Fla. Mother and Son Are Attacked

A young girl plays on one of the many clothes lines in Dunbar Village in West Palm Beach, Fla. Saturday, July 7, 2007. Residents of the community complain that kids have nothing to do, and this is one of the reasons for the recent gang rape of a woman living in the complex. In the year leading up to the gang rape, police were called to Dunbar Village 717 times. (AP Photo/J. Pat Carter) (J. Pat Carter - AP)

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.

____

The rape victim and her son have not returned to their apartment 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."

___

AP researchers Judith Ausuebel and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS by deleting number of times police were called to Dunbar Village; police now say their figures were incorrect.)