Is it too late for justice — and arrests — in unsolved rapes in impoverished town?
ROBBINS, Ill. — The rape evidence was stored in the police department’s musty basement: brown paper shopping bags, stuffed with sneakers, bras and underpants, jammed on metal shelves. Scattered blood vials and swabs covered with dust and mold — an inventory amassed over more than 25 years.
Cara Smith, a Cook County sheriff’s aide, knew something was terribly wrong the moment she saw the jumble, which included 176 rape kits dating back to 1986. Many of these crimes had long been forgotten by everyone except the victims.
Smith began digging into the cases and ultimately came to a disturbing conclusion: In most of the reported rapes, Robbins police had seemingly conducted little or no follow-up despite having crime lab results. And in nearly a third of the cases, police hadn’t even submitted physical evidence for analysis.
Those findings posed one daunting question: Is there any way to right the wrongs that, in some cases, go back a generation?
The answer will come from the Cook County sheriff’s office, where Smith and investigators have devoted much of the year to reviewing the cases, poring over records, interviewing victims, trying to put together puzzles even when key pieces are missing.
Activists: Government warplanes strike rebel-held areas in Syria, killing 44
BEIRUT — A string of government airstrikes on rebel-held areas in northern Syria killed at least 44 people Saturday, activists said, as al-Qaida-linked rebels captured one of the country’s major oil fields in the east.
An attack on the rebel-held town of al-Bab near the northern city of Aleppo was the deadliest of the three raids, killing 22 people, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Fighter jets also bombed two rebel-held districts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Government warplanes missed their target in the Halwaniyeh neighborhood and sent bombs into a crowded vegetable market, killing 15 people, Abdurrahman said. Seven people died in a third airstrike in the Karam el-Beik district, according to the activist group. The Observatory has been documenting the conflict by relying on a network of activists on the ground.
Air power has been Syrian President Bashar Assad’s greatest advantage in the civil war. Over the past year, his forces have exploited it in a wide-ranging offensive to push back rebel gains in the north and around the capital, Damascus.
Syrian state television confirmed the fighter jets were in the north, but said they targeted “gatherings of terrorists” in Aleppo, killing a large number of them. Syrian state media routinely refers to rebels fighting to topple Assad’s government as terrorists.
Modest deal on climate targets break deadlock at UN talks
WARSAW, Poland — Avoiding a last-minute breakdown, annual U.N. climate talks limped forward Saturday with a modest set of decisions meant to pave the way for a new pact to fight global warming.
More than 190 countries agreed in Warsaw to start preparing “contributions” for the new deal, which is supposed to be adopted in 2015.
That term was adopted after China and India objected to the word “commitments” in a standoff with the U.S. and other developed countries.
The fast-growing economies say they are still developing countries and shouldn’t have to take on as strict commitments to cut carbon emissions as industrialized nations.
“In the nick of time, negotiators in Warsaw delivered just enough to keep things moving,” said Jennifer Morgan, of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank.
By wire sources