Megan Williams Raped and Tortured For One Week in a Hate Crime

While the media is sensationalizing the OJ hotel theft case, this has gone virtually unreported. I have heard about it from various people and found articles after searching on CNN - but it is not getting prime coverage.

Megan Williams was tortured and raped for a whole week by six white individuals - three males and three females between the ages of 20 and 49. CNN normally does not reveal sexual assault victims' names. However, Williams and her mother, Carmen Williams, wanted her identity revealed.

This event happened in West Virginia, USA very recently and as of Wednesday, September 12th 2007, Megan Williams was still being treated in the hospital.

Police said Bobby Brewster raped Williams, forced her to lick blood and drink from a toilet, and told his mother to kill Williams if she tried to escape. Authorities previously said Williams was also forced to eat rat and dog feces.

According to criminal complaints filed in the county, Williams was assaulted, stabbed in the left leg, choked with cords and beaten for at least a week. When she was found, big parts of her hair had also been torn off of her scalp. Williams says that Alisha Burton 22 cut her ankle with a knife while saying, "That's what we do to Niggers around here," police records show.

"I don't understand a human being doing another human being the way they did my daughter," Carmen Williams told The Associated Press on Tuesday from her daughter's hospital room. "I didn't know there were people like that out here."

Deputies received a tip and Saturday visited a home owned by Frankie Brewster in Big Creek, West Virginia. As the deputies spoke with a woman on the front porch, "a female inside the residence limped toward the door with her arms held out, saying 'Help me,' " according to a news release from the sheriff's department.
"It's something you'd expect to see in a horror movie, not in Logan County," Abraham said. "She was subjected to unendurable torture down there."

The six are charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and battery. If convicted of kidnapping, a suspect could face a sentence of up to life in prison. The penalty for first-degree sexual assault is 15 to 35 years.

Abraham said he is seeking the maximum sentence on the kidnapping charges. In addition to the Brewsters, the suspects are Danny J. Combs, 20, of Harts, West Virginia; and George A. Messer, 27, Karen Burton, 46, and her daughter, Alisha Burton, 23, all of Chapmanville, West Virginia.
"They all have previous records and have been arrested numerous times," Sheriff W.E. Hunter said Tuesday. "They are familiar to law enforcement."

Frankie Brewster was charged with first-degree murder in 1994, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in the death of an 84-year-old woman. She was released in 2000 after serving five years in prison, according to court records cited by the AP. All of the six individuals that are involved in this case are accused of 108 different cases of crimes all combined. All six were being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, and all requested court-appointed attorneys, the AP reported. Investigators are still looking for two other people suspected of driving Williams to the home, according to the AP.

According to CNN, representatives of several black churches appealed to prosecutors Thursday to pursue hate-crime or civil-rights charges against six white people accused of torturing a black woman over several days.

Logan County prosecutors say they have not ruled out hate-crime charges but are focusing on the counts already filed, including kidnapping and sexual assault, which have tougher maximum sentences. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, have not sought civil-rights charges.

"The family is aghast and totally devastated by the findings of the Logan prosecutor that this barbaric, heinous, despicable [crime] is not one of racial hatred," said the Rev. Emanuel Heyliger of the Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church in Dunbar.

Logan County Prosecutor Brian Abraham urged patience.

"We're still working the case, even today," he said. "I'll make that determination when the investigation is concluded, but I want to focus on the most serious crimes that carry the stiffest penalties."

Authorities also said the fact that Megan Williams knew one of her alleged attackers played a role in their decision not to pursue hate-crime or civil-rights charges at this time. Heyliger, speaking outside the Charleston hospital where Williams is being treated, rejected that explanation.

"Whether she was known by or known to any one of these perpetrators, that is no reason why this case should not be treated as it should, and that is as a hate crime," said Heyliger, who was joined by representatives of another Dunbar church and an association of black churches in Charleston.

Spread this article since the news stations are not trying to focus on this subject...

More information at the links below:
http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2007091022
http://www.tarpy.net/2007/US/09/12/woman.tortured/index.html
http://beta.cnn.com/2007/US/09/13/woman.tortured.ap/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296429,00.html

- Presario