First, let me tell you about a child who was apparently loved:
I picked up at auction a small blue cardboard case covered in royal blue satin. I looked inside and saw a cute pair of little girl bedroom slippers topped with white faux fur and needlepoint flowers. Folded beneath the shoes were a Japanese-style robe and pajamas size S, all in matching blue color.
Tucked inside a pocket in the case next to an oval mirror was this note:
“Happy Birthday Karen. Love Aunt Nette and Uncle Wri.”
The clothes had the smell of having been kept in the box for a long time, and Karen apparently wore them because they were stained. I can surmise from the gift and card that Karen was a child who was loved. She had an aunt and uncle who remembered her birthday and gave her a gift to celebrate it. She was one of the lucky children.
Here’s the story of a child who was unloved by his parents:
My newspaper has written stories about a boy named Khalil Wimes who was starved and beaten over two years by his mother and father. He weighed only 29 pounds when he died at the age of six in March. Every inch of his body showed bruises left by belts, shoes, extension cords and it seemed anything else his parents could get their hands on.
The parents have been charged with murder.
Life had not always been so devastating for this child. After he was born, Khalil was placed in the foster care of relatives because his parents had substance-abuse problems. The foster relatives raised him for three years before Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services (DHS)returned him to his parents’ home over the objections of his relatives and others.
The abuse is said to have started after DHS stopped checking on Khalil after a year. Two of his siblings were under the agency’s care, and a caseworker visited the home to monitor them. It’s amazing that this worker missed the suffering indicated by the scars on the face of Khalil, who was forced to sleep on a soiled, plastic mattress in a locked bedroom.
Khalil’s story breaks your heart just as much as the story about Karen warms it. Children are supposed to be loved and protected – the way Karen’s family looked after her, not brutalized the way Khalil’s parents dispensed with him.
When his mother took the final blow to his head, she told authorities, he didn’t even try to break his fall. Maybe he was too frail or too tired, and just gave up. Khalil didn’t have to suffer so needlessly when a better life awaited him – the one with his foster relatives as a growing boy and the one he would carve out for himself as a man.
How sad. Child welfare is a special passion of mine. I have been a volunteer with at-risk children for over 30 years. What I don’t understand is why this little boy’s relatives did not check on him. How can you have a child in your home for the first three years of his life and not check on him periodically? It takes a village to protect a child. While it’s too late for this baby boy, I will donate money in his name to No Hungry Kids. I hate feeling that there is little we can do to prevent these tragedies.
Hi. This is a very sad case. The relatives did try to keep the little boy in their home, and they protested when he was removed. They also wrote letters to try to get the little boy back. One of the relatives told a newspaper reporter that she used to sit in front of the parents’ home hoping to get a glimpse of the boy. I can only assume that the parents would not allow the relatives to see the boy. Most unfortunate was that he had older siblings who told reporters that they spent some time in the home where the little boy lived.
Sherry