Beaten and Forced to Sleep in a Barn – The Story of Hana Williams

Beaten and Forced to Sleep in a Barn – The Story of Hana Williams

Another parishioner at the family’s church signed to the deaf little boy. He was asking him if he was okay. The parishioner had grown concerned as he noticed that the little boy and his sister were losing more and more weight every time that he saw them. But before the little boy could answer him, his parents stepped in, told him it was time to go, and quickly pulled him away.

It’s one that I personally had never heard of until I started researching it, and I’m surprised that I have not heard of it. Two children—siblings—who came to the United States thinking they were going to have a better life than they did in the country they previously lived in, Ethiopia, but instead they would live in a home that would fill them with terror each and every day. What these two children went through was absolutely appalling, and it made one of them lose their lives. This is the story of Hannah Williams.

Hannah Grace Rose Williams was born Hannah Alemu on July 19th, 1997, in Ethiopia. She and her deaf younger brother, Emanuel, had both been abandoned by their biological parents when they were little. Since then, they had been living at an Adoption Advocates International Catholic orphanage in Ethiopia called Kidan Meret. Hannah was said to have enjoyed knitting, crocheting, reading, drawing, and various crafts. Hannah liked to play soccer as well as ride her bike, and she was described as a very pleasant young girl with a great personality and a beautiful smile—though, a side note, the people who would end up ending her life were the ones who wrote this.

The Adoption and Relocation

In August of 2008, Hannah and Emanuel flew with an escort to the United States to live with a couple, the Williamses, whom they had never met before. Carrie and Larry Williams were a couple in their late 40s who lived in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. They already had seven biological children together who ranged in age from 7 to 17, but recently they had decided that they still wanted more children. However, since Carrie was unable to bear any more children herself, they decided to adopt.

They underwent a home study and evaluation with the adoption agency and were soon approved to adopt. Not long after, they received a phone call saying that there was a little deaf boy in Ethiopia that needed a home. Since Carrie had actually studied American Sign Language, they figured it would be a good match. After agreeing to adopt Emanuel, they saw a 60-second video of his sister Hannah and decided they wanted to adopt her too.

“This is Hana. Hana’s a little bit emotional; she’s done this before. Hana, how old are you? Ten years old. And what grade are you in at school? Grade seven. Good. What do you like to study?”

Now, the Williams family lived differently than most. In their home, which was fairly isolated, there was very limited TV or Internet allowed. They also homeschooled their seven children and didn’t socialize very much. The Williamses were also devout fundamentalist Christians who had grown even more fundamentalist over the years. Larry was even giving sermons out in the backyard at this point, and Carrie had gone from wearing pants to only skirts and dresses. She also did not believe that women should wear swimsuits or, get this, vote. Partially due to these religious beliefs, the couple thought that corporal punishment was appropriate for their children. Had the adoption agency known that that’s how they punished their children, they would not have let them adopt Emanuel and Hannah, but they didn’t know.

Escalating Isolation and Abuse

At first, it seemed like everything was going great for the family and their new children. A social worker from the adoption agency would stop in from time to time and see how things were going. Emanuel had learned to sign with his new siblings, and Hannah had been reading books—her favorite was Little House on the Prairie. Hannah had also gone from a slightly underweight 77 pounds when she first arrived in the United States to a now 105 pounds six months later.

But after the children had been living with the family for six months, the adoption process was considered final. This meant that social workers would no longer go out to the home to check on Emanuel and Hannah, and that also meant that not only would the two siblings start to be treated differently from the other children, but they would go through hell.

Friends and neighbors started noticing that Hannah would often get excluded from activities with the family. If she was going on walks with them, she would trail behind. If the children were playing in the driveway, she would hang off to the side of the driveway. Carrie had started to complain to friends and acquaintances that Hannah was rebellious and didn’t listen to her. She was also upset that Hannah had started her period shortly after she arrived in the United States, and she said she expected to adopt a child and not a full-grown woman. She knew she was 11, though, so she has other daughters—she should have expected that. I don’t know what she was looking for. When others recommended that maybe Carrie call the adoption agency and see if they could help her with Hannah, she said, “I don’t wish her upon anyone.”

Hannah’s life soon became a series of daily and escalating punishments:

• She was forced to sleep in a barn that was more than 80 feet away from the main house.

• Sleeping in the barn soon turned into sleeping in a locked, dark shower room.

• Finally, Hannah was made to sleep in a locked 4×2-foot closet.

This is where Hannah would spend much of the last six months of her life, sometimes confined as long as 24 hours at a time while her parents blasted in Bible sermons and religious music—though Carrie would later testify that it was only for as long as 10 hours, not 24 (which doesn’t make it much better).

