State of Virginia Pays Drugged Up Parents To Kill Disabled Child

Now with a tragic tale. An 11-year-old found dead, brutally beaten in her Norfolk home. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend sit in jail, charged with her murder.

Heaven Rola Watkins was born on April 14th, 2007, to parents Latoya Monique Smith and Wen Watkins. Less than two pounds at birth, she was so tiny she was considered a micro-preemie. She came into this world fighting. She had bleeding in her brain and hydrocephalus, or excess spinal fluid that filled the deep cavities of her brain. Both of these conditions pressed on her delicate brain tissue, causing irreversible damage.

She spent three and a half months in the NICU before she was finally strong enough to go home. The damage to her brain caused cerebral palsy, but her family said that never let her stop her. Her aunt on her father’s side, Dr. Shironda Orid, called her a joy and said she had a spirit that matches her name, Heaven.

She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a bright smile. She was very outgoing. Her aunt called her a Chatty Cathy and said she talked and talked and talked. When she met someone new, she would sing their name and wave her hands and make them smile. She liked making friends and playing tag with the neighborhood kids. She loved to sing and learned how to scat in her musical therapy class. She also loved smooth jazz, Hall’s cough drops in the colors pink and purple, and her aunt’s cat Porchy.

She was sweet and very, very compassionate. She paid close attention to the people she was around and was empathetic whenever somebody was hurt. Her aunt described an outing where she took Heaven into the city and gave her money to spend at Candyland. On the way to the store, Heaven saw a homeless lady and asked her, “Why do you have all your stuff on the ground?” When the lady said she needed to find a house to put all her stuff in, Heaven gave her the $5 that she had for candy so the lady could, as she put it, “go get a house.”

After being released from the NICU, Heaven went home with her mother, father, and older brother. In addition to cerebral palsy, Heaven was eventually diagnosed with autism and chronic lung disease. Her family grew in 2010 when her first sister was born, and then again in 2012 when her second sister was born.

The first official reports of trouble started that year when Heaven was five. Toya called 911 after Wen punched her in the mouth. He disconnected the call by throwing the phone across the living room. He was charged with DV and interfering with an emergency call, and a restraining order was issued.

The next month, the teacher noticed a bruise on Heaven’s cheek. When Heaven did not show up at school the next day, officers performed a welfare check at her home. They found Wen there in violation of the restraining order and arrested him again. Heaven was placed in state care for a short time but eventually returned to her parents. Wen was required to attend DV counseling. Eventually, the restraining order against him was cancelled.

The next report of trouble happened in 2014. When Heaven was 7 years old, she showed up at school with a swollen lip. When asked, she said her father had hit her, so her teachers notified CPS. Court documents from the time showed her father was selling drugs from their home and both drugs and weapons were found there. Heaven was also displaying inappropriate behavior, talking about adult topics at school. She was acting out and having outbursts, which is sometimes a sign of trouble at home. There were allegations that an older child had touched her inappropriately, but Heaven refused to talk about what had happened.

Family members told CPS her mother treated her badly and made her stand in the corner for hours. Concerned that she might have been sexually assaulted, physically harmed, and neglected, Ramsey County Child Protective Services launched an investigation. Whatever else was happening, Heaven’s needs were not getting met.

Because of her disability, she qualified for funding to hire a PCA, or personal care assistant. Latoya’s sister was listed on the paperwork and getting the money, but she wasn’t actually providing care. Instead, she kept half the money for doing nothing and then gave the other half to Latoya. Heaven was still wearing diapers, but she sometimes had to change herself because her parents wouldn’t. She was severely underweight and she hadn’t learned how to walk, and she didn’t have the braces she needed for her legs, so she went to school in a wheelchair.

Her vision was very poor, but her parents never took her to get glasses. She needed physical therapy, and she hadn’t seen a doctor or medical staff in over a year and a half, and she had never been to a dentist. She wasn’t getting the care and attention she needed, and those troubles carried over into school. Heaven was struggling academically and wasn’t even meeting the goals for kindergarten. Some of her teachers thought she was so delayed that she had the mind of a 2 or 3-year-old, and they couldn’t reliably assess her education level because of her behavior issues. Sometimes she would lash out and hit and scratch.

