Crime Victims

Raelyn Campbell had heard about the safety of Tokyo's streets and the efficiency of its police. Soon after coming to Japan, however, she came in contact with another reality--an expectation that victims of sex crimes remain silent. Though Japan has seen many advances toward gender equality over the last few decades, experts say women who have been sexually assaulted often face a familiar old problem--a justice system that is unsympathetic and a society that blames the victim.

When the Obama administration last week announced its intention to review the cases of 300,000 immigrants ensnared in the nation's deportation process, as well as to institute new guidelines going forward — with the goal of distinguishing between those who pose threats to public safety from those who are merely in the country illegally — reaction reverberated along well-worn lines. Enforcement hawks denounced the move as amnesty; immigration doves responded warily, worried that it would substitute for more comprehensive efforts to fix the nation's broken immigration system.

On July 15, 1984, athlete Kari Swenson was kidnaped while running on a mountain trail near this resort town about 20 miles north of Yellowstone National Park. Her abductors--who the next morning shot Kari through the chest and killed one of her rescuers--were self-proclaimed mountain men Don Nichols, 53, and his 18-year-old son, Dan. They had long shunned society, hiding out in the mountains and surviving on squirrel meat, poached livestock and caches of red beans.

The Obama administration said it will review the cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants currently in deportation proceedings to identify "low-priority" offenders — including the elderly, crime victims and people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood — with an eye toward allowing them to stay. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the review as the Obama administration has sought to counter criticism that it has been too harsh in its deportation policies. By launching the case-by-case review, officials said they are refocusing deportation efforts on convicted felons and other "public safety threats.

David Rothenberg has dreaded this day since kindergarten. The father who doused him with kerosene and set him afire seven years ago is getting out of prison Wednesday. And although Charles Rothenberg has vowed never again to hurt his son, David doesn't buy it. He has practiced self-defense and all the best ways to flee his Orange County home. He knows the fastest routes on his bicycle from his junior high school.

When Jorge Garcia delivered a pizza in Van Nuys in September 2003, he was forced at knifepoint to enter the apartment. Garcia said two men choked him until he passed out. When he awoke, his neck and wrist had been sliced and his stomach burned with an iron. The men told Garcia they had a gun and threatened to kill him. Then the assailants picked him up, threw him in the trunk of his car and dumped the vehicle. Bleeding and in pain, Garcia escaped and sought help.

One intersection. Seven unsolved homicides. That's the tally for the cross streets of San Pedro and 84th dating to the late 1980s. The spot is typical of many in South and Central Los Angeles where extraordinary numbers of people are murdered and the killers are never caught. Unsolved homicides -- killings for which no suspect is ever arrested -- are stacked up block by block, mile by mile, in this part of Los Angeles.

The eldest sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams was fatally shot early Sunday on a Compton street, not far from the cracked concrete tennis courts where her sisters began their ascent to the upper echelons of the sport. Yetunde Price, 31, of Corona was shot shortly after midnight in the 1100 block of East Greenleaf Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Parents and friends of children killed in gang violence near the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts held a memorial service Friday that was underscored by a police investigation of a murder a few yards away. The service at the Imperial Courts gymnasium was held in remembrance of victims such as 8-year-old Kanita Hailey, killed in a drive-by shooting while playing in front of her home in the housing project in August, 1989. The group gathered around a bronze plaque bearing Hailey's name.

As 500 mourners faced a row of caskets at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, seven members of a family of Armenian immigrants were buried Friday while the eighth was in a county jail cell on charges of murdering them. Six times the names of the dead were spoken in Armenian and English as a part of the funeral service. And six times a wave of sobbing rolled through the cemetery's Hall of Liberty as the roll call of grief progressed.

My column on sexual assault allegations against a prominent French politician accused of attacking a hotel maid struck a nerve with readers this week. Make that two nerves — two very different nerves. Most women I heard from were gratified by my willingness to believe the maid's account. I think the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund now charged with sexual assault, ought to go forward. Let a jury decide whether to believe the woman, whose own past is pockmarked with scams and lies.

