The Curse of Violent Crime

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For each crime that creates those statistics there is a victim whose life has been ended, painfully altered or traumatically affected. No sampling can span the full range of outrage or reflect all the victims' agony, but here are some examples:

Burglary in the Country. Vivian and Al Weber lived in Battle Creek, Mich., working 6:30 a.m.-to-3 p.m. shifts in two different factories—and hating city life. In 1976 they realized what Mrs. Weber calls "our dream, our lifelong dream," moving to a 50-acre site near the tiny village of Burlington and commuting 35 minutes to work. "Everything we had, we put into this home," she recalls. One afternoon the Webers came home to find "glass all over. They'd smashed the window into the kitchen. Everything was gone through —every drawer, every room."

Mrs. Weber felt that their house had been sullied. "I scrubbed the walls. I took the curtains down and washed them. I would open a drawer to put on clean clothes and think about my personal things, 'Oh, God, I've got to wash them. I don't know who had their hands on them.' " She and her husband took different shifts so one of them would always be home. They started locking their doors, even if one of them was merely going out to the garden.

Eventually they decided to work the same hours again. Al got home first one day and met Vivian outside the door. He was white as a sheet. "Honey," he said, "we've been ripped off again." This time the burglars took some of the items the Webers had bought as replacements—and keepsakes as well. "They've got us timed," thought Mrs. Weber. "They know when we go and when we come home." She quit work and would not even go shopping unless Al was home. He gave up his annual hunting trips. They put deadbolt locks on all the outside doors, wired a back-room window with a siren, and even bought a third car to park as a decoy in the driveway if they could not avoid being gone at the same time.

The Webers placed their dream house up for sale, then reconsidered. "I have friends here who are more like family than friends," she explains. But their lives have changed. "I try to be normal, but I'm afraid. I have turned around and driven 15 miles back home because I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I feel watched constantly. I never feel safe."

Brutality in Phoenix. Suzanne Marie Rossetti, 26, a technician at a burn treatment center in Phoenix, had attended a performance of Dancin' at Arizona State University. On her way home, she drove into a grocery-store parking lot, and mistakenly locked her car with the keys inside. Two young white men helpfully unlocked the door, asked for a short lift—then forced her to drive to her apartment, where they beat and raped her for several hours.

According to Phoenix Police Detective Richard Fuqua, the men then drove 50 miles to an isolated desert area and hurled Suzanne off a cliff. They heard her moaning and climbed down to her side. She pleaded with them to leave her alone because, she said, "I'm dying anyway." The response was swift. "Damn right you are," one of the men said, and picked up a large rock and crushed her head to still her sounds.

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