Humiliation and Cruelty

Now, Hannah was a carrier of hepatitis B, and one time while she was having her period, the Williamses accused her of smearing her menstrual blood on the bathroom walls. So, she was made to use an outdoor porta-potty that was behind the barn that only got cleaned once or twice a year. Hannah was also forced to shower in the front yard under the cold water from the garden hose in full view of the entire family. There were also times that the family would not speak to her at all for as much as two days at a time.

Now, Emanuel had it a little bit better than his sister, but he was also hated and abused by his new family. If Hannah or Emanuel acted rebellious by Carrie’s terms—whatever those terms were—then they would be forced to go outside, even if it was freezing, raining, or snowing. And what she fed the children was horrible too: cold leftovers with frozen vegetables on top of it, or sandwiches that had been purposely soaked in water.

The punishments just got worse from there. Carrie actually had come up with quite a few ridiculous reasons to punish Hannah. If Hannah argued with Carrie about the clothes that she picked out for her—which she probably would because she wants to dress herself; she’s 12—then Carrie would punish her by only letting her wear a towel and sometimes making her go barefoot as well. Hannah’s beautiful braided hair that she was so proud of? Carrie shaved off. She did it three times, one of these times being because she had cut the grass too short.

Hannah and her brother were also not allowed to participate in birthdays or Christmas. Sometimes they were even made to sit outside while the family celebrated with their biological children. Both Hannah and Emanuel were spanked regularly as well with belts, a long glue stick, and a piece of thin plastic tubing. Now, the couple’s biological children were sometimes spanked as well, but nothing like what Emanuel and Hannah would receive.

There were even more ridiculous reasons why Carrie would punish the two children, including:

• Getting anything wrong on their homework.

• Standing in the wrong spot.

• Sneaking food (because she often withheld food from them, so who wouldn’t?).

Emanuel’s Ordeal

Emanuel was eventually forced to sleep in the bathroom like his sister as well. Not long after he had arrived at the Williams house, he had started wetting the bed—probably because he was scared of the things that had started happening. But the Williamses thought that he did it on purpose and would make him immediately get out of bed and go outside and shower in the freezing cold water that came out of the garden hose.

Emanuel, being deaf, would get punished for not hearing the vibrations of the Williamses’ feet on the floor walking towards him. For this, he would often get whipped on the bottoms of his feet, and for other mistakes deemed by Carrie, he would get whipped on other parts of his body. One time during a family celebration, Larry hit Emanuel so hard over the head that he started to bleed, and the blood trickled down his face. Larry, instead of apologizing, put him outside in the cold and told the family to not sign with him.

And when the family would go to church, another parishioner who was also deaf like Emanuel would try to talk to the little boy alone to ask how he was doing, but every time he came close to doing so, Carrie or Larry would whisk him away. The family even made efforts to change Hannah’s age. They figured that they could kick her out when she was 18, and then Carrie said that she could just train Emanuel to be obedient—he would be easier than Hannah. And when someone asked Carrie how Hannah would survive, she said, “Not my problem.”

The Tragic Day: May 11, 2011

All this senseless and cruel punishment would continue on for Hannah up until May 11th, 2011. On this day, Carrie would send Hannah outside, and Hannah was only wearing a t-shirt and some cut-off sweatpants. It was drizzly and in the mid-40s, and at this point, Hannah was extremely thin and malnourished, which made it feel even colder outside. Hannah had been sent outside that day as punishment, and Carrie told her to do jumping jacks to stay warm.

Later on, when Carrie decided it was time for her to come back inside and she started to call Hannah, she claims that Hannah was disobedient and decided she didn’t want to come back in right away. After standing out there for that long freezing, she wouldn’t want to come back in and be warm? No, outside, Hannah soon began stumbling around. Her siblings had been looking out the window for some time now; Emanuel would say that they were laughing at her.

Hannah would soon start removing her clothing while she was still outside in the cold—something that’s known as hypothermic paradoxical undressing. Hannah then began falling down and hitting her head. She would get back up, but Carrie thought that she was just faking it and pretending that she couldn’t walk when she would fall down yet again. Finally, Hannah fell face-first into some mud.

When one of Carrie’s biological daughters reported that Hannah was laying face down and not getting up this time, then Carrie finally went outside. Carrie’s first concern was certainly not Hannah’s life, but rather her immodest nudity. So, she grabbed a sheet and put it over her first, and then asked her two teenage sons to help bring Hannah inside. But before calling 911, Carrie decided to call Larry, who was on his way home from his shift at Boeing—probably so that she could ask him what kind of BS she should feed the 911 operator and the first responders.

