Saturday, July 27, 2013

Trial begins for couple accused of starving adopted daughter

(July 27, 2013, (Kings5))--For Hana Williams, it was a troubled transition from Ethiopia to the promised land of America. She wet the bed, rebelled against her strict Christian parents and was more than they and their seven biological children could handle. Less than 3 years after setting foot in her new Seedro-Woolley home, Hana was dead.



The question before jurors now is did Carri Williams and her husband Larry cause Hana’s death? The devout Christians admittedly did not spare the rod with their children, but prosecutors say they went to terrible extremes, hitting Hana and her younger brother with plastic plumbing pipes, hosing them down with cold water and forcing Hana to sleep in a barn or a four-foot-by-two-foot closet for weeks at a time.

"These things are not discipline or punishment," said assistant Skagit County prosecutor Rosemary Kaholokula. "They constitute torture."

Prosecutors say the couple withheld food from Hana as a form of punishment and at the time of her death, the teenager weighed just 80 pounds. One cold, wet night in May 2011, she was sent outside as punishment wearing little more than cut-off sweatpants and a T-shirt. A few hours later she was dead from hypothermia exacerbated by malnutrition. Read more from Kings5 »

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