Evacuee Charged With Raping Mentally Challenged Girl

[ECH1969]

Lt. Rodney Neighbors of the Garland County Sheriff’s Department says an 18-year-old Louisiana man has been arrested for and charged with rape.

Glenn Dorsett is accused of raping a 13-year-old mentally challenged girl from New Orleans at the Assembly of God church campground on Hwy. 7 that has been set up for hurricane evacuees. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=19428

[Catch22Dem]

1. Where were ya on that one, god?

[SammyBlue]

4. And the racist Freepers will use this ONE story to say:

"See, they're all criminals and scum. Let them die." Just watch! Just watch!

Rush the nazi, Savage the stupid and Sean the asswipe will all scream that and the Freeptards and Ditto-monkeys will fall right in line.

Anyone want to gamble on that?

[RPM]

49. God is dead - thought you heard....

:D

[are_we_united_yet]

2. When they said mentally challenged

I thought of Ann Coulter or Laura Ingram

[SammyBlue]

5. No, don't insult the mentally challenged by comparing them to

Coulter or Ingraham. Coulter and Ingraham aren't mentally challenged, they are sub human!

[are_we_united_yet]

6. Good point

[merci_me]

13. If was Ann Coulter it wouldn't be rape,

it would be bestiality!

[Conservativesux]

24. No it wouldnt. Anne Coulter is a man in disguise.

[meow2u3]

38. That would be sodomy

If he raped Mann Coulter, it would be sodomy.

[Cocoa]

3. we should start a new forum

the "Evacuee atrocities" forum.

[bunny planet]

7. When will they start reporting rape rooms, and calling the evacuees

insurgents.

[kestrel91316]

8. And if she gets pregnant from this they will make her have the baby.

[nodehopper]

10. yep, pretty much :(

[Lone_Star_Dem]

9. I read about this yesterday

The article I read said he did this on a bus on the way to a church camp in Arkansas where they were to be housed.

When they arrived the girl was questioned and told about what had been done to her.

My thoughts are, if it's true he was scum before and still is scum. There were all kinds of people in New Orleans, not all of them were good ones. Just like every other city in they US, they also have a criminal element there.

His criminal history points out that he wasn't exactly a shining star before the hurricane.

"Lt. Neighbors says Dorsett's adult arrest history since he turned 18 years old includes Louisiana charges of aggravated criminal damage to property, illegal use of weapons, terrorizing, disturbing the peace, criminal trespass, manufacturing - distribution - possessing a controlled substance and possession of marijuana and crack cocaine. Neighbors says his juvenile history is unknown."

[iverglas]

11. no no no no no

It did not happen, we must deny it happened, we must not permit evil slanders against ... oops, do we know what race / religion / ethnicity / class the person charged represents?

No one of whatever race / religion / ethnicity / class he belongs to would *ever* exploit an opportunity to victimize a vulnerable person.

(Ah yes, there he is; an African-American man. Why, he couldn't have done it. And if he did, we must not say so.)

And women and children are not doubly vulnerable when the protections of civil society break down, and women and children with disabilities are not triply vulnerable. No, it is not common knowledge that the victimizers who are present in every population, of every race / religion / ethnicity / class, will exploit the kind of disorder that prevails in conflict and disaster zones to victimize the most vulnerable.

And even if that were common knowledge, and the people of good will who work with displaced persons in conflict and disaster areas did in fact recognize it and acknowledge their special responsibility to these vulnerable people, to protect them from the special risk of victimization, none of that knowledge applies to the Katrina disaster zone and the populations affected by it. No, they're not like any other population; they're all saints. Or they became so as soon as the hurricane hit.


And denial like that doesn't -- by reducing the likelihood that the risk will be taken seriously and addressed -- increase the risk of harm to vulnerable individuals like this poor girl ... whose tragedy is apparently now to be exploited here for political points no more distastefully than it can be expected to be exploited by the bad people.

I wonder what reasons we can all come up with for not believing what this girl says. I mean, we could just come right out and say it's because she's a female person ...

Or we could say yes, we believe you, but hush. Now is not the time to make African-American men look bad.

Yup, women, it's still time to sit down and shut up, lest your reality be used by someone somewhere to make someone else look bad.