After substantiating some of the claims, CPS picked Heaven up from school and placed her into emergency foster care. They had determined that her mother was unable to protect her from sexual assault as well as unable to meet her special needs. Scared and stressed out by the experience, Heaven did not do well in her first foster home. Her father asked his sister Shironda if she would take care of her. Shironda was already a child care provider in the system because she had run a daycare for children with special needs, so she was able to quickly complete the requirements and bring Heaven to live with her.

Shironda lived on the same street as the home Heaven had lived in with her parents, only six houses up the road. In addition to Shironda, Heaven’s grandmother Rayola and her cousin also lived nearby and became very involved in Heaven’s care. She made huge improvements in the stable and loving environment they provided. A month later, her other siblings were also removed from Latoya’s care. Her sisters also moved in with Shironda, but her brother had a different father, so he went to stay with another aunt.

It soon became clear that Heaven was starved for attention. She had a short attention span and she was very smart and could learn if someone helped her focus. Shironda said all it took was patience. If you paid attention to Heaven and talked to her, she was very teachable. She got a new brace for her leg and her grandmother taught her how to walk on her own. Shironda said she could have learned much earlier if her parents had taken the time to work with her.

Shironda made sure she caught up on all her medical and dental appointments. She got her glasses and signed her up for physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. They taught her how to use the toilet and soon she didn’t need to wear diapers anymore. She gained 40 lbs and was at a healthy weight for her age. They styled her hair, bought her cute clothes and pink eyeglasses, which was one of her favorite colors.

She soon gained confidence. They taught her how to be respectful and helped her work on her patience. Because of their hard work, her outbursts dramatically decreased. Instead of lashing out in frustration, Heaven started to want to behave better. On a trip she went to the circus, Heaven asked Shironda, “Auntie, am I acting good?” Shironda replied, “Yes, baby, you’re acting good.”

After a year with Shironda, she was able to be assessed at school and had exceeded all of the goals of her IEP. She was starting to catch up academically and now loved going to school. She was performing so well she won a best storyteller award. She was well-liked and everyone, all the kids and teachers, knew her. She even had a special seat in the nurse’s office with her name on it, like a VIP.

The difference was striking. Shironda said she wouldn’t have been so far behind if they would have put some time into her. Heaven often thanked her aunt and grandmother for taking care of her and worried that they’d stop when she misbehaved. She would ask, “Are you going to stop taking good care of me?” Her aunt always assured her that it was okay if she made mistakes and that nothing would make her stop taking good care of her.

But Heaven hadn’t forgotten the life she lived before moving in with her aunt. Sometimes she would ask her grandma, “You’re not going to let nobody kill me, you’re going to still take good care of me.” Her grandma would answer, “I’m not going to let nobody kill you.” She was safe and happy with her aunt. She wanted to be there, and her aunt and other family members wanted to take care of her.

Unfortunately, Minnesota law didn’t care. Like many other states, reunification is one of CPS’s primary goals. In Minnesota, CPS wanted Heaven to live with her mother. They didn’t care that Heaven was happy where she was. They had a job, and they were going to do it.

Wen and Latoya had split up when the children were taken away, and Heaven’s father had moved and no longer spoke to any of his family members. The summer of 2016, when Heaven was required to start trial visits with her mother, Latoya was living with a new boyfriend named Demont Harris. At first, Heaven enjoyed these short visits because she could soon go back to Shironda, but as the visits got longer and longer, her tantrums started again.

On one occasion while they were dropping her off, Heaven tried to choke her mother, and her grandmother had to pull the girl off of Latoya. During the trial period, Shironda witnessed several disturbing incidents. When Heaven needed help, there were well-meaning people from the neighborhood, and they knew to take her to Shironda. One time they brought her because she had a long cut on her foot that was still bleeding. Heaven was only wearing a long shirt and nothing under it. Shironda made sure her foot was taken care of.

On another occasion, she had been wearing the same underwear for 3 days and desperately needed a bath, so Shironda helped her take one. Shironda wrote a letter to CPS asking for just a year or two more so Latoya could get more training about how to take better care of Heaven. The letter she wrote, “I want to see Latoya with her children, but the right way, the healthy way, not with rushing the process which causes the county to skip steps so that the children are back in an unsafe environment.”

On another occasion, Heaven got a hair bead stuck in her ear. Someone brought her to Shironda, and she took her to Children’s Hospital to get it removed. While at the hospital, Heaven made other statements that indicated child abuse, and her CPS worker met them at the hospital. She said she was concerned that Shironda was coaching Heaven to make false reports, so she separated them.

