Remembering a young life allegedly cut short by abuse
Saturday, June 14, 2003
By PAUL H. JOHNSON STAFF WRITER
On what would have been his eighth birthday, the family of Faheem Williams gathered by his unmarked grave Friday to remember his short life and begin a campaign to help other children in danger.
"I don't know want another child to go through what those kids went through,'' said Faheem's cousin Clarence Jackson. "To me it's not human.''
Faheem was found dead in a locked room of a Newark basement in January. His twin brother, Raheem, and their brother, Tyrone, 4, were found the previous day, starved and covered in feces.
Their plight attracted nationwide attention and led to reforms at the state Division of Youth and Family Services, the agency that failed to act on tips the children were being abused by their cousin Sherry Murphy, who was taking care of them.
Murphy, 41, is now in the Essex County Jail on charges of child endangerment. Murphy's son, Wesley Thomas, 16, is in the Essex County Youth Home awaiting trial on charges of aggravated assault and child endangerment. Prosecutors allege Thomas struck Faheem in the stomach and that the blow eventually killed Faheem.
Faheem's family gathered at Hollywood Memorial Park in Union to commemorate his birthday and announce a tour around New Jersey to talk with community groups and other families who might face some of the same struggles.
It is scheduled to start in Paterson on Tuesday and travel to 16 other cities around the state from Newark to Trenton to Elizabeth, before ending July 10 in Atlantic City.
The event is being organized by Salaam Ismial of the United Youth Council in hopes of creating a statewide network to support families in crisis by linking houses of worship and other community organizations.
"If we don't start right here, how do we reach the world?'' Ismial asked.
Faheem's brothers, Raheem and Tyrone, are in an undisclosed residential youth facility, and did not attend the event. Jackson said the two are doing well and attend school regularly. Raheem, who also turned 8 on day, went to school dressed as a police officer for his birthday, Jackson said.
"They enjoy the school they're in,'' Jackson said, adding that Raheem "talks about his brother all the time.''
The youths' mother, Melinda Williams, was recently sentenced to four years in prison for violating the terms of her probation in an unrelated case. Williams was convicted in 1997 on charges of child endangerment for abusing a child she was supposed to be baby-sitting.
Williams was arrested in March. She is still recovering from injuries received in a January car accident in the Bronx.
"She's not doing too good,'' said Lynella Gaddie, her cousin. "It's a struggle for her every day. She hasn't even gotten a chance to grieve."
Faheem's grave remains unmarked. Family members said they do not have the money to purchase a marker. Friday's short service was grief-filled, as many family members cried thinking of the horrific life Faheem and his brothers have led. Jackson said he could not fathom living as they did.
"I don't know what it's like to be hungry," said Jackson, who has custody of Faheem's other brother, Fuquan Williams, 11.
Cousin Phillise Williams said she still can't understand why Faheem had to die.
"I feel the same way I felt when he was first laid to rest,'' she said. "He shouldn't be here."
Paul H. Johnson's e-mail address is johnsonp@northjersey.com
Judge told Murphy has low IQ and is depressed, but pointing toward high school diploma
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
BY GUY STERLING Star-Ledger Staff
The teenager accused of battering a 7-year-old boy whose body was found in a Newark basement in January is depressed and beset with learning, intellectual and maturity deficiencies, but also on track to earn a GED, according to court testimony yesterday.
A licensed psychologist who evaluated the 17-year-old testified before a Family Court judge in Newark that Wesley Murphy has an IQ of 79 and reads at an eighth-grade level, while his spelling and math skills are at fifth-grade levels.
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Murphy's academic problems, including a lengthy truancy record, could be the result of getting hit in the head with a baseball bat when he was attending a Newark middle school five years ago, said psychologist Matthew Johnson, who examined Murphy in February and March.
Murphy was hospitalized for two days as a result of the March 1998 attack, which left him with injuries requiring 21 stitches. He may be so impaired from the assault that he will not be judged competent to stand trial, Johnson said.
The assessment came as a lawyer for Murphy (who had been known in the courts as Wesley Thomas) and an Essex County assistant prosecutor debated whether the teenager should be moved from the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center to the county's adult jail.
Murphy has been charged with aggravated assault and child endangerment in the death of Faheem Williams, and Family Court Judge James Troiano had previously ruled he can be tried as an adult.
Murphy's lawyer, Patricia Weston Rivera, has appealed that decision and is fighting his proposed transfer from the youth house. Assistant Prosecutor Carolyn Wright wants him moved.
"If he stays where he is, he can complete his education and hopefully become a fully functioning member of society someday," Rivera said after the hearing. "To do anything else would be to throw away the key on him simply because he's been charged with a crime, not convicted."
