Societal Treatment Toward Certain Victims of Crime- Part Two

This is the second part of the series concerning how society treats certain female victims of crime.

First part discuss about the neglect and complicity of certain people of Cleveland in connection with the crimes of serial killer Anthony Sowell and the fact that there are those who support that killer because "he took out the trash" and that women who engaged in prostitution or on drugs deserved their fate. 

Well, society enforce certain gender roles in men and women and punish those who don't conform or are rebellious.

When it comes to coverage of female victims of crime, we tend to objectify and label such victims of crime, whether in positive stereotypes of what a woman should be or in contemptuous objectification when they don't prescribe to "normal" gender roles in our society.

For example, serial killer Joel Rifkin was less caring several years ago in a handwritten legal response to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of murder victim Lorraine Orvieto of Stony Brook.

In the response, Rifkin described her as mentally infirm, a drug user and a carrier of the AIDS virus who "may be responsible for the eventual deaths of numerous ... individuals 
... Her family and society bears some responsibility for what might have been."

Mr. Rifkin also objectify prostitutes as being transient nobodies with real families to tend to. 

Rifkin explained why he decided to target prostitutes.

He said he would have "no attachment" to the victims -- meaning they could not be traced to him. This, he said, explains why the Gilgo Beach victims were chosen. As prostitutes, they were easy to entice. "That's their job . . . to get into a stranger's car," he said.

He said the slayings were a "primal urge" that he justified by reminding himself the women were drug-addicted hookers with no self-respect.

Rifkin says he regrets his rampage, but he sounded bizarrely nostalgic as he spoke about how much easier it was to kill his in his day.

He said technology like GPS in cell phones has given police a tremendous advantage in tracking victims.- 

According to Mr. Rifkin, those women were to blame for their own deaths. He also thought that those women are here on earth to serve them with no strings attached.  

Ironically, ths man created a charity house named Oholah House after the Old Testament character who was a prostitute who was murdered.  He saw this as a penance for his sins of murdering his victims in the late 80s through early 90s.  Many people didn't buy his idea and with good reason.