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The
stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome
and convention center and were repeated by public officials.
Many news organizations, including The Associated Press,
carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements,
and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact,
without attribution.
But
now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining
the reports and finding that many of them have little
or no basis in fact.
They
have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses
to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and
Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four
at the convention center. Only two of those are believed
to have been murdered.
One
of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears
to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to
the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
``It
was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had
a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able
to say right now that things were not the way they appeared,''
said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally
Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was
relying on others for his information about conditions
at the evacuation sites. ``He was listening to officials,
trusting that information they were providing was accurate,''
she said.
To
be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water
was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees.
Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights
were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention
center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from
the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The
elderly and very young were desperate for food, water
and medicine.
Police
said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center,
and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when
an evacuee tried to take his gun.
A
week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an
Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune
of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40
bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food
area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that
some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends,
including ``a 7-year-old with her throat cut.''
When
the convention center was swept, however, no such pile
of bodies was found.
Lt.
Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard
said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention
center were overblown. He was head of security at the
Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen
who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
``The
incidents were highly exaggerated'' _ the result of
fear and hopelessness, he said. ``For the amount of
the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment.''
Thibodeaux
said his guard unit received no reports of rape.
Bill
Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans
for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center
until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between
young men, but ``no murders, no rapes.'' He said that
he did see people dying, but that those deaths were
most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.
``People
were wanting just some type of authority to come in
and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,''' Waldron
said. ``People were scared.''
New
Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials
at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent
homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all
were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion
of attempted sexual assault but received no official
reports of rape.
Judy
Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation
Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too
soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation
sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have
been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now
Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she
said.
``It
is extremely difficult to get good statistics about
rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly
not normal circumstances,'' she said.
Bill
Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University,
said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation
centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances
and paucity of authoritative information.
``Rumors
become improvised news. You become your own anchorman,''
he said.
The
chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors,
said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists
at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and
education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
``You
get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture
is that you use generalizations that become untrue,''
McBride said.
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