Update: The AP, in a rather suspect move, is reporting the victim’s name, which will not be appearing on this site. They are saying they have permission; however, to me it feels like they are taking advantage of this young woman, who will likely get a bunch of hate mail and death threats from white supremacists.
I’m not sure that I can find words to adequately describe the brutality of this crime. You can read more details below. Here’s the initial report:
Authorities are investigating whether a woman who was tortured in a southern West Virginia home for more than a week may have been lured there by a man she met on the Internet.Police were still looking for two people they suspect drove the 23-year-old Charleston woman about 50 miles to the Big Creek home where she was abused, said Logan County Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess.There, according to police, she was beaten, sexually assaulted and humiliated.Logan County Prosecutor Brian Abraham said police are investigating the possible Internet connection into what some are calling one of the most shocking crimes in the county’s recent history.In 30 years of law enforcement, Logan County Sheriff W.E. Hunter said he’s never seen anything like this.It’s “something that would have come out of a horror movie,” he said Tuesday.
Deputies were interviewing the victim Tuesday morning and are scheduled to meet later in the day to discuss the case with Abraham, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office. The officials may decide then whether to file hate crimes charges.
Bill Crowley, spokesman for the FBI in Pittsburgh, confirmed that the agency is looking into possible civil rights violations.
Six Logan County residents, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, remained in custody Tuesday on $100,000 bonds each. They are charged in the weeklong kidnapping and abuse of the woman.
All six are white. The victim, who was being treated Tuesday at the Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital, is black.
“Every one of these people who were arrested are no strangers to law enforcement,” Hunter said.
Deputies found the woman Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek to investigate an anonymous tip from someone who had witnessed the abuse, Sgt. Sonya Porter said Tuesday.
One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the victim limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying, “Help me,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release.
Besides being sexually assaulted, the victim had been stabbed four times in the left leg and beaten, Porter said. Both of her eyes were black and blue. The woman’s wounds were inflicted at least a week ago, deputies said.
During her capture, the victim was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet, according to the criminal complaint filed in magistrate court. The woman also had been choked with a cable cord and her hair cut, it alleges.
One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is accused of cutting the woman’s ankle with a knife. She used the N-word in telling the woman she was victimized because she is black, according to the criminal complaint.
Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.
“We have all been praying and asking the Lord to take us through this,” the victim’s mother told The Charleston Gazette on Monday. “It’s hard to deal with it. We are very angry. … She will be scarred for a long time.
“She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, ’Mommy,”’ the mother said. “What’s really bad is that we don’t know everything they did to her. She is crying all the time.”
Some evidence suggests that the crime was racially motivated. We’ll have to watch the details as they come out.
I read about this in the NY Times this morning. I don’t think I’ve been this horrified in recent memory, I quite nearly burst into tears. Absolutely devastating.
it is brutal. and horrifying.
and, for people of color in this country, not the least bit surprising. oh, yes. the rankness of it is a bit of a jolt; no one likes to think that real people are capable of something you see in a rob zombie film. but on another level, we’re not that surprised.
violent white people taking a young brown girl and raping/torturing her? it’s called American History and brown people are taught that that’s what the white West does.
by no means do i want to shrink what’s happened to this girl and make it disappear in a whole sea of historical details, but how can you not read this story and think of other places, other crimes, other women? i can’t forget that iraqi teen who was raped and killed by those american soldiers. or the thousands of women on the mexico/usa border who are still mysteriously being raped and murdered.
the horror of this one incident will fade into the background while news stories are written and maybe anderson cooper will do a piece on it for CNN; but it’s truly horrifying when you think of all the brown women killed by our american racism and misogyny in this country and overseas.
Yes, it’s ugly and awful and I hope the perpetrators are punished to full extent of the law. And that the victim receives all the help she needs for full and complete recovery.
However, when Rachel S. writes that she doubts AP has permission to publish the name, she’s taking away the woman’s agency with no proof that AP is lying. And when ding calls her a young brown girl, that language invokes a picture and possibly accompanying emotion that are egregious: the victim here is a 23-year-old woman, not a child. This crime is bad enough on its own, you don’t need to add the piteous mental image of a child suffering those tortures. Devaluing the victim as an adult implies that the crime is only so awful because the victim was a child.
I read about this story the other day and I my mouth just dropped open with the brutality of it. And there is the fact that there were six people who all got together to do this. Who came up with the idea to torture a black woman and why would the other 5 folks go along?
