2 men identified in LA disabled abuse case
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press(01-07) 13:06 PST Monterey Park, Calif. (AP) --
Authorities have identified two of the suspects recorded in sexual assaults of profoundly disabled women, officials said Friday.
Los Angeles police officers recognized the men after detectives went public with artist sketches and photos of four men on Thursday, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Dan Scott said. As many as 10 suspects could have been involved in the assaults.
One of the suspects, Bert Hicks, was a worker at a Los Angeles care facility and had already been prosecuted by police for two felony sex counts and two abuse counts. He is currently imprisoned at Tehachapi State Prison and scheduled for release in 2012, Scott said.
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The images were gleaned from over 100 hours of video delivered to sheriff's headquarters in suburban Monterey Park last March. It took months for investigators to digitally enhance the grainy footage and produce pictures and artist sketches of four of the suspects.
The videos show the men sexually assaulting physically and mentally disabled women, some of them in diapers.
Scott said Los Angeles detectives recognized Hicks after his picture was shown on the news. The second suspect's identity was not immediately released.
The footage was not released to the public, but authorities described seeing horrific acts. In one video, an obese man in a wheelchair is seen pushing himself into a small bedroom while wearing a diaper. His back is covered in scars and he appears to be a paraplegic resident of a care facility.
The man pulls himself onto a woman's bed, removes his own and her diaper, then assaults her, authorities said.
The videos came from an anonymous tipster who said a customer purchased a laptop on the streets of Inglewood and brought it to him to wipe the hard drive. Before doing so, he copied the videos and gave them to authorities.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/07/national/a113024S21.DTL#ixzz1AOoGJw00Information Sought on Men Seen Sexually Assaulting Disabled Women in VideosSheriff's investigators are asking for the public's help in identifying at least four of the perpetrators, the victims and the locations of the crimes.
By Saul Daniels
Detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau are asking the public to provide them with information about a series of videos they have obtained, which show at least 10 severely disabled women being sexually assaulted by at least eight men.
More than 100 hours of video recordings of the sexual assaults were sent anonymously to the Sheriff's Department.
It is not yet known who the perpetrators or victims are, or where or when the sexual assaults occurred. There are several locations shown, at least one of which appears to be a residential care facility, deputies said.
http://agourahills.patch.com/articles/information-sought-on-men-seen-sexually-assaulting-disabled-women-in-videos-4