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Old 07-13-2007, 08:27 AM   #1
smurfalicious
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Horrifying gang rape & assault on mother & son

I don't know if I've ever been so horrified by what happened in an area so close to home. I had to post this.


I'd like to know your thoughts on trying these "boys" as adults versus juveniles.

Also, I don't know where to even begin with the psychological issues the victims will have to contend with for the rest of their lives...


Police arrest 3rd teen in rape

Quote:
Friday, July 13, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH — A third teenage suspect has been linked by a fingerprint to the vicious attack on a Dunbar Village woman and her 12-year-old son, during which the woman was gang-raped by as many as 10 school-aged assailants and forced to have sex with her son.

Police arrested Jakaris Taylor, 15, Thursday morning at his mother's apartment in the dilapidated housing project on charges that included armed sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, home invasion robbery with a firearm and wearing a mask while committing an offense.

"I'm just too upset ," said his sobbing mother, Jacqueline Minor, 32, after the arrest. "I can't deal with it."

The arrest of Taylor, who records indicate was a student at Oak Grove Academy, came one week after the arrest of Nathan Walker, 16, and nine days after the arrest of Avion Lawson, 14, whose DNA was found in a condom at the victims' home, police said.

Police said Lawson confessed to participating in the June 18 attack but Walker has not.

Taylor, who was first interviewed by police two days after the attack, initially denied involvement. He gave two additional statements in which he again denied any role, detectives said.

But when a crime scene investigator confirmed Thursday that Taylor's fingerprint was found inside the victims' home - near those of the other suspects - detectives arrested him.

He was picked up just as he was about to go to class at summer school, a family friend said.

Taylor admitted he was at the scene but later refused to speak about the case, detectives said. Like Walker and Lawson, Taylor's case is expected to be referred to a grand jury to ensure adult prison sentences if the boys are convicted.

According to police, the assailants tricked the woman into opening her door by saying her tires were flat, then forced her back into her home.

They allegedly raped her repeatedly, smashed a plate over her son's head, poured household chemicals into his eyes and forced them at gunpoint to have sex with each other. Friends say both are still in physical pain from their injuries.

The 35-year-old and her son moved out of Dunbar Village and have not told friends or relatives where they are staying. The woman is afraid because her attackers said they would find her and set her on fire if she told police what they did, her brother said.

The woman's father said the attackers poured ammonia on his daughter, a suffocating chemical whose gases alone can burn the eyes and lungs, in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence.

Family members said the boy now can see, though excruciating pain remains. Two days after the attack, the boy was immobile in a hospital bed, a 1 1/2 '-inch wound stitched across the top left of his skull and bandages covering both eyes.

The attackers did not seem to know the victims, who kept to themselves because the mother was worried that the neighborhood was unsafe for her son, police said.

Taylor, wearing dark green shorts and a black Michael Jordan T-shirt, smiled at the cameras outside the police station when reporters asked him whether he was guilty.

He was transferred to the Juvenile Assessment Center and will make his first court appearance today.

The arrest left Taylor's family heartbroken.

"I don't understand, I don't believe this," said Taylor's grandmother, Angela Bell, a few minutes after she heard about the arrest. "I'm so sick about this."

Police were able to match Taylor's fingerprint from the scene with prints already in their system from a Jan. 6 arrest on charges of aggravated assault and robbery by sudden snatching in West Palm Beach.

Police said he was among five assailants who attacked two men at Datura Street and Rosemary Avenue, knocking them off their bicycles as they rode home from work.

Minor, his mother, sent him to live with his grandmother on Windsor Avenue so he would stay out of trouble, said a family friend who spent Thursday by Minor's side but refused to give her name.

Taylor is an eighth-grader at Oak Grove, a school in Riviera Beach for students with behavioral problems, according to the family friend. He played youth league football and basketball and was known as a joker who apparently got "hooked up with the wrong crowd in Dunbar," the friend said. His family, including a younger brother and sister, moved to Dunbar from Boynton Beach about three years ago, she continued.

Having heard the police were asking about her son, Minor initially brought Taylor to the police station herself, the friend said. Minor has cooperated since the beginning of the investigation, police said.

Minor has been arrested eight times in Florida on charges that include fraud and making a false statement for public aid.

Taylor's father is deceased, the family friend said.

Investigators are awaiting results of tests done on other evidence from the crime scene.

"We're hoping more of it will come back and link to additional suspects," police spokesman Ted White said. "We've had investigators working 10, 15 and sometimes 20 hours a day, looking through evidence, waiting for it to come back and lead us to more arrests.

"It's been paying off."

After the attack, the mother and son walked several miles to the closest hospital for help. Not a single neighbor, some of whom HAD to have heard the attack through the paper-thin walls of the Section 8 housing, intervened or contacted authorities to stop it. All suspects are believed to be teenagers; the first one arrested was in middle school.
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Old 07-13-2007, 08:31 AM   #2
DanaC
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Appalling crime. On whether they should be tried as juveniles: if they are juveniles, then they should be tried as juveniles, regardless of the nature of their crime. That they committed a horrific crime does not in any way change their age and likely level of mental/emotional development.
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Old 07-13-2007, 09:00 AM   #3
jester
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this truly is a heinous crime - i don't know what your laws are concerning juveniles - my opinion would be to hold them in a facility for their age and when they become "adult" age - prosecute them as such. i know some people like to claim "products of their surroundings", but they still had a choice to make. it was the wrong choice.
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Old 07-13-2007, 09:07 AM   #4
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i personally think they should lock all the guys who did it away until the 12yr old son turns 18, then they should let him execute each and every one of them.
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Old 07-13-2007, 09:11 AM   #5
DanaC
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Quote:
this truly is a heinous crime - i don't know what your laws are concerning juveniles - my opinion would be to hold them in a facility for their age and when they become "adult" age - prosecute them as such.
Personally, I don't think anybody should be tried as an adult for a crime they committed whilst still juvenile.
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Old 07-13-2007, 09:21 AM   #6
smurfalicious
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How about this, which I forgot to include in the original post:

