Crime Victims

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.

For kidnap victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard, recovery is rare. A full portion of her life -- her entire teens and 20s -- was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them. They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now. Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children.

With Bernard L. Madoff sentenced Monday to 150 years in prison, his massive Ponzi scheme is likely to be felt for years as victims struggle to recoup their money, investors treat Wall Street with new suspicion and regulators scramble to crack down on all manner of financial wrongdoing. Closing a chapter in the Madoff melodrama, a federal judge unexpectedly imposed the maximum possible sentence, jolting the legal community and electrifying many of those who had entrusted Madoff with their money.

Arline Mathews' age-spotted hands shake ever so slightly as she sorts through manila envelopes stuffed with police reports, letters and newspaper clippings, the chronicle of a quarter-century-old crime spree arrayed across her dining table. At 82, the portrait artist, community leader, mother and grandmother should be spending her time in leisurely pursuits, playing golf or bridge or having the kids over. Instead, Mathews' days are consumed by fear that the man who raped her 22 years ago could soon be released from prison and follow through on threats to kill her. The files in her dining room recount the battle she fought a generation ago to see Lloyd Anthony Roy punished for shattering her sense of security and her faith in the goodness of people.

A spasm of cross-racial gang shootings in and around the San Gabriel Valley city of Monrovia has left a 64-year-old African American man and a 16-year-old Latina dead and prompted a law enforcement crackdown to stem the bloodshed. In all, seven people have been killed or wounded in recent weeks, as suspected black and Latino gang members have traded gunfire. At least two of those killed have been bystanders, authorities said.

A Westminster woman was on life support Monday after she was pepper sprayed during a robbery and suffered a stroke while being treated at a hospital, police said. Kun Min Kim, 50, was attacked about 7:30 p.m. Sunday as she arrived home from her snack store at the Anaheim Marketplace. She parked in a carport at her apartment building in the 15000 block of Van Buren Street, and as she opened her car door, a woman approached and sprayed her in the face, authorities said.

On the way home from school Thursday, 13-year-old Magda Gomez and his friends walked past the South Los Angeles intersection where five youths and three adults were shot the day before. One of the boys pointed out the splatter of dried blood that stained the sidewalk next to the bus stop at Central and Vernon avenues. "Check it out," he said. Gomez and his friends turned briefly to look and then kept walking. "I saw the injured people," Gomez said of Wednesday's shooting.

Army Sgt. Anita Shaw spent endless hours worrying about her teenage son while she served in Iraq. She worried about his learning to drive without her, then maybe having a car accident. She worried about his not seeing a doctor if he needed to, or forgetting to go to the dentist. She worried about his having trouble in school. But even in her darkest moments, she never worried about him being slain. Her son, Jamiel Shaw Jr.

She purses her lips in a "tsk-tsk" when asked difficult questions. Questions about her life, about the husband who beats her, the father who denies her an inheritance and a place to live. Slightly hunchbacked, her thin frame barely fills the several layers of donated clothing she wears. At 26, she looks 15. She has three children and an elementary-school education. When she showed up at the door of a women's shelter here, purple bruises blotched her face and framed her shattered, crooked nose.

In an unprecedented gesture, Pope Benedict XVI met privately Thursday with a small group of men and women who were sexually abused as youths by their clergy, an emotional encounter of prayer and tears. Participants said later that they had experienced a long-overdue sense of "fulfillment." Inside the chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature, the pope spoke to the victims individually and as a group, and they prayed together, said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.