Or ... we could say: where was civil society when this girl needed protecting from people who wanted to hurt her?? And if she is African-American, which she quite probably is, we might even ask specifically why civil society has been so negligent in protecting vulnerable African-Americans.

Oh, and we could always express our concern for the girl, and seek assurances that she is getting, for instance, emergency contraception and prophylactic medication against sexually transmitted disease, and appropriate emotional support and physical comfort and security ...

Anybody?

Of course, we might also acknowledge that in some extreme situations, civil society is simply not capable of providing all the protections that all its members are entitled to -- but still, we really might better direct our inquiries to determining whether all that could have been done to protect her was done, than to issuing demands for scientific proof of the offence such as I expect to be seeing here.



Anybody remember Angela Davis?


(edited to fix double negative)

[Cocoa]

12. who is saying it didn't happen?

none of the ten posts before you did. :shrug:


edit: although now that you mention it, there IS a distinct possibility that this in fact did not happen.

[iverglas]

16. well there ya go

although now that you mention it, there IS a distinct possibility that this in fact did not happen.

Now let's get to it.

Would the reason to doubt the alleged victim's word be that

- she is female?
- she is young?
- she is intellectually disabled?
- she is African-American?
- the alleged victimizer is African-American?

... - believing her would make somebody look bad?

That last one's not actually a reason for not believing her, but it might be a reason for saying one didn't believe her.

Of course, none of the others appear to be reasons for disbelieving her either, or even for doubting her word.

So why exactly IS there a distinct possibility that this never happened ... or would you say that there is a distinct possibility that it never happened?

[Cocoa]

17. because we know nearly nothing about this

because he hasn't been tried, let alone convicted. And notice, there is nothing in this story that says the girl reported this, all we know is that the police arrested and charged him.

But the main point is, your parody missed the mark, because none of the discussion before my afterthought was denying this person did this crime.

And I'll say again, this accusation may in fact turn out to be false, and that's important to keep in mind as well.

[iverglas]

21. eh?

And notice, there is nothing in this story that says the girl reported this, all we know is that the police arrested and charged him.

Of course, that isn't the only story available to those looking for information.

http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050909/APN/509091100&cachetime=5

... The alleged rape occurred Thursday night at the camp.

Neighbors said the two allegedly had sex on a bus they were riding from the convention center in New Orleans to Arkansas on Monday. He said the girl told investigators about the incidents.

Now, why the neighbours didn't do something to prevent the incident, I wouldn't guess.

She is 13. She is intellectually disabled. He "had sex" with her, according to what seem to be numerous eye-witness reports and the girl's own words.

Information is indeed sketchy. The incident in the camp is being described as "rape", the incident on the bus as "had sex" -- perhaps she consented (although her consent is not operative in law) in the first instance, and not in the second.

It appears that someone reported an incident to an authority, presumably the second incident once it came to someone's attention, e.g. by the girl reporting it to someone, and an investigation was commenced, and in the course of the investigation the neighbours reported the earlier incident, the girl was interviewed, and she confirmed the earlier incident. I can't imagine how the incident characterized as "rape" could have come to anyone's attention unless the girl reported it to someone or someone observed it.

Hmm. But yes, it's possible that whoever the various people involved are, they all made all of it up. And without anything resembling a reason to think this, I'll remember to characterize this "possibility" as just as plausible as the other.

And I'll say again, this accusation may in fact turn out to be false, and that's important to keep in mind as well.

That's usually the case when girls (and boys) and women report sexual assaults, you know.

I dunno though. You got yer eyewitnesses to an 18-yr-old man "having sex" with an intellectually disabled 13-yr-old girl, at the very least. I'd sure be wanting some reason to disbelieve them before keeping the possibility that the accusation is false too high in my mind.

If it happened, there is NO possibility that it didn't happen. The, er, best anyone can say is that s/he doesn't know whether it happened.

But the main point is, your parody missed the mark, because none of the discussion before my afterthought was denying this person did this crime.

The thing that struck me, you see, was that none of the "discussion" that had taken place before I began to compose my first post expressed a drop, a shred, an iota, of concern for the victim or for all the many vulnerable people in situations like hers.

Still not seeing much.