Two of her witnesses yesterday, Johnson and Elinor Elcock, an administrator at the youth house, said it would be a mistake to move Murphy because he is making progress and could backslide in an adult facility. "He's in an area where adults care about him," Elcock said. "They love him."
Arrested after telling investigators that he knocked Williams unconscious with a wrestling move, Murphy has been in youth houses in Bergen and Essex counties for four months.
A third witness, Keith Ali, warden of the Essex County Jail in Newark, testified that his facility could accommodate Murphy's needs. But he also said the jail has only just begun transporting the juveniles it keeps as adults to the youth house for educational purposes. There was a dispute in the testimony over how many hours of lessons those transported inmates receive each day.
Troiano adjourned the hearing with one of Rivera's witnesses remaining and Wright still to present her case. He scheduled the proceedings to resume later this month and is expected to rule when testimony has concluded.
Johnson said Murphy spoke of suicide after his arrest on Jan. 10 and the earlier arrest of his mother, Sherry Murphy, who had custody of Faheem Williams and two of his brothers when the boy's body was found Jan. 5 in the basement of a Parker Street apartment.
The previous day, Raheem Williams, Faheem's twin, and Tyrone Hill Jr., were discovered starved, dehydrated and in poor medical condition in a locked room next to the one where the remains of Faheem Williams were uncovered. Sherry Murphy has been charged with three counts of child endangerment and is in jail.
The discovery of the three boys set off a firestorm of complaints against the state Division of Youth and Family Services and led to the reform of the state's child protection system.
Johnson said Wesley Murphy had been a failure in school, missing 57 days and being late for 57 others when he was in the eighth grade at the Vailsburg Middle School in 1999-2000, his last real year of education. He tested below normal in language arts, math and science there.
At West Side High School the next year, Murphy failed every course but one in the first grading period, was suspended for fighting and transferred in mid-year, eventually ending up in a night program that he never attended.
On Jan. 11, Murphy was psychologically assessed in Bergen County and disclosed that he had indulged in both marijuana and alcohol use.
In addition to his low reading, spelling and math test results, Murphy scored poorly on tests that evaluate social concepts and practices, Johnson said. The psychologist said he did not believe the teen is mentally retarded, but did describe him as "socially immature."
Elcock held out hope for Murphy, saying he takes classes six hours every weekday and should get his high school equivalency diploma in August. The idea to resume his education was Murphy's, Elcock said.
"Wesley asked me, 'What do you think about me getting a GED?'" she recalled. "I was happy about that. He seemed to want it and I set up a program for him."
Both she and Johnson also said Murphy is safer in the youth house, where the other juveniles wouldn't necessarily know of the offenses he is facing.
In the adult facility, they contended, the other inmates could be aware of his charges involving a 7-year-old and might want to attack him in retribution. Newspapers are banned in the youth house, but not the jail, they testified.
HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Melinda Williams, whose sons are at the center of a child-abuse case in which one boy died and two were found starving, was sentenced to four years in prison for violating probation.
Williams was convicted of child endangerment in 1997 for injuring a child she was supposed to be baby-sitting.
The charges are unrelated to the treatment of her own children, whom Williams left with a cousin, Sherry Murphy, while she was in jail.
Essex County sheriff's officers arrested Williams last month after she attended a custody hearing about her surviving children, who were hospitalized for more than two months and now live in a state-run home.
Williams had been sought on an outstanding warrant for violating her probation. The court had required her to meet with a probation officer and seek psychological counseling, which she apparently did not do.
A state judge gave Williams the four-year prison sentence Friday after she pleaded guilty to violating probation.
Murphy, 41, is in the Essex County Jail on charges of child endangerment for allegedly mistreating Williams' children.
Murphy's son, Wesley Thomas, 17, is in the Essex County Youth Home awaiting trial on charges of aggravated assault and child endangerment. Prosecutors say Thomas struck a blow to 7-year-old Faheem Williams' stomach and that blow eventually killed Faheem.
Faheem's twin, Raheem, and their 4-year-old brother, Tyrone Hill, were found Jan. 4, the day before Faheem's decomposed body was found in a plastic storage bin in an adjacent room.
17-Year-Old Pleads Not Guilty to Assaulting Boy, 7, Who Died
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
EWARK, March 21 — A teenager charged with assaulting a 7-year-old boy whose body was found in a basement here pleaded not guilty today and was ordered held in $100,000 bail.
The teenager, Wesley Murphy, who entered the plea in State Superior Court, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child and aggravated assault. Mr. Murphy, 17, who is the dead boy's cousin, is being tried as an adult, and the case is being sent to a grand jury, the Essex County prosecutor's office said.
