A Dead Child's Tale
tiny dancer
Child's death still a mystery
Family members know little about time girl spent with her mother
By PEGGY O'HARE
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
For months, she was nobody's child, a nameless, faceless little girl who met
a tragic, brutal end, thrown away in a ditch. Fall passed, winter came, then
spring arrived as her remains went unclaimed, leading some to wonder if the
child was even from Houston.
But when she finally was identified as a local child who lived just blocks
away, no one was more surprised or devastated than the girl's extended
family who had taken turns caring for her since birth.
Angel Doe, as she was called by child advocates during her six months of
anonymity, was eventually identified as Raysate Chain Knight, a 6-year-old
whose happier days were divided between loved ones in the Sunnyside
neighborhood of southeast Houston, where her grandfather is a church pastor,
and an aunt and uncle in Georgia, who were like her mother and father.
That was before Raysate's birth mother, Connie Gazette Knight, 40, took the
child back home to live with her -- and before Raysate was found dead Sept.
9 in a trash-filled ditch in the 5100 block of Groveton, killed by blunt
trauma to the head, her body marked by signs of long-term abuse.
The circumstances of Raysate's death are as unusual as they are tragic.
Rarely is a child that old -- a girl who should have been starting the first
grade -- killed as a result of abuse or neglect.
"Children are abused this age, but to have a child that age die is unusual,"
said Dr. Curtis Mooney, president of DePelchin Children's Center, which
provides counseling to children and families, including victims of abuse.
Infants or toddlers more commonly are the victims. Statistics show 80
percent of children who die as a result of abuse or neglect are under the
age of 3, a consistent trend locally and nationally in recent years, experts
say.
But exceptions do occur.
In Raysate's case, the child's stunned aunts, uncles and grandparents are
trying to figure out how such a lovable, bubbly little girl could meet such
a cruel fate. They have no real answers.
"It's mind-boggling," said the slain child's grandmother, Joan Bell, 62, of
Houston, in a recent interview. "I think the thing that really bothers me
about this is we were always here, always here. I just can't make any sense
out of it. I can't get a handle on it.
"Actually, when I first knew (Angel Doe) was Raysate, when my husband
finally did tell me, `It's the baby,' I was really full of rage. I was just
so angry that I couldn't eat or sleep. ... (Connie Knight) never made one
overture toward us. She never called. Somebody said maybe she was ashamed."
Knight, who remains in the Harris County Jail awaiting trial on a charge of
injury to a child, isn't shedding much light on what happened. She declined
to talk with a reporter about her daughter's death, as did her attorney,
Laine D. Lindsey.
Also not talking are Knight's other children, who lived in the same house
with her and Raysate -- three girls, ages 17, 13 and 8, and a 4-year-old
boy. They remain in the protective custody of state officials in Louisiana,
where they have been since their mother's arrest in that state in March.
They have yet to tell child welfare officials or Houston police anything
about what happened to their sister, investigators say.
While the details of what happened to Raysate may not emerge for some time,
what little is known paints a heartbreaking picture of a child whose life
showed moments of promise and hope before it was destroyed.
Raysate, affectionately called "Bitly" by her grandmother, was born in
Houston on May 20, 1995, to Connie Knight and Raymond Jefferson Sr. She was
the fifth of six children born to Knight, a lifelong Houston resident and
single mother.
Knight, the eldest of four children born to Bell, has always been close to
her family and has no previous history of abusing any of her children.
"She has a good heart, good intentions," Bell said of her daughter. "She
hasn't always been able to execute what she intends."
Raysate's brief life, though marked by upheaval and frequent moves to
various relatives' homes, had moments of happiness. She was a cheerful baby
who rarely cried, and her keen intelligence quickly became apparent to those
around her. She also had an ear for music and loved to dance.
"She was the kind of child, you just could not help loving her. She was
affectionate. She was a funny little girl," Bell said, noting that her
granddaughter often mimicked the way she sat, tilted her head and crossed
her legs.
