(ROUGH DRAFT)
Rachel of Rachel’s Tavern (http://rachelstavern.com/?p=708#comments74195) posted this news article on the brutal kidnapping/rape/attempted murder of a young black woman. Here is her post:
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.”
Update: The AP, in a rather suspect move, is reporting the victim’s name, which will not be appearing on my 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.
Some evidence suggests that the crime was racially motivated. We’ll have to watch the details as they come out.
That this woman has suffered from such a heinous crime does not surprise me. Yes, it hurts me how this society stills degrades, denigrates and hates black women. Violence against black women and girls is as American as cherry pie. My response to Rachel’s post is as follows:
“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.”
“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.”
America’s devaluation of black women.
From the news report, there is some evidence that this is a racially-motivated hate crime, with possible civil rights violations, rape, attempted murder, as well as federal charges of imprisonment and kidnapping:
“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.”
This young woman was missing for more than a week.
Looking at a time frame on when she disappeared, when her relatives, or close friends/relatives reported her missing, I wonder how long it took the law authorities who were alerted by any relatives to look into investigating this young woman’s disappearance or to start searching for this young black woman?
“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.”
From the New York Times report on this story on September 12, 2007 concerning the “witness” who alerted law authorities:
“On Saturday, Logan County deputies received a tip about a woman being held against her will at the Brewster residence. A person working in the area had heard disturbing noises coming from the trailer and seen the victim with cuts on her leg through the window, the police said.”
If not for this witness, God only knows what more could have happened to this young woman. She could be lying right now in some abandoned shallow grave, dead, after having suffered unspeakable horrors.
And many people still refuse to believe that black women’s lives are still held so cheaply in this country. Some people around the blogoshpere and on news websites are calling the state of Virginia a hotbed of racist haters, when the truth of reality is that racist pogrom violence against black Americans has occurred all across America in small towns, in urban areas, in suburbs, in New York, California, Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia—EVERYWHERE, throughout the entire history of this country.Black Codes, Black Laws of the Old Northwest. Racial covenants. Sundown Towns. Lynchings. Genetic violence. Ethnic cleansing. Mass gang rapes.
America the, Great Whore of Babylon, has shown nothing but hateful depravities towards her black citizens.
These histories of depravities committed against black people are nothing new. This is business as usual in the life history of black Americans. This is a legacy of hatred of black people that started back in 1619 when the first black Africans were brought here against their will.
That black life has been held in such contempt, from the rulers at the top, all the way down to the individual, should come as no surprise to anyone.
No one state, or community, or geographical area holds a monopoly on the degradation and destruction of black Americans.
Violence is as American as cherry pie.
And violence is ingrained into the fabric of American culture, violence that cheapens and holds no sanctity nor human regard for black American life.
Especially violence done towards black women and girls.
Last year it was a little 15-year-old black girl who was brutally raped by two white men, one of whom stated:
“She’s someone no one will miss.”
And this long history of relegating blackness to something that is sub-human, as something that has no rights that America is bound to respect is normal in how America regards, or better yet, disregards her black citizens.
“Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.”
“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.
According to the news article, these are the KNOWN crimes that these people have been charged with. There is no telling what other unknown criminal atrocities they may have committed against someone else.
The depravities and atrocities done to this young woman is nothing short of sick, perverted and sadistic.
“Update: The AP, in a rather suspect move, is reporting the victim’s name, which will not be appearing on my 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.”
From the news article:
“The Associated Press generally does not identify suspected victims of sexual assault and is not identifying the mother to protect the identity of her daughter.”
Maybe I missed it but, I did not see the young woman’s name in the article you linked to, Rachel. Is there some related article that previously gave out her name? (Please e-mail me this information.)
It is illegal to divulge the names of sexual assault victims, be they adults or minors.
This is possibly precedent for a lawsuit against the newswire for revealing the victim’s name, if so. If she wasn’t black would they have revealed her name to the public?
“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.”
Yes, the family does not know ALL of what their daughter suffered. Their daughter’s physical scars may heal and can possibly be covered with clothing.
She will have psychological scars from this nightmare for the rest of her life.
That this young woman possibly met this human on the internet has to also be taken into consideration.
Her life became jeopardized when she did not meet this person in a public setting, if according to the article she met him on the internet.
Per the article:
“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.”
“We’ll have to watch the details as they come out.”
I agree.
Forensics and SANE evidence will have to be thoroughly gathered to help the prosecution in this case.
Let’s hope that the police do not drop the ball on this young woman’s case.
