Welcome to Gilead

I recognise the need to protect the unborn from the drug epidemic, but the sheer callousness of how this woman was treated-but oh, my Gods. This is wrong. Both the child and woman could have most certainly died given the treatment of the mother by the guards. She was denied care over and over and nearly bled to death. It's a miracle either survived. So who's endangering lives?

An Alabama woman was imprisoned for ‘endangering’ her fetus. She gave birth in a jail shower

Still praying this will work out

Alabama bunker suspect faced court date, neighbors say

Investigators have communicated with the suspect through a length of PVC pipe that extends out of the bunker. They've sent down coloring books and crayons for the child, state Rep. Steve Clouse said. They've also sent prescription medicine for the boy, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he said.

The boy's family is "holding on by a thread," Clouse said. They do not know Dykes, according to Clouse, who has been speaking with the family. Investigators are still communicating with the suspect and "have no reason to believe that the child has been harmed," Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said Wednesday evening.

"Pray, pray," Olson told reporters.

Tense Negotiations in Alabama Kidnapping

A man with a history of violent behavior and a 5-year-old boy he abducted from a school bus on Tuesday remained holed up in the man’s homemade underground bunker in rural Alabama on Thursday morning.

The negotiations, described as tense and delicate, began Tuesday afternoon, when local law enforcement officials, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and SWAT teams surrounded the bunker off a dirt road in Midland City, a small town in southern Alabama peanut country, near the Florida and Georgia borders.

Horrible

Teen arrested for assaulting woman on Thanksgiving day

A teenager accused of a beating a woman so severely, that she may require plastic surgery, has been released from jail on bond.

The family of Mallory Owens said 18-year-old Travis Hawkins, Jr. targeted her because of her sexual orientation and they want to see the charge for the Nov. 23 beating upgraded to attempted murder.

The incident occurred as Thanksgiving Day turned violent at Hawkins' home on Bourgeois Drive in Mobile. Mobile Police Department said officers responded to the home for a report of a person being assaulted.

When police arrived, they found Owens, 23, had been punched repeatedly in the face.

Owens's mother said her daughter was attacked because of her sexual orientation.

Woman beaten on Thanksgiving by girlfriend's brother will be released from the hospital today, family says

Family members say the woman who was severely beaten by her girlfriend's brother on Thanksgiving Day will be released from the hospital today.

Mallory Owens, 23, suffered multiple skull fractures and crushed bones after the Nov. 22 attack. Family members say she had metal plates put under her eyes because of her injuries. She also has internal and external injuries.

Owens says she was beat on Thanksgiving while at her girlfriend's family's house for dinner. Avery Godwin, Owens's sister, said Owens was blindsided just before she left the Mobile home of the Hawkins family.

Apologising for an injustice done

Lawmaker wants Ala. to apologize to rape victim

An Alabama legislator wants the state to apologize to a black woman raped in 1944 by a group of white men who later avoided prosecution.

Democratic state Rep. Dexter Grimsley of Newville says he is preparing a resolution apologizing to Recy Taylor, who was 24-years-old and living in her native Henry County when she was gang-raped in Abbeville. Two all-white, all-male grand juries declined to bring charges.

Grimsley said he believes police bungled the investigation and harassed Taylor. The married woman was walking home from church when she was kidnapped, raped and left on the side of the road in an isolated rural area.

It is thought that she's outlived her rapists, but the apology is being sought because of how the state handled the case, including making it sound like she was a prostitute when in fact she was not. She felt so much pressure in her home state that she moved to another state entirely. A lot of things were done during Segregation that were shameful, and can never be made up to those who lived (and died) under its sway.

The state should apologise for victimising Recy Taylor, for daemonising her for her race and trivialising her pain. It think it would certainly be just. I guess it is better late than never. It's a nice gesture. But it still smacks of 'too little too late' for me.

It can never erase a life of knowing justice wasn't done because she was seen as 'deserving' her lot due to her 'racial inferiority'--or so it was thought of then. The men who did this not only escaped justice; others were complicit after the fact. The state can only apologise for its role, though. Plus, she certainly was not the only person treated this way. How do you apologise to everyone who had similar experiences in a meaningful way? Does one apology to one person suffice?

Apologies are simple gestures. I'm not saying they shouldn't be made--they can go a long way to healing a rift. But they shouldn't stand on their own--what would be best is to also make sure no one else is ever treated this way. We've come a long way since 1944, but there are still those whose mentalities are the same. The state has the responsibility to prosecute and discover the guilt of perpetrators of whatever race against victims of whatever race to the fullest extent of the law, leaving behind prejudice. Race should really only come into it if it is a racially-motivated attack. And in cases of rape, the victim's character really is for the most part irrelevant. I don't care if you're a stripper or prostitute or a nice church-going married lady--you don't deserve to be raped. So the use of those sorts of tactics must be abolished. I'd like to think they were never used these days, but we know they are.

It's good these sorts of situations still make the news, though, so we can think about how to make our society as just as possible.

Unbelievable

Police: Dad threw four children off Ala. bridge

Sometimes, words just fail me.

PS 1/11 He's now denying that he did so, and no trace of the children have been found. Authorities still believe he did kill his children by throwing them off the bridge; there are witnesses who place him there throwing a bundle into the water. But the fate of the children are in doubt. Did he kill them? Did he sell them to feed his crack habit? What? Aiyee.
1/12 They've found the body of the youngest, the 4-month-old, and they think they located the other three, although divers weren't able to recover them before darkness and the current may move them in the meantime. So, it pretty much looks like he killed them like he said. So sad. Here's the update: Body found in Alabama bridge case.