This is madness.
the horror of this one incident will fade into the background while news stories are written and maybe anderson cooper will do a piece on it for CNN; but it’s truly horrifying when you think of all the brown women killed by our american racism and misogyny in this country and overseas.
It’s rare that incidents like this one get much attention from mainstream media. Hopefully, she will get justice but I’m too cynical to really think so. Our society would have to change an awful lot and it doesn’t want to do so.
The problem with incidents like this one is that they tend to be isolated from a larger picture and marginalized as aberrations of racism and misogyny in an otherwise just and equal society free of those things for the most part. But it’s like one poster said, it’s called American History, tied in with colonialism, slavery and other things. About 150 years ago, this woman might have been considered property. But it seems to me that even in the 21st century, she’s still in a sense property at least to a group of people who are probably more extreme examples than usual of a system that still supports that philosophy but in some ways, not much different at all.
She’s a woman of color, a Black woman facing a criminal justice system which has a difficult time believing that Black women(and men for that matter) can be crime victims(as witnessed by the situation with the Jena 6). Traditionally, the criminal justice system in most places hasn’t been kind. This might be an exception, but if so, only because it will be viewed and treated as an exception.
I read about this story the other day and I my mouth just dropped open with the brutality of it. And there is the fact that there were six people who all got together to do this. Who came up with the idea and why the other 5 folks go along?
This is madness.
Most of the cases I hear about, albeit not on this scale involve more than one individual. Some may be active participants and others serving an encouraging or protective role in terms of not reporting the crimes or even helping those who commit them after the fact.
It’s not uncommon at all in hate crimes for groups to be involved. Sometimes they feed off of each other. I’ve heard of cases for example of African-Americans who’ve been assaulted and nearly killed and it’s by a smaller group cheered on by a larger group that doesn’t actively participate in the assaults but encourages them vigorously through their own conduct. In one case, four individuals did get some prison time for playing that role.
I’m not surprised at all that something like this can and did happen. Horrified but not surprised. There’s so many lessor crimes and incidents which are ignored. There are many cases like Jena 6 where the justice system treats disparately incidents of Whites against Black people as opposed to Black people on White. There’s been cases I know of, where hate crimes or incidents done by Whites against Black men or women wind up in the latter getting arrested and charged or in one case peppersprayed in a school yard and sent to juvenile hall whereas the White students were just told to go to class.
My local news just reported that since the victim had a relationship w/one of the perpetrators, this won’t be prosecuted as a hate crime.
I don’t get that. How does having a relationship keep him/her from being charged with a hate crime.
The article I read included statements that from the perspective of the prosecutors, it was more of a strategic decision.
No Hate Crime Charges in Torture Case
WV law must be different than my state’s where hate crime can be charged but it’s also an enhancement that can be attached to certain crimes. If there’s a conviction with the crime, then the jury must decide if the hate crime enhancement is proven true. Hate crime enhancements generally add 10 years to the sentence.
The federal agencies can also file charges if they determine that civil rights violations have taken place but that’s a separate process from the state case and the feds at least locally usually wait to see what happens at the state level though they may launch a parallel, separate investigation. Even if there are acquittals in state cases, the federal agencies will often ask to review the evidence as they did recently in the case of an officer-involved shooting that became a criminal case. The U.S. Attorney for my region explained the process for a particular case but the people had more questions than answers from it.
Many years ago during slavery this would not have been considered a hate crime. I don’t believe that the consideration for this not to be a HATE CRIME would even be fathomed. It is crimes like these that get kicked back into the darkness and maybe happening more than not, and because “THEY” can get away with it they DO. I am angry with the mentality of Black Americans to think only how awful ths is until you experience it for yourselves. This is act of pure unadulterated hate due to rejection or low self esteem; nevertheless you can’t remove the BLACKNESS of the victim. She had no recourse except for GOD himself to deliver her. I THANK the person who had the gumption to tip off the authorities and to them for not using the “Good Ole Boy” system and not check out the lead; this cause and effect saved this women’s life.
@ kai: i didn’t use ‘young brown girl’ as a way of removing her agency. it’s just the way i talk to my friends (‘hey, brown girl!’). sorry. (shrug) but i also recognize that reading that the woman had some developmental issues probably colored my language. again, it’s not a removal of agency, it’s a recognition that her perceived ‘slowness’ probably made it easier for the perpetrators to target her.