She deserves to have justice for what was savagely done to her.
NEWS REPORT LINKS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/us/12captive.html?ref=us
VIDEO LINKS:
http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/9712762.html
LINKS:http://lahumanrelations.org/publications/docs/2005HCR.pdf
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 
Just checking to see if your comments are moderated. Can you email me, I lost yours.
May God watch us all. These are perilous times for Black women in America today. When will it ever end? Probably never as long as people in general believe the hateful lies on Black women generated for centuries by the powers that be. American society is far more outraged that dogs are abused than they ever have whenever a Black woman is murdered, assaulted, or raped by anyone. This reminds me of another racially motivated violence against Black women when two white men violently raped a Black woman and a girl in S.C. last year.
http://httpjournalsaolcomjenjer6steph.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-on-racial-hate-crime-in-sc.html
Black women and girls are viciously raped and murdered in America each day. The perpetrators have been men of all races. Not a peep from major media. Nor do they get covered by Faux News, which is MPWW Central.
I truly hope she gets justice and not have white supremacist media, so-called Black media, and the general society attack her the way they attacked the victims of Dunbar Village assault in Florida. My prayers go out to her and her family.
Stephanie B.
This both saddens & sickens me, as a woman, a human being & as a West Virginian. Although presently residing in another state, West Virginia is still the home of my heart & of my ancestors. It is my heritage. It is where my family, including two young nieces & my godchildren continue to reside, and not far from the area where this horrible event has taken place. Sadly, in that area of the state, racism has always been an issue that has been ignored by the local & state governments & law enforcement. That area remains a center for racial extremists, violence & drug manufacturing, cultivation & distribution. The local law enforcement, in my personal experience, is just as corrupt as are many of the residents. That is not to say that ALL who reside there are filled with hate, evil, or dangerous & unethical/cruel behavior. Many of the locals are decent, hardworking, religious people, yet there remain a good many who are lawless. What has happened to this young lady has happened to others of various racial & ethnic backgrounds. Only now, with the rate of hate-crimes growing in our country has this come to light. Long before nooses hanging in trees on college campuses, victims in this area were lynched, shot, stabbed, and the list goes on & on. This HAS to stop!! To all local & state government officials & to the Federal government, PLEASE step up to the plate, take action & investigate this area of the crimes that have gone unsolved or have been covered up & forgotten! Protect the innocent, as is your call. Serve the justice you have been elected to serve. And, please, save our beautiful West Virginians from such horrifying events such as this. Don’t think about it! Do it now! Before something like this happens again, as it will & as it has in the past!!
When whites do violence — rape, murder, assault — how often do they choose black victims? Shouldn’t a nation of bigots target blacks most of the time? At least half of the time? Of course, it does not. When whites commit violence, they to it to blacks 2.4 percent of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose white victims more than half the time. [317]
In those cases in which the race of the killer is known, blacks kill twice as many whites as whites kill blacks. Black-on-white robberies and gang assaults are twenty-one times more common than white on black. In the case of gang robbery, blacks victimize whites fifty-two times more often than whites do blacks. [318]
The contrasts are even more stark in the case of interracial rape. Studies from the late 1950s showed that the vast majority of rapes were same-race offenses. Research in Philadelphia carried out in 1958 and 1960 indicated that of all rapes, only 3.2 percent were black-on-white assaults and 3.6 percent were white-on-black. Since that time, the proportion of black-on-white rapes has soared. In a 1974 study in Denver, 40 percent of all rapes were of whites by blacks, and not one case of white-on-black rape was found. In general, through the 1970s, black-on-white rape was at least ten times more common that white-on-black rape. [319]
Because interracial rape is now overwhelmingly black on white, it has become difficult to do research on it or to find relevant statistics. The FBI keeps very detailed national records on crime, but the way it presents rape data obscures the racial element rather than clarifies it. Dr. William Wilbanks, a criminologist at Florida International University, had to sift carefully through the data to find that in 1988 there were 9,406 cases of black-on-white rape and fewer than ten cases of white-on-black rape. [320] Another researcher concludes that in 1989, blacks were three or four times more likely to commit rape than whites, and that black men raped white women thirty times as often as white men raped black women. [321]
Interracial crime figures are even worse than they sound. Since there are more than six times as many whites as blacks in America, it means that any given black person is vastly more likely to commit a crime against a white than vice versa.
Notes
317. “What Should Be Done,” US News & World Report (August 22, 1989), p. 54. See also Department of Justice, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1987 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), p.7.
