Trial starts in 2007 Fla. gang rape, assault
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:36 am
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A man accused in the brutal gang rape and beating of a mother and her young son sexually assaulted the woman but did not participate in more than a dozen other horrific acts prosecutors allege, his attorney told jurors Monday.
The victims of the 2007 attack at their public housing complex just a few miles from downtown West Palm Beach say up to 10 masked teens raped the woman repeatedly and forced her and the boy to have sex with each other, then doused them with chemicals to clean the crime scene.
Williams said the suspects ripped the woman's clothes off and raped her repeatedly, at one point bringing her son over to watch.
The two were forced into a bathtub together, both stripped naked, as the suspects forced them to perform sex acts on each other, he said. They later allegedly doused the two with household cleaners. The victims huddled together in the tub for several hours, too scared to move.
Then, in pain and bleeding, they walked a mile to the hospital, Williams said.
Authorities say they still don't know why the woman and her son were targeted. The woman fled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with her son years earlier in search of a better life. With no money, they landed in the Dunbar Village housing project, where they almost instantly became targets for crime, standing out as Haitians among the mostly American-born black residents. Her car and the boy's bicycle were stolen. Their house was ransacked.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090824/ap_ ... rape_teens
Yet, they aren't being charged with a Hate Crime per Florida's 1989 legislation...is that only reserved for white on black crime?
The victims of the 2007 attack at their public housing complex just a few miles from downtown West Palm Beach say up to 10 masked teens raped the woman repeatedly and forced her and the boy to have sex with each other, then doused them with chemicals to clean the crime scene.
Williams said the suspects ripped the woman's clothes off and raped her repeatedly, at one point bringing her son over to watch.
The two were forced into a bathtub together, both stripped naked, as the suspects forced them to perform sex acts on each other, he said. They later allegedly doused the two with household cleaners. The victims huddled together in the tub for several hours, too scared to move.
Then, in pain and bleeding, they walked a mile to the hospital, Williams said.
Authorities say they still don't know why the woman and her son were targeted. The woman fled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with her son years earlier in search of a better life. With no money, they landed in the Dunbar Village housing project, where they almost instantly became targets for crime, standing out as Haitians among the mostly American-born black residents. Her car and the boy's bicycle were stolen. Their house was ransacked.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090824/ap_ ... rape_teens
Yet, they aren't being charged with a Hate Crime per Florida's 1989 legislation...is that only reserved for white on black crime?
