This time one year ago the focus of much of the nation was on the Gulf Coast and the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Things were bad. Worse than many had anticipated. Homes destroyed. Flooding. People stranded. And the situation was about to get much worse.
I was reporting in West Virginia at the time; nearly one-thousand miles away. And I was chomping at the bit wanting a chance to take part in covering the biggest story inside of the United States since 9/11. I don't know what it is in me, or other journalists, that drives the urge to seek out the bad. Morbid curiosity I guess. No, it's more than that. It has to do with feeling. I want to feel the situation. I want to see the bad. It makes it real - not just pictures on the screen. I want to see for myself the things that make up the stories of our time. Because somewhere amid all of that bad, the good shows up. The volunteers. The rescuers. The people who give of themselves to help total strangers. I want to tell their stories. I want to meet the people. The afflicted and their heroes. Because that's what I believe I was put here to do.
It didn't take long for the story of Katrina to come to me. In the aftermath of Katrina, thousands of New Orleanians were evacuated from the city. Some were taken by bus to Houston, Texas. Some were flown to other cities in the south and around the country. And some evacuees were flown, via military planes, to West Virginia and later bused to Camp Dawson, an Army National Guard base in Preston County - about 50 miles from my station. There were about three thousand, or so. The buses arrived in tandem for two consecutive nights. I was there on the second night. I watched as they stepped down onto solid ground. They looked like zombies. Weary from their long trip. Recovering from what they'd just been through. The clothes they were wearing were just about the only things they had with them, aside from the garbage bag suitcases they pulled out from the bus's cargo hold. They shuffled by me, falling into line for the recovery center.
One of the many evacuees I met that night was a young man named Damien. 20 years old, Damien lived in the lower ninth ward, the birthplace of rock legend Fats Domino; an area now known as one of the most devastated by Katrina floodwater. The day before Katrina hit, Damien and his family sought shelter in the Louisiana Superdome. It too was once known for something far brighter than it is today.
Damien told me about the conditions inside. Cramped quarters. No air. No toilets. He said people used the floor for their bathroom - the same floor people used for a bedroom. After awhile, he told me he was moved to the convention center. Things there were no better. They were worse. Damien said he saw several men rape a young girl, perhaps twelve years old. And when word spread of what had happened, a posse of other men tracked one of the rapists down and shot him to death. Damien said the body laid untouched for several hours.
Damien told me about these things and I could tell he was sincerely affected by them. He was upset. He needed to talk to someone. I was surprised by how candid he was being with me, but I've been told people who've been through tragedy need to talk about it. It's cathartic. And a journalist with a camera easily stands out as someone who is willing to listen.
I saw Damien the next day too. I had returned for a follow up interview. He was wearing the same clothes. But he had slept. And he was happy. He talked about how relieved he was to be there. To be out of Louisiana and in 'Almost Heaven' West Virginia.
I loved his 'Nawlins' drawl. It made his words sound almost musical. And I was proud of the story I'd told through him - a Katrina survivor airlifted from the sorrow who now had a chance to start life again in the Mountain State.
But Damien took that chance and threw it away. Less than one week later I learned he was being charged with the rape of a seven year old evacuee. According to State Police, Damien and his brother, whom I never met, stole this girl from her grandmother's arms, took her to their bunk room and took turns raping her. A seven year old girl.
He was arrested and taken to the Regional Jail. I re-ran a portion of our interview that night, the part where he spoke with disgust of the rape he had witnessed in New Orleans. His words didn't sound so musical anymore.
The state eventually dropped the charges against Damien and turned him over to authorities in Louisiana where I learned he was wanted for other, less severe, crimes. My feeling is that, in Damien's case, West Virginia didn't want to deal with what they reasoned was Louisiana's problem.
I felt that Damien had betrayed me. I had been taken in by his survivor story and wanted nothing but good things for him. That was my mistake. I learned a good lesson through that experience. Take people for their word but don't project an image onto them. And never underestimate the human being's ability to completely screw things up.
But I can't help but think that had Katrina not hit, and had Damien not seen the things no person should ever have to see, he wouldn't have hurt that little girl. He wouldn't have even have been in a position to hurt that little girl. I don't like the excuse that people are products of their environments. But it's hard to argue with that logic when it applies to Katrina.
People do things under situations of extreme stress that they couldn't have ever previously imagined themselves doing. Good and bad. There are great stories of heroism that have come out of Katrina. The men and women who dangled out of helicopters to rescue people stranded on their rooftops. The people who risked their lives to save stray animals that may have otherwise starved to death. And the police officers who worked days on end to try and bring about some sense of order to their city that was free falling into anarchy.
And then there are stories like Damien's.
Here's to hoping that as New Orleans continues to grow out of the devastation that there are more of the former and less of the latter.