At birth, Raysate tested positive for exposure to drugs, so she was placed
in state custody, Children's Protective Services officials in Harris County
confirmed. The baby went straight from the hospital where she was born to a
foster home. But Bell stepped forward almost immediately, identifying
herself as the child's grandmother, and Raysate was allowed to go live with
her in December of that year after authorities approved her home as a safe
environment.
Bell recalls the moment she saw her granddaughter for the first time, when
Raysate was 5 months old.
"She had curly black hair and really long eyelashes," Bell said. "She was a
beautiful little baby."
Knight did not object to having the infant placed with Bell.
"We were attempting to work with (Knight), offering her the possibility of
treatment," said Judy Hay, spokeswoman for CPS in Harris County. "But she
was not interested in raising Raysate and did not fight her mother having
custody."
Raysate went to live with Bell and her husband, Walter Bell, pastor of
Christ Way Church on Comal Street in Sunnyside. Knight, meanwhile, went on
to become drug-free for three years, according to her mother, and had
frequent visits with her young daughter.
When CPS last had contact with the family in 1998, Raysate remained with her
grandmother, Hay said.
But Bell had a stroke and began having health problems that made it
difficult for her to raise a young child, so Raysate went to live with an
aunt and uncle in Norcross, Ga., Randy and Gloria Knight.
The couple were described in the child's recent funeral program as "special
parents," and Raysate called them Mom and Dad. By all accounts, they
thoroughly enjoyed having the child in their home, even including her in
their formal family portraits.
In Georgia, Raysate seemed to thrive. She took her first step on her first
birthday during a birthday party. By the age of 2, she was talking nonstop.
Soon, she was attending the Apple-a-Day day care in Duluth, Ga.
But in March 2000, when Raysate was 4 years old, her birth mother went to
Georgia and took the child back to Houston, unknown to CPS officials in
Harris County.
Had CPS officials been told, they would have evaluated the child's new
home -- but there was nothing to prevent Connie Knight from reclaiming her
daughter as long as Bell, as the child's custodial caregiver, allowed it,
Hay said.
Bell said Connie Knight was never satisfied "with somebody else having her,
which I thought were pretty normal feelings. She wanted her back. My son and
his wife (Raysate's uncle and aunt in Georgia) are both still totally
devastated by that."
For the last year-and-a-half of her life, Raysate was under the sole care of
Knight, and for most of that time she lived with her mother and siblings at
a house in the 9300 block of Ashville, not far from her grandmother's in
Sunnyside. Knight's oldest son, now 20, was the only one of her children who
did not live with them.
Raysate was never enrolled in school in Houston, police said. Relatives
outside the home, including her grandmother, never saw her. From what police
have learned, she was rarely let out of the house.
Relatives asked about Raysate and tried to see her but were always told the
child was not home and was out visiting other loved ones. Bell, consumed
with round-the-clock care for her own ailing mother, talked with Raysate on
the phone a few times but never became suspicious.
"I never got alarmed, because I saw the other children, and they were fine,"
Bell recalled. "I talked to her several times on the phone at Connie's
house -- I never got any kind of signals anything was abnormal. ... I'm
seeing Raymond (Raysate's father), and he didn't seem concerned."
While Raysate's last days remain a mystery, typically in child abuse
situations, the victimized child may be the scapegoat of the family, and may
suffer more severe consequences than the other children, such as more
spankings, confinement in a room or isolation, experts say.
Usually in such cases, "that child becomes the one everything is blamed on
... and probably over a period of time has taken the brunt of the family
problems," said Mooney, the DePelchin president.
Such a victim may be targeted because he or she is seen as a "problem child"
or perhaps has a more aggressive personality than the other children, he
added.
"It's not totally inconceivable that could have happened to this child,"
Mooney said. But, he added, "I can't imagine that happening in a home with
other children and them not knowing about it."
Since the arrest, police have questioned Knight's other minor children, but
they have denied that Raysate lived with them.
