When you speak of Evil these days, true Evil not just something disagreeable, many Americans will smirk and brush away the idea that Evil exists as anything more than a backward, ideological fervor found in the most despised sections of society. Especially in the academic world the belief in the existence of Evil is considered no different than admitting to being a “neo-con warmonger” and brings a reaction worse than when people discover to their unmitigated horror that you’re a Republican.

But even voting for Bush doesn’t invite attacks on your intelligence and often your very sanity like announcing your conviction that there are people and things in this world that are simply Evil. Thus when you speak of rapists and child molesters the prevailing wisdom among such liberal enclaves is that the perpetrators were themselves victims, of other abusers or society, or that they are “mentally ill” and therefore treatable. Murderers are victims of cultural imperialism and thieves are the product of class disparity and no person choses to hurt others simply because they like to.

It’s a convenient fantasy this world of victims, and a notion so comforting in its own way it is hard to disabuse people of. For many people criminality is somehow curable, perhaps with a pill or therapy or wealth redistribution, and those people sleep better at night than those of us who know the truth, who have looked horrified into the night of the human soul and saw what looked back at us.

The story of Buddy E. Smith is one of those examples of undeniable Evil. Mom of 4 over at the Dreamin’ Demon forums dug up this ghastly tale but after reading it you’ll see why it’s hard to thank her for the tip, though like me you’ll acknowledge that this is a story most people will need to hear. You just won’t want to.

Be warned, this is not an easy story to read:

NEW BEDFORD — Advocates for the developmentally disabled say law enforcement authorities could have done more to prevent the repeated gang rapes of a mentally handicapped man.

Suspect Buddy E. Smith, 22, of Fall River, as well as an uncle of Mr. Smith and several friends who are still at large, stalked, kidnapped and raped the mentally retarded man more than a dozen times from 2004 to 2007, prosecutors say. Mr. Smith and his friends also engaged in a campaign of threats and intimidation to keep the Tiverton, R.I., man from reporting the crimes, prosecutors said.

[…]

Tuesday, a Superior Court judge temporarily detained Mr. Smith until a bail revocation hearing May 21. He had been free on $1,000(Editor Note: WTF!?!) bail since June 2006, when he was indicted on charges of rape, indecent assault and battery on a retarded person and witness intimidation. He is scheduled to stand trial on those charges July 21.

Mr. Smith’s uncle, William Senay, 52, of Fall River, also was arrested in connection with the alleged sexual assaults. Mr. Senay is charged with rape and indecent assault and battery on a retarded person, and also is scheduled to go to trial July 21.

None of the other alleged co-conspirators have been identified or arrested.

The alleged abuse reportedly began shortly after the victim met Mr. Smith through a Fall River friend of the victim in spring 2004. Later that year, Mr. Smith allegedly took the victim to a church parking lot in Fall River, where he and several other young men sexually assaulted him.

The gang rapes continued throughout 2005, according to the victim’s relatives, who said they began noticing changes in his behavior.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Mr. Smith allegedly went to the victim’s house in Tiverton, R.I. The victim’s mother answered the door and became suspicious. After speaking with the victim, the family went to the Police Department the following day.

The victim also was taken to Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, where a social worker there assessed him as having been raped, relatives said.

The alleged sexual assaults were accompanied by repeated instances of stalking and harassment, prosecutors said.

Throughout the summer of 2006, the victim’s family said, Mr. Smith and his friends staked out their home and often drove by the house in different vehicles. The family alleges the suspects told the victim they would kill him and his mother if he did not leave the house.

The stalking continued through 2007, as Mr. Smith and friends allegedly followed the victim and contacted him using a disabled girl’s cell phone, the victim’s relatives said.

The alleged stalking continued unabated until last month, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors allege that on March 20, Mr. Smith traveled to a remote residence on the Connecticut-Rhode Island border where the victim, now 25, had been staying. A witness later told police in Foster, R.I., she saw Mr. Smith peering into the window.

Foster police have since obtained an arrest warrant for Mr. Smith, prosecutors said.

The alleged stalking on March 20 occurred three months after the last sexual assault is said to have taken place, prosecutors said.

Mr. Smith is suspected of stalking the victim at a library in Middletown, R.I., in December. Later that day, Mr. Smith allegedly lured the victim from his home and gang raped him with his friends, prosecutors said.

The developmentally disabled man had been moved several times because Mr. Smith and his friends had been stalking him, prosecutors said. Mr. Smith had been ordered by the court to stay away from the victim.

If this story is true (and having come of age during the Satanic Panic I often take wild tales of sexual abuse with a grain of salt) what possible explanation could you come up with to explain this atrocity? Were it simply Smith and his uncle William Sanay one could make an honest attempt to explain this away as a family of abusers with Smith as victim then later accomplice to Sanay. But what about all those friends of Smith who gang raped the retarded man?

There are credible witnesses to Smith and his friends stalking the victim, terrorizing him and his family. Without the concept of Evil, how do you explain Buddy Smith and his rape cult? How do you explain a group of men, and boys in some cases since Smith would have been 16 when the rapes started, spending three years of their life stalking, terrorizing and raping a mentally retarded man?

What this group is accused of doing is Evil. It cannot be described in any other terms and there is no trendy sociological theory that can explain away the monstrousness of these crimes. There is only the philosophical and perhaps metaphysical observation that this group of people gave themselves over to Evil.

And of course Evil flourishes when we refuse to confront it. From the same article:

“This is the worst alleged case of sustained abuse of a person with mental retardation in New England since the Raynham ‘House of Horrors’ was exposed more than 10 years ago,” said Colleen Lutkevich, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition of Families and Advocates for the Retarded.

COFAR officials have been working with the victim’s relatives since they reached out to the organization last summer. The group has been monitoring the ongoing court proceedings against Mr. Smith, and has been critical of how law enforcement initially handled the case.

COFAR officials claim the Fall River Police Department refused to take a report when the victim’s family approached them in January 2006 because the victim was developmentally disabled.

A spokesman for Fall River police could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

COFAR officials also say former Bristol County District Attorney Paul F. Walsh Jr. demanded the victim’s family pay for a forensic psychiatrist to examine the victim on two occasions on the subject of consent and to determine his degree of mental retardation.

Contacted by telephone Tuesday, Mr. Walsh said he did not remember the specific case, but said it was not his office’s practice to demand victims’ families pay for their own expert psychiatric witnesses.

“I can’t remember ever requiring a family to get expert witnesses for us,” Mr. Walsh said. “People are frequently frustrated with delays in the court system. I hope the family’s frustrations are alleviated when the case pans out in court.”

Disgusting. The police facilitated the ongoing suffering of this victim, likely because few of them could accept the idea that such Evil exists. The victim paid for that pretension.

h/t Dreamin’ Demon

Update: Dreamin’ Demon has a blog post up about the story and now have a picture of Buddy Smith and his MySpace.