318. Department of Justice, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1987.
319. Gary D. LaFree, “Male Power and Female Victimization: Toward a Theory of Interracial Rape,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, No. 2 (September 1982).
320. William Wilbanks, “Frequency and Nature of Interracial Crimes,” submitted for publication to the Justice Professional (November 7, 1990). Data derived from Department of Justice, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1987, p. 53.
321. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations, pp. 183, 185.
——————————————————————————–
Jared Taylor, Paved with Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America (New York: Carrol & Graf, 1992), 92-93.
“Interracial crime figures are even worse than they sound. Since there are more than six times as many whites as blacks in America, it means that any given black person is vastly more likely to commit a crime against a white than vice versa. ”
Illogical, and irrational fallacy.
The figures would lend themselves to more Whites committing crimes against Blacks since there are more Whites in America than Blacks.
“Any given black person is vastly more likely to commit a crime against a white than vice versa.”
Numbers would put the crimes of white/black more in the area of Whites, than Blacks, since Whites outnumber Blacks in America.
Many of the so-called studies that indicate that interracial rapes involving a Black American male attacking a White female constitute a significant percentage of total rapes reported, while rapes involving a white assailant and black victim arecomparatively rare, should be looked at with a logical evaluation of said rapes. Statistics such as these perpetuate the kinds of myths and stereotypes about black aggression and white victimization recurring throughout American history: Big-bad Black man attacking White woman, when reality has shown that Big-bad White males have overwhelmingly raped and attacked Black women, and contribute to the persistent belief that the paradigm rape involves a black perpetrator and a white victim.
However, studies have shown that rape is far more intraracial, and less interracial, than has commonly been believed. By looking at population distributions rather than simply at number of reported rapes, Robert O’Brien demonstrated that even though the number of black assailant-white victim rapes is higher than the number of white offender black victim rapes, (and we must also factor in the many Black women who do not report rape when the rapist is a White man) its relative frequency is not.
When one group in a population is smaller than another, members of the smaller group will experience a higher rate of interaction with members of the larger group than vice versa. After taking into account the distributions of whites and blacks in the general population and in the offender population, one can conclude that not only are rapes less interracial than would be expected; by looking at population distributions, they are actually more intraracial than many want to acknowledge. Thus, the common myth/lie that Black Americans are more likely to rape White people than the reverse is unfounded, thus a fallacy. (1)
Therefore, White men are more likely to commit crimes (embezzlement, arson, murder, kidnapping, and yes!—rape) NUMBERS WISE/POPULATION WISE against whites and blacks, than say, moreso, than a Black woman would commit a crime against a White person (man or woman) NUMBERS WISE/POPULATION WISE. At any given moment, there are more White men committing crimes in comparison to Black women. White men outnumber Black women 7-to-1, therefore, it is illogical to state that more Blacks commit crime than Whites.
Because Blacks are smaller in numbers to Whites, the figures on crime statistics can be misleading. A smaller population group will always have crime numbers skewed that mislead people to think that there are large numbers of that small group committing ALL the crimes in America. Such misinformation would be lies and disinformation.
And that is what YOU state.
(1). See Robert M. O’Brien, The Interracial Nature of Violent Crimes: A Reexamination,
92 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY 817–35 (1987). His theory depends on the insight
that because there are fewer Black Americans in the population than there are Whites,
the relative frequency of blacks’ interacting with Whites will be higher than Whites’
interacting with Blacks in “asymmetrical” situations like rape. That is, “[a]ll minority
groups, singly or in combination, are more involved in intergroup relations with a group
constituting a majority than the majority group is with them.” Id. at 820 (quoting PETER
M. BLAU, INEQUALITY AND HETEROGENEITY: A PRIMITIVE THEORY OF SOCIAL
STRUCTURE 22- 23 (1977)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
30 “To illustrate, assume that there are 10% blacks and 90% whites in a population of
1,000; then, if there are 10 black-white marriages, 10% . . . of the blacks would be
intermarried, while only 1.1%. . . . of the whites would be intermarried.” Id. at 819. Id at 822.
“Shouldn’t a nation of bigots target blacks most of the time?”
A nation of bigots already does:
-racial profiling
-racist disparity in the (in)justice system
-defiling sexist/racist stereotypes created against Black women by White men during slavery; hateful lies that still exist over 400 years later;
-continuing redlining of Black communities;
-substandard unequal educations between Blacks and Whites;
-Black women paid $0.66 for every $1.00 a White man earns.
I’d say that America targets her Black citizens every time….all the time.
Hope that answers your question.