote in the piece, titled "The Right to Keep Private Pain Private": "As my family and I continue to mourn our loss, the rampant and cruel misinformation that has spread about her death, and about our relationships with her, stalks my days.
"The horror of it will only worsen if the details surrounding her death are disclosed by the Tennessee law that generally allows police reports, including family interviews, from closed investigations to be made public."
Describing her mother's mental health battle as "an unrelenting foe that in the end was too powerful to be defeated," Judd went on: "I could not help her. I can, however, do something about how she is remembered.
"And now that I know from bitter experience the pain inflicted on families that have had a loved one die by suicide, I intend to make the subsequent invasion of privacy—the deceased person's privacy and the family's privacy—a personal as well as a legal cause.
"Family members who have lost a loved one are often revictimized by laws that can expose their most private moments to the public," she wrote. "In the immediate aftermath of a life-altering tragedy, when we are in a state of acute shock, trauma, panic and distress, the authorities show up to talk to us. Because many of us are socially conditioned to cooperate with law enforcement, we are utterly unguarded in what we say.
"I gushed answers to the many probing questions directed at me in the four interviews the police insisted I do on the very day my mother died—questions I would never have answered on any other day and questions about which I never thought to ask my own questions, including: Is your body camera on? Am I being audio recorded again? Where and how will what I am sharing be stored, used and made available to the public?"
"Cornered and Powerless"
Saying that she felt "cornered and powerless" as she was questioned by officers, the actor said that the interviews felt "mandatory and imposed on me that drew me away from the precious end of my mother's life."
"I want to be clear that the police were simply following terrible, outdated interview procedures and methods of interacting with family members who are in shock or trauma and that the individuals in my mother's bedroom that harrowing day were not bad or wrong," she continued. "I assume they did as they were taught.
"It is now well known that law enforcement personnel should be trained in how to respond to and investigate cases involving trauma, but the men who were present left us feeling stripped of any sensitive boundary, interrogated and, in my case, as if I was a possible suspect in my mother's suicide."
The star shared a link to the op-ed on her Instagram account on Wednesday, alongside the caption: "Today, I pour my soul into describing the four interviews I was given no choice in doing the day our beloved mother died, and why such material should remain private for all families in the devastation [that] follows suicide.
"We need better law enforcement procedures and laws that would allow suffering families and their deceased loved one more dignity around agonizingly intimate details of their suffering. Autopsies are public record. So are toxicology reports.
"We have shared our story so openly, to raise awareness, reduce stigma, to help people identify, and make sure we all know we face mental illness together. What more do folks want us to give of our grief?"
Elsewhere in her op-ed, the Double Jeopardy star went on to reveal that earlier this month, she and her family filed a petition with the courts "to prevent the public disclosure of the investigative file, including interviews the police conducted with us at a time when we were at our most vulnerable and least able to grasp that what we shared so freely that day could enter the public domain.
"This profoundly intimate personal and medical information does not belong in the press, on the internet or anywhere except in our memories."
"Death With More Dignity"
Insisting that the family has nothing to hide, Judd explained of the move: "We ask because privacy in death is a death with more dignity. And for those left behind, privacy avoids heaping further harm upon a family that is already permanently and painfully altered.
"Though there will be inevitable questions about our decision to assert what we believe is our legal right to protect our privacy in this specific matter, we stand united as a family and hold fast to our belief that what we said and did in the immediate aftermath of Naomi's death should remain in the private domain—just as it should for all families facing such devastation."
Expressing "deep compassion" for Vanessa Bryant following the leaking of information surrounding her husband Kobe Bryant's death, as well as families in similar positions, Judd added that revealing certain details could push the vulnerable to self-harm.
"Though I acknowledge the need for law enforcement to investigate a sudden violent death by suicide, there is absolutely no compelling public interest in the case of my mother to justify releasing the videos, images and family interviews that were done in the course of that investigation," she said. "Quite the contrary. Not only does making such material public do irreparable harm to the family; it can act as a contagion among a population vulnerable to self-harm."
"I hope that leaders in Washington and in state capitals will provide some basic protections for those involved in the police response to mental health emergencies," she added. "Those emergencies are tragedies, not grist for public spectacle."
In the end, Judd said that her mother should be remembered "for how she lived, which was with goofy humor, glory onstage and unfailing kindness off it—not for the private details of how she suffered when she died."
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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About the writer
Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
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