30733: (news) Chamberlain: Gang Rape (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By BRIAN SKOLOFF and JENNIFER KAY

   WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 10 (AP) -- Mother and son huddled together,
battered and beaten, in the bathroom -- sobbing, wondering why no one came
to help.
   Surely the neighbors had heard their screams. The walls are thin, the
screen doors flimsy in this violence-plagued housing project on the edge of
downtown.
   For three hours, the pair say, they endured sheer terror as the
35-year-old Haitian immigrant was raped and sodomized by up to 10 masked
teenagers and her 12-year-old son was beaten in another room.
   Then, mother and son were reunited to endure the unspeakable: At
gunpoint, the woman was forced to perform oral sex on the boy, she later
told a TV station.
   Afterward, they were doused with household cleansers, perhaps in a
haphazard attempt to scrub the crime scene, or maybe simply to torture the
victims even more. The solutions burned the boy's eyes.
   The thugs then fled, taking with them a couple of hundred dollars' worth
of cash, jewelry and cell phones.
   In the interview with WPTV, the mother described how she and her son
sobbed in the bathroom, too shocked to move. Then, in the dark of night,
they walked a mile to the hospital because they had no phone to call for
help.
   Two teenagers -- a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old -- have been arrested.
Eight others are being sought.
   Welcome to Dunbar Village, a place residents call hell.
   ------
   "So a lady was raped. Big deal," resident Paticiea Matlock said with
disgust. "There's too much other crime happening here."
   Built in 1940 to house poor blacks in then-segregated West Palm Beach,
Dunbar Village's 226 units sit just blocks from million-dollar condos on
the Intracoastal Waterway. Billionaires lounge on beachfront property just
a few miles away on Palm Beach.
   The public housing project's one- and two-story barracks-style buildings
are spread across 17 grassy, tree-lined acres surrounded by an 8-foot iron
fence. The average rent is about $150 a month.
   Almost 60 percent of the households in the area that includes Dunbar
Village were below the poverty level in 2000, according to Census figures.
Only 19 percent of the area's residents had high school degrees. About 9
percent of the adults were unemployed, nearly triple the state average.
   Teenagers with gold-plated teeth wander the streets. Drug dealers hang
out on nearby sidewalks. Trash bin lids are open. Flies hover over dirty
diapers. Clothes dry on sagging lines.
   Since the June 18 attack, police have increased patrols in the area,
blocked off one entrance and will soon install surveillance cameras.
   "It took this to make that happen?" Matlock, a 32-year-old single mother
of three, snarled.
   As in other blighted neighborhoods across the country where criminals
seem to have free rein, residents here live in fear. Snitches get stitches,
they say. Or worse.
   "I try to be in my house no later than 7, and I don't come out," said
Citoya Greenwood, 33, who lives in Dunbar with her 4-year-old daughter. "I
don't even answer my door anymore." On the Fourth of July, "we didn't know
if we was hearing gunshots or fireworks."
   ------
   Avion Lawson, 14, and Nathan Walker, 16, will be charged as adults in
the assault and gang rape, prosecutors said. They are jailed without bail.
   Lawson's DNA was found in a condom at the crime scene, and he admitted
involvement, authorities say. Police say Walker's palm print was discovered
inside the home. He denies being there. His attorney says he will plead not
guilty. Lawson's public defender did not return telephone messages.
   Walker and Lawson did not live at Dunbar but visited often. Lawson
stayed with his grandmother there. Walker came to hang out and play
basketball. Dunbar has become the place to be for wayward black teens,
residents and neighborhood kids say.
   Walker and Lawson both grew up mostly fatherless, bouncing between
homes. Walker's family sometimes lived in old cars or abandoned houses,
said his mother, Ruby Nell Walker.
   "We've never really had a real home," said Naporcha Walker, Nathan's
15-year-old sister.
   He dropped out of school after spending three years in seventh grade.
The family lives on food stamps and recently had to pawn their television
and radio, Ruby Walker said.
   "I just feel like he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. ... My
son is not a rapist," she said.
   Ruby Walker said she herself was raped twice, at ages 7 and 12. She said
that just days before the Dunbar attack, someone tried to rape her again,
and "my son came to me crying and said he wouldn't ever do that to anyone."
   She has had her own problems with the law -- at least nine arrests on
charges such as disorderly conduct, aggravated assault and battery,
according to state records.
   Avion Lawson was a headstrong kid, never listening to his mother, said
his cousin, Cassandra Ellis.
   "I knew he was bad, but I never pictured him to be that type of bad,"
Ellis said. She said one traumatic experience may have scarred him --
watching his older sister fatally stab a boyfriend.
   "It was an accident. She killed her boyfriend. They was fighting, there
was a knife," Ellis said. "He was there when it happened."
   ------
   City officials are quick to note that neither Lawson nor Walker lived at
Dunbar, and say they are doing their best to make the place safe.
   As quickly as overhead lights can be replaced, they are shot out, so
officials are now considering bulletproof lighting.
   "Isn't that quite a commentary on what the situation is there?" said
City Commissioner Molly Douglas, whose district includes part of Dunbar.
"Dunbar Village is a hell hole. They shouldn't have to live in fear."
   More officers are hitting the streets, but "I just bow my head sometimes
and think we just couldn't possibly have enough officers ever to take care
of all of this," Douglas said.
   Laurel Robinson, head of the city's housing authority, said that up
until about four years ago, the federal government provided the city with
$160,000 a year for security in public housing projects, but Congress did
away with the money.
   "Every family housing project in the country has suffered because of
it," she said.
   --------
   The rape victim and her son have not returned to their apartment since
the attack.
   The woman fled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with her son seven years ago in
search of a better life. With no money, they landed in Dunbar. The two
almost instantly became targets for crime, standing out as Haitians among
the mostly American-born blacks in the housing project. Her car and the
boy's bicycle were stolen. Their house was ransacked.
   On the night of the attack, she was lured outside by a teenager who
knocked on the door and said her car had a flat. Nine more teens, their
faces shrouded with T-shirts, barged in, she told authorities. They
brandished guns and demanded money, then went beyond the imaginable.
   "I was so scared," the woman told WPTV. "Some of them had sex with me
twice, some of them had sex with me three times. They're beating me up.
They make me do those things over and over. The man with the big gun, he
put the gun inside of me."
   She said that when she was forced to perform oral sex on her own son,
she told the boy: "I know you love me, and I love you, too."
   Investigators say it is not clear exactly why the thugs picked her
house.
   The boy's sight has returned. Both mother and son are seeking
counseling.
   "I have to try and talk to him every day. He's so angry," the woman
said. "He said we never should have moved to Dunbar Village."
   ------
   AP researchers Judith Ausuebel and Monika Mathur contributed to this
report.