Victims' despair, loneliness drove them into trap
Street woman stereotype made it harder for families to get help
With respect to the Cleveland serial killer, it is too easy to blame neighbors for not knowing they were living next door to a monster.
Too easy to ridicule these people for confusing the smell of death with the smell of rotting meat.
And much too easy to point fingers at police officials for failing to follow up on reports that a naked and bleeding woman was spotted near the convicted sex offender's home.
When all is said and done, only the victims could have saved themselves from the despair and loneliness that drove them into a trap set by a sexual deviant.
There was no shortage of women who were willing to risk their lives for a drink and a moment of companionship.
So far, 11 bodies have been dug up in and around the house where suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell lived and allegedly raped and killed his victims.
No telling how many others Sowell would have murdered had a woman not escaped and contacted police.
Last month, she reported that Sowell punched, choked and raped her inside the home where the bodies were found.
Her claims led to an arrest warrant for Sowell, who had served 15 years in prison for the rape of another Cleveland woman.
Questions are now being raised about whether law enforcement was negligent in keeping tabs on Sowell, a registered sex offender.
This serial killing also has rekindled complaints that police are lax when it comes to searching for missing black women.
These are legitimate concerns.
Here in Chicago, relatives of 17-year-old Yasmin Acree have had to press Chicago police to keep looking for the teen who disappeared in January 2008.
After Yasmin's cousin, the Rev. Ira Acree, complained about the way police conducted the investigation into her disappearance, the Chicago Police Department was forced to acknowledge that officers left pertinent evidence behind and did not dust for fingerprints.
Yasmin -- then a 15-year-old honor student -- wasn't a runaway and did not hang out in the streets.
Acree has tried to keep her disappearance in the spotlight.
"Until she is found, any time we can talk about her is helpful," he said.
"There's not a lot of attention given to black women who are missing in urban communities."
Indeed, a story about missing black women seems to hold the spotlight only after a number of them are found murdered.
Unfortunately, these stories often shared a common thread.
Many of the women who were victimized were later identified as addicts who traded sex for drugs.
I'm not suggesting that these lives were worthless.
But, like runaways, the unsavory lifestyle of women living on the street almost has become a stereotype for poor, black women who go missing.
That has made it even harder for the relatives of missing black women to get immediate help.
For instance, another woman who had an encounter with Sowell came out of the shadows last week.
Tonya Doss claims that last April Sowell held her captive after she went to his bedroom to drink beer and watch a basketball game.
In a CNN interview, Doss demonstrated how Sowell allegedly choked her until she nearly passed out.
She said that after Sowell had several beers, he leaped on her, telling her that she could be another "b----on the street dead and nobody would care."
She escaped Sowell by telling him that she had to meet her daughter at the hospital.
Doss said she did not tell police about her near-death experience because she's been raped before.
After she went to authorities, her attacker got a light sentence and relatives blamed her, she said.
I kept waiting, in vain, for Doss to at least acknowledge that she made a terrible mistake going into Sowell's house in the first place.
For weeks to come, Doss' face likely will be the face of the missing women victimized by Sowell, and by extension, the face of black women who have gone missing.
If Sowell killed these women, he is the bogeyman that our mothers warned us about.
Those of us who fail to heed those warnings still do so at our own peril.
MARY MITCHELL