[dansolo]

41. I suspect that they did have sex

"Rape" is am emotionally charged word, and it implies violence of some sort, though the accounts don't seem to indicate that he forced himself upon her. But in this case, it sounds like he had sex with a underage, mentally disabled girl, which by all accounts is still rape, even if she agreed to it.

[achtung_circus]

27. It happened on a bus?

Were there no other people on that bus?

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

30. if you have something to say to me

"this long winded say nothing poster and friends"

Perhaps you would say it to me. If you wish to say something *about* me, or anyone not present in this thread, perhaps you would check the rules.

If you are going to say that I have been "trying to make the case all weeks that 1000's of black people were allowing people to just wade through the crowds at the dome and convention center and shop for young girls to rape", perhaps you would put your money where your keyboard is, and quote me saying something that can be characterized as that.

"I guess they now think that the NO cops are covering it all up though, since they said that none of those things happened."

And perhaps you could find us a quote to that effect -- and if you do find one that you think says that, perhaps you could tell us how anyone, police or otherwise, could know that anything at all did not happen anywhere that they were not present. If you didn't see me eat breakfast this morning, did I not have breakfast?

"Of course this is what would have to had happened to believe all the stories they were trying to spread about the rampant raping of babies and slitting their throats and murders that was going on."

As you know perfectly well, given the broad knowledge you seem to have of what *I* have said, *I* have said no such fucking thing. Would you have some reason for raising what someone I have never met or spoken to might or might not have said, in a post about me and about what I have said?


In point of fact, *I* have never said a single bleeding thing about either the dome or the convention centre. The information that I have cited -- the report by singer Charmaine Neville in what she confided to Archbishop Hughes (on videotape) that she and other women were raped -- occurred (allegedly ... we wouldn't want to take the word of a widely known and respected African-American woman for anything) somewhere on the flooded streets of New Orleans ... where she and who knows how many others had been abandoned without food, water, medical attention and protection from criminal victimization.

But she was just an African-American woman, so who the hell would believe her ... or care what happened to her?

[Roy]

31. If I had something to say to you sir, it would have been said!!!!

because even if this were not an anonymous community sir, I fear you not!

When your done pointing out the things that (I didn't say) you didn't say, then maybe you can stop trying to imply your thoughts are my words. Give me the same treatment you demand from me and others. Show me the quote where I said

"But she was just an African-American woman, so who the hell would believe her ... or care what happened to her?"

I noticed you came to a quick conclusion as to who you thought I was talking about. I said absolutely nothing about what *YOU* said or to have any knowledge, broad or otherwise, about you. But, you obviously know exactly what mold you fit into.
If this is the case be comfortable there and stop complaining to me, after all you put yourself in my comments not me.

And I will continue to comment about any thing that I wish, without your permission, thank you very much. If you don't like it tough shit.
If I wish to make negative or positive comments about a topic, an attitude, a behavior, or anything else, I will do it without asking your permission or advice on what I should say or should not say.

Hey, it's a discussion board and the admin here has given everyone even those they don't agree with the right to discuss anything they wish within the boundary of posted rules. But you know that already, for I see you take full advantage of doing just that, and you have no right to tell me what I *should* and *should not* do.
If you don't like my post the admins have a installed a little feature here called ignore, I suggest you use it as you see fit.

But then you may miss some other molds that you feel that you fit into.

[iverglas]

33. wooooo

Let me catch my breath.

... Oh well, nothing there. Just a few more baseless allegations and a lot of noise and pretense.

Um ... did you maybe want to actually say that the person you were referring to -- you know, "this long winded say nothing poster", the words you wrote to someone who had responded to a post by me -- wasn't me? I didn't notice you saying that. But heck, maybe you were referring to, oh, Will Pitt.


I suppose you think it's respectful to call a woman "sir". Can't think why you would ... oh wait, maybe I can ...

[Roy]

34. If the shoe fits.... wear it is my noisy pretend answer.....

I don't care if you are a he or she or even about what you think is respectful or not. It doesn't alter any prospects of my life good or bad.

Further, I don't have to explain my post to you or anyone else. I post for anyone who care to read them to take at face value, to read them and come to their own conclusions or to ignore them as they see fit.

