By
The Associated Press
MARIETTA, Ga. - As many as 25 men and boys raped and molested a 13-year-old mentally disabled girl over 12 hours after luring her off of her bicycle and into an apartment building, police said.
The assailants ranged in age from 12 to 27, authorities said.
"I am not familiar with anything this barbaric," said Brody Staud, a police spokesman in this Atlanta suburb.
Five suspects were arrested and authorities were searching for seven others identified so far in the attack, which occurred Oct. 13-14. The suspects face charges including rape and child molestation.
Police said four men leaving a high school football game met the girl on her bike and persuaded her to accompany them to an apartment. They raped her and then took her to an abandoned apartment in the same complex, where as many as 21 other men and boys raped her for several hours, Staud said.
The nature of the girl's mental disability was not disclosed.
The girl returned home about 4 a.m. on Oct. 14, her mother told police.
"She told her mother she knew something had happened to her that shouldn't have," Cobb County police spokesman Dana Pierce said.
The victim's mother took her to a hospital, where she was treated and released.
Tenants at the apartment complex were shocked and angry over the news. They said they are scared of young men who hang out around the complex, made up of two-story brick buildings with several units in each structure.
Maria Capiz, 18, said she does not let her son play outside for more than 30 minutes a day.
"I don't trust it here," Capiz said. "The teen-agers here are crazy. I don't want what happened to that little girl happening to me or to my niece or my son. Everybody here is scared of these teen-agers."
Sexual assaults against the disabled are probably underreported because victims are unable to explain what happened or are perceived as unreliable witnesses, said Jennifer Bivins, a victim advocate at the Southern Crescent Sexual Assault Center in Jonesboro.
