Friend: disabled woman raped, pregnant

NORTH COLLINS, N.Y. (WIVB) - More shocking stories are surfacing from the so-called "house of horrors" in North Collins, where a disabled woman was tortured and murdered. Now there are claims that at one point, Laura Cummings was pregnant.

Laura Cummings brutal murder, after years of abuse by her own family, has shocked and outraged western New Yorkers. But those few people that got to know Laura say there was an even seamier side to that house in North Collins. One of those childhood friends shared part of Laura Cummings' untold story.

"Charity" said, "She told us, the first time she told us, she was being raped. We did not know what to do with that kind of information. We were too young."

"Charity," as we will call this woman, and her small circle of childhood friends played with Laura Cummings - when Laura was allowed. Charity asked News 4 not to reveal her true identity. On those few occasions, Charity says Laura would share some of her deepest, darkest secrets about living in the house on Sherman Avenue, ruled with an iron fist by Laura's mother, Eva Cummings.

>>>Eva Cummings and her son and Laura's half-brother, Luke Wright, face a number of disturbing charges, many of which Eva admitted to.

"Really, it didn't last long because then her mother didn't want her hanging around us anymore because she knew that if we found out information like that, we would tell our parents," said Charity.

But that "house of horrors" was horrible for all three females that lived in there. Laura was raped and beaten for years before Eva Cummings smothered her with her bare hands last January. Patricia Wright, Laura's half-sister, was sexually molested by Laura's father, and a number of sources have confirmed Eva Cummings has AIDS.

Charity said, "She has been pretty bad since I have known what AIDS was. My entire life I've known that she has had it."

And after years of sexual abuse, Charity said, "We found out that Laura had gotten pregnant."

In a wrongful death notice filed against Erie County, attorneys for Laura Cummings' estate contend county officials were made aware of the abuse in that household going all the way back to 1995 and refused to heed the warnings of Laura's brother, Richard Cummings, and North Collins judge John Stevens, that Laura was in imminent danger. An Adult Protection supervisor ruled those claims "unfounded."

Laura Cummings' estate attorney Terrence Connors said, "Did not do enough to save her, did not do enough to help her, take her away from that horrific situation."

In an interview earlier this year, Patricia Wright said that inaction has scarred the whole family.

"We would try to plead with them, like, "No, please get us out of here." They would say we were lying, that we were kids, that we didn't know what we were talking about, and then the abuse even got worse," said Patricia.

The outcome of Laura Cummings' pregnancy? Charity couldn't say, but did say that Laura stayed with another relative while she was pregnant, and when she returned to her mother, the abuse escalated until that tragic day last January.