The Exploitation of Laken Riley and Crime Victims for Personal Gain
By Kiera Spann for FEMINIST
Violence, crime, murder, and rape are not something to be capitalized on with as many gruesome details as possible, trying to draw in clicks and comments and red hearts. There is a grieving family, an investigation, a person with hobbies and passions – probably that had a pet to feed at home – and now, a body cold in the ground that is left behind long after the video stops playing.
I ask you to remember that as you keep reading.
On February 22, 2024, 22-year-old Laken Riley was murdered while on a run at the University of Georgia. The Augusta University nursing student had been killed by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. According to investigators, the perpetrator had been attempting to kidnap and sexually assault her at the time of her death.
The name may strike a familiar cord in you, as it gained widespread media attention and public interest. In fact, the name Laken Riley tore through social media in a blaze. For weeks, I didn’t click on an Instagram story or scroll on my TikTok For You Page without seeing at least one video or picture mentioning her.
Due to the short nature of her attack, people began dedicating their runs in her honor, captioning their post “17 minutes” in recognition of how fast Riley’s life had been taken from her by her attacker.
The controversy of this case, and thus the reason for its virality, lies in the perpetrator. Like most true crime cases, very quickly the story turned from Laken Riley onto the man who had killed her.
José Antonio Ibarra was a 26-year-old Venezuelan man – and most importantly to the media, an illegal immigrant in the United States.
Do not misunderstand me, Ibarra is a villain for what he did, and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for it. However, what makes him a monster is that he is a murder, not that he is an immigrant.
90.3% of all homicides are committed by men. According to the National Institute of Justice, rates of all crimes, not just violent crimes like homicide, are significantly lower among both legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. (National Institute of Justice) If Ibarra is to be convicted on the grounds of any stereotype for the crime he committed, it is that he was a man.
The Riley family was, understandably so, devastated and wanted time to grieve. So when Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted Joe Biden during his State of the Union address and screamed her name to make political points about the border and immigration, it was a slap in the face to Riley’s memory and her death.
The family was invited to the State of the Union by their Georgia Congressman, but turned down the invitation.
Politicians quickly began using Riley’s name as a buzzword when talking about harsh immigration policy, using her violent death and the Venezuelan man who had killed her as a way to gain votes in a party that tends to lean towards stricter border laws.
Her father, Jason, at a press conference expressed his outrage at this. “I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley told NBC in an interview. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel.”
My platform is one where I advocate for survivors and victims of gender-based violence. When I posted a story about Laken Riley, sans anything political, I was met with intense backlash from many of my followers asking “Are you a Republican now or something?”
This is the danger of politicizing or dramatizing crime and gender-based violence. It has no party. It has no partisanship. If you’re attacked walking down a dark road, the man (it’s always a man) isn’t going to stop and ask you who you voted for (I hope).
I have had a platform where I advocate for survivors for just about four years now, and I have people from every walk of life, background, ethnicity, class, gender, and political party on my page. Sexual assault, MURDER, does not stop to ask you if you wear a blue shirt or a red hat.
It’s time for our politicians to stop treating victims and survivors like pawns in their Capitol Hill chess games.
The Laken Riley Act was presented to Congress and passed last year, but didn’t see the Senate floor. The Bill was once again brought before the House after the new Congress was sworn in this year, and passed on January 7th with a 264 to 159 vote, with 48 Democrats voting with Republicans. It is the first piece of legislation to pass through the newly elected House of Representatives. (Congress)
On the outside and from a brief glance, the bill itself looks harmless, if not… dare I say, positive? It argues that any illegal persons attempting to enter the United States with a violent record or background check be detained or denied entry. Fair right? How do we not already have this legislation in place?
Oh, because we do. They were enacted in 1996. (Immigrant Justice)
The Laken Riley Act, or HR29, is an inhumane immigration bill posing as law drafted for safety, which once again, is using a victim’s tragedy to exploit for political gain. Since Laken’s killer had been picked up prior to her death on minor shoplifting charges, the bill seeks to allow ICE and detention centers to indefinitely hold any illegal immigrant over minor misdemeanor crimes such as theft, even if they haven’t been convicted yet.
In simpler terms, someone could only be accused of stealing a $20 shirt, and then be detained in ICE for years without trial or fair due process proceedings because of their immigration status if the Laken Riley bill were to pass. This is unconstitutional, a slander of the rights of human beings, and it is all being done in the name of an innocent girl’s death.
Riley’s parents have not spoken publicly about the bill – or its name.
The saddest piece of this nauseating puzzle is that without the exploitation of her death — no one would know her name. Her friends and family would, but the social media movement dedicated to “17 minutes” was done so out of political greed and to make a statement about undocumented migrants, not to celebrate the life of a 22 year old college student.
Coming forward about an assault or pursuing legal action against a crime committed against you is the hardest thing most people will go through in their lifetimes.
Losing a child to brutal violence is a tragedy no parent should experience.
For anyone – from a podcast host to a politician – to use those stories as a tool to gain social or political capital is a travesty on those lives that are lost or hurt.
When your TV flashes with the next news headline about a young girl slaughtered, followed by politicians attacking a minority group; remind yourself of the grieving family and person behind the screen, whose last moments on Earth are now being exploited in front of the country for the benefit of a man (it’s always a man) who never knew them.