After she spoke with him, Carrie finally dialed 911, where she told the operator, “I think my daughter has killed herself. She’s very rebellious.” As the 911 operator walked Carrie through mouth-to-mouth instructions, Carrie told her that Hannah’s mouth was full of mud and her eyes were dilated. Then Carrie’s voice grew annoyed as she told the operator how Hannah was naked and that Hannah had been passive-aggressive lately and causing her so much stress.

The paramedics arrived soon after midnight, and Hannah was rushed to Skagit Valley Hospital. She was severely underweight, her head had been recently shaved, and her body had scars from the repeated beatings with a plastic plumbing hose. Once Hannah arrived at the hospital, doctors realized there was not much they could do for the little girl. On May 12th, 2011, Hannah Williams was pronounced dead.

Investigation and Arrests

Police interviewed Carrie the same day, and since Larry was not there when Hannah collapsed, they only interviewed her at this point. Carrie was cooperative and answered all the questions that detectives asked her. In the interview, Carrie said that Hannah’s behavior had escalated over the past six months and she had been lying, stealing, and self-harming. But Hannah had no diagnosed behavioral problems; as Carrie put it, she was just rebellious. She later told another detective that she was dealing with Hannah’s issues by talking to her, reading to her, and playing music, along with other forms of correction. And Carrie would even say that at dinner time, Hannah did not want to eat—yeah, that’s why she was all skin and bones! Carrie also said that when Hannah had removed her clothes, she thought that she was only messing around because lately Hannah had been dropping her pants in front of her stepbrothers. That’s what Carrie said, at least.

An autopsy report determined that Hannah died from hypothermia and malnutrition, as well as chronic gastritis being contributing factors. According to her medical records between 2009 and 2011, she had lost 30 pounds. Hannah was between 76 and 80 pounds at the time of her death, which was lighter than over 97% of girls her age. She was also very short for her age. Hannah’s frail and dying body just could not withstand the cold temperatures that day.

A day after Hannah’s death, Child Protective Services tried to follow up on the other children, including Emanuel, but when they got to the home, Larry refused to let them in. So, they had police do a follow-up the following day. When they showed up, a deputy said that the family acted like Hannah’s death was just an everyday occurrence.

Twelve days later, police would finally conduct interviews with the other children who had been in the home. By this time, they were most likely rehearsed by their parents because that’s exactly how their statements sounded. They all would say that Hannah was rebellious and did not like to listen to Carrie. One child even said he thought that Hannah was possessed by demons.

Two months later in mid-July, CPS would receive an anonymous tip saying that Carrie did not like her adoptive children and that Emanuel was being treated just as bad as Hannah was now. CPS launched an investigation, and all eight children went into state care. You think that this would have happened a lot sooner than mid-July! They saw how emaciated her body was and the fact that she was naked outside—like, obviously there’s something going on here, not normal. Why was this not investigated a hell of a lot sooner?

Then, it wouldn’t be until September 29th of 2011 that Larry and Carrie were finally arrested and charged in Hannah’s murder. They were charged with homicide by abuse and first-degree assault of a child, the second one being because of their mistreatment of Emanuel.

The Fundamentalist Book and Trial

When detectives searched the Williamses’ house, it did not look like eight children had lived there; it was extremely neat and tidy. Detectives found a fundamentalist Christian child-rearing book called To Train Up a Child. This book gives advice to parents on raising children to obey without question, and it recommends that in order to get your children to obey you, you start spanking them as early as only a few months old.

This child-training book has also been implicated in other children’s deaths as well—a little boy in North Carolina and a girl who lived in California. Apparently, the book’s concepts had been diligently applied to all of the children because they would tell investigators that they did not misbehave because they had been trained, and since their adopted siblings weren’t trained at a young age, that’s why they acted rebellious.

But this book was just the beginning. All seven of Carrie and Larry’s biological children were allowed to participate in the abuse against Hannah and Emanuel. One of Hannah’s siblings told investigators that nobody liked Hannah, but it didn’t matter because she was always in the closet anyways, and they really didn’t hear her anymore either because she had stopped crying when she got spanked. The children also told detectives that Hannah had not participated in homeschooling or family meals for over a year now.

In foster care, after Emanuel and the other children had been removed from the home, a therapist and a deaf child specialist said that Emanuel was afraid to talk about his time at the Williamses’ house because he was afraid he would be punished. His language skills were also behind, and he would compulsively apologize for the littlest mistakes as well as ask his new foster mom why she did not hurt him. Emanuel even had nightmares about having to return to the home, and he knew that he would have been the next one dead had somebody not stepped in. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Then, in November, Larry and Carrie were also charged with first-degree manslaughter by domestic violence. This meant that their offense—Hannah’s death—was part of an ongoing pattern of psychological, physical, or sexual abuse.

