By Seamus McGraw

Megan Kanka

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Megan Kanka

She was just seven years old in 1994 when Jesse Timmendequas, an ex-con with a history of sex offenses lured her off the quiet Hamilton Township street where she lived, raped her and killed her.  Perky and vivacious in life, in the days after her slaying every aspect of her life and death were scrutinized by the press. It soon reached a crescendo and her death led to hastily enacted creation of a package of law, now duplicated nationally, designed to alert the police and in some cases the public to the presence of potentially dangerous predators in their midst.

In the end, as the inspiration for Megan's Law, the name of that little blonde haired girl has become almost a household word.

Divina Genao

In all likelihood, you've never heard of her. Like Megan Kanka, she was seven years old, and like Megan, she was lured off the street outside her home by a man with a lengthy criminal record, a confessed killer in fact named Conrad Jeffrey who had spent most of his life in and out of state prisons and mental hospitals. But unlike Megan Kanka, Divina's death received only limited media attention. The New York media covered it only briefly. And while the local newspapers the Herald and News and The Record of Hackensack, devoted a great deal of time and energy to the case, including several reports by this writer, the story of Divina's death and the massive institutional failings that led to it, never really gained much traction.

Even at the time, there were many who suggested that the media, though it appreciated the tragedy, had failed to see the significance of Divina's death because in many respects, it didn't fit the paradigm of the perfect story. She was a young Hispanic child, trying to grow up on the seedy streets of Passaic, a deteriorating New Jersey mill town. Had she been a middle class child, or had she been snatched from a playground in some leafy suburb, perhaps, they said, there would have been a greater sense of urgency about her case. And even now, among those who are familiar with her case, there are still those who suggest that it underscores a persistent problem in American society, the sense that when it comes to the media, stories involving white victims get greater play than those involving minorities.

Perhaps, as Rebkah Howard, the aunt of young murder victim Tamika Huston put it, that is because those who manage the media are still largely white and perhaps unconsciously identify more with white victims. Or maybe, as others have suggested, it is because the media has become more consumer driven, and consumers, conditioned by years of similar stories, expect and demand stories about exploited white children and missing white women. Perhaps it is a combination of all of those factors.

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