Black Woman Kidnapped, Tortured and Raped for Days by Racists in West Virginia

Posted by David Neiwert at 2:00 PM on September 12, 2007.

This post, written by David Neiwert, originally appeared on Orcinus

You all remember how Michelle Malkin led the wingnutosphere on one of its periodic torchbearing mob parties earlier this summer in whipping up racial angst over a particularly ugly black-on-white murder in which the victims were tortured and sexually assaulted. The mini-crusade was so successful that it became the talk of every neo-Nazi and white-supremacist site in the country (especially Stormfront) for the next couple of months.

What Malkin likes to use cases like this for -- as she has numerous other cases involving minorities harming whites, particularly when illegal immigrants (see the Adrienne Shelly case) and Muslims are involved -- is to establish, somehow, that these individual cases demonstrate something broader about the characteristics of the ethnic group to which the perpetrators belong. Namely, that they're innately criminal.

So I wonder if she'll even bother to mention this case (well, actually, I don't):

A black West Virginia woman was sexually assaulted, stabbed, and tortured while being held captive by her white abductors, one of whom told her, "That's what we do to niggers around here." The 23-year-old victim was freed Saturday after cops responded to the home of Frankie Brewster for a "welfare check on a female that was reportedly being held against her will." When cops arrived, Brewster claimed she was the only one home, but then the victim limped to the door and said, "Help me." According to six harrowing criminal complaints, the woman, who apparently had been held for more than a week, had four stab wounds in her left leg, bruised eyes, and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and humiliated. The woman told police that she was forced to lick Brewster's "toes, vagina, and anal cavity." Brewster's son Bobby forced the woman to eat dog and rat feces, according to one complaint filed in Logan County Magistrate Court. The victim, who is now hospitalized, was raped at knifepoint, choked with a cable cord, and had her hair pulled and cut during the ordeal.

An Associated Press report has more details:

A woman who authorities said was sexually abused, beaten and stabbed while held captive for at least a week was repeatedly called a racial slur during the attacks, the victim's mother said.

Six people, all white, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, have been arrested in connection with the alleged abduction of the 23-year-old black woman, sheriff's officials said Monday.

Authorities were still looking for two people they believe drove the woman to the home where she was abused, said Logan County Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess.

The FBI, which was asked by the sheriff's department to aid in the investigation, will look into whether a hate crime occurred.

The woman's abductors called her the N-word "every time they stabbed her," the woman's mother told The Charleston Gazette for a story published Tuesday.

The woman underwent surgery for leg wounds, Dingess told the paper.

Deputies found the woman Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip.

One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the woman limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying, "Help me," the sheriff's department said in a news release.

Besides being sexually assaulted, the woman had been stabbed four times in the left leg and beaten, Logan County sheriff's Sgt. Sonya Porter said. Her eyes were black and blue. The wounds were inflicted at least a week ago, deputies said.

During her capture, the woman was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet, according to the criminal complaint filed in magistrate court. She also had been choked with a cable cord and her hair was cut, it alleges.

"The things that were done to this woman are just indescribable," Porter said.

One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is accused of cutting the woman's ankle with a knife. She used the N-word in telling the woman she was victimized because she is black, according to the criminal complaint.

Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.

"She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, 'Mommy,"' the mother told the paper. "What's really bad is that we don't know everything they did to her. She is crying all the time."

Following Malkin's logic, I'd say it was time to start profiling poor white trash and think about locking them up in internment camps, wouldn't you?

Tagged as: violence, race, racism, rape, malkin, west virginia, sexual abuse, kidnapping

David Neiwert is a freelance journalist based in Seattle, and the assistant editor of Crosscut.