Why are you getting so worked up and defensive about me posting my own thoughts on an anonymous message board?
Methinks thou dost protest too much.

If you feel so strongly about my post being noise and pretense, just put me on ignore.
Frankly, You are actually embarrassing yourself to no avail, because I will say exactly what I want to say without your or anyone elses permission.
If I accidentally dispense some information that may be useful to you, your welcome to use it to any advantage that can find.
But, if you find my post to be as you described above, there is a nifty little feature embedded in this software mentioned previously.

Short of that tough shit, be that respectful or not, whether you are a he, she, or otherwise. I don't care one little twit.

[barb162]

35. Out of the five things you mentioned

you might have forgotten to add she could have been hallucinating the whole thing from lack of food and sleep. :eyes:


Now you just KNOW I had to add that, because there weren't three or more videotapes done of the crime*, which means there's no perfect evidence anything really happened. And if there is no perfect evidence, then it could not possibly have happened.

:sarcasm:


*"alleged" crime :sarcasm:

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

15. what am I smoking?

The crap that my eyes have been taking in on DU for the past several days. Perhaps you and others missed it; too bad, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Of course, there was also a response right here in this thread that expressed concern only about the effect this would have on other people, and no concern about the victim or even acknowledgement of the harm done to her.

Given that you didn't know what I was talking about, the appropriate way of asking what I was talking about might have been something like "can you tell me what you're talking about, please?", do you think?


"Shame on anyone who takes advantage of a forced evacuation to prey on those weaker than they are."

You see, we agree.

I go farther, as you may well too, and say shame on the society and its authorities who failed to protect an exceptionally vulnerable member of that society from this kind of victimization, if the means to provide that protection were available to them.

And triply shame on them if the reason that they failed to protect her and people like her, when the means to do so were available, was because they were members of any particular race or class.

[NorthernSpy]

40. no one objects to SUBSTANTIATED reports!

We DO object to rumor being presented as fact, as you know very well.

For someone who complains endlessly -- and often groundlessly -- that others misrepresent her arguments, you seem to do an awful lot of that sort of thing yourself.

[sakabatou]

18. Christianity at its best

:puke:

[Conservativesux]

19. Lock him up and throw away the key !!!!

[Laelth]

22. made irrelevant by the self-delete above

:shrug:

-Laelth

[Conservativesux]

23. .

[ckramer]

32. Alternative: dead penalty

The argument would be: Why waste taxpayers money by feeding him for life? Let's kill some people when a good excuse araised.

[NorthernSpy]

43. what is a "dead penalty"?

Flogging, the ducking stool, the iron maiden -- those are all dead penalties. We don't use 'em any more. So I guess you could say they're pretty well dead.

Let's kill some people when a good excuse araised.

You baffle me.

[silverlib]

20. And how many rapes occurred across the nation?

For every serious "looter", how many "robberies" were thee elsewhere?

For every crime committed in New Orleans, what is the ratio in the rest of America?

I doubt seriously we will ever no the answer - but I think it is an important question.

[Cocoa]

25. evacuees' crimes will be under scrutiny

the cable courtroom shows are going to pound on it. Some of the cases will become national obsessions.

Think about it, there are hundreds of thousands of evacuees, think of all the villains to choose from!

[ElectroPrincess]

26. Gosh, guess we all know what that Psycho "Nancy Grace" will cover ...

all next week? :puke:

[iverglas]

28. and I'm still waiting

... among all the Ann Coulter jokes, and pre-emptive strikes against racist exploitation of criminal victimization of disaster victims by other disaster victims, and off-topic jibes at adherents of religions, and warnings that we must not believe anything that has not been proved (if we accept that a conviction is proof of anything or an acquittal disproof, which they aren't) ...

... to see any expressions of concern for the safety and well-being of people in the position of this extremely vulnerable girl, and all the others who have been made so vulnerable by the loss of the ordinary protections of civil society -- family, friends, neighbours (lot of good they did in this case), streetlights, homes, locked doors, police -- and any calls for assurances that all the protections that it is within their society's means to provide them are finally being provided ...

