Playwright and poet Scherezada (Chiqui) Vicioso lived moments of terror, movie-style, when she and family members were about to sit down for dinner at her mother’s home in the El Embrujo neighborhood in Santiago. Vicioso was visiting her mother when five hooded and gun-porting delinquents assaulted the house. With her were her husband Fidelio Despradel, mother Maria Luisa Vicioso, 74 years old, brother Luis Daul Vicioso and Jose Herrera Sanchez. Her brother had just come from New York City where he lives. Vicioso says she suspects Dominicans that had been deported from New York committed the robbery. She said that all were obliged to hand in their valuables. She had US$300 to pay for a credit card purchases in her bag. They were forced on to the floor as the assailants searched the house finding a US passport in the name of her brother, Luis. She said the assailant asked in English, "Who is Luis?" They took Luís inside the room and threatened to torture him with a heated iron. He handed in US$3,000 and his credit cards. The thieves cut the telephone lines, tied them and gagged them. The thieves left with the navy blue Toyota Corolla property of their cousin, Jose Herrera. Vicioso told the press that she suspects they were deported Dominicans because of the threat to use the heated iron, a way of torture that she says is used frequently in NY. She says the return of delinquents is definitely contributing to the increase in the crime rate in Dominican cities. She says there have not been the means to rehabilitate them here and reinsert them in society, and instead they have been ostracized by a society that has rejected them. "The country needs to prepare to face delinquency, rehabilitate these people, help them get jobs, or the middle and upper class will have to become armed like in the Middle West. The governments have to stop playing the role of the ostrich ignoring this problem," she said. In July of this year, for the first time the Police Department gave out 500 good conduct papers to deported Dominicans, which was seen as a step in the right direction.