Premier Fiesta Mexicana is the kind of working-class bar that most Southern Californians drive past without even seeing. The Bell Gardens restaurant and nightclub offers a dinner show with mariachi music and is packed most weekends, but on a summer night nearly a year ago, Carlos Galindo wasn't there looking for a good time. He was looking for a truck — and a way out of a desperate situation. Carlos, the lead character in director Chris Weitz's "A Better Life" — a new movie about the personal struggles of a Mexican gardener in the United States illegally — had scraped together every last dollar to buy a used pickup.

SERIES Pretty Little Liars: The end of last season found Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer (Lucy Hale, Shay Mitchell, Ashley Benson, Troian Bellisario) resolving to put an end to "A" once and for all. In the season premiere, all eyes in Rosewood are on them (8 p.m. ABC Family). The Nine Lives of Chloe King: Based on a book series by Celia Thomson, this new drama series stars Skyler Samuels as a teenager who has special catlike powers, including enhanced agility and a set of claws (9 and 10 p.m. ABC Family)

Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its recent decision that California would have to reduce its prison population to relieve overcrowding, a representative of Crime Victims United of California took to the airwaves with harrowing predictions. "It's a disaster," Nina Salarno Ashford, a board member of the group, told an interviewer. "They're going to be letting sex offenders out. They're going to be letting kidnappers out. They're going to be letting a whole host of really bad people back into California without the resources to protect the good citizens of California.

As crime victims go, real estate agents don't compare to taxi drivers, who suffer the highest rate of homicide of any occupation, according to government statistics. But every so often an agent is killed, robbed or beaten while showing a house for sale. So realty companies and trade organizations have made their agents' safety a top concern. Rarely, though, do agents pass along safety tips to their clients. As a result, sellers may go about the business of putting their homes on the market oblivious to the dangers.

The Los Angeles Times was awarded the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service for revealing official corruption in Bell and the feature photography award for Barbara Davidson's images of victims struggling to recover in the aftermath of gang violence. In a series of articles beginning last summer, a team of 20 reporters and editors, led by staff writers Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, revealed that Bell officials secretly enriched themselves with extravagant salaries and benefits while illegally raising taxes on the city's residents, who are among the poorest in Los Angeles County.

I am the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was murdered in Los Angeles more than 40 years ago. As the child of a crime victim, I am guaranteed by the state Constitution that my family and I will be treated with respect and dignity. Yet I was horrified to learn earlier this week that the Los Angeles Police Department had included the shirt, tie and jacket my father was wearing when he was assassinated in an exhibition at the California Homicide Investigators Assn. conference in Las Vegas.

Peter H. King ("In the Name of Victims," Oct. 2) misses the larger point. The victims speak for a great many of us who believe that our society has become far too soft on crime. As we try to protect the rights of the accused and keep the lid on the costs of incarceration, too many felons are doing too little time for their crimes--some of them (both the felons and the crimes) heinous indeed. If some victims can command the attention of the media, courts and legislatures, who better to speak out for "more perfect" justice?

Minutes before San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow was beaten in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, he texted a relative to say that he feared for his safety, his cousin said Tuesday. In the text message, he said he was "scared inside the stadium," his cousin John Stow said, adding: "He doesn't use that term loosely. " A short time later, after the game had ended, the 42-year-old paramedic and father of two walked out to look for a taxi and was attacked so brutally that he remains in a coma with a brain injury.

Los Angeles County's fee to transport and handle dead bodies is going up from a cap of $200 to a maximum of $400. The county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the fee increase Tuesday, accepting the coroner's office's assertion that transportation and handling costs have gone up since the fee was enacted in 1991. Approved billing rates for the current fiscal year, which ends this summer, will only go up to $312.12, according to a coroner's staff report. "The increased fee ?