Mother and Son Brutally Attacked in Florida

I Am Sure That The Thug Culture Apologists Would Say That The "White Man" Is Responsible For The Attack

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 16 — The single mothers and children who fill most of the apartments at Dunbar Village — a housing project on the poor, black, north side of this city — are used to nightly gunfire. They are used to theft, assault, murder and the indifference of federal and local authorities.

But nothing could have prepared them for the awfulness of the attack that took place last month, which the local prosecutor called “the worst crime I’ve seen in 37 years in the business.”

After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment at Dunbar Village and then went further, forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. They took cellphone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman’s skin and the boy’s eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire.

Neighbors did not respond to her screams, and no one called the police. The victims ended up walking a mile to the nearest hospital afterward.

[On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Avion Lawson, 14; Jakaris Taylor, 15; and Nathan Walker, 16, on charges in connection with the case that include eight counts of sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, two counts of kidnapping and one count of promoting sexual performance by a child. The three teenagers, who will be tried as adults, face life in prison if convicted.]

The police have said that Mr. Lawson’s DNA was found in a condom at the crime scene.

The people of Dunbar Village are petrified, furious and doubtful that even such a savage crime will bring about change. West Palm Beach — “a city of unsurpassed beauty,” its Web site says — has eagerly permitted luxury condominiums and revitalized neighborhoods for the rich and middle class. But the north side, where steady violence has pushed up the city’s crime rate, continues to languish.

“They keep promising, promising, promising,” said Citoya Greenwood, who lives four doors down from the attack victims, who have since moved away. “Nothing is getting done.”

Ms. Greenwood, 33, is one of the few Dunbar Village residents speaking openly about the attacks. Others agreed to be interviewed but would not give their names, fearing consequences. The police said many had shrunk away from their questions, a longstanding problem in the neighborhood.

On Monday, Ms. Greenwood attended a city meeting where she implored the mayor and commissioners not to forget what happened.

“Just stop by and see what goes on there,” she said, “and you’ll see how I have to live and how my daughter has to live every day.”

“It didn’t affect the people’s lives on Palm Beach,” Ms. Robinson said, referring to the wealthy island across the Intracoastal Waterway from West Palm Beach, “but it sure affected the people who live in Dunbar Village.”

The rape victim, a Haitian immigrant, lived quietly, Ms. Greenwood and other neighbors said, rarely letting her son venture outside their apartment in a dull yellow building with wooden porches and clotheslines in the backyard.

She has left Dunbar Village, neighbors said, but this month she gave an interview to WPTV, a local television station. She described how that night, someone knocked at her door and said her tires were flat. When she returned from checking on the car — borrowed from a friend because hers had recently been stolen — a throng of men, their faces covered, followed her inside.

They had two guns, she said. They stayed three hours.

“Nobody came for us,” the woman, 35, said in the interview with WPTV. “Nobody even called the police for us.”

She had been victimized before at Dunbar Village, she said; her apartment had been robbed, her car stolen, her son shoved off his bicycle.

Maybe she was singled out because she is Haitian, the woman said, adding, “I don’t know the reason.”

Ted White, a spokesman for the West Palm Beach Police Department, said detectives were analyzing evidence and interviewing people who might lead them to more suspects.

Nine people have been murdered in West Palm Beach so far this year, Mr. White said, down from 13 by this time last year. Palm Beach County is particularly worried about youth violence; the county sheriff’s office created an antigang task force in January, and West Palm Beach is planning to expand the boundaries for its curfew law, which now bars people under 18 from the downtown area after 11 p.m. on weekends and 10 p.m. on weeknights.

The curfew will not help Dunbar Village, less than two miles north of downtown, where residents described packs of teenagers loitering outside well past midnight in the months before the attack. One neighbor of the victim, who would not give her name but said she had waited two years for housing in Dunbar Village, said teenagers used to lurk under a tree with droopy branches just behind the victim’s apartment.

Those branches are gone now — cut off by maintenance workers last weekend so the new security camera will have a better view. The nights have been quiet at Dunbar Village, the neighbor said, and on a recent searing afternoon, the only sign of life outside was children at play.

“That’s going to be scarred in my mind forever,” the neighbor said, her voice rising, before driving off with her daughter. “I could have never, ever believed that would happen six doors down from me.”

Outside another unit, Calvin Jones, 71, said he would leave with his 13-year-old granddaughter this weekend. They came to Dunbar Village from Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Jones said, and now they were going back — though with no home.

“If you knew that happened,” he asked, “would you stay here?”

Laurel Robinson, executive director of the West Palm Beach Housing Authority, said that even before the attack, the agency had decided to allow only a single entrance for cars at Dunbar Village and to install a “panoramic security camera” with a direct feed to the police department. The camera will allow the police to monitor most of the 17-acre property, Ms. Robinson said.

Cars will need an electronic device to open the gate at night, she said, but there is no way to stop people from entering on foot. As dismal as the conditions are at Dunbar Village, she said, more than 700 families are on a waiting list for housing there and at four other projects in West Palm Beach.

Mayor Lois Frankel said improving Dunbar Village and the surrounding neighborhood was “high on my radar screen,” ideally by replacing the complex with mixed-income housing. But Ms. Frankel said the city had already tried to address problems there, adding, “It would not be accurate to say that these people live in an enclave of neglect.”

The housing authority is financed by the federal government, and has repeatedly failed to win a federal grant that would have allowed the demolition of Dunbar Village and relocation of its 300 residents. Four years ago, Congress eliminated $165,000 a year that paid for extra policing at the city’s housing projects as a part of a national cutback in housing money.