In Cleveland, where a 10-story tall LeBron James proclaims We Are All Witnesses, how is it that no one witnessed 11 homeless women go inside a house on the city’s east side and never come out alive? Anthony Sowell, 50, sits in jail charged with the murders of those 11 women, all of them poor, all of them living on the streets. Their murders only came to light a few months ago, even though for years Sowell had allegedly been beating, raping and strangling homeless women in his well-kept Imperial Avenue home, which sits in the middle of one of Cleveland’s working class neighborhoods.
That’s what makes this story even more disturbing — all this murder and mayhem occurring in the midst of people going about their everyday lives and no one witnessing a thing.
Homeless women are in constant danger of sexual assault. According to a report from the National Coalition for the Homeless, eight percent of reported crimes against the homeless in 2008 were rapes and sexual assaults, with women being the victims in all of those cases. Keep in mind that rapes and sexual attacks against homeless women tend to go unreported. (via Poverty in America)
