Posted on 09/27/2005 11:36:58 AM PDT by andyk
NEW ORLEANS
On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.
One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.
To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.
Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.
A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."
Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.
Bill Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between young men, but "no murders, no rapes." He said that he did see people dying, but that those deaths were most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.
"People were wanting just some type of authority to come in and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,'" Waldron said. "People were scared."
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.
Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she said.
"It is extremely difficult to get good statistics about rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly not normal circumstances," she said.
Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University, said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances and paucity of authoritative information.
"Rumors become improvised news. You become your own anchorman," he said.
The chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"You get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture is that you use generalizations that become untrue," McBride said.
Well, damn! I didn't ask you to prove an opinion. I specifically said that your opinion was "misinformed." And it is.
You quite clearly accused me of having posts "full of bigotry." Well, you made the charge, now prove it. And it was a demonstrable fact that you made the charge.
Get busy. I want to see you back up your charge. And if you can't, have enough decency to retract your statement.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
Come'on guys...ease up. Have fun...and don't take things personally.
Thanks!
I have nothing to prove to you- You may not recognize it-since you don't get to see it that often... BUT- I am one white gal who wont cower to you or try to appease you - all because you want to call me a racist or a bigot for disagreeing with you.
I know who and what I am- the other people who really know me know if your accusations are true or not and those are the only people I care about. And you can line up 100 of your buddies to call me a racist and KKK member and a bigot- and it won't change my feelings a bit.
I have been there- done that with you and your buddies already and I threw the t-shirt away.
I will not retract my opinions of your posts or my opinion of what you are doing here at this website, or any of my opinions of what is going on with racial issues in this country.
You don't like what I have to say? Don't read my posts.
LOL...keep dreaming.
It was amazing how fast some were willing to believe all these stories considering how much the MSM is distrusted on this site.
Not that hard to look up everything you post.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
The media reported any spicy news they got. That is how they do it.
In the civic center, and the dome, it was horrendous.
Gunfire was heard. A guard was shot.
Thugs and Drugs were in abundance.
People were scared for their lives.
Blacks advised whites "you don't belong here."
It wasn't racial. It was damn good advice.
When it came down to it, American pride, God fearing pride showed itself.
The biggest and strongest , both black and white, defended the weak and infirm.
That is why there were not as many deaths and other violent acts as imagined.
These men will go unnamed, unacknowledged.
They don't consider themselves heroes.
God does.
The MSM won't be investigating those events. No spice.
I cautioned my best friend here at FR to withold judgement for exactly this reason. The MSM lies.
Ooooh....yeah!....Hey! Now cut that out! It ain't time to sleep yet.
Yep. After a while, I began to wonder because the MSM needs death and drama to make their numbers. Also, I wonder about the foreign press repeating the same stories with much 'happiness' because it was all about America bashing and Bush hating.
Nagin got them from a trusted source. Someone at the dome. Someone in the LNG. Someone under the control of Governor Blanco.
It was about that and more. The worst part was that the media was complicit in the attempt to drive the racial wedge deep. Despicable behavior.
Yep
Remember how they reported 6 Army Corps Engineers being shot by the NO Police??
They blew that story BIG TIME
And gave everyone a heart attack in the process
YES.
Yeah, makes you wonder if it wasn't an orchestrated attempt to smear Bush for his "delay." Lots of good corrections here:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_26.html#082732
Once they begin to report about the failure to evacute New Orleans' poor and the hundreds of flooded parked buses we will then see:
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