Rape & Murder in NO: I need help understanding this

[Saffron]

While I agree some stories may be slightly exaggerated and over-reported, I can't tell you how many anchors and reporters I have seen literally break down and CRY during all of this or have a serious tantrum. These are not things you normally see from any news reporters, no matter what the situation. I have seen Geraldo, Anderson Cooper, Miles O'Brien, Shepard Smith, Jeanne Meserve, an unidentified blonde local reporter, and one of the CNN anchors I really like...her name is escaping me now...Carol something....totally break down and cry or have a yelling fit. I don't think they're acting...that doesn't get them any journalistic awards.

I really don't think we could comprehend the actual depths of despair and destruction down there even from watching it on TV. You have to smell it, touch it, see it, hear it, and experience it to really get it.

Oh I agree, 100%!

I'm not talking about the horrific conditions, the death, the dying, the despair, I'm talking about the reports of the people killing and raping each other. Like I said in my last post, I do believe that some of it has happened, but I don't believe to the extent that it's been alleged. If widespread mahem, murdering and raping, civilization as we know is just lost there, the reporters themselves wouldn't be able to report. As you've heard, most of the newscasters have been outraged by the relief/aid response efforts, not by the vicitims of this tragedy themselves. I recall seeing newscasters outraged by the almost non-existent relief/aid response effort that has allowed the death toll and the despair to rise even higher, day after day.

I think what is happening is that there are reports of rapes (maybe from one person to another) or the reports of murder (maybe from one person to another) and things spin out of control like the old "Whisper Down the Lane" game. That doesn't mean that some haven't occured, I saddly believe they have.

Look at this thread alone. There are reports of a girl 7 years old, or 14 years old, being raped, or being ganged raped until she was dead, or being raped then murdered, then the offender being shot dead, or maybe beaten to death. Then I followed the link in someone's threads to a newspaper account of some students from England who were stranded in the sports complex. One wrote in his diary that gang fights were breaking out and people were weilding weapons against each other during them, people were throwing racial slurs at the students, a man had been arrested for raping a 7 year old girl in the bathroom, there was human feces and urine everywhere and they feared for their lives, they were afraid they would become a target at one point. I believe all of that student's writing. I believe his diary because that's what I've heard the people themselves say on television.

As truly awful as it is, and I'm sure others have stories that are just as bad or even more horrific, I still think the rapes and murders are isolated incidents, not wide spread and rampant as it is being made out to be. And no matter if they are isolated incidents, it's still very, very sad and tragic and unthinkable, and I hope they find whoever did those things and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law and then some.

But I absolutely think and agree that the death, destruction and despair is wide spread and rampant. I never meant to infer any differently and I hope no one took that from my last post. I'm sorry if they did, I never meant it that way.

 

[peter+lynne]

do you think this would happen in any other country or just the usa i cant believe we would de-generate into primeavil beings so quickly in the uk.
i still cant believe it is the usa i am watching on tv.

 

[Divamomto3]

do you think this would happen in any other country or just the usa i cant believe we would de-generate into primeavil beings so quickly in the uk.
i still cant believe it is the usa i am watching on tv.

I really don't have a response to this that the webmasters wouldn't find attacking or at the very least, sarcastic. So I guess I'll have to keep my mouth mostly shut. This isn't happening all over the 90,000 square mile disaster area. This isn't representative of the entire U.S. or the entire disaster area. It is an isolated area that I'm sure your news media that thrives on gossip and sensation can't wait to show you.

 

[Luv2Roam]

I wondered when all this started what would happen to the junkies, alcoholics and gangs. Their behavior and need does not stop. It just becomes more obvious in such poor, cramped conditions.
I could see where gangs would love a situation like this. They would try to take over and be "king" in no time. They have nothing to loose and everything to gain.
They go to a shelter in the next state over -- who are they? Nothing but a gang of unknown thugs in a crowd of thousands, all who own nothing and stand in line for food.
Plus security is all around in shelters outside of NO. (And now in NO.) The gangs did not have to worry about security most of last week. They are opportunists, narcisstic psychopaths.

 

[mark&sue]

I truly believe this would happen where I live in London if something similar was to happen. I am scared going on tube trains because other British Nationals are trying to blow us up. We had a mini tornado in Birmingham a month or two ago affecting a small amount of residential streets and looting took place at that time. However both London and Birmingham are cities. Perhaps Peter+Lynne you would be safe on the Isle of Mann.

