(I would like to think that) relatively few of us have the experience of being victimized by sociopaths. Seeing it only second-hand, I agree with RD's assessment, pending any wiggle room for what a "sociopath" might be exactly. It seems like such an ill-defined, wide ranging, and flexible term to me. But that may be because I haven't learned enough about how it's commonly applied by psychologists yet.
If we're talking Cho Seung Hui, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc., I think it's a worthwhile thing to try and investigate the motives and developmental histories of these individuals so we can identify warning signs and stage an intervention before people like them do something they ought not to in the future. I met one of Cho Seung Hui's victims just a couple months before she died, and I can't deny an obsession with learning more about how the heck that could have happened. This is different from empathy or sympathy with the perpetrator though; the interest is nothing more than clinical. For those of us who are merely aware these things happen, our sympathy and empathy belong with the victims. I think that is as it should be. That's no failure of society; our failure as I see it is not being properly vigilant for the warning signs. Furthermore, I believe this fault is tied to our mass media's habit of dropping subjects before they're fully explored.
For myself, I'll say this: anyone who's been victimized by a sociopath is in a dark place I can never go. I can't scratch it, can't hope to fully understand it. That understanding, too, is something I owe victims. That said, from my naive perspective, I can accept that different victims may have different healing responses to the experience, if it can be said that healing is possible at all. Whatever path they need is worth supporting, no matter how lonely that path may be.