Mr. Murphy was arrested and taken into custody on Jan. 10, five days after the emaciated body of the boy, Faheem Williams, was found in a plastic storage bin at the home of Mr. Murphy's mother, Sherry L. Murphy, 41, who had been entrusted with the boys' care.
The authorities said that in a statement to the police after his arrest, Mr. Murphy admitted that he had kneed his cousin in the abdomen and flipped him backward over his shoulder while performing a wrestling move on him last September. Faheem's head hit the floor and he began gurgling, investigators say Mr. Murphy told them. Mr. Murphy said he left when his mother arrived to help, and never saw Faheem again, according to the authorities.
Mr. Murphy's lawyer, Patricia Weston Rivera, has asked that those comments be suppressed, and the court has denied her request. She said she would appeal the decision.
Today, Ms. Rivera asked Judge Harold W. Fullilove to reduce bail for Mr. Murphy to $10,000 from $100,000 so he could return to his family and 9-month-old son.
Judge Fullilove denied the request after prosecutors contended that Mr. Murphy had failed to make two previous required court appearances on earlier charges that were unrelated to the Williams case.
Faheem's twin, Raheem, and his 4-year-old brother, Tyrone Hill, were found alive and severely malnourished in another area of the same basement on Jan. 4, the day before the body was found. They were released from University Hospital in Newark this month and placed in a foster home.
The case drew national attention to the State Division of Youth and Family Services, which had received 11 complaints of abuse and neglect about the children. The case was closed after a division worker was unable to locate the children.
Ms. Murphy is being held on child endangerment charges in the case. A friend of Ms. Murphy's, Joseph Reese, 45, of Orange is charged with sexually assaulting one of the boys. The boys' mother, Melinda A. Williams, who left them in Ms. Murphy's care, was arrested last month on charges that she violated the terms of her probation in an earlier child endangerment case.
TRENTON, N.J.(AP) _ It begins with Ashten Akturk, a five-year-old girl who died trying to cross a street in Paterson. Prosecutors called her death a homicide and blamed her father, a known drug abuser, who couldn't keep his child safe.
The final entry is for Shelly Williams, a two-year-old who disappeared from her Jamesburg backyard and was found gasping for life in a neighbor's swimming pool.
In between are details of beatings, burnings, sex assaults and abandonments, horrors reduced to routine in a bureaucratic catalogue of 123 child deaths in New Jersey. State officials released five years of such records Thursday, including detailed summaries of 62 cases, a response in part to another shocking death in Newark earlier this year. More case summaries are expected to be made public soon.
"This is a way to really asses whether the child welfare services were really protecting children," said Cecila Zalkind, executive director of the Association for Children of New Jersey. "Hopefully these cases will give some indication of what changes in practices need to be made. We still have a system that tends to provide what the state wants to provide, rather than what the parent needs."
The Division of Youth and Family Services had been supervising 82 of the families. In 41 cases, DYFS had no contact until authorities reported the case to them.
Several of the children were so young when they died they had not yet been named. Nearly all were killed or died at the hands of caregivers.
"Cassandra was found by her almost three-year-old sister face down in a bucket of detergent water. Her mother was in the next room having mopped the floor and leaving the bucket of water mixed with a toxic detergent," reads one report from 2002.
Another, from 1998: "Parents have been unable to comfort their child since birth. They claimed he was inconsolable, always crying and in discomfort ... The father has admitted to beating the child because he cried a lot and deprived the father of sleep."
Ruth Andrade, 2, and sister Millaya, 9-months-old, died when their apartment caught fire. They were alone, left by parents who told police they went to the store.
This 1999 case was an example of one thing DYFS is now trying to prevent. Caseworkers were alerted two months before the fire that the children were left alone. A social worker made several tries, but never saw the children or visited their apartment.
New Jersey's child services agency came under attack earlier this year when two half brothers were found emaciated and abused in a locked basement.
Raheem Williams, 7, and Tyrone Hill, 4, were found Jan. 4, the day before the decomposed body of Raheem's twin brother, Faheem, was found in a plastic storage bin in an adjacent room.
DYFS leaders ordered emergency action to find every child where abuse allegations had been made, at the time estimated to be over 200.
Caseworkers were ordered not to close any case where abuse was alleged, as it was in the Williams case.
Earlier abuses also led to reforms, including a 1997 law that required records related to children's deaths be made public.
"The information shows a variety of different things. Families known to DYFS and many families where there was no history with the division," said DYFS spokesman Joe Delmar. "Unfortunately, lots of times there are child deaths where there was nothing we could have done to prevent the tragedy."
Details for cases this year will be made public, but many of them involve unsettled criminal cases, Delmar said.
EWARK, March 21 — A teenager charged with assaulting a 7-year-old boy whose body was found in a basement here pleaded not guilty today and was ordered held in $100,000 bail.