Posted on 05/28/2004 11:57:51 PM PDT by familyop
The service was held at a Baptist church in Longwood. Afterward, the three white coffins were loaded into hearses for the trip to the cemetery.
There was plenty of space in the hearses, because the coffins were small.
Ilona Williams died at age 9. Ian Williams was 6. Ivey was only 5.
Police say their mother killed them and hid the bodies in a trundle bed.
On Mother’s Day.
The children’s father says he begged authorities to take the children from his estranged wife because she was mentally disturbed. Last fall, she was hospitalized twice for psychiatric evaluation under Florida’s Baker Act.
Three reports of possible child abuse against Andrea Williams had been investigated — and closed — by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
“We don’t have a crystal ball, obviously,” Capt. Greg Barnett told a reporter.
Despite Andrea Williams’ hospitalizations, Circuit Judge Donna McIntosh refused to take Ilona, Ian and Ivey from her mother last November.
If she had, the children would be alive today. It’s the same sad and infuriating story, recycling through the headlines: Somebody guessed wrong.
As wrong as wrong can be.
Sometimes it’s a judge, sometimes it’s a case worker or supervisor for the Department of Children & Families, sometimes it’s a cop, sometimes it’s a family member.
The result is the same: a funeral.
Last year in Florida, 81 kids died because of abuse or neglect, according to DCF. The most common cause was accidental drowning that occurred when a parent was distracted or inattentive.
But at least 36 of the 81 victims were the subjects of previous abuse reports to state officials. These children were known. Their names were on files. They were not invisible. And still they ended up in caskets.
Nobody knew that the three Williams children were dead until their mother arrived in North Carolina to confront a woman named Ashley Bishop. The two had met in an online chat room, started a relationship and then lived together for a time.
When Andrea Williams was arrested, police say, she had a duffel bag containing handcuffs, duct tape, ammunition and a handgun. Just your average Florida mom on vacation.
During her interviews with North Carolina police, Williams provided the information that led Seminole County lawmen to her children’s bodies, wedged between mattresses in the trundle bed at the family home.
NIGHTMARE AFTER
NIGHTMARE
Williams allegedly confessed to giving lethal overdoses of sleeping pills to Ilona, Ian and Ivey on Mother’s Day, then driving north to surprise Bishop.
Once upon a time, such a crime would have seemed beyond belief, but not anymore. These horror stories keep coming, one nightmare following another, and they keep getting worse.
On the very day that the Williams children were laid to rest in a cemetery near Orlando, another small casket was being prepared in North Miami.
Angel Hope Herrera, age 3, had been beaten to death.
The person charged with the little girl’s murder is her mother, Yusimil Herrera, herself the victim of violence when she was a child in state-approved foster homes.
In the Herrera cases lies a depressing irony.
A few years ago, Yusimil and her sister, dubbed the “Two Forgotten Children,” sued DCF for the rapes, beatings and other cruelties suffered at the hands of foster parents.
A jury awarded $4.4 million to the Herrera sisters. Later the verdict was tossed out, and the case was settled for about $250,000.
No amount of money could have healed the damage that already had been done to Yusimil. She turned Angel over to the Mitchell family when the baby was only four weeks old.
Two years later, though, Yusimil began seeing Angel again, and eventually took her back. Ann Mitchell said she told DCF of her fears that the toddler was being beaten by her mother.
In February and March 2004, calls to the state’s child-abuse hot line warned that Yusimil Herrera was physically abusing Angel. DCF reports indicated that Yusimil was mentally ill, and might have stopped taking her medicine.
On March 24, a hearing was held to decide if she was fit to keep custody of Angel. The Mitchells say they were unable to attend.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Sarah I. Zabel ruled that there was no probable case to separate Angel from her mother. It remains unclear how much information the judge received from DCF before making her decision, but this is much is true:
Angel Hope Herrera would be alive today if she’d been taken from Yusimil.
Zabel, like McIntosh, had no crystal ball to guide her.
And consider the options: Leave Angel with Yusimil — aged 20, unstable and pregnant again — or put the little girl into the same foster-care program that destroyed Yusimil’s own childhood.
That’s all we had to offer a 3-year-old girl who needed help. That was the best we could do.
Strapped for money, DCF has been summarily closing thousands of case files — which, unfortunately, is not the same as saving thousands of kids.
Not that all of them can be saved, but for many the warnings are evident. It was true for Ilona, Ian and Ivey Williams. It was true for Angel Hope Herrera.
Maybe someday, somebody in Tallahassee will decide that protecting our most endangered children is more important than all the other nonsense that goes on in politics.
Until then, the funerals will continue, and we’ll be haunted by the sight of coffins that are just too small.
Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.
"Ashley Bishop, 27, told the Orlando Sentinel that she and Williams dated for 18 months after meeting in an online chat room. Bishop moved back to North Carolina in September" (May 14, 2004, Charlotte Observer).
Williams' husband had tried to get custody ("Mother declines to waive extradition," AP, News 14, Carolina) http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=63094
Why do you Post them?
Why did you read it?
The brutal treatment of children by their parents is one of the most important stories for anyone to read and think about.
In older, more sane times she would have been deemed an "unfit mother", and the children would have been taken from her.
Now, I guess it is considered wrong or politically incorrect to pass judgement in such cases.
Very significant as the country is on the verge of legalizing "gay marriage." I'd guess that the lesbian weirdness played a role here.
The outrage is why the judge refused the father custody AFTER the mother attempted suicide. What in the hell was the rational thought behind that?
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