A Mother Begged for Help After a Stranger Took Her Daughter—Then Philly DHS Made It Worse
Slea Marie Williams was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 27th, 2020. She was nicknamed Suzu and Sue Bear. She loved Doc McStuffins’s dancing and was said to have been incredibly smart for her age. Some official sources refer to Slea as Sulia. Based on DHS documents and the young girl’s own mother, we will be using Sulea.
Sulea’s mother, Titana Hawthorne, grew up in Philadelphia’s foster care system. She had Sulea at 20 years old and was determined to be a good and present mother. But unfortunately, the cards were stacked against her. It’s reported that she had an IQ of 70, which made her a cognitively disabled adult. She also relied heavily on the kindness of friends and relatives to give Sulea a roof over her head.
One of the women who opened up her home helped the young mother apply for benefits. When Titiana was younger and living in a group home, another girl close to her age approached her and said, “You’re my sister. We have the same father.” This girl was Denasia Harper. The two weren’t particularly close after this meeting.
According to Titiana, I didn’t think she was my sister and didn’t want anything to do with her. The final time they crossed paths before the events of today’s story was after Sulea was born. Titiana took Sulea to a park and Dasia happened to be there. Dasia referred to Sulea as her niece, and Titana took issue with that.
Titiana really didn’t like Dasia and would have rather kept Sulea far from her reach. In 2021, now one-year-old Sulea spent a weekend at her father’s home. When she returned, Titiana noticed sores and blisters on her daughter’s skin. Titiana allegedly couldn’t afford to take Soulea to the doctor, so she decided to apply Neosporin to the wounds instead.
Later, Titana made a post on Instagram featuring Sulea. The little girl’s injuries were still healing and were noticeable in the picture. Nia found this post. She immediately believed they were burn marks from, of all things, a hookah. In response, she reported her suspicions to Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services.
She provided Titiana’s name and address, and DHS investigators reached out via phone. When the call went to voicemail, the investigator explained that DHS was following up on a report that Sulea appeared to have hookah charcoal burn marks on her thighs. Now, to Titiana, this seemed like a simple misunderstanding that would be easily remedied.
She called the investigator back and explained the situation. Sulea had some sores and blisters, but was getting better. When asked about their living situation, she admitted that she was stretched thin financially. DHS investigator visited their home in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood where Sulea did not exhibit any behavior of a neglected child.
However, the department wanted her to be seen by a doctor to be completely sure. There, a doctor confirmed that Soulea’s marks weren’t from burns at all. The one-year-old was diagnosed with a skin infection called impetigo, which is a common infection in young children that can be treated with antibiotics. Titiana was instructed to purchase a prescribed antibiotic cream, but she chose not to do so.
Although the infection healed without it, DHS perceived this as negligence and determined solely from this that Sulea wasn’t safe under her mother’s care. The investigator confronted Titana with a choice. She could either give Sulea up willingly now or see her be taken by the courts. or Titiana. The worker told her, “I have enough evidence now that I could take your daughter into the foster care system, but if you can place the child elsewhere with someone I can trust, we don’t need to get the courts involved.
” This choice was presented as a voluntary placement agreement and is a touchy subject in child welfare spaces. Parents who’ve consented to these agreements in the past claim the choice was not always voluntary. It’s not hard to find story after story of parents being coerced into giving up their children under threat of legal action against them.
By state law, a VPA shouldn’t extend past 30 days, after which the parent and child must be reunited. However, Philadelphia based journalist Steve Vulk found the state’s DHS no longer uses VPAs, opting for voluntary safety plans instead. In one of his many articles of Pennsylvania’s foster care system, he quoted attorney and law professor Sarah Katz to explain the differences.
And I quote, “Legally, these voluntary safety plans are a much greater concern because they can go on indefinitely. The parents are often not made aware of their rights, and the government takes as much control of the child as they would if they had them in their custody. It’s essentially a total denial of parental rights.
We’re seeing these cases in the legal clinic a lot when either DHS finally seeks custody of the child or if a parent just gets tired of wanting to be reunited with their child, takes their child back, and forces DHS’s hand. The notion that these plans are voluntary is laughable. The parents comply the whole time out of fear of DHS.
In arrangements like these, it’s up to DHS to make sure the department and the parents are on the same page. See, Vulk’s articles suggest that the department’s investigators and case workers do not take these steps. In some instances, these parents remain unaware that they have the choice to end a voluntary safety plan without any repercussions onto them.
