Don't Forget The Victims

Sometimes it is really hard for me to keep what I consider reality in my thinking when there are so many people out there who seem to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime.

I read a post today about Christa Pike. It talked about her childhood, her trauma, mental illness, relationships, brain development and what her life has been like in prison. And I get it. All of those things may help explain how she became the person she became. But explaining something doesn't make it okay. It doesn't erase what happened.

Because somewhere in all of that was Colleen Slemmer. Colleen was 19 years old. She had a whole life ahead of her too. She should have had the chance to grow up, make mistakes, fall in love, have a family, change her mind, become a different person and live out the rest of her life. Instead, she was beaten, tortured and murdered.

And this isn't just about Christa Pike. I see this kind of thinking all the time now. People who spend so much time talking about what happened to Lindsay Clancy and wearing pink like idiots that the three children she killed seem to become secondary. People who believed Karmelo Anthony deserved another trial. He admitted to doing it! People who don't seem to have a problem with someone being here illegally even when they kill someone. And I find myself sitting here thinking...when did we become so forgiving of the person who did the terrible thing? You cannot just forget the victims and the families who had to suffer because of it.

I don't even have compassion for them. I don't care if it's mental illness, childhood trauma or someone's life circumstances. After the crime, it simply doesn't matter to me. The victims matter.

Whatever happened to Christa growing up may help explain how she became who she was. But it does not erase what happened to Colleen. Plenty of people survive horrible childhoods, abuse, trauma and circumstances that I can't even imagine without going on to torture and murder another human being.

And maybe that's the part I struggle with. I don't need to understand every detail of the person who committed the crime to know what matters. The bottom line is that someone was hurt or killed, and their life should not become nothing more than a footnote while we spend years trying to understand the person who took it from them.

If we're going to tell someone's whole life story, tell the victim's story too. Remember who they were. Remember their family. Remember the life they should have had.

Don't make the victim the footnote.