THE PITTSBURGH NIGHTMARE
This is pretty graphic testimony.
I won't blame you if you don't want to read it,
but this actually happened, here in America,
and almost nobody knows about it.
-- Monte
From www.AbortionViolence.com
Pittsburgh -- Assault (12 incidents),
Torture (6 incidents) and Sexual Abuse (8 incidents)
On February 25, 1989, Pittsburgh police tortured a group
of pro-life rescuers which included students from the Franciscan
University of Steubenville, and sexually abused the women students.
What happened two weeks later, however, was far worse.
On and after March 11, 1989, Pittsburgh police brutally assaulted
and deliberately tortured scores of pro-life rescuers to the point
of severely injuring many of them.
This incident, now known as "The Pittsburgh Nightmare," is so
extreme that it deserves a detailed description. When reading this,
try to imagine police treating civil rights or homosexual protesters in
such a manner. At a March 11, 1989 rescue mission at the Allegheny
Reproductive Health Center abortion mill, Pittsburgh police, upon
arriving at the scene, immediately removed their badges and name tags.
A very young rescuer named Frank, one of about sixty men and
sixty women, was arrested and falsely charged with assault by
a police officer who was a member of the board of directors of
an abortion clinic. As a result of this, all the other rescuers went
limp in order not to cooperate with the police. Per the typical plan
at rescues, all rescuers were limp throughout all the arrests and
booking procedures.
The police separated the women from the men, and once the women
were in jail, the male police verbally abused them and made lewd
comments about their breast sizes. The male police told the women
that they were going to rape and sodomize them. Police ripped the
blouses off of two women, completely exposing their breasts.
Police brutalized and sexually harassed 24 of the sixty women.
One pro-life woman in the jail was knocked unconscious by the abuse,
and the police would not let anyone tend to her.
Janet Cooke testified:
"The police held twelve women to a one-man cell without food or water.
They denied phone calls to attorneys or others. The rescuers weren't
told the charges against them. The police dragged the women from
the cells, while using vulgar language, and put them into a paddy wagon.
Then they drove violently while the prisoners bounced off the walls in
the back. They would go up and down twelve inch curbs. The prisoners
were not told where they were going."
When the police took the women to the male-only county jail, they threw
them on the ground and dragged them along the pavement by their hair,
arms, and clothes. They tore the clothes completely off of one young girl.
As the police dragged the women up the stairs, they paused occasionally
to beat them with sticks and fists. For twelve hours nobody was even
allowed to go to the bathroom, or call their attorneys. In the county-jail
processing area, the male police mocked the women using vulgar language
and threatened to rape them. They photographed several of the women
after tearing off their clothes.
Janet Cooke continues:
"Then they were dragged around the stairwell where no one could see,
and while one man held my head up by my hair, two others kicked me
in the side. They did this because they wanted me to walk instead of
being limp. They said that if I didn't take my `bleep bleep' up those steps,
I would be thrown into the cells with the men to be raped by the inmates.
They were serious. I knew now that if I didn't cooperate, they would kill me."
Finally upstairs, Cooke was strip-searched in front of a male guard.
Men were walking in and out, and the men made her do some things
that were too graphic to describe. Other women were brutally beaten
at the same steps.
Arlene Eddy testified:
"Policemen were joking and laughing. They had the appearance that they
couldn't wait to get their hands on them. At each landing/level, the "guards"
threatened even when the prisoners were cooperating by walking.
They again threatened to throw them into cells with prisoners who
would rape and sodomize them."
Janet Smother testified:
"The police blew smoke into the face of the woman who had the
asthma attack."
After the jail, the women were taken to the state mental facility.
When leaving the jail, the male inmates, having heard all that had happened
to the women, clapped for them. Also, two or three hundred Christians
were waiting on the side of the hill clapping for the women. All charges
against all the women were dropped.
Concerning the male pro-life prisoners, they police put ten men in
one-man cells for 36 hours without food or water. Afterward, the city
and county government would not accept papers from these victims
for legal complaints. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights asked
the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate the various
law-enforcement agencies.
The remainder of this description is taken from testimony was
placed in the Congressional Record:
"Many were strip-searched in front of male guards and prisoners,
fondled and punched in the breasts. In one case a matron kicked
a naked prisoner between the legs.
"One guy was gonna carry me up the stairs but the other guy said
not to and make it hard on me. ... He grabbed me between my breasts
and dragged me up the stairs by my wire-rimmed bra. My breasts were
fully exposed as I was being dragged up the stairs. My hands were
still behind my back and I couldn't pull my top down. Then I was taken
to another room and thrown to the floor."
Another woman in the same rescue reported difficulty with a matron
assigned to perform strip searches:
"After I had my picture taken I was carried up the stairs. Before being
carried a policeman pulled up my shirt in order to expose me. Then he
and one other policeman took me up the stairs. One, whose name was ...,
after she realized I wouldn't stand, threatened to take off my clothes ...
and molest me in front of the male guards."
Other women complained of male police officers taking full advantage
of their passive resistance:
"As I was being carried onto the bus, one of the officers ...
reached down my pants to carry me and told the other guy,
"Hey just reach down her pants." ... Then when we got to the
Allegheny County Jail ... people grabbed my clothes and just
heaved me way up in the air much more than was necessary
and I just felt like I was flying through the air. ... When they
carried me out they lifted my shirt up [and] it went over my
head and I couldn't see anything ... they carried me that way
up the whole flight of stairs and I think down a couple hallways
and left us on the floor. They made no effort to cover me in any way.
... I'm really afraid of police officers now and I always thought
they were there to protect us."
"They threw me in ... and rolled me over a bunch of people ...
I was the last one out. He got me out and they laughed and
he put his arms around me and held me around by boobs.
... And he squeezed super hard and I thought he was trying
to break my ribs. ..."
One woman reported the following acts of sexual harassment:
"[W]hen I was being dragged onto the bus ... I was drug by my
ponytail and a lot of my hair came out... . I was dragged in front
of a table and they asked -- told me to get up and I didn't say
anything back. Then the male officer started to undo my coat
and he tried to undo my pants and I just like pushed my stomach
out so that he wouldn't be able to... . And then he opened my coat
and they stood me up on my feet and I went limp and they
raised me to the table. Then a male officer frisked me, a female
was standing there but a male officer actually touched me ...
on my breasts and also between my legs ... I felt them pull my
T-shirt and my bra all the way up above my head ... [and] one of
the guards ... punch[ed] me in the chest on this side and on this
side and I have bruises ... I don't know if it was two or three and
I felt one of the guards take me by my breast and squeeze and
I have bruises all around where he squeezed with his fingers."
"The Pittsburgh Nightmare:
An Interview with Attorney Larry Washburn and Two of the Victims,"
audio cassette; "The Brutal Truth," American Portrait Films, 1990;
Congressional Record, 101st Congress, 1st Session, 1989.
135: 4, 6, 7. Chicago Suburban Rescue (CSR) news release,
August 21, 1993.
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