AP itself acknowledged that it doesn’t usually print the name of sexual assault victims; it has nothing to do with agency. it’s a policy they decided to put aside when the *young woman’s* mother said they had permission to publish it.
certainly her agency isn’t in doubt since it was her own plea for help that moved the policeman to immediate action.
re: whether or not this should have been a hate crime. i believe a few articles also mentioned that by choosing not to charge them with a hate crime, the prosecution calculated that the charges they levied carried heavier penalties. like, in w. virginia, a hate crime puts you behind bars for only a few years while kidnapping charge alone gets you 30. (something like that.)
I am curious if this falls within the boundaries of cruel and unusal punishment? A hate crime will not be filed, I am sure, for whatever reason. Americans don’t like to be seen in such a fashison as this is a a civilized nation, and you know who are the most civilized people are and which are not, without much more being said. Can I provide you with a view of this from the work of Kate Millett on the poltics of cruelty and decide for yourself if this is a hate crime.
This , after all, is the intention; it would be be unusual that the party with every resource should fail in the end or with frequency. Torture is consquest throught irressitable force. It is to destroy opposition throughcausing it to destroy itself: in despair, in self -hatred for its own vulnerablity, impotence. It is to defile, degrade, overwhelm with shame to ravage. Ins this it resembles rape. And tortured come to experience not only the condition of the animal caged by man, but the predicament of woman before man as well. A thing male prisoners discover, a thing female prisoners redisover. Torture is based upon traditional ideas of domination: patriarichalorder and masculine rank. The sexual is invoked to emphasize the power of the tormenter, the vulnerablity of the vicitim; sexuality istself is confined inside and ancient apprehension and respression: shame, sin, weakness. The victim totureed sexually is tortured twice as it were, first by being deliberately harmed, second by being harmed in a way that is regarded as the most humiliating of all humiliations. p.34-35
Now today I read that the defense attorney said that hundered thousand dollar bail was grossly to high given the charges. Not to mention two attorney had to recuise themselves because they had represented some to the people before. Seems that 108 arresst had occured between the six who are accussed in the past.
The big news story as far as I can tell is that OJ stole some stuff in Vegas, what a contrast for the awake.
dj
It is heartbreaking to think that a person because of the color of their skin would have something like this done to them in America. But looking back at our past it is not surprising. Our lawmakers need to put very HARSH penalties in place for folks who do this kind of stuff. Racism is like a cancer for our country that keeps coming back over and over again. In fact it never went away. African Americans has contributed so much to this country from all of the invetions to all of the free labor that helped build some of the biggest companies it this country. It is saddening to see that in 2007 things of this nature are still happening. God help us.
Dave;
“cruel and unusual punishment” is a transgression only the state can commit. Generally, adult citizens are not allowed to incarcerate, “interrogate” or kill one another, however cruel or humane their approach may be. When regular people do it, its kidnapping, murder, and torture, which are all supposed to be always illegal.
As an African student whose country had to fight for 13 years to beat back colonialists, I find this revolting to say the least. And as a father of a 3 year old daughter, this is horror personified. Is this the America we so often heard of from beyond the seas? America, where is your conscince? Where is your sense of justice?
Wow. Just wow. All you guys who expressed disbelief at this crime… Were you all unaware that earlier the same year, in the US, a couple had been abducted, raped, sexually mutilated, and then killed? The man was shot, set on fire, and left on railroad tracks, while the woman was made to swallow bleach while alive, beaten not quite to death, then stuffed in a garbage bin where she suffocated?
Do you mean that this crime is worse? Or maybe the media did not report on the other crime all that much… I wonder what made it less newsworthy?
By the way, did you know that the accuser in this crime recanted her story? Yes, her boyfriend abused and hurt her, but the shit eating, drinking from the toilet, rape by the women, and all of the cutting/stabbing was made up. In her own words, she just wanted to get back at her abusive boyfriend.
What did the police do when they found no evidence that she had swallowed fecal bacteria, and when they found contradictions in her story, including the fact that some of the accused where not physically present at the times when they allegedly committed the crimes, and that the slashing and puncture wounds were at angles consistent with either being self-inflicted, or someone inflicting them while standing behind her, which she did not report? They simply leaned on the accused, and got them to confess and implicate each other in exchange for reduced sentences. And by reduced, I mean ten years and more. That said, they all seem like fine assholes, and I could not care less about them rotting in jail. What bothers me is the role played by the police.
Oh, and what was the prosecution reaction to the recantation? They said that although they never believed the whole of the accuser’s story, they still believed the physical evidence, and that unless the accuser recanted under oath, they would not do anything for the convicted. They did not forget to mention that re-testifying under oath would open the accuser for prosecution.