GROUPS WANT VICTIMS' RIGHTS CONSIDERED

Imagine how you would feel if a loved one was murdered and then the murderer's face was put on a trading card. That is what two local groups, Survivors of Homicide and Senior Girl Scout Troop 576, would like people to think about.

Survivors of Homicide is a support group for the families and friends of murder victims. The group, organized in 1988 by a member of the crime victims' assistance unit in Marion County, has 77 members who are relatives of murder victims.

Barbara Hudson, Survivors' president, has been involved in the group since 1989. After her sister was murdered in 1987, she took classes in an effort to find support. While doing research for her classes, she found information about the local organization.

Hudson and Anne Greene, the group's vice president, were interviewed recently by Children's Express about crime trading cards. At least three organizations publish such cards.

Pressuring card company

Girl Scout Troop 576 has been trying to get Eclipse Enterprises to stop producing True Crime trading cards by getting hundreds of people to sign petitions.

An uncle of one of the Scouts was murdered, and the troop wants to make sure that other victims' relatives don't feel violated by the printing of these cards.

The Survivors and the Scouts believe the cards are insensitive to the families of crime victims.

"Being a family member of a murder victim, it is hurtful to those of us that have actually been there. It, to me, is no form of entertainment," Hudson said.

Companies that make crime cards "forget that there's a whole section of society out there that's grieving for the people that have been killed," she added.

Prolonging the pain

Jill Meisenheimer is the Scout leader whose brother-in-law was killed. She believes that these cards prolong the pain.

"What happens with these cards and with the movies is you've been victimized once and you're re-victimized every time it happens. . . . They say, `Look at the act, and don't look at those who are acted upon,' " Meisenheimer said.

Greene thinks the trading cards are a way of making murder seem unreal.

"It's one way of laughing at a circumstance and pushing it aside and saying, `It's never gonna happen to me. And if you make light of it . . . you're doing the same thing. You're psychologically distancing yourself from the possibility that it will happen to you.

"When you do that, you do yourself a disservice and you do a disservice to the homicide survivors that are out there," she added.

Hudson agreed. "Not only will it distance you from it, it will desensitize you to it. It doesn't seem that it's any big deal.

"Then murder really becomes no big deal. It's something that you can look at and say, `Oh wow, isn't that neat,' and go on."

Scout Karen Martin, 17, thinks that by downplaying the victims, the cards make readers forget that there were victims.

Forgetting the victims

"(Readers are) not gonna think of any of the victims' families. They're not gonna think of any of what was going through the victim's mind when this person was picked up," said Karen. "They're not gonna think that at all. And they have to realize that there are people out there who are related to those people."

Another Scout leader, Cheryl Hazelrigg, remarked that people who buy the cards for investment purposes are subconsciously trying to make money off of the crime.

"A parent might buy them for a child because of the investment. They are a limited series; they will increase in price. They will be an asset eventually _ financially," she said.

It isn't just collectors who are doing the buying. Scout Lauren Saywell, 14, thinks that peer pressure may influence kids to buy them.

"If one person has it," said Lauren, "everyone else is gonna want one. So they're gonna go home and tell their parents, and their parents may buy it, just because it's a fad."

Scout Sonia Meisenheimer, 17, said some kids would like the cards because they are a novelty.

"If my uncle wasn't killed, I might think the cards were neat. . . . I'm sure if I told my friends, they would go 'neat, rad, cool,' you know," Sonia said. "It's the same reason like (you want to be) the first person to buy Nike Airs.

"They say, `Wow, this is so new and different and cool.' "

Educating would-be murderers

Hudson scoffs when companies like Eclipse Enterprises, Bloody Vision and Mother Productions _ all of which publish such cards _ try to represent their cards as educational or a form of entrepreneurship.

Greene added: "It is educational for would-be murderers, for anybody who wants to get good ideas about how to do it, and maybe how to do it better the next time so they get on more trading cards."

Another Scout, DeInda Disbro, 18, said the Green River Killer card make the police look "stupid" because they never caught him.

"I don't think that's right. I think (the publishers should include) that he was a bad person. Because all through that, it doesn't say anywhere that he was a bad person. It just tells you what he did. And they should explain that he is a bad person."

Sonia doesn't believe that the cards glorified the criminals, but she is offended by some of the artwork.

Too graphic

"They're really graphic, and it's not necessary. . . . I mean, they tell about things like what limbs they cut off," she said.

Through the years, kids have been collecting sports trading cards because their role models are on them.

But what might a troubled boy think if he sees the crime cards?

Sonia put herself in his place.

"I may not be a baseball player, but if I killed 20 people maybe I'll get to be on a trading card, too."