Reported by: Jamie Holmes
Photographed by: Eric Pasquarelli
She is 35 years old, but as she enters to speak to us, she moves as if she is far older.
She is in pain.
"I was so scared," she says.
This woman and her 12-year old son never wanted to end up in Dunbar Village.
Work was hard to find, she had a back injury, but like so many others there it was better than the street.
Right away, she was different.
Haitian born, she had raised her son as a Christian, and she tried to keep him inside, away from the temptations of Dunbar.
"I know there are bad people there. Even if I call the police, they will kill me and my son. That's why I don't stay outside, I stay in my room."
Almost instantly they were targets of crime.
The boy had his bike swiped, their car was stolen, their house broken into and ransacked.
Nothing would compare to the night of June 18-th, when there was a knock at her door and someone said her car tires had been slashed.
"When I go outside, I see I didn't have any flat tires."
When she and her son came back inside, she says ten men, their faces wrapped in T-shirts, stormed in behind them.
"The one in the front had a big gun and two others had a shotgun. I couldn't see their face. They said, 'Give us the money.' I said I didn't have any. They said, 'If you yell we kill you and your son.'"
It is then they tooK something else.
There are no ways around what happened next.
For three hours these men took total control over a mother and her son and they made them suffer.
"Some of them had sex with me twice, some of them had sex with me three times. They're beating me up. They make me do those things over and over. The man with the big gun, he put the gun inside of me. They have sex with me in the front, in my anus. I said please, I don't do that kind of stuff."
Despite the thin walls on her run-down apartment, no one heard her screams, or if they did, no one came to help.
"Nobody came for us, nobody even called the police for us. People in the next apartment, if they are talking, I can hear everything they say."
The men put the woman in her bathtub, doused her in cleaning products, and used soap to try and clean out the evidence.
Then they brought in her son who had been repeatedly beaten in his room.
What happened next, is heart-breaking as the mother is forced at gunpoint to perform oral sex on her own son.
"I tell him it doesn't matter, to save your life child, to do it. I know you love me, and I love you too, but you have to protect yourself."
When the attackers finally left, mother and son laid there together, sobbing in the bathroom.
Too scared to get up, too shocked to even call police.
Now her life is shattered.
She can't keep any food down, she can't sleep.
And despite their high profile arrest, she has no thoughts on the 16-year old and 14-year old who have been charged with the attack.
All that matters now is picking up the pieces.
Her son, who hid in his room through our interview, said nothing to us.
But as we spoke to his mother, we could hear his soft sobs coming down the hall.
"I have to try and talk to him everyday. He's so angry, he said we never should have moved to Dunbar Village."
http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=d38eaab5-d429-4f9c-95b0-5410a41ed4c2
Photographed by: Eric Pasquarelli
She is 35 years old, but as she enters to speak to us, she moves as if she is far older.
She is in pain.
"I was so scared," she says.
This woman and her 12-year old son never wanted to end up in Dunbar Village.
Work was hard to find, she had a back injury, but like so many others there it was better than the street.
Right away, she was different.
Haitian born, she had raised her son as a Christian, and she tried to keep him inside, away from the temptations of Dunbar.
"I know there are bad people there. Even if I call the police, they will kill me and my son. That's why I don't stay outside, I stay in my room."
Almost instantly they were targets of crime.
The boy had his bike swiped, their car was stolen, their house broken into and ransacked.
Nothing would compare to the night of June 18-th, when there was a knock at her door and someone said her car tires had been slashed.
"When I go outside, I see I didn't have any flat tires."
When she and her son came back inside, she says ten men, their faces wrapped in T-shirts, stormed in behind them.
"The one in the front had a big gun and two others had a shotgun. I couldn't see their face. They said, 'Give us the money.' I said I didn't have any. They said, 'If you yell we kill you and your son.'"
It is then they tooK something else.
There are no ways around what happened next.
For three hours these men took total control over a mother and her son and they made them suffer.
"Some of them had sex with me twice, some of them had sex with me three times. They're beating me up. They make me do those things over and over. The man with the big gun, he put the gun inside of me. They have sex with me in the front, in my anus. I said please, I don't do that kind of stuff."
Despite the thin walls on her run-down apartment, no one heard her screams, or if they did, no one came to help.
"Nobody came for us, nobody even called the police for us. People in the next apartment, if they are talking, I can hear everything they say."
The men put the woman in her bathtub, doused her in cleaning products, and used soap to try and clean out the evidence.
Then they brought in her son who had been repeatedly beaten in his room.
What happened next, is heart-breaking as the mother is forced at gunpoint to perform oral sex on her own son.
"I tell him it doesn't matter, to save your life child, to do it. I know you love me, and I love you too, but you have to protect yourself."
When the attackers finally left, mother and son laid there together, sobbing in the bathroom.
Too scared to get up, too shocked to even call police.
Now her life is shattered.
She can't keep any food down, she can't sleep.
And despite their high profile arrest, she has no thoughts on the 16-year old and 14-year old who have been charged with the attack.
All that matters now is picking up the pieces.
Her son, who hid in his room through our interview, said nothing to us.
But as we spoke to his mother, we could hear his soft sobs coming down the hall.
"I have to try and talk to him everyday. He's so angry, he said we never should have moved to Dunbar Village."
http://www.wptv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=d38eaab5-d429-4f9c-95b0-5410a41ed4c2
