Two children 14 and 7 raped and murdered in the Convention Center.

[KyndCulture]

Murder and mayhem in New Orleans' miserable shelter
By Mark Egan
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - With the rotors of President George W. Bush's helicopter sounding overhead, New Orleans' poor and downtrodden recounted tales of murder, rape, death threats and near starvation since Hurricane Katrina wrecked this city.

snip--

"I had to walk two blocks to get here and I have arthritis and three ruptured discs in my back," said Selma Valenti, 80, as her husband lay beside her, being revived by a policeman in riot gear. The two had eaten nothing since Wednesday.
Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were threatened with murder on Thursday.
"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came -- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."

Other survivors recounted horrific cases of sexual assault and murder.

Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights raping and murdering children.

She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.

"She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."

--snip--

http://www.radionewsamerica.com/index.php?blog=2&p=8261&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1


OMG OMG when is it gonna end. Please God help these people!!!

[AtomicKitten]

1. Locking them in with predators is unforgivable.

God help them.

[DELUSIONAL]

2. The LA National Guard should have been there for LA

Several others interviewed by Reuters told similar stories of the abuse and murder of children, but they could not be independently verified.

These stories need to be verified.

[KyndCulture]

3. agreed, but how are the reporters going to do that?

Are you saying you don't believe this? I've seen too many stories not to.

[DELUSIONAL]

7. Rumors spread -- and in a crisis with lots of people crammed in

together word of mouth is both good and questionable.

If there are bodies -- then the police should be involved.

The reporters are being professional -- they want verification. They reported what they were told and then tried to verify -- but as yet they have not been able to.

I am hoping that nothing horrible happened to the children -- but we do need to avoid spreading rumors and to wait for verification. I'm sure the reporters are on this -- in fact the story mentioned that they couldn't verify the story -- which means they tried to and they will continue to follow this.

The reporters are our eyes and ears -- and I'd say they are doing a pretty good job in a horrible situation.

[Solomon]

4. Yes they DO NEED TO BE VERIFIED.

[KyndCulture]

5. Email reuters, that's where this story came from.

I don't see how they are going to verify this with that place not under control yet.

[Judi Lynn]

8. It's hard to understand how a woman can find a dead child

and ascertain it has died after being raped for four hours.

Reuters should not simply publish rumors like this which have been stated to a reporter, or invented, as in the many, many admissions which have been made by reporters over the years after having been caught trying to create sensational stories.

Several in the last couple of years at prominent papers.

Since so much "information" is exploding, it would be easy for unscrupulous writers to try to get creative.

Reuters should be ashamed. Obviously.

On edit:

Please review this excellent post, #27 concerning emotion-charged accusations, which serve to villify others:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1748640#1749208

Poster's #24 is important, and CLEAR HEADED. Intelligent. Quite different from some of the deliberately misleading comments I've seen in the last few days.

[itzamirakul]

6. Exactly why our troops should be in NOLA hleping evacuate these

people instead of being in Iraq.

Some of this sounds like reporters trying to stir up the white militia to start a second Civil War.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Oh GOD!!!

[Judi Lynn]

10. Please refer to this post from LBN on the story you're featuring.

It should aid in providing some missing perspective for those who would otherwise run amock:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1748640#1749237

(I've seen people feeding on wild sensationalism before, and it's comical. I have a distant relative in Birmingham, who used to streak over to his aunt's house to pour out all the wild, racist rumors he'd heard that day, ALL of them related to their obsession with the civil rights workers in the South during the 1960's.

He insisted on yammering about how condoms were lying all over the streets because the outsiders from the North were fornicating with the black people from Birmingham during the marches, etc., and they threw them all over the place.

It turned her into a nervous, anxious wreck, thinking it was the end of the world. I trust she eventually saw through his lies, in later years.