At Fla. housing project, rape just another crime

Ruby Walker said she herself was raped twice, at ages 7 and 12. She said that just days before the Dunbar attack, someone tried to rape her again, and “my son came to me crying and said he wouldn’t ever do that to anyone.”

She has had her own problems with the law — at least nine arrests on charges such as disorderly conduct, aggravated assault and battery, according to state records.

Avion Lawson was a headstrong kid, never listening to his mother, said his cousin, Cassandra Ellis.

“I knew he was bad, but I never pictured him to be that type of bad,” Ellis said. She said one traumatic experience may have scarred him — watching his older sister fatally stab a boyfriend.

“It was an accident. She killed her boyfriend. They was fighting, there was a knife,” Ellis said. “He was there when it happened.”

No safe spots
City officials are quick to note that neither Lawson nor Walker lived at Dunbar, and say they are doing their best to make the place safe.

As quickly as overhead lights can be replaced, they are shot out, so officials are now considering bulletproof lighting.

“Isn’t that quite a commentary on what the situation is there?” said City Commissioner Molly Douglas, whose district includes part of Dunbar. “Dunbar Village is a hell hole. They shouldn’t have to live in fear.”

More officers are hitting the streets, but “I just bow my head sometimes and think we just couldn’t possibly have enough officers ever to take care of all of this,” Douglas said.

Laurel Robinson, head of the city’s housing authority, said that up until about four years ago, the federal government provided the city with $160,000 a year for security in public housing projects, but Congress did away with the money.

“Every family housing project in the country has suffered because of it,” she said.

Dreams of a better life in the U.S.
The rape victim and her son have not returned to Building 1843, Unit 2, since the attack.

The woman fled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with her son seven years ago in search of a better life. With no money, they landed in Dunbar. The two almost instantly became targets for crime, standing out as Haitians among the mostly American-born blacks in the housing project. Her car and the boy’s bicycle were stolen. Their house was ransacked.

On the night of the attack, she was lured outside by a teenager who knocked on the door and said her car had a flat. Nine more teens, their faces shrouded with T-shirts, barged in, she told authorities. They brandished guns and demanded money, then went beyond the imaginable.

“I was so scared,” the woman told WPTV. “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.”

She said that when she was forced to perform oral sex on her own son, she told the boy: “I know you love me, and I love you, too.”

Investigators say it is not clear exactly why the thugs picked her house.

The boy’s sight has returned. Both mother and son are seeking counseling.

“I have to try and talk to him every day. He’s so angry,” the woman said. “He said we never should have moved to Dunbar Village.”

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