Now, prior to Carrie and Larry’s trial, Hannah’s body would need to be exhumed, and doctors would measure her teeth to try to find out what age she was. Her age mattered because the couple had been charged with homicide by abuse, and in homicide by abuse, the child has to be 16 years old or younger. Adoption records say that Hannah was 13 years old, but the Williamses in their defense were trying to say that she was older than that. Two dentists examined Hannah’s teeth, and it was determined that at the time of her death, Hannah was 16 years old or younger, so the charges stuck.

The Trial and Verdicts

Carrie and Larry Williams’s trial would begin in July of 2013. One of the first people to take the stand would be Hannah’s little brother, Emanuel. A sign language interpreter helped him speak in front of the jury. He told them that him and his sister were repeatedly beaten as well as punished with a water hose while they were at the Williamses’ house. Emanuel would say:

“They beat me very hard. It was the same for my sister. The father would use a beating stick to beat us. If we wet the bed, they would use a water hose all over us to spray our bodies. They would hit me around the bottom of the feet and toes as well.”

Carrie and Larry Williams would take the stand in their own defenses, and they would start pointing fingers at each other. Carrie stuck with her original story that she had asked Hannah to come inside, but then Hannah began throwing herself around. Carrie said that Hannah bumped her head and scraped her knees, but she just believed she was acting out. Carrie talked about how she had put a sheet over Hannah after she had collapsed because modesty is important to her family. Carrie told the courtroom that she believed Hannah had accidentally done this to herself, and she also said that since she was not the man or the head of the household, she was not responsible for what had gone on in the house.

Larry told the jury that he felt responsible and ashamed. He said that sometimes he did not agree with Carrie’s discipline methods and he regrets not stepping in. He said that since he worked long hours at Boeing, he didn’t know everything that was going on inside the house—but just one look at Hannah would have told him that she wasn’t being fed! And I’m sure he was home for, I don’t know, Christmas and other celebrations when her and her brother were kicked outside, so no, not buying it. Larry’s attorney said that Carrie should be the one to spend decades in jail because she was the primary actor in all the mistreatment of Hannah and Emanuel.

Emanuel’s new foster mom also took the stand, and she said that when she took the little boy in, he was rail-thin and covered in scratches.

On September 9th, seven weeks after the trial started, Carrie and Larry were found guilty on almost all of the charges brought against them:

• First-degree assault of Emanuel.

• Manslaughter of Hannah.

• For Carrie, homicide by abuse.

On October 29th, 2013, Larry was sentenced to 28 years in prison, and Carrie to 37.

Aftermath and Legacy

After Hannah’s death, the adoption agency that had placed her and her brother with the Williams family made some changes. Their post-placement reporting procedures will now last a year instead of only 6 months. Adoptees also will now be interviewed away from the adoptive parents, and families must now contractually agree that if the post-adoption reports are not filed, the adoption agency can call CPS or the police. The adoption agency that had sent them to the Williams house actually had their Ethiopian adoptions temporarily suspended in 2012 over concerns of abuse.

Emanuel is now living with a deaf African-American foster mother. His signing abilities have drastically improved, and he seems much happier than he’s ever been.

After Carrie and Larry’s sentencing, the Ethiopian Community Center had hoped to install a headstone for Hannah where only a temporary marker had been. But in October, community members who had spent months following the trial and years grappling with what had gone wrong learned that they could not. Two years after Hannah’s death, the Williamses’ extended family suddenly ordered a headstone themselves—but the birth date on Hannah’s headstone reads 1994, which is three years earlier than her death certificate reads! Since the Williamses were headed into appeal, this engraving was a way to posthumously change Hannah’s age from 13 to 16, just as the Williamses’ defense attorney had argued, in order to invalidate the most serious charge and to cast Hannah not as a youthful victim, but a troubled teen. Disgusting that they would do that after the poor little girl is already dead too—they’re trying to get their family off the hook instead of giving a damn about this little girl who was murdered.

Nice funeral services for Hannah Williams were held on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011, at Lemley Funeral Chapel in Sedro-Woolley. She was then buried at the Sedro-Woolley Union Cemetery.

Conclusion

Well, thank you for listening to all of Hannah’s story today. I don’t understand why these people, or monsters, wanted to adopt two more children when they already had seven of their own, just to beat the hell out of them. Hannah looked like a sweet little girl who potentially could have had a better future for herself here in the United States, but that was ripped away from her by those animals.

I’m very glad that her brother Emanuel made it out and now he’s happy, but had Child Protective Services waited any longer to remove him from the home, I might be today telling you about two homicides instead of just one. Hopefully, he will go on to have a great life, because I know Hannah would have loved that for him.