What about the neighbors who heard what was going on and failed to contact authorities? I can understand not wanting to physically intervene for of one's own personal safety, but anyone can call the authorities anonymously. Considering this is a crime-ridden area, and that the authorities were called to that particular area twice daily on average, then it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary to have a police presence show up.
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Old 07-13-2007, 10:14 AM   #7
jester
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC View Post
Personally, I don't think anybody should be tried as an adult for a crime they committed whilst still juvenile.
i understand that thought - what really gets me though is this was an adult crime - this is not something that probation is going to cure and not all prisons are a cure either, but for extreme crimes sometimes extreme punishments are needed.
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Old 07-13-2007, 10:27 AM   #8
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There's a whole hell of a lot more going on than a little old criminal behavior. They didn't steal penny candy. Their age became irrelevant after committing such atrocities. It's not like: well, at 18 they magically would have "known better" but since they were only kids they didn't know the magnitude of the situation.

Try them as you would try an 18 year old who committed such crimes.
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Old 07-13-2007, 10:43 AM   #9
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It's a serious crime for sure, but if you are going to have a distinction in the law between kids and adults, you should always apply that distinction, regardless of the crime. If you don't like it, then get rid of the distinction in the first place.

If there is a legitimate reason for the distinction, that reason doesn't go away just because the crime is a more serious one.
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Old 07-13-2007, 10:43 AM   #10
DanaC
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Quote:
i understand that thought - what really gets me though is this was an adult crime - this is not something that probation is going to cure and not all prisons are a cure either, but for extreme crimes sometimes extreme punishments are needed.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if one or more of these boys is still too dangerous to be allowed out into society when they are in their forties. I don't actually think extreme punishments help the situation at all. Most important issue for me, is removing dangerous people from mainstream society and keeping them incarcerated until they have been reformed enough to pose no threat.


Quote:
It's not like: well, at 18 they magically would have "known better" but since they were only kids they didn't know the magnitude of the situation.
It's not about them 'knowing better' or 'not knowing better'. It's about their understanding of the magnitude of their actions. It's about their understanding of the magnitude of the consequences of those actions. It's about the level of their ability to empathise with other human beings, which is undergoing a great deal of its development during those teenage years.

It's entirely possible that they could have got to eighteen and committed this crime, in which case they should be tried as an adult, because society can reasonably expect them to have fully developed the areas of the brain dealing with empathy and self restraint/censorship, by that age. Society can reasonably expect of them a level of understanding of the consequences of their actions appropriate for an adult.

They no doubt understand that what they did was wrong. They may well have some understanding of the consequences of their actions; but it is an understanding appropriate to the brain development of a teenager and that is different to the understanding which an adult has. That doesn't mean they should 'get away with it'. It does, in my view, mean that they should be treated as juveniles within that process and their punishment and/or rehabilitation should take that into account.
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Old 07-13-2007, 10:56 AM   #11
Shawnee123
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Quote:
It's not like: well, at 18 they magically would have "known better" but since they were only kids they didn't know the magnitude of the situation.
Quote:
It's not about them 'knowing better' or 'not knowing better'. It's about their understanding of the magnitude of their actions.
Which they did. Sorry, I don't buy that they just weren't "developed" enough to understand. 15, 18, 21. I didn't draw the arbitrary lines in the sand, but I sure know when those lines don't matter.


Geez peeps, they made the mom and son have sex! But I guess they didn't understand. Did their parents not have the Howard Cunningham sex talk with them?

Quote:
Taylor, wearing dark green shorts and a black Michael Jordan T-shirt, smiled at the cameras outside the police station when reporters asked him whether he was guilty.
Nice kid, just misguided.
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Old 07-13-2007, 11:00 AM   #12
skysidhe
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more doom and gloom
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Old 07-13-2007, 11:02 AM   #13
Shawnee123
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Perhaps they should have baked the kid.
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Old 07-13-2007, 11:12 AM   #14
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This thread seems really more to belong in Current Events than Home Base.
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Old 07-13-2007, 12:03 PM   #15
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Yeah, Florida. What in the hell is wrong with the people in Florida?!? I didn't used to use generalized negative statements like that...but....I used to edit appeals cases for a publishing company, and I got a very good look at what the people of that great state do. I spent 4 months editing Florida, (and didn't put a dent in it) that's 10 volumes and a high production rate. By the time I was done I decided that Florida needs to just fall off the map. (I'm about to start cussing I think) This is actually average activity for the people in that fabulous state.....Numbers and numbers of rape/murders etc. etc. (you don't even want to know the horrific details).... it should be considered a national crisis. Sometimes I would cry before I left the company parking lot. The judges opinions should have started looking more like evacuation plans. Worse has definitely happened there (a whole lot) and I think if someone actually called a spade a spade, the people of Florida would go on lock down and everyone would be separated from each other just for the general health and well being of the people of the United States. *knee jerk* *twitch* Smurf- read some Florida citators and it will alleviate your shock. Florida....get out of Florida.
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