It breaks my heart to hear all of your stories about being ripped off. I never expected Silk Road to become an exchange site because there are so many other sites doing just that, and there is no real security advantage to buying bitcoins from Silk Road itself. In fact, it is less secure. If you buy from an exchanger and have them send your coins to your Silk Road account address, they have no clue where they went, but an exchanger from here knows exactly what you are doing with those coins. I would encourage everyone trying to get bitcoins to use 3rd party sites. If you do need to use a money changer here for whatever reason, use the escrow.