Titiana, who was just 21 at the time, was understandably scared. In her mind, she did her best for Sulea, despite the fact she hadn’t initially sought medical help and never picked up the prescription cream. She said she felt forced to give Sulea away to DHS and if she cooperated, then she might have an easier time getting her daughter back later.
As Titiana had a cognitive disability, she realistically should not have been met with the VPA without some form of advocate, especially as this required an immediate decision. Allegedly, DHS believed Titiana needed mental health and wellness services, but did not provide any specific organization she could go to for help. It’s speculated that DHS were acting in their own best interest and not in the interests of the family.
If Sule were placed in foster care, DHS would have to by law spend resources on both the mother and the daughter. But a VPA meant they could be hands off, pushing the responsibility onto the new caregiver. Philadelphia’s DHS often reaches out to private agencies to help place children in temporary or semi-permanent homes.
It’s been a common practice since 2012 after the department established community umbrella agencies or kuas for short. They were meant to make child welfare a simpler process by delegating these individual agencies into specific areas. In theory, this practice should solve the issues of heavy case loads in families that slip through the cracks.
Instead, these kuas have seen the same failures that persist in many other CPS and CPS adjacent agencies. high turnover rates, low pay, vacant positions, heavy case loads, and workers allowing dangerous people to be caregivers of vulnerable children. Philadelphia’s Kuas have been sued multiple times within a decade for cases of violence, neglect, and even death.
Some have scaled back their case loads or even entirely closed their offices within the last 5 years because of the burdens of legal and settlement costs. DHS reached out to one of these kas for help with Soulea’s case. Northeast Treatment Centers, or NE for short, was tasked with giving Sulea a safe home while her mother worked out her situation.
Agencies approached Dasia Harper and asked if she would care for Sulea. She agreed. Titana was shocked and confused that Dasia was getting involved, but she had to weigh her options. If she agreed, she would technically still be Soulea’s legal guardian. That moment, she believed that was her biggest hurdle, so she gave in. She trusted that within time she would have Sulea back in her arms.
Sulea was not only given to Dasia Harper, but to her roommate and partner, Diamond joiner by extension. The couple also watched Diamond’s nephew. Nasia left Sulea with Diamond while she had to work and kept tabs on her through home surveillance cameras. Titiana messaged her case manager that she didn’t want Dasia near Sulea at all, but her concerns went unheard.
Later, she asked permission to see Sulea on her birthday. She had the legal right to do this even without the department’s permission. But the case manager replied with a single word, no. By the end of 2021, a judge removed Sulea from Denasia’s home, granting her father custody of her. It’s unclear how she fared living with him and her paternal relatives.
Dasia asked for custody again in May of 2022, which she regained in January of 2023. Sulea’s days were numbered. She only had a week left. Sulea Williams died on February 4th, 2023. Philadelphia’s DHS finalized a document about a year later detailing the events of her death. The version is available to the public and is heavily redacted.
Even names that are publicly available elsewhere, such as Tai Tiana Hawthorne, Denasia Harper, and Diamond Joiner, are censored. Based on what we know, we can piece together the timeline. Diamond worked days and Dasia worked nights. When Diamond returned home, Denia would immediately leave.
That day, Diamond came back around 400 p.m. Sulea was playing on the carpet, minding her own business while Denasia was at work. Without warning, Diamond kicked her. Sulea wasn’t breathing. Her stomach became swollen, and she frothed at the mouth. Her nephew later described Sulea’s mouth as soapy. Diamond first called Dasia and said that Sulea wasn’t breathing.
Dasia told Diamond to call emergency services. When EMS arrived at the apartment, they performed life-saving measures before rushing her to the hospital. She was alive for a short period of time, but within 1 hour of being kicked in the stomach, she was pronounced dead. Titiana arrived at the hospital and sat by Sulea’s bedside, speaking softly until Sulea was no longer with her.
Titiana decided to keep what she said to her daughter in her final moments to herself. How have the last couple of months been for you? How you been handling it? It’s hard. [Music] Do you believe your daughter would still be alive if she wasn’t placed in DHS care? Yes, I do. The medical examiner found various injuries all over Soulea’s body, including bruises that couldn’t have come from an accidental injury because she was kicked so hard that her pancreas tore.
