A Vile, Disgusting Crime

Via Steve Sailer, this report of a horrific crime in West Virginia. This is like something out of the movie Deliverance -- A young black woman was allegedly held for a week inside a shed located near a mobile home by a group of degenerate sadists who allegedly sexually assaulted her, forced her to eat dog and rat feces, poured hot water on her as they performed the sexual assault, and undoubtedly performed other evil acts upon her. In addition, the suspects, who are white, are alleged to have used racial slurs during the attack -- from the delicate manner in which the media reports are couching things, I assume they used the "N word." (Additional coverage -- including video of the poor woman and her mother can be found here.)

The AP is now reporting that the alleged perpetrators include two mothers and their grown children. As one report put it, the suspects are "not strangers to the criminal justice system." Since 1991, the six have faced a total of 101 criminal charges, the most serious being a first degree murder charge against Frankie Brewster, the owner of the mobile home where the alleged crime took place. She pled down to manslaughter and wanton endangerment and was released in 2000 after serving five years in prison. Brewster's son, Bobby Brewster, has also been charged in connection with this attack.

The other defendants include Karen Burton, who has faced 33 charges in her life, and her daughter Alisha Burton, who has "only" faced 20. Of course her daughter is only 23, so she can probably catch up with mom. Danny J. Combs and George A. Messer round out the list of defendants.

Words cannot express the sympathy I have toward this poor girl who was brutalized in this manner. Certainly if these charges are proven, the people who did them are vile scumbags who deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I would have no problem at all if this whole gang ended up dying in prison. And they're being charged with some serious crimes, so let's hope so.

Steve Sailer makes the point that this story will probably get more national attention than it otherwise would. He's probably right about that. If this were an otherwise-identical black-on-white attack, it's likely it would get less national coverage, and it's certain that the race of the attackers would be less prominently mentioned. Likewise if the attackers were illegal aliens. So he's right on the substance.

Maybe I'm having an attack of political correctness -- something I'm not generally prone to -- but I found Sailer's post a bit distasteful. My first reaction was "the poor girl," followed closely by "send these vermin to prison." Fine, make your point. But at least show some human compassion to a woman who appears to have been brutalized in an unspeakable manner. And some recognition that the people who did this are lower than dirt. (Assuming the allegations are borne out, that these people did it, etc.)

Like Steve Sailer, Dave Neiwart had a similar impulse. Not compassion or outrage, but instead the impulse to use the case to ride his favorite hobbyhorse. A different hobbyhorese, but still. For Neiwert, the case is a club for him to beat Michelle Malkin and the "wingnutosphere." He doesn't think she will talk about the case, and so that raises some issue of inconsistency. His very first sentence isn't about how bad the crime is or how he feels for the victim. Nope, it's a link to this post, where he bashes Malkin, at great length.

I'm not even worried about whether he's right, and Malkin has a big enough stage to defend herself. Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of Malkin, and I think she's wrong about a lot of things. Of course I also think that much criticism of her -- including Neiwert's -- tends to be overwrought and unfair. Untangling the fair criticism from the overwrought criticism requires rather more effort than I want to make at the time, and as I said I'm willing to let Malkin fight her own battles.

But couldn't Neiwert at least at least express some compassion for the poor girl who got raped and forced to eat dog shit? Show some desire that the culprits be punished (after a fair trial, of course)? His first impulse is to use this as a way of attacking his perceived enemies. And the truth is, I don't think that even Michelle Malkin condones this sort of attack. I think Neiwart has a touch of "Malkin Derangement Syndrome."