Eventually, after separating them, CPS decided that Heaven was just repeating things that happened to her when she was much younger, and so they closed the report as unsubstantiated. A second time Shironda stopped by Latoya’s house to visit Heaven, Heaven begged her to take her home and asked her how her grandmother and Porchy the cat were doing. Shironda was heartbroken because she wasn’t allowed to take her home. She felt like she was breaking her promise to always take care of Heaven. She was bound by the rules CPS had made.

A few weeks later, she drove by and saw Heaven playing outside with the neighborhood kids, but Heaven did not see her. After that, Shironda kept driving by the house to check on her, and she often saw Heaven’s sisters outside but never saw Heaven outside again. After that, this worried her. If Heaven wasn’t allowed to play outside, she knew something was wrong.

When a shipment of Ensure and diapers showed up at her house because Latoya forgot to change the shipping address, she knew Heaven was losing weight and struggling with the potty again. These were all bad signs. She didn’t know how to help her niece. At first, she joined a parent leadership organization that worked with CPS, hoping she could make changes by working inside the system. And she wrote letters to CPS begging them to do what was best for Heaven.

Eventually, she said it began to feel personal when they accused her directly of making things up. She said, “I felt like it was more of them not liking me than about what was best for Heaven.” For a time, she stopped calling CPS and just let the schools and professionals report what they saw, but unfortunately, this didn’t help either.

When school started, the teachers noticed a number of red flags based on what Heaven said. They filed a report of suspected child maltreatment and had a meeting about concerns over her continued caring condition. School officials were under the impression that Heaven was going back to live with her aunt and even sent a school bus driver to Shironda’s house to pick up Heaven, but CPS didn’t remove her. Instead, they left her with her mother.

In one of her last letters, Shironda wrote, “Somehow this whole situation has become an ‘us against them’ situation, and that is a shame. We should all be on the same side as the children. Is it going to take one of the children getting hurt before something is truly done?” She also told CPS workers that Heaven’s not going to live long if you send her back there, and the blood’s going to be on your hands.

Heaven made another report of child abuse to the school in October of 2016, but it was again listed as unfounded. Later that month, her guardian ad litem submitted a report to the court stating Latoya had made significant improvements because she’d been passing her drug tests and attending therapy. But none of the information and the reports made by Shironda or the school was shared with the judge.

So based on the fact he was just given positive reports, the judge returned Heaven to Latoya permanently soon after CPS closed the case. Less than a year later, Latoya and her boyfriend Demont moved to his home state of Virginia, over 1,000 miles away. Her son refused to go and instead moved in with relatives in Minnesota, but Heaven and her two sisters moved in with them to Hampton Roads.

When they first arrived in Virginia, they lived with Demont’s family for several months. In Minnesota, the funding set aside for Heaven’s personal care assistant wasn’t allowed to go to any friends or family members of her mother because Latoya had previously had her sister pretend to provide care. But when they moved to Virginia, Latoya signed Demont Harris up as Heaven’s PCA, so he would get paid for taking care of her.

This might in part explain why he and Latoya wanted custody of Heaven, since otherwise they seemed to think she was a burden. Shironda only found out about the move from a friend of her daughter who saw it posted on social media. Helpless, she began to Google Latoya and Heaven’s names every day. When her daughter asked her why, she said, “Because she’s going to be on the news.”

On February 26, Heaven acted up on the school bus, and as punishment, Demont held her hand under the hot water faucet until she had third-degree burns. He chose her right hand, which was Heaven’s only fully functional hand. Demont told Latoya what he had done. She didn’t take her to the hospital right away.

Two days afterwards, Demont’s sister saw Heaven’s injury and made Latoya take her to the ER. Demont told Heaven they needed to lie to the doctor that she had burned her hand accidentally. According to Latoya, everybody had to say that Heaven was washing her hands in hot water, and the water got too hot, and she burned her hand.

Her injury was so severe that doctors admitted her. Her hand had to be surgically repaired with skin grafts, and she stayed in the hospital for 6 days. CPS in Virginia was notified, but they didn’t press any charges at the time, and they didn’t remove Heaven from Latoya and Demont’s care. According to their protocols, they should have tried to check with CPS officials in Minnesota to see if there was a history of child abuse, but it is unclear whether they did so or not. When asked directly, the agency refused to answer, citing privacy regulations.

