COMMUNITY On March 18th I had the opportunity to talk to Calvetta Williams. She was recently acquitted of child endangerment. At the Urban Experience we believe that everyone has a story, and I reached out to Calvetta to tell her story in her own words. The Day My Life Changed That day has almost been two years ago, it was July 12th or 13th the day my life changed for real. I was watching a child as a favor because I no longer did daycare. When I got my grant from the Attorney General’s office, they told me I had to retire daycare and I kind of wanted to retire anyway. There was a certain young lady that I did daycare for who kept asking me for months. Now that I think about it, I told my boyfriend that I should have trusted my gut because she kept asking me over and over to watch her daughter. her (the mother of the child I had been watching). She is hollering, “what did you do to my baby?” “What happened to my babies face?” I’m in shock and I ask her, “What are you talking about?” I had just given her, her daughter and there was nothing wrong with her and she didn’t say anything about it when she picked her up. She had even paid me. Doing Mothers Against Violence, I know the steps of what to do if a child is hurt in my care. I know to write accident reports, I know to care for them, give ice packs and band aids. I’m still looking at her like what are you talking about. It was dark, but she was like see her face, see her face and I said to her, “I don’t see anything.” Since it was dark, I asked her to come into my home so that I could look at her child’s face in the light and I still didn’t see anything. I remember a month before there was a shooting that happened, two young men who shot each other, and I found out they were cousins, I was at the hospital. My Uncle had gone into a coma that same day the mother is calling me, and I kept telling her, “I can’t keep your daughter”. She said she didn’t understand why and I’m thinking cause my Uncle is in a coma. It never registered with me, I’m like why does she keep asking me to watch her child? Before I got my grant about 9 months before I did watch her child. I never had any issues, I had her daughter all the time like Monday-Sunday the mother always worked double shifts, so I’ve never had any issues watching her child. This particular night in July, she came and got her daughter, she gave me the money she owed me, and I was like goodbye. I had originally agreed to watch her for a week. My kids were out of town with their dad’s side of the family and I needed some money because of some other issues I was going through at the time and so that’s the only reason why I watched her daughter. When we exchanged money, my granddaughter was home with me. At about 2 something in the morning I didn’t think anything of it, I got up to got to the bathroom, and then I hear this boom, boom, boom it sounded like the police. I asked my granddaughter if she heard it and she was laying down sleeping, so I opened the door and it’s The pictures the mother posted on Facebook, I have never seen those pictures, never seen that bruise. Those pictures that the mother posted on Facebook along with my picture that she posted alongside her post was used in court. When they asked me in Court, my stories always stayed the same rather it was my lawyer or the prosecutor asking me. The media, prosecutor, and even the mother tried to say that I said the marks on the child’s face were bed marks. I said on the stand I have never seen those marks until I got up the next morning and saw the pictures the mother had on Facebook with my picture next to the pictures of her daughter. I immediately started crying because I was thinking how I had not saw those marks. I’m now looking like a monster, and I’d never seen those marks but, in the pictures, they had in the courtroom, there were sleep marks on the babies face there were like two or three. When the Police came, I have the body cameras which they didn’t get to see in court, no one else in the public have seen them, and even the Police officers were like they didn’t believe that I did this. I don’t want to talk bad about the mother, but one of the Police officers was like it looks like she is acting (referring to the mother). People know that I was acquitted, but they still ask what happened to the baby’s face. I answer people by saying that you should of came to the trial and seen the evidence for yourself. April 2019 The URBAN EXPERIENCE 37
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