C hristmas Day was the hardest of all, Princess's birthday, the first one Judyann Hansen marked without her baby, who would have turned 15. Then, on Jan. 23, the anniversary of the night when Jahkema Princess Hansen was executed at Washington's Sursum Corda housing complex, another wave of pain washed over the family.
It has been this way all year, periods of rebuilding -- classes taken, a new home, the mercy of daily routine -- alternating with valleys of despair.
Hundreds of readers responded generously a year ago when I wrote a series on the murder of Princess Hansen -- allegedly by drug dealers who thought she had witnessed one of their killings -- and the city's disturbing failure to respond appropriately to the killing of a child. You contributed $15,000 to pay for Princess's funeral and help the Hansens get out of Sursum Corda.
The Greater Washington Urban League administers your donations, which came mostly in amounts of $10, $25 and $50, but with a few gifts up to $2,000. The league's Audrey Epperson reports that Judyann Hansen has been diligent about providing receipts for all qualifying expenses.
About $1,000 went toward Princess's burial and the family's travel and clothing needs for the funeral, which took place in New York, home of Princess's father. Another $2,500 paid the security deposit on a house in the Woodridge section of Northeast, where the Hansens relocated a few months after the shooting. About $7,000 went for furnishings and utilities. Smaller amounts went toward other expenses for the children. About $2,000 remains.
An accounting of the Hansens' lives over the past year does not balance out that neatly. Judyann Hansen's two younger children are in new schools, and the mother recently completed a course on entrepreneurship. At the graduation ceremony, she read a poem she wrote for Princess.
"We're doing fine, but it's been very hard," Hansen says. "We've had no contact at all from the city. We tried to get grief counseling, but the counselor didn't get to me till November because they said they had all the violence at Ballou High School to take care of first.
"By the time she came, we had went through all the emotions already, all the stages, so we didn't need them."
The counseling, provided by an agency called Free Advice, is now the subject of a dispute. Hansen and her husband, Frank Wade, say they never received counseling. The D.C. Crime Victims Compensation Program, which reimbursed Free Advice for $220 in therapy fees, now wants that money returned. "This is highly irregular," said program director Laura Reed. "It's awful."
But Free Advice's owner, Shana Latham, told me that her therapist visited the Hansens five times, albeit not until 10 months after the murder. "I called Miss Hansen and reminded her about when the therapist came, and she said, 'Well, we just discussed the stages of grief.' And I said well, that was the therapy service you received."
Latham says Hansen "has the groundwork in place for herself and her family. But there's a difference between wanting to do things a certain way and actually doing it."
Wade knows that gap too well. Less than six months after Princess was killed, Wade, who had spent nine years on probation after three years in prison for an armed robbery, was sent to jail after a routine urine test showed marijuana in his blood. He spent four months locked up, and his probation was extended by a decade.
"With all the grief, I fell back, relapsed, started smoking marijuana, using drugs," Wade says. "That was my fault. I take all responsibility for that. When she got killed, that was just the bottom for me." One of Wade's sons -- both of whom were in jail when Princess was killed but were released a few months later -- similarly violated his parole and is back in prison.
"The judge gave my sons the okay to go to Princess' funeral, but the marshals didn't let them go," Wade says. "Both my sons really grieve behind that. We sought to medicate ourselves against the grief the best way we knew how, the way I have since I was 13, a little kid, and that is smoke marijuana."
Those who have worked with the family over the past year tend to like them and to believe they are trying to right their course. But neither Hansen nor Wade has found work. Both say they are looking, but both tell me they don't really see a way through.
Next: The year in Sursum Corda.