She had a brain bleed and injuries to her intestinal wall. The DHS report on her death, which again was not finalized for another whole year, described, and I quote, the severity of injuries that the victim child had indicated she wouldn’t have survived long minutes after the impact to her torso. The victim had small areas of multiple bruises around the head and a small amount of bleeding on her brain.
Sulea’s aunt, Elena Jiganito, organized a GoFundMe to raise money for Soulea’s funeral. She wrote in the description, “My family and I are now trying to bury our princess and give her the homegoing service she deserves.” As of the date of this recording in September of 2025, the family surpassed their $2,000 goal.
Titiana was granted custody of Soulea’s remains and held her funeral on February 22nd, 2023. The Wood Funeral Home hosted her service. Cool girl was buried in the Ivy Hill Cemetery. Her headstone was engraved with a teddy bear. Since Titana had legal custody of Sulea at the time of her death, a letter from DHS came in the mail to her address.
Was on record that Sulea was living with Denasia. Police were actively investigating Diamond. Titiana followed the caseworker’s instructions to the letter, communicating often with them even when nothing went the way she hoped. Still, DHS assigned a caseworker to investigate Titiana. The department sent her a copy paste letter detailing she was to be investigated for suspected child mistreatment.
After all she had been through, including watching Soulea die in the hospital, it was a heap of salt on a fresh wound. A crop picture of the letter was uploaded to the GoFundMe page. It read in part, “Dear Titiana Hawthorne, the Philadelphia Department of Human Services has received a report of suspected CA concerning the above. Under the law, we must investigate every report of suspected CA we receive.
I have been assigned to this report to determine if a problem exists affecting the safety and well-being of the children and youth in your home, and if so, to do everything possible to help you with this problem.” The report alleges causing the death of child through any act, failure to act, beating unknown.
These allegations may be reported to the appropriate law enforcement officials if required. Diamond and Denasia originally denied knowing what happened to Sulea. Diamond recalled a recent memory of Sulea falling down the stairs, but couldn’t pin down an exact date. Diamond claims she left the children alone while she showered and prepared the children’s dinner.
She said that she checked on Sue Leia in her bedroom and saw that she was unresponsive. The investigators visited Dasia’s apartment where they spoke with Diamond’s nephew. The child confirmed the police’s suspicions that Diamond was responsible for Sulea’s death. While Denasia was away, Diamond slapped Sulea twice across the face and kicked her in the stomach.
The nephew said Sulea fell asleep after being beaten and blood and white stuff came out of her mouth. Allegedly, Diamond had slapped the children before and Denasia had known about it. It took until Dasia and Diamond were arrested months after Soulea died when the case made headlines in Philadelphia news outlets.
And even then, her name in some reports was mistakenly presented as Sulya. Diamond had her preliminary hearing in October of 2023. She claimed she never hurt Soulea, much less killed her. Titiana attended the preliminary hearing and so did Diamond’s friends and family. The hearing was adjourned. Titiana stepped into a hallway where Diamond supporters cornered her.
Now, allegedly, they threatened Titiana’s life, goated her into fighting them, and said they knew where to find her. There was no law enforcement or security in the hallway, and and no one was prosecuted, so Titiana had to endure this torment. At the height of her distress, she yelled, “I’ll never have my little girl again.
” The commotion eventually caught outs attention, and the courthouse sheriff separated Titiana and the group. Diamond had a preliminary status hearing in February of 2024, which she didn’t attend herself. The trial began in earnest the following week. She’s found guilty of thirdderee murder, just thirdderee murder in July of 2025, but as of the date of this recording, she has not been sentenced.
DHS released a statement regarding Suea, which read, “DHS is saddened by the tragic death of Sulea Williams. DHS was not providing any services to Sulea at the time of her death. Due to pending litigation as well as state laws which protect the confidentiality of case record information, DHS cannot answer any specific questions.
Attorney AJ Thompson represented Sulea’s estate and he pursued litigation against Northeast Treatment Centers or NE. He said in an interview that he believed Soulea’s race played a large part in how she was treated by child welfare, stating, “I really just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
” And I kept thinking, “Imagine if some white family on the mainline was treated this way. It would never happen.” For those unfamiliar, Mainline is an affluent, historically white region of suburban Philadelphia known for its old money families. The case was settled in 2024, but the outcome was confidential. Both Titiana and attorney Thompson are not legally allowed to discuss the details for the time being.