I am 41 years of age and have never bought a newspaper here in UK because of the very reasons stated previously.


Susan

 

[peter+lynne]

actually it was cnn i am watching and readind usa news websites no the uk press i dont read them as they are the real gutter press i think we even invented rubbish news media.

what i am trying to say bit i didnt get it over properly (my mistake) is that we in the uk regard the usa as just like us rational careing people and i find it upsetting to see people behave like this.
if it was iraq or afghanistan or anywhere like that we would say oh well what do you expect but not in the usa.

 

[d-r]

New Orleands is a major city. Most of the people with cars evacuated, some stayed for whatever reason, but most of the people who were still there were the poorest people. The elderly. People who were sick. And yes, like any city in America, there were criminals. I'm sure there were gang members. I'm sure there were mentally ill people - really flat out crazy people - who haven't been taking their medicine for a few days. There are probably a lot of people there who have never been more than 5 miles from their home in their entire life. Inner city folks who don't have a minivan to hop into, or even the understanding of how to go somewhere else like suburban folks do. So then you put thousands of folks together, with little food, water, a lot of stress, little information about what will happen. Oh, and most of these people have nothing. And it is surprising that some bad things happened? The overwhelming vast majority of these folks just need help.

 

[Saffron]

do you think this would happen in any other country or just the usa i cant believe we would de-generate into primeavil beings so quickly in the uk.
i still cant believe it is the usa i am watching on tv.

I know I certainly didn't expect anything like that to happen here and I doubt many people did. I think one thing unique to American culture is, no matter what, no matter how divided we may be on political issues, in times of need we always, always, always set things aside and stand with each other and for each other, lifting each other up. People are and were trying to do that all this week. Why these things happened (as far as I can tell in very isolated instances) is anyone's guess at this point in time. That's something that has never happened before, as far as I know.

Who knows what would happen in other countries around the world if something like this were to happen there. Not a soul knows until you go through it. You can guess, but you'll never know.

 

[MrsNick]

What I want to know is, whether it was two rapes, or two hundred, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN"S GROUPS? Why are they not speaking up to support women's and children's rights not to be preyed upon by predators, particularly during a crisis?

And, IMO, it is likely more, rather than fewer, rapes that occurred.

As far as people thinking that reporters are exaggerating by the sheer fact that they are still on the scene, I have two points to make.

First, many reporters do put themselves in harm's way to do their jobs. Remeber Daniel Pearl?

Second, I recall one fellow on Fox News (don't remember his name) who did state that they had changed locations because they felt that looters who were stealing from and menacing others might just make the news crew the next target.

 

[dawgsgirl]

There is a larger segment of our population than you want to believe that are just plain BAD!! They simply had a good chance and took advantage. It is easy to believe that everyone is good, but sadly that is NOT the case. There are very twisted people out there.

 

[phamton]

Sorry to bump an old thread but just wanted to add some information. The rapes and murders at the superdome stories have turned out to be false and just one of the urban legends popping up:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/21/katrina.recovery/

Cataldie also put to rest rumors that some stranded evacuees who packed the convention center and Superdome had been murdered.

None of the 10 people who died at the Superdome or the four who died at the convention center were murdered, he said.

The people who died at the two shelters, he said, "were so fragile, quite honestly, they didn't make it without medical care."

Edited to add: About the link posted earlier in the thread from Dr. Charles Burnell who told about rapes and murders in the Superdome:

The New York Times has been trying to verify his story but Dr. Charles Burnell has refused to comment. It seems he may have just been repeating a story that he was told.

 

[Saffron]

I can't help it, I just have to say, told "you" so. Not nice of me I know, but I couldn't stand to see the rumors perpetuated on the DIS, it really made me feel uneasy.

If something doesn't seem right, it usually isn't. Like I said in one of my other posts on this thread, when things go wrong in the USA, we stand together, with each other, we do not stand against each other. It was no different this time around. It's VERY sad that it had to be reported that way.

Here is a link that breaks down things. Apparently one person's death (at this time) is considered a murder (either stabbed or shot) and another is a suicide, and there is one confirmed rape. Like I said in earlier posts, one rape or murder is too much, but NO wasn't in a state of "civilization gone mad" as the media was reporting. It was, as I suggested in a post on this thread, more or less a "whisper down the lane" type of reporting happening from the evacuees and media.