The Bunker
How Bibb County, Alabama, became home to one of the most horrifying accusations of child abuse in American history.
225 charges of rape, sodomy, human trafficking, and kidnapping have already been filed; as many as 28 perpetrators may be eventually be tried for sexually abusing children as young as 3.
But what really happened?
It happened in a forgotten place. The thick fog of a mid-August morning lingered atop the pines, drawing moisture from the tributaries feeding the Cahaba River as I turned onto Main Street from Bibb County Highway 1, the blue highway. Heading north towards the towns of Brent and Centreville, trees gave way to a Piggly Wiggly and a secondhand store just before the mayor’s office and Brent Baptist Church, where the town’s older, wealthier white residents worship. Behind the church, off Main Street, a side street leads to the Bibb Correctional Facility, inmate population 1,800.Plantation Road is the main artery through Brent’s black neighborhood, which is labelled Zulu on maps but among locals is called “Zuzu.” The homes in Zuzu were built to house workers for the W.E. Belcher Lumber Company, which processed long and shortleaf pine at its mill on Plantation Road. The mill was the town’s largest employer until it was sold in 1976. While its successor — Belcher Forest Products, which …
