We live in a society where it seems like the defendants and perpetrators of vicious crimes gain more exposure than the actual victims. The defendants’ faces become plastered all over the news. They gain celebrity-like status and appear on television specials by major news networks. Think of the Aurora movie theatre gunman, the D.C. snipers or the Boston bomber — who appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone earlier this summer.

And now we have Ariel Castro, who was recently sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years. He was spared the death penalty after pleading guilty to 937 counts, including aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape and assault.

Will we give him the same publicity we gave the other nationally known criminals?

As millennials, we have a special obligation to focus our attention on the three female survivors of this case.

With Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight as members of our generation, it is important for us to cling to their stories of triumph, rather than follow our usual pattern and feed into the mass amount of exposure the defendant received.

In the aftermath of this trial’s verdict, we must not allow the stories of our peers to be limited by a few specials on the nightly news or exclusive interviews. We can help them return to some sense of normalcy by giving them our undivided attention.

It is natural for the public to be inquisitive about perpetrators of crimes that shake the nation. But the line between natural questioning and downright obsession with criminals has been crossed by the nation as a whole.

CNN reported that when Judge Michael Russo handed down Castro’s sentence, he told the defendant there wasn’t a place in the world for his type of criminal. But we as a generation have somehow found a space to allow such warped mentalities and incomprehensible crimes into our society by constantly giving our attention to the culprit.

With a wide array of crime shows such as “CSI,” “Law and Order” and “Snapped,” as well as cable stations such as Investigation Discovery, heinous crimes have become an American fixation, especially among young people.

By analyzing criminal minds and constantly seeking out the ghastly details of a crime, we subconsciously imply it is more important to obsess over the blueprint of a crime than it is to understand the strength and endurance it took the survivors to overcome it.

The tide of this unsettling trend attempted to be turned around the time of the tragic and devastating Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The public supported major media outlets in refusing to only hone in on personal details of the shooter, and as a result, the stories of the precious children of Newtown were able to gain the exposure they deserved.

But we reverted back to our old ways with the heartbreaking news of the Boston Marathon bombing. It almost became more important to discuss how much of a terrorist the suspect was than it was to discuss the survivors and lost lives.

We can no longer allow ourselves to make lawbreakers celebrities.

No matter the race, religion or other identifying characteristic of a criminal, their story should never become more important than the story of the individuals who were unrightfully and traumatically by their heinous actions.

Nina Rodgers is a sophomore sociology major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at nmrodger@syr.edu. 

Published on August 7, 2013 at 1:26 am