Vantressa Brown: Rape Game

Residents of a suburb in the US City of Atlanta are trying to come to terms with what local police describe as the most barbaric crime they have ever encountered.

Authorities in Marietta, Georgia said on Thursday they had obtained a videotape allegedly showed about 25 men raping and molesting a 13-year-old mentally disabled girl.

Police say eight of the assailants have been arrested and a number of arrest warrants have been issued.

The men lured the girl off her bicycle and into an apartment building after a high school football game on 13 October, according to the police.

The girl was first raped by four men who persuaded her to accompany them home, police said. Later, they took her to an abandoned apartment in the same complex, where as many as 20 other men ranging in age from 12 to 27 raped her, authorities said.

The girl, who is described as "severely mentally handicapped", with the mental capacity of a six or seven-year-old, was allegedly raped for a number of hours. She told her mother something had happened to her that she did not understand, but knew was wrong.

She was admitted to hospital, where she was treated and then released.

A police spokesman said he was "not familiar with anything this barbaric", while Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head described the incident as the most despicable he had seen in 22 years of working as a lawyer.

Local residents say there are now afraid leave their homes or allow their children to play outside.

"I don't trust it here," said Maria Capiz, resident of the apartment complex where the girl was allegedly raped.

"The teenagers here are crazy. I don't want what happened to that little girl happening to me or to my niece or may son."

An expert on sexual violence at the Southern Crescent Sexual Assault Centre in Georgia said sexual assaults against the disabled were under reported.

Jennifer Bivins said this was probably because victims are unable to explain what happened or are perceived as unreliable witnesses.

BBC News