SXMElections.com

By Hilbert Haar

GREAT BAY / COLORADO SPRINGS – It must have been near eight years ago that this newspaper received a letter from a lady in England that complained about how her husband – “a local celebrity in Sint Maarten” – had dumped her. The basic request was to hang him out to dry, but Today passed on the occasion, thinking that marital problems do not belong in the public domain.

Last week, Today received a cry for help and understanding from Louise Carr in Colorado Springs. Though she did not offer too many details at first, her story reminded us of that letter we received all those years ago. And bingo: Carr is the daughter of the lady who wrote to us from England. Her father is radio broadcaster Eddy Williams – up to not too long ago the voice of Radio Soualiga 99.1 FM where his affected English pronunciation dominated the airwaves for a long time. Williams has since retired, but the pain his abandonment created on both sides of the ocean still runs deep. Now, Carr wishes to tell her story.

Kenneth Edward Dominic (Eddy) Williams was born in the African state of Sierra Leone. In the seventies of last century, he married a British science teacher, Patricia Ingrid Jeavons from Northumberland. On August 18, 1970, their first child was born: Louise Ingrid Williams – currently going by the name of Louise Carr. “My mother is the reason he was able to get to England and my birth gave him citizenship,” Carr says. “Shortly after my birth he disappeared and never paid child support or acknowledged my existence.”

Carr says that her father disappeared before she was one year old. “I know the marriage was in trouble. My mum was struggling mentally with a new baby and my dad was out each night clubbing and drinking.”

When Williams left his family he went to the Netherlands, Carr says. “The divorce took seven years because the courts couldn’t track my dad down.”

The baby did not have a happy childhood. “My mum could not handle my crying as a baby,” the now 44-year old Carr says. “She would smother me until I passed out. As a science teacher, she had enough knowledge to know when to stop.”

Carr did not get any support from her father Eddy Williams either:  “As a little girl I felt so ugly for being biracial in the seventies and I felt I wasn’t black enough for my father to love me. I wondered why he did not want me. It led me down a dangerous path of seeking a man’s love and appreciation.”

Before Carr even got to that stage in her life, she had to deal with her early childhood situation – and that was not pretty either. Her grandparents were concerned and took her away from her mother and for a while things looked up. At the age of three she was returned back home. “From then on it got bad,” she remembers. “I was whipped, kicked, hit with shoes, scalded, starved, had my hand broken and was used as a child prostitute until I was seventeen. My family knew what was happening but nobody did anything. My male cousin called me the N-word and molested me. One of them hit me in the face with an iron fire poker when I was four. It knocked me out. When I was a baby, the same boy scrubbed me with a steel brush to clean off the ‘black.’ I was scratched and bloodied.”

The situation at school was miserable too: “I was considered a bad kid; always dirty, always late and no homework done. I was unable to concentrate. Mum got a lot of sympathy for this – and she was one of my teachers.”

By the time she was 6, her mother moved to Tokyo to get away from what she called the interfering of Carr’s grandparents. “We returned to England when I was 10, just for eleven months. Again my grandparents tried to have guardianship, so my mum moved us to Denmark.”

Carr says that her mother wrote several times to Williams’ mother in Sierra Leone in attempts to track down het (ex) husband. Information about his whereabouts was not forthcoming.

Around 1982, Patricia Williams-Jeavons wrote a letter to her ex Eddy Williams with a plea for help. “The letter was returned by his new wife. It had been torn up and her enclosed letter read that we should “stay away and that if we needed help to just ask my “honky” grandparents.”

At the age of 17, Carr had had enough and she ran away – from one bad situation to the next one. “I was homeless on the streets of London and ended up in violent relationships and an abusive marriage. My face has been hit so much that I have a missing tooth; two of them are broken in half. My back has whip scars. I hate looking at my own body; it is a reminder of pain and sexual abuse. I have an eating disorder; purging makes me feel like I’m getting rid of the badness inside.”

Before she ran away, Carr says, she hoped at times “to die and end it all.” Now her children are keeping her alive, but to say that the kids are leading a happy life would be the understatement of the century. “They have been alienated by family,” Carr says. “My ex-husband married me without telling his parents that I was colored. This caused them not to accept or acknowledge our children. When we were in his parents’ home, we were not invited to sit or eat. My children’s names were not remembered and there was no celebration of their births. We are so alone.”

In spite of these dire conditions, Carr went to college in Minnesota where she studied personal training, massage therapy and plant medicine. Later she took a course in Cranial Sacral, “because that was the only thing along with diet changes that helped my son with Asperger’s.”

Carr moved to Colorado Springs to be near four military bases where she practiced Cranio Sacral on military personnel with traumatic brain injuries.

At the age of 27, Carr found out that she had a brother and a sister. “They told me of their lavish lifestyle. My brother had made money by selling drugs but no one ever noticed the extra cash because he already had so much. He was given money for college but he used it to buy a new car, then he had to get more from my father. My sister talked about Christmas and how many Barbies she had had. Christmas with my mum did not even include a tree or pretty presents. We didn’t have a feast.”

Carr’s son Joshua has Asperger’s Syndrome, two others – Harley and Zoe suffer from severe asthma and Celiac disease – a condition caused by allergy to gluten.

“We are all gluten free because we have Celiac disease,” Carr says. “We are vegan because we don’t believe in hurting animals. I don’t drink or smoke. We love to bake, hike, paint and do anything artistic.”

“Because of their special needs I have lost work and thus my car and my home in a domino effect,” Carr says. As a homeless mom, she lives currently in a hotel in Colorado Springs, but she wonders whether she will be able to stay there as prices will go up for the summer season.

In spite of the dire circumstances, the children have not lost their dreams. “Harley writes lyrics and dreams of working with bands; he is still in high school. Zoe wants to work as an editor for Vogue and Joshua has a beautiful singing voice and wants to be a rock star; he also graduated from bartender academy. Sophie is a sergeant in the army.”

Feeling alone and abandoned, Carr finally wants answers from her father, but Eddy Williams does not want to know anything about her. “I just want answers. I used to go to the mailbox on my birthdays and Christmas, hoping for a sign of love. Even when I turned 18, I still hoped for something from dad, but nothing ever came. He knew my mum was mentally ill, yet he left me with her. I have begged my dad for help, love and affection, but he just continues to ignore me. Last time I tried calling was in 2007. He hung up. I just want to know why? The kids deserve better from their grandpa.”

Attempts to get in touch with Williams, who is now in his seventies, have consistently failed. “There is no excuse for being a deadbeat dad,” Carr says. “It’s not about history or he said she said, if you are a parent you have a responsibility.”

This newspaper offered to get in touch with Williams for an attempt to bridge the divide, but Carr dismissed the idea: “Talking does not help. He knows what has happened and all I ever get are lies. He seems to care more about his image than he does about his firstborn. I want the truth to come out. Maybe then I will get answers and recognition.”