He also began the process for a wrongful death lawsuit against Dasia and Diamond. He accused the pair of plotting to steal Sulea to raise her as their own as they could not have a child themselves. On top of that, attorney Thompson could not find any evidence that Titiana and Dasia were related at all to begin with.
You can just call DHS on somebody in this city. Now, some people do it just to get get back at somebody, but here it seems like the motivation was to become the parent. Well, how’d that work out? It defies credul that this person who claims to be a maternal aunt is not and makes up a story to get DHS involved, DHS would then give the child to her.
But that’s what happened here. DHS denied and continues to deny requests for voluntary safety plan documents or any kind of record that would give concrete information on the practice. At this time, journalists and activists can only estimate how many children fall victim to these agreements. In April of 2025, journalists for the news organizations Resolve Philly and the Philadelphia Inquirer investigated DHS and the KUA still in operation.
They published their findings in various articles. In one, they reported that the city itself has 50% more children in its care than the national average, about 7.6 per 10,000 compared with 5.1. Their articles report that the agencies disproportionately take poor black children from their families because of perceived neglect, thereby punishing parents and guardians for poverty conditions instead of offering them assistance.
An anonymous DHS case worker told the investigative journalist, “We go into homes as case managers and tell moms they should be serving their kids fresh vegetables, but we’re feeding these kids frozen chicken fingers, frozen pizzas, everything frozen.” The overcrowding in Philadelphia’s DHS is bad, to put it lightly. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city has a similar number of children in its custody as the state of New Jerseys Division of Youth and Family Services.
An investigation from August of 2022 found how bad this overcrowding truly was. DHS offices have dedicated spaces meant to house children for the short term while either finding them a proper foster home or just to separate the family for the night if the mistreatment is suspected. But these kids don’t always stay for just one or two nights.
One case found a group of kids packed like sardines into a conference room for weeks. Their living conditions were not better than the neglectful or perceived neglectful conditions of the kids’ family homes. Dirty bathrooms, broken toys, CS, and sleeping bags for beds were found here.
Children and teenagers with specific medical or mental health needs often didn’t get proper help due to the department’s negligence. Were they really better off in these facilities than at their own homes? The kids had little supervision. On top of that, teenagers exclusively came and went with no one in DHS staff knowing where they were going or what they were doing or who they were seeing.
An anonymous case manager said, “If we had a birth parent or foster parent letting kids walk in and out like it’s a revolving door, we’d take those kids into foster care. But what are we doing? It’s shameful. Kids placed into homes are still at risk of danger.” Marcus Jarvis, a former Philadelphia foster child, said about living in a foster home, physical mistreatment, spankings, slap faces, verbal mistreatment like, “You ain’t no good. Nobody wants you.
That’s why you’re here and not feeding you or feeding you different from the other kids that’s there.” CA of foster kids happens all the time. The children themselves may not report what they face behind closed doors out of fear, obviously, or from the belief that they somehow deserve what happened to them.
When the foster kids do report the terrible things that happened to them, they are at the mercy of the case worker they speak to, an adult that might not believe them or who doesn’t have the drive to fight on the child’s behalf. Children like Sulea are at risk of real danger when they’re forced into a new living situation.
If their new caregivers don’t kill them outright, the kids face a new reality built on trauma and confusion. Children with medical, emotional, or mental issues don’t always have those needs met, which potentially makes their conditions worse down the line. With conditions such as these, it’s no wonder why parents like Titiana choose not to place their vulnerable children into official foster care, opting for placement agreements and safety plans.
Titiana was also put on the spot and didn’t have all the information available to her. She didn’t know her rights. A foster care survivor herself, she was only trying to keep Sulea out of harm’s way, the harm that she experienced herself as a child. DHS should have acted in the family’s best interest. Instead, they tore a child straight from mother’s arms.
Attorney Nadine Bazaar, who represented many children and families in suits against Kuis, said, “We’re talking about a child welfare system that needs a complete overhaul. It places too many children into foster care, claiming they’re safer, but it doesn’t actually have the capacity to take care of these kids. This is a system that has always resisted big change.
Put me out of business. Please. My goal is for the system to perform so well. There’s no need for me anymore.” A case in 2020 depicted the inverse of a case like Sueis where a Philadelphia foster child prone to violence killed their caretaker. While they are less common cases, they are no less dangerous and they still fall under DHS negligence.
