Is Publicity Perpetuating Animal Abuse?

This is a Catch-22; in attempting to raise awareness on animal abuse issues, animal advocacy groups, the law officials and concerned citizens publicize the details of horrific animal abuse crimes but in our efforts to raise awareness are we actually helping to perpetrate more crimes?

Take the Michael Vick case, a high profile, celebrity, animal cruelty, dog fighting case. It has been publicized to the point that people who never heard of Michael Vick now know who he is and what he's done. People who never knew the horrors of dog fighting have gotten an education they never anticipated or expected. Now look in the news; story after story on dog fighting. I'm not talking about the large dog fighting rings that have been uncovered because public awareness has been raised, that's a big positive! What I am talking about are the stories that are surfacing of kids on street corners and alleys and backyards, fighting dogs, 12 and 15 yr olds being arrested. Has this been happening all along or can some of this be attributed to these children emulating a 'sport's hero' and all of the publicity surrounding the story?

What about the dog burnings? There have been two relatively recent, high profile, highly publicized cases involving dogs being doused with an accelerant and set on fire; the DeShawn Brown case in which Mercy, a 10 month old pit bull, was stabbed and set on fire and the Derick Phanord case in which another pit bull, dubbed Maximus, was doused and set on fire, both dogs eventually died due to their injuries. Now we are hearing this happening more and more. Juan Daniels, 20, was arrested in Alabama for 'allegedly' beating his family's dog then setting him on fire after being denied the use of the family car. There's been a rash of dog burnings in Atlanta, almost a dozen. Originally officials thought this might be attributed to gang activity but now they just don't know. There have been several other cases as well where dogs were set on fire or had some caustic substance poured on them and no one was ever caught or arrested.