On January 4th, 2003, Raheem Williams, 7 years old, and Tyrone Hill, 4 years old, were found burned and starving in a home in
Newark. While in University Hospital, one of the boys asked where their brother was. The next day authorities found his dead body in a plastic bin tucked hidden inside a closet that had been nailed shut.
An autopsy revealed that the child had died from starvation and blunt trauma to the abdomen. No one has yet been charged with his death.
The New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services had followed the family for years.
As I sat in the mobile medical unit yesterday, on Irvine Turner Boulevard in Newark, New Jersey, I could see news vans setting up their giant inverted mushrooms outside the Emmanuel Church of Christ. White stretch limousines cruised up and down the boulevard. Mayor Sharpe James was there. Governor "Don't Call Me Jim" McGreevey was there. Senator Frank Lautenberg paid his respects.
The newspapers in the morning described the small ivory casket that held Faheem. Faheem has achieved stature in our town; he is a "prince" and a "hero."
I did not know Faheem. No one knew Faheem. His heroism? He starved and was beaten by his caretakers; along the way he died.
Faheem did not die a hero. He died alone. His rotting carcass rested in a plastic bin left in a basement closet that had been nailed shut. Officials got embarrassed. The "system" failed. Still, children have been killed here before, and will be killed again.
United States Senator Frank Lautenberg:
We do not want another child to go through this. This little boy's memory will do so much more than he ever could have imagined he would do in his short lifetime.
Mr. Senator, he imagined he would be a
firefighter, a
pilot, a
president, a ball player. He hoped for
food,
security, some sense of routine in his day. To suggest that his
death will do more than the child "ever could have imagined" is
obscene, as though the limousines and the notoriety and celebrity means anything to an abused child, a dead child in particular.
Newark Mayor Sharpe James:
Because he lived, New Jersey and America will never be the same. Because he lived, there has been such an outpouring of love from all over the world. Because he lived, America is a better place.
Mr. Mayor, nothing has changed. I tend a family just 5 blocks from the Emmanuel Church of Christ with hungry children, with the help of a caring but overworked and ineffective caseworker.
The Division of Youth and Family Services cannot locate several children they have been called to help. Mr. Mayor, you plan to spend $200 million dollars of city money on an arena downtown. America plans to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions more bombing Iraq, and its children. Another child will be killed in Newark before too long.
Governor James McGreevey:
Today Faheem enters the Kingdom of God and may in his memory we do so much more to protect these little children, who are the blessed disciples of God.
"The blessed disciples of
God." In our country 1 out of 5 blessed disciples of God lives in poverty, and 1 out of 3 will spend some time poor. About a quarter of the blessed disciples of God are insufficiently immunized at age two.
I have pronounced one blessed disciple of God killed by a bullet before his tenth birthday, and another who was slammed to death before he was old enough to walk. Governor McGreevey, if Faheem is a blessed disciple of God, I suspect He's going to be steaming by the time we grown-ups try to get in to heaven.
No one had much personal to say about Faheem. No one knew him. He died alone.
Quotes taken from
The Star Ledger, Saturday, January 25, 2003.