Heartless

HANA Williams was supposed to have a
better life in the United States.
Instead, the Ethiopian teenager was
subjected to horrifying abuse at the
hands of her adoptive parents, Larry and
Carri. Then, three years after travelling to
the US from an African orphanage, Hana
was found dead in her own backyard.
Carri Williams has since been convicted
of "homicide by abuse" and sentenced to
37 years in prison. Her husband Larry
will serve 28 years. The pair terrorised a
household of nine children, two of whom
were adopted, with a strict disciplinary
regime that turned deadly on May 11,
2011.
Carrie Williams in court. Photo: AP
On that day, Carri sent Hana outside into
rain and single-digit temperatures, telling
the girl to do jumping jacks to stay warm,
Slate reports. Hana was left outside for
hours, where she eventually died of
hypothermia, compounded by
malnutrition and gastritis.
It was a slow death. Hana staggered
around the yard, repeatedly falling and
hitting her head, before taking off her
clothes in a phenomenon called
"hypothermic paradoxical undressing".
When one of the family's biological
daughters said Hana was lying facedown
on the ground, Carri went out, covered
her with a sheet and told two teenage
sons to bring her inside. She eventually
called 911.
"I think my daughter just killed herself,"
Carri said. "She's really rebellious."
Hana Williams. Photo: Facebook
The Williams family lived on an isolated,
5.6-acre property in Sedro-Woolley, a
small town deep in the American
northwest. Larry and Carri practised a
fundamentalist brand of Christianity
while homeschooling their children and
banning most TV and internet access,
Slate reports.
The couple's strict parenting style
appears to have been taken from the
book To Train Up A Child, which has been
implicated in the deaths of two other
adoptees. While the Williams' biological
children were seemingly well "trained",
their two adopted kids, Hana and
Immanuel, were often singled out for
brutal punishment.
Hana was forced to use an outdoor port-
a-loo her parents hardly ever cleaned.
She had to sleep in a dark, cramped
bathroom, and when that punishment
didn't work she was moved to a closet
which was barely a metre long. If Hana
didn't like her clothes, Carri made her
wear a towel instead.
The two adopted children were fed cold
leftovers and frozen vegetables, or
sandwiches soaked with water. They
were excluded from family events and
routinely beaten.
Hana's adoptive siblings later told
investigators they barely saw or heard the
girl because she was "always in the
closet" and had stopped crying when
their parents hit her.
Larry Williams is the man in the centre of this
photo. Pic: AP
When Hana first arrived in the US she
weighed 35 kilos. Six months later she
had almost reached 50 kilos. But at the
time of her death, Hana was so
emmaciated and malnourished that she
had returned to her original weight.
Immanuel suffered the same abuses.
When he was removed from the family
following Hana's death, the boy told
therapist Julia Petersen he felt certain he
would be the next one to die in the
home. Immanuel apologised
compulsively and asked his new foster
mother why she didn't hurt him.
Larry and Carri had been arrested. They
couldn't mistreat Immanuel anymore. But
he was still afraid of ending up like Hana.