Rape reporting in Katrina’s aftermath

Women’s E-News has an important story today about tracking the number of rapes that occurred in Hurricane Katrina’s wake.
The Houston Police Department was originally not dealing with reports of rapes that happened in Louisiana, instead instructing officers to hold reports “for safekeeping until other police jurisdictions are prepared to deal with them.” Yeah. Surely the New Orleans Police Department will be making rape reports a priority.
One Superdome volunteer says: “There were so many rape victims, and we had to turn (most) of them away because they had life-damaging, but not life-threatening, wounds.”
Rape is already underreported. Add to the mix a chaotic evacuation for a second hurricane and a police department that won’t do anything when women do come forward. Now you tell me if we’re ever going to have any idea how many women were raped in the chaos following Katrina.
Says evacuee Charmaine Neville (whose story has been floating around the internet): “I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people.” Crooks and Liars has the video clip.