Al'Yana Barnes was an outgoing, confident, headstrong 9-year-old girl before an acid attack changed her appearance, damaged her self-esteem and made her a target for teasing at school.
She spent summer 2007 in the hospital recovering from third-degree burns after her grandmother's neighbor in Richmond threw acid in her face, leaving permanent scars on one side of her face and body.
When she returned to Blackwell Elementary School that fall, she sometimes would hide in the bathroom instead of reporting to class, principal Conrad Davis said. Some children made fun of her, calling her "burnt," she said.
"She did not want to be bothered with anyone -- did not want to interact with anyone," Davis said.
Gradually, she became more defensive and started getting into more trouble, including fighting at school, her mother and grandmother said.
But with the support of her family, consistent counseling and help from a school program for troubled youth, Al'Yana has made progress. She has gotten more used to her appearance, although her counselor says she will probably never be fully comfortable with it.
Last month, Al'Yana was placed in the Richmond Alternative Program for third-, fourthand fifth-graders who are chronically disruptive or have committed a major infraction of the student code of conduct. She is one of 14 students in the program citywide, and Davis said he has heard no complaints about Al'Yana's behavior since she entered the program Jan. 5.
The girl also received some comfort from her attacker's punishment. On Jan. 12, Jean Williams, 67, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors say Williams accused Al'Yana and other children of throwing a