Cool question @Hypocrisy_Central, one I’ve wondered about on occasions, as news breaks about another horror… The phrase ‘ever recover’ is the difficult bit – what would it mean? No one could ever forget, some might be able to let go or perhaps even forgive – in their own terms – but recover? Not sure.
Anyone with the same surname as the perpetrator or who has been knowingly involved or related are bound to be labeled and saturated in the attention to it. I think the answer(s) to the question are entirely relative. Unfortunately, living in such a blameful society, tends to mean that relatives are put under the spotlight and blame is sought. The fashion, especially here in the UK, is now to highlight as much about family background as possible, regardless of privacy or even the processes of justice.
This public attention, coupled with the mass of amateur psychobabble that accompanies it, seems to me to cloud the deeper issues rather than clarifying. There are good psychological portraits coming along now, of how the worst serial killers may have become skewed. But as this stuff feeds out, edited and patched together in the press or on tv, the desire from our culture to see drama and gawp at the horror is deeply distracting to understanding.
I pity those related to the perpetrators, they may not necessarily be culpable, but often get to carry much of the blame. It will be interesting to see what others have to say here.