LOGAN, West Virginia (AP) -- The list of horrors allegedly endured by a woman at the hands of six people in a remote trailer grew during the suspects' court hearings -- leaving the woman's mother sobbing.

Reading Tuesday from a statement 20-year-old Megan Williams gave deputies the day she was rescued from the ramshackle home, a sheriff's deputy said she had been stabbed with what she described as a butcher knife and beaten with wooden sticks and fly swatters.

She said she was sexually assaulted, doused with hot water, forced to eat animal feces, and taunted with racial slurs.

September 18, 2007
Honorable Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
Governor of the State of Louisiana
Office of the Governor
PO Box 94004
Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9004
[cc: District Attorney, U.S. Attorney and School Superintendent]

Dear Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco,

As human rights organizations working in the United States and around the world, we applaud the actions of Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday which vacated the conviction of Mychal Bell, although we are troubled that the District Attorney announced his intention to appeal the ruling. We also remain deeply concerned about reports surrounding the recent events in Jena, Louisiana. Specifically, we are concerned about reports that:

from colorofchange.com

Six young black men are headed for 20+ year prison sentences in a clear case of Jim Crow "justice." Their families are fighting but need our support. Will you stand with them?

Last fall in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."1
 
A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Earlier this month, the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) met for the ninth year at American University in Washington DC. Close to 2,000 people from all over the country packed its approximately 100 workshops on such varied topics as Race and Privilege in Radical Communities, Parenting for Social Change, Animal Rights and Human Wrongs, What Does Positive Masculinity Look Like?, and Street Theater as a Media Tool.