This particular case involved a troubled 17-year-old boy named Xavier Johnson. The Kua Turning Points for Children handled this case. They were considering placing him in a secure facility for his history of violent behavior. He was arrested five times. At least one arrest was for aggravated assault. DHS overruled their qualms, placing him in the home of Renee Gillard, a veteran foster parent.
Previously, Xavier resided with Jimmy Maui, a student three years his senior. While he was an adult, he was living in a foster home. English was his second language and he was studying to get his GED. He was also an expectant father. Jimmy had a PlayStation console he played games on to decompress during his free time.
Jimmy was last seen alive on December 29th, 2019. He was heard in his room arguing with Xavier. Xavier stabbed Jimmy in his neck and face. He took Jimmy’s money, PlayStation, and video game collection for himself. He stuffed Jimmy into a duffel bag and threw him down a hill a short distance away from the foster home.
Jimmy was reported missing and Xavier was moved into Rene’s home. After only a few days, Renee contacted the agency to have Xavier placed somewhere else. She was concerned about his behavior and for her own safety. She was right to be scared. In mid January of 2020, Xavier stabbed her in the bathtub. He stole her credit card, cash, car, and keys.
When Rene’s relatives couldn’t get in contact with her, they called the police. Officers found the 64y old woman in the bathroom. The next day, Xavier went on a shopping spree with his friends. He told them, “I killed a lady for all this stuff, and I took everything she had.” Officers found Xavier driving in Rene’s car.
He crashed it with his friends in the passenger seats and was arrested by the officers. The same day Jimmy’s body was located. It took until 2024 for Xavier to go to trial where he plead guilty. DHS didn’t face any repercussions for ignoring the AY’s concerns. Xavier’s case shows how dangerous their negligence can be to everyone involved, foster parents, other foster home residents, and the individual children themselves.
If properly analyzed and given the resources and care needed, Xavier may not have inflicted so much misery. Renee and Jimmy could still be alive and well with her loved ones. Journalist Steve Vulk’s articles about Sulea in the Philadelphia DHS were an important source to the writing of this episode. While other news outlets eventually covered Sulea’s death after Diamond’s trial, his remains the most in-depth in comparison to the other few sparse articles about her.
Steve Vulk along with many other journalists such as Samantha Melamemed and Julie Christie also discussed the failures of Philadelphia’s foster care system, including voluntary safety placements. Even if parents still technically have legal custody of their children, the kids are still under DHS’s care through the hidden foster care system.
February of 2025, a conference was held by the family activist group Philly Voice for Change at the Beasley School of Law. The city’s DHS commissioner, Kimberly Ali, was in attendance. She listened as the speakers discussed their grievances with the city’s child welfare services. Another hearing was held in May, hosted by the Health and Human Services Committee, direct response to the articles by Resolve Philly in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Dasia Harper has not been charged with anything. So, she is therefore innocent of any wrongdoing until proven guilty in a court of law. Attorney Thompson’s litigation against the couple is not public information, so we can’t know its progress right now. The Philadelphia Inquirer discussed in multiple articles how Pennsylvania and perhaps every US state can look to New Jerseys child welfare system as a resource for improvement.
New Jersey once had one of the worst child welfare systems in the country. Then in 1999, lawyers filed a class action lawsuit against DFS. The lawsuit was settled in 2003. A third party oversaw how the State Department would use their newfound budget if they would follow through with the reforms. Now, New Jersey has one of the better child welfare systems in the United States, one of the lowest statistics for child deaths and children in foster care.
Sulea is on a list of names of children who died after being separated from their families. It is titled the case for foster care reform is written in stone and is about 150 pages long. It is an alphabetical order, so Sulea is towards the end of the list. Sulea has a tribute wall on the wood funeral home website.
Titiana has posted on the wall three times. Her messages to her daughter read, “Hey Suzu, mommy loves you and misses you so much. You were the best gift I ever got in my life. Forever in mommy’s heart and had to go visit my baby. Had all good talks and laughs. She was so happy I came to visit her. I miss you, Mommy’s pretty baby.
and I love you so much more than anything in this world. I’mma forever keep your name alive no matter what. You’re my everything. And finally, I miss you so much, daughter. I love you so much. Mommy’s pretty baby.