Two months later, on April 10th, Latoya announced her engagement to Demont on social media. At the time of her joyful announcement, she was well aware that he was viciously harming her daughter, but still, she decided she wanted to marry him. Around the same time, the family moved into an apartment on Bayview Avenue in Ocean View, Virginia.

On May 18th, Latoya called 911 and told them that her 11-year-old daughter was unresponsive. When firefighters and paramedics arrived, there was nothing they could do, and Heaven was pronounced dead at the scene. Police spoke to Latoya on the day it happened, and she told them that Heaven had fallen about a week before while she was playing tag with her sisters outside. She blamed the fall for Heaven’s death and claimed that she and Demont never hit or hurt her.

After the police left, she told neighbors that Heaven had died of natural causes. A few of the neighbors stayed and shared drinks with Latoya and Demont while they cried for hours. When police questioned her more the next day, Latoya admitted she hit all of her children with a belt on occasion, but she punished Heaven more because she acted out all of the time.

She told officers that when Heaven was bad, she only fed her bread and water. At the time of her death, Heaven had been on bread and water for three or four days. In the past, Latoya admitted she had kept her restricted for as long as a week. Latoya said one of their regular punishments for Heaven was making her stand in the corner for hours. While she stood facing the wall, Demont would hit her and punch her on the back, arms, and legs. Other times, he hit her on the back with a hard slipper or shoe. On at least one occasion, he grabbed her by the neck and punched her in the face, splitting her lip open.

When asked how often Demont hit Heaven, Latoya said, “Every time she’s in trouble, maybe three or four times out of the week.” She said Demont had hit Heaven on several occasions when she had a dirty diaper because he couldn’t stand the smell. This from the man the state of Virginia was paying to take care of the disabled girl, including, presumably, to change her dirty diapers.

Latoya also told officers she never interfered when Demont hit Heaven. When they asked her why she didn’t protect her daughter, she said she didn’t know. The night before Heaven’s death, she said Demont had punished Heaven because she had soiled her diaper while she was standing in the corner. Demont punched her three or four times in the back with a closed fist. He also twisted her around and punched her twice in the chest and once in the stomach.

That same night, Latoya said she smacked Heaven in the face when she was in the bath because she brought a toy in the tub. When officers asked her what Heaven did when Demont beat her, she said she cried and said “stop.” After she confessed to police, CPS removed Heaven’s sisters from Latoya’s custody. They were initially placed in foster care and eventually placed with an aunt.

Her aunt Shironda found out about Heaven’s death when her daughter saw it posted on social media. On May 21st, Latoya and Demont were both charged with second-degree murder and held without bond at the Norfolk City Jail. CPS also reopened the investigation of her burned hand and charged Latoya with child abuse and neglect, and Demont with child abuse and malicious assault in connection with that incident.

In September of 2018, prosecutors withdrew the murder charges and replaced them with felony homicide charges, which in the state of Virginia means an accidental killing that happens during the commission of another felony. These new charges carried similar punishments and would have been easier to prove in court.

At one of the couple’s early hearings, medical examiner Dr. Michael Hayes described the injuries he found during her autopsy. He found signs of multiple beatings that Heaven had endured. She had bruises on her forehead, cheek, and chin, along with two black eyes. She also had bruises on her torso, back, and belly, and on her upper and lower arms and legs. Her right upper arm had been twisted and broken.

She had 23 rib fractures. Based on the varied amount of healing, they had occurred in at least four separate events. Two or three of the fractures had happened in the days before her death, and one was a perimortem fracture, which meant it occurred at or near the time of her death. The doctor found hemorrhaging or bleeding in her brain, the optic nerve sheath of her eyes, and behind the tissue of her abdominal wall. She had been struck so hard in her belly that her small intestine ruptured, likely several days before she died.

Her cause of death was lethal blunt force injuries to the head and torso, and her manner of death was homicide. Another expert, forensic anthropologist Tal Simmons, said her injuries showed the classic hallmark of child abuse. She said that some of them may have been caused years before her death. The couple had likely been torturing Heaven ever since CPS placed her in their care.

On October 17th, 2018, Latoya pled guilty to one count of felony homicide and one count of felony child abuse. On October 30th, 2019, Demont pled guilty to one count of felony homicide and two counts of felony child abuse. He was sentenced to 60 years, but 35 years of the sentence were suspended, leaving him to serve just 25 years for causing Heaven’s death.