[barb162]

36. I so wholeheartedly agree with you, I can't tell you.

Where are the "expressions of concern for the safety and well-being of people" when the people are further victimized

[Cocoa]

37. and we're waiting for you to express such concern

you've condemned all of us for not expressing such concern, but you yourself have so far neglected to express your own.

Well, how do you feel about the safety of evacuees? Any ideas on what should be done?

[iverglas]

44. gee

I'm just a Canadian, you know. So I don't have a member of Congress or a President or a Governor or anything like that to call or email or pound on the door of. All I can do is hope that my neighbours were doing just that, loudly and clearly, as they watched what was being allowed to happen to people in the disaster area for days after the disaster began.

Mind you, in the middle of last week, I did email the house leader of my party in the House of Commons asking whether Canadian parliamentarians could not individually contact USAmerican congresspeople and senators calling on them to pressure their President to accept all the help we had been offering for search and rescue, relief, medical care, etc.

It's the summer vacation; I didn't get too far. The staff person who replied seemed to think that it was the violence on the ground that was preventing aid from being delivered. I referred her to sources to disabuse her of that notion. I also provided her with a piece from a Canadian public-sector union describing how right-wing government causes disasters such as this, a cautionary tale that our party should always remember:

http://www.nupge.ca/news_2005/n01se05b.htm
"New Orleans: the ultimate catastrophe of government cuts"

There wasn't much else an individual in Canada could do. Our government was already pressuring the US government to allow us to come to the aid of the people on the Gulf Coast. It would have taken me three days to drive to New Orleans to do anything myself ... I wasn't quite sure why a lot more people sitting in front of their TVs in the US weren't doing that, but I didn't know what I needed to know in order to have an opinion on that matter, so I didn't comment.

I had a lot of ideas on what should have been done. The authorities at all levels of government and in all relevant agencies of government in the US should have immediately begun rescuing the victims, should have immediately begun delivering relief and care to those who could not be rescued right away, and should have immediately put as many people in place on site to ensure that rescue, relief and care were being provided effectively and equitably, and people protected from victimization, as could humanly be done. Had the events happened in my own jurisdiction, I would have done everything I could to ensure that my governments did that, and everything I could to contribute to the effort myself.

At present, I can only hope that -- along with food, water, medical care and shelter, and other goods and services as it becomes possible -- appropriate security is being provided for people in precarious situations -- living in crowded evacuation centres, living in tents, living in facilities or isolated situations in strange communities, whatever. There ARE people like the man charged in this incident among the evacuees -- and worse. What earthly sense it makes to deny this reality, I cannot figure out.

Your statement that I "have so far neglected to express (my) own (concern)" is not accurate, but whatever. This thread is not the sum total of everything I have every said about anything, so again: if you are not aware of my having said anything in particular in the past, you might want to ask, rather than make inaccurate statements based on incomplete information and whatever else they might be based on.

There are people who have expertise in handling situations involving large numbers of displaced people in precarious circumstances, in this second stage of the crisis response. I would want to know that they were being given the resources to do their job, and that others working with the evacuees are being made aware of the risks inherent in the situation and equipped to deal with them.

The two points are:

1. In situations such as prevailed in New Orleans -- and I AM NOT TALKING exclusively about mass assembly centres for victims, I am talking about everywhere within the disaster area -- people are unusually vulnerable to victimization, and the people who are ordinarily specially vulnerable -- including women -- continue to be more vulnerable. A DUTY is owed to those people, by society, to PROTECT them to the extent it is able.

2. Because of the very nature of the situation, the ABILITY of society to perform that duty will be considerably lower than at normal times, even if all good faith is used in attempting to perform it. Victimization WILL occur, just as it occurs at the best of times, and DENYING THIS is not in the interests of the potential victims, if it results in all possible efforts not being made to aid them -- and in the reality of their experience, from which they will have to find a way to recover, being denied.

There simply is no conflict between the interests of the population who were victims of the natural and neglect-caused disaster itself and the population who were vulnerable to criminal victimization in the situation that resulted. They are the same people. Their needs were the same -- the need to be rescued, to be given relief, and to be protected from victimization.

They're the needs of all people at all times. They amount to what we call human security, and it makes no sense to say that there is a duty to provide helicopter airlifts and food and water but no duty to provide safety from criminal victimization. People hurt and die as a result of crime just as they hurt and die as a result of exposure and thirst.

