They’d make great high school vice principals.
An Alabama reporter was accosted over her skirt length before an execution at a state prison Thursday night.
Ivana Hrynkiw of AL.com was covering the execution of Joe Nathan James Jr. in Atmore when corrections officer Kelly Betts accosted her, the outlet reported Friday.
FILE - The sun sets behind Holman Prison in Atmore, Ala., on Jan. 27, 2022. (Jay Reeves/AP)
“I have worn this skirt to prior executions without incident, to work, professional events and more and I believe it is more than appropriate,” Hrynkiw wrote on Twitter. “I tried to pull my skirt to my hips to make the skirt longer, but was told it was still not appropriate.”
[ Alabama man executed for 1994 murder of ex-girlfriend, over objections of victim's family ]
A colleague at a Birmingham TV station came up with an improvised solution: He had some fisherman’s waders in his car, and offered them to Hrynkiw.
With no other option, she took the waders and the suspenders, but that still wasn’t enough. She was next badgered about her open-toed heels. But the Alabama Department of Corrections wasn’t going to get rid of her that easily. She had tennis shoes in her car.
“This was an uncomfortable situation, and I felt embarrassed to have my body and my clothes questioned in front of a room of people I mostly had never met,” Hrynkiw wrote on Twitter. “I sat down, tried to stop blushing, and did my work. As women often have to do.”
Batts told AL.com that a new warden at the Atmore prison wanted to start enforcing the dress code. The code, which was not sent to reporters prior to the execution, reads straight out of the 1950s: “all dresses, skirts, and pants shall extend below the knee (females only). Splits/Slits must be knee length or lower (females only).”
However, AL.com notes that the only banned shoes are “slippers, shower shoes, and beach shoes.”
Hrynkiw said that another woman, reporting for the Associated Press, was also paraded in front of the room to have her outfit examined. The other reporter was not told to change.
“This was unacceptable, unequal treatment,” said Kelly Ann Scott, editor in chief and vice president of content for Alabama Media Group. “This was sexist and an egregious breech of professional conduct. And it should not happen to any other reporter again.”
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News