Knight's 13-year-old daughter shook uncontrollably when a caseworker in
Louisiana handed her a photo of Raysate, but she still denied she had ever
seen the child, police said.
"All of the children denied knowing who she was," said Houston police Sgt.
Clarence Douglas. "My personal opinion is that the mother probably told them
not to acknowledge this child as their sibling, and if they did, they would
be taken from her -- something to that effect. They just won't acknowledge
this young child as being their sister."
Thinking of the other children compounds the pain felt by their grandmother,
who says this is "absolutely" the worst experience she has ever endured.
"It's not even about anger," Bell said. "It's my daughter, then it's my
grandchild that's dead, plus I have all these other grandkids I don't have
access to -- what could be worse than that? How do you put words to that? I
don't think you can."
Child welfare officials in Louisiana earlier this month contacted CPS in
Harris County to begin discussions on returning Knight's other children to
Texas, but the children will be placed initially in a foster home and remain
in protective custody, Hay said.
In September -- right around the time Raysate died -- Knight and her
children vanished from Houston without explanation to her immediate family.
The last time Bell saw her daughter, Knight was talking about getting
married to Jefferson and taking legal custody of Raysate. Then one day, Bell
went over to Knight's house and found everyone gone, the house empty. She
didn't know what to think.
"Before, when Connie had an addiction, it wasn't unlike her just to leave,
so I didn't know what was going on," Bell said. "My mom had just died ...
and Connie was real close to my mom, so I don't know if that had affected
her. I'm sure it did in some way. We talked about it, but we couldn't come
to any conclusion about it. After that, we never had contact with her."
Knight's sisters didn't know where she was, either. No one in the family had
heard from her.
As it turns out, she was in Lafayette, La., living in an apartment with her
children. Police say Jefferson went to Lafayette first, to look for a job,
and Knight and her children soon moved there to join him.
Houston police won't say how they traced Knight to Lafayette. But she showed
little reaction or emotion when officers finally showed up at her door in
late March, Douglas said.
Knight admitted being Raysate's mother. In a statement to police, she said
she had caused the child's death and that she had acted alone. Police don't
want to give any details, but an autopsy found the child died from blunt
trauma to the head.
Jefferson has not been charged in the case, but police say the investigation
remains active.
Police will not say if Knight disclosed why Raysate was killed or if she
admitted to having any problems with the child. They also will not disclose
if a search of the family's Houston home yielded any evidence.
However, detectives at a previous news conference said they were
particularly interested in hair and fibers collected from the house, and
that the blanket wrapped around the child's body when she was found held
foreign carpet fibers that were red and blue, similar to ones inside the
house.
Raysate's body was found lying in a water-filled ditch just a few blocks
from the home, in an area known to police as a common dumping ground.
She was identified months later, in March, only after Bell, her grandmother,
saw a sketch of the child's face on TV. Troubled by the drawing, Bell
contacted police and endured a traumatic two-week wait before tests
confirmed the child's identification.
"It's still hard to believe, even though I know we had a funeral and buried
her coffin. It's still hard to believe she's actually dead," Bell said.
"It's just a lot of raw emotions."
For the first few weeks after Knight was returned to Houston and booked into
the Harris County Jail, her mother and sisters were unable to bring
themselves to visit her. Finally, a jail chaplain called on Knight's behalf
and asked Bell to come visit. Since then, Bell has met with her daughter
more than once.
"I think she was just surprised that I came. Mostly, (she was) just very
remorseful," Bell said, declining to elaborate.
Though Bell still cannot fathom how her granddaughter was treated so
cruelly -- "just thrown away like that," as she describes it -- she says she
has forgiven her daughter and still cares for her.
"I don't know if I can make you understand it," Bell said. "I love Connie. I
love her; I love her a great deal. I really tried to be a good mother to
them. I just don't know what happened."
Michael Snyder
We're going to hear more about this one. I predict that the
involvement of the other kids will come out next.
tiny dancer wrote in message ...