The unfortunate fact, however, is that there are still many people who create conflict between the interests of women in a community and the interests of the community. African-American women have been the victims of this tactic forever, as have women who are members of any exploited and oppressed ethnic or racial group or class.

African-Americans are exploited, oppressed and vulnerable, as this event plainly demonstrates -- and so, of course, are poor people. Women are exploited, oppressed and vulnerable. African-American and poor women are no less vulnerable to victimization by men in their community than any other women. African-American and poor women are just as entitled to protection from that victimization as any African-American or poor person is entitled to protection from hurt or death by any other cause.

[NorthernSpy]

45. how does any of that justify the spreading of wild-assed urban legends...

... in place of actual news?

A lot of us here have objected to the rumor-mongering, and gotten bashed for it. We've said that the spread of unverifiable rumors has harmed the hurricane victims, and we were right about that. Have you taken note of what happened when a group of refugees walked for hours to reach the Crescent City Connection bridge in hope of reaching safety? And did you note the reason the Gretna police gave for forcing them back into New Orleans at gunpoint, and taking away all their food and water?

No one has a problem with substantiated reports of crime making the news. Throughout this ongoing discussion, we have acknowledged that crime occurs everyday, and doesn't stop for natural disasters. We want reported crimes investigated, an all appropriate action taken.

But from your side, we've seen nothing but indifference to the harm that rumor does to a vulnerable population. That attitude is rather hard to take, and increasingly hard to explain.

[iverglas]

48. I don't know

how does any of that justify the spreading of wild-assed urban legends...
... in place of actual news?

I don't know why you're asking me questions like this, and I would be really grateful if you would stop.

Please ask someone whom you might have some actual reason to think does believe that the spreading of wild-assed urban legends is justified, if you're looking for an answer.

When put to me, the question is simply loaded with a false premise: that I believe that the spreading of wild-assed urban legends was justified. I don't. You have not a single shred of a reason to think or insinuate that I do. So if I were to answer your "question", the answer would be: mu.

Please stop attempting to make it look to someone as if I spread such rumours, justified the spreading of such rumours or tolerated the spreading of such rumours. I have never even engaged in a discussion of the rumours or the spreading of them.

A lot of us here have objected to the rumor-mongering, and gotten bashed for it.

Then, again, you should tell this to someone who bashed you for it, or who tolerated the bashing, or whatever.

Have you taken note of what happened when a group of refugees walked for hours to reach the Crescent City Connection bridge in hope of reaching safety? And did you note the reason the Gretna police gave for forcing them back into New Orleans at gunpoint, and taking away all their food and water?

What are you asking me these things for? Why are you attempting to create the impression that I have, or would, deny any of these things? Why would you even try to create the impression that I would do anything other than decry such things, and denounce anyone who had done them?

Why would you suggest that I would think that these things are anything other than instances of the very thing I am talking about -- the failure of the society to protect its members?

But from your side, we've seen nothing but indifference to the harm that rumor does to a vulnerable population.

"My side". Would that be pompous Canadians, or rich white people, or racists, or enemies of the working class?

Perhaps you've managed to miss my description of what I *did* -- "doing" as distinct from talking. It's kind of hard to see, on a discussion board, what people *do*. Of course, I did post my email to a Member of Parliament in the Canada forum, and suggested that my fellow Canadians follow suit -- press Canadian parliamentarians to press their counterparts in the US to press their President to allow Canada to bring aid. If someone thinks there's something else I could have *done*, I'd be pleased to hear it, for future reference.

Here's part of my follow-up email to that MP's staffer. In response to her initial reply (my emphasis):

... I think the problems lie on the ground with logistical problems such as transportation, roads, and unfortunately the violence on the ground.

... I wrote:

I'd like to see our MPs pressuring our govt to pressure the US govt, and pressuring the US govt through elected representatives in the US, to let us do it. The "violence on the ground" is an excuse for the atrocity occurring there (and part of the atrocity occurring there) and precisely what governments exist to do something about.

I really don't know how I could make my position any clearer, or what more I could do to avert misrepresentation of it.