Latoya’s sentencing hearing was delayed until October 7th of 2020. During the hearing, she cried and said she wished she could get her daughter back. She was sentenced to 50 years in prison with 20 years suspended, leaving her to serve 30 years. Demont is serving his time at the Green Rock Correctional Center in Chatham, Virginia. He is scheduled for release on March 12th, 2040. Latoya is serving her time at the Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center in Troy, Virginia. She is scheduled for release on August 22nd, 2044.

Heaven’s family had a memorial service for her and had her cremated. Her neighbors in Virginia also held a vigil for her in the parking lot for the apartment building on Bayview Avenue, writing messages on pink, purple, and white balloons. With candles, pictures, posters, and balloons, a community remembered the sweet smile of 11-year-old Heaven Watkins right outside of her home on Bayview Avenue.

“She was our next-door neighbor and my niece came out and played with them all the time,” said one neighbor.

Heaven’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend were charged with murder this week. 10 On Your Side told you yesterday the medical examiner’s office said Heaven died of blunt force trauma to the head and torso. Her mother will remain behind bars until trial.

“Once we heard the charges, it’s like, you know, I really don’t believe that this is happening. I can’t believe that this is happening. You know, I can’t believe that somebody’s that cold-hearted that they would do this to an 11-year-old child with cerebral palsy,” said another neighbor.

And people who didn’t even know little Heaven came out to the vigil. Neighbors held hands, praying for her.

“We pray, Father, that her soul rest in peace and for a stop to child abuse.”

“It kind of got me choked up inside because they just took time out of their day to come and just say goodbye and show respect for somebody they didn’t even know, especially a child.”

Neighbors wrote their goodbyes to Heaven on balloons and released them with one final message. [Music]

People tell Shironda, “You did all you could,” but she said that doesn’t help. She is haunted by her niece’s death and wonders what Heaven thought in the months she spent with her mother. She said, “I don’t know if she was like, ‘Where’s my grandmother and auntie and my cousin at? Why can’t I be back with them?'”

She also worries that she made Heaven’s struggles harder in some ways. She said, “Before Heaven came to live with her, she didn’t know anything better, but after, she knew the difference. She knew what love was. She knew what patience was. She knew what having fun and going places was. And to have that turn into the last two years of her life, what she went through is real hurtful.”

She constantly thinks about what she could have done differently and what more she could have done. Though she blames CPS for what happens, she also blames herself. She said, “I knew it was going to happen, and I knew Heaven was going to be the one. I feel like the blood was on my hands too because I’m trying to figure out what else I should have done.”

If she could talk to her one more time, she would tell Heaven, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more, and that I really miss her.”

After Heaven’s death, Virginia Representative Bobby Scott sponsored the Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Among other things, the bill would have funded an interstate registry of child abuse and neglect, allowing CPS workers to easily check to see if someone had been reported for child abuse in a different state.

This is not the first time such a bill has been suggested in a database. The Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act of 2006 mandated the creation of a child abuse database in addition to requiring a national registry for offenders. Instead of creating it though, Congress decided it was better to fund a study about its effectiveness instead.

The results of that study were released in 2012. In brief, the study used data from 22 states to calculate that a national database might only apply to about 8,000 offenders a year, and only about four of those cases would be expected to be severe enough to result in death. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services described these as small numbers and determined that such a database would be of limited use. Though I imagine those numbers don’t seem quite as small to the family who has lost a beloved grandchild or child.

The bill passed in the House, but it died in the Senate, so it was never enacted. The United States still does not have a national child abuse database like the one described in that bill.

The state of Virginia also considered legislative changes after hearing Heaven’s story, and they were able to unanimously pass and sign Heaven’s Law, which requires CPS workers in Virginia to check to see if there were out-of-state reports made within 5 years of any report made in Virginia. This isn’t easy, but it is a change that they believe will save lives.

Delegate Mike Mullen, who sponsored the bill, said, “I am of the firm belief that if this bill had been a law a year and a half ago, Heaven Watkins would still be alive.” The law took effect in Virginia on July 1st, 2019.

Shironda is glad something good could come from her family’s tragedy. She said, “A lot of times you do feel alone, and to know somebody was listening and looking at her story, not just listening to me but listening to Heaven, that’s the way I look at it.”

She also said, “It may sound cliché, but I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. People need to know. People need to know Heaven’s story. Heaven’s not here, but Heaven’s not going to die in vain. If we can help one other person, then we’re going to help that one other person.”