A teenage Missouri girl reported missing more than two years ago told police she escaped a home in a decaying, crime-ridden Illinois village where she was held captive and subjected to sexual assaults that resulted in a child.
About two dozen members of a SWAT team wearing body armor and tactical gear raided the home Thursday afternoon in southwestern Illinois' Washington Park, taking into custody a 24-year-old man and his mother.
"The conditions in there were definitely deplorable," St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly, the county's top prosecutor, told The Associated Press on Friday after consulting with investigators at the scene.
Police
also recovered the teen's young child, who the girl said was the result
of rape by her captor. The child was taken away in an ambulance.
No
charges had been filed as of Friday morning, though Kelly said he
anticipated investigators would submit reports for his review later in
the day.
Initial evidence
suggests that "some of the details are consistent with what the young
lady is saying, and I think there's something to it. We're still trying
to figure out what the heck is going on," Kelly said.
Police in St. Louis listed the girl as a missing or runaway juvenile in April 2010, when she was 15.
The
teen told police she was held against her will and was beaten and
sexually assaulted almost daily. She said she tried to escape several
times but that her captor chased her down each time and forced her back
to the home at gunpoint.
She told police she was able to escape this week with the help of a relative.
Police
said the teen also told them she was forced by the man and his mother
to give a false name in medical records during her pregnancy and when
the child was born.
A neighbor, Lakeitha Smith,
told local television stations that she saw the girl from time to time
outside the house and never witnessed anything that would raise concern.
"I used to see her come out of the house, back and forth," Smith said. "I didn't think she was being held hostage in the house."
Long known for its strip clubs and poverty, Washington Park — tucked on the edge of East St. Louis —
has grappled for years with corruption and violent crime punctuated by
the 2010 shooting death of the village's mayor, John Thornton. A suspect
in that killing was convicted in April of first-degree murder and
awaits sentencing.
Washington
Park, where 86 percent of the 4,200 residents are black, is in one of
the state's poorest regions and twice since 2004 has filed for
bankruptcy, the last time in 2009.
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