[iverglas]

46. btw

At present, this issue -- failure to protect victims of the disaster in the immediate term, while it was ongoing and people were trapped -- is no longer an issue. Lessons will need to be learned, and there will need to be accounting for failures, but the situation has changed and the obvious criticisms of the initial response do not by any means necessarily apply to the current response.

In the second stage of the crisis response, there is no reason to think that all possible efforts are not being made to provide evacuees with shelter, food, water, medical attention and physical security.

The risk of criminal victimization is undoubtedly still higher than in normal times and places, but not all risks can ever be prevented from materializing, simply because we do not have the resources to do so, or cannot do so for a whole host of other reasons. Intellectually disabled adolescent girls will always be exceptionally vulnerable to victimization, everywhere. It will always be impossible to prevent all of them everywhere from being victimized.

As long as there is no reason to think that the girl in this incident was not being protected to the extent that resources permitted, there is no criticism to be made of the society that owes her the duty of protection. THAT was my criticism during the first stage.

I do have to wonder about those neighbours, and how well they fulfilled their individual duty to vulnerable individuals among them -- decent, reasonable people just don't let thugs "have sex" with intellectually disabled 13-year-old girls in normal circumstances ... but I also have to consider how their personal capacity to respond to someone else's needs might have been reduced by their own horrific circumstances and experiences, and their responsibility diminished accordingly.

So this incident seems to be much more a matter of the "normal" failure of society, and its members, to protect -- a failure resulting from inability to protect everyone from everything, including bad people, despite best efforts, rather than from the kind of refusal to deploy any decent effort that characterized the initial response to the disaster victims. At least so I would hope.

And society is in a better position now to respond to these things the way it ordinarily does once they happen: through the criminal justice system. That is one way we try to prevent them from happening -- by punishing those who do them and putting everyone on notice of what will happen if they do them. It is only one way, and it only comes into play once all the initial protective measures that are available in a society have failed -- and it was those protective measures that were not provided during the initial stage of the disaster. The protection provided by streetlights and locked doors and families and a police presence had failed, and nothing was provided to compensate for their absence.

I'm still left wondering why anyone would deny this obvious reality: bad people sometimes do bad things. Let the right wing try if they like, let them pretend that this reality is something it isn't; that's their job.

[NorthernSpy]

50. and I'm left wondering...

... why you'd say:

I'm still left wondering why anyone would deny this obvious reality: bad people sometimes do bad things.

I can only imagine that you simply pay no mind to remarks other than your own. Those of us who have argued against the spreading of unsubstantiated reports have repeatedly said that people commit crimes every single day, and that there's no reason to assume that criminals will take a break for a hurricane.

Our argument has never been based on any assumption that a disaster area will suddenly be free of crime. You ought to have noticed that by now.

Really, you haven't been answering our arguments at all. Instead, you've spent the entire discussion in a thousand decibel rage-rant against some bizarre caricature of what you perhaps imagine the running dogs of anti-feminism might say.

At least, that's how it seems.

[aikoaiko]

39. Clearly, not all evacuees are saints,

I hope the ones who exploit the vulnerable in this time of crisis for self-indulgent pleasures are prosecuted (rape being one of the worst), and if found guilty, punished severely.

After hearing so many stories, I have to agree with Iverglas, that we care notdoing enough toprotect the evacuees from the criminals in their midst.

I wish they had deputized and supervised more people who brought their guns when evacuated rather than take away their guns.

[NorthernSpy]

42. specific incident, known victim; duly investigated by the authorities

This is a good example of a substantiated report, as opposed to the varied and ever-changing rumors we've been plagued with of late. Whether or not the man arrested is ultimately tried and found guilty of a crime, the report offers verifiable details. Without verifiable details, there would be nothing that could be honestly reported as news.

But according to some here, we've seen few rumors substantiated because the authorities are surely much too busy at the moment to investigate things like credible allegations of sexual assault. Guess not, eh?

[Roy]

47. They will pay no attention to that.

Especially the ones who get paid by the paragraph. They'll just rail and demand specific comments from others who has espressed their feelings and outrage of the victims and victimized throughout all of DU.

I guess they don't see them because they are apparently assigned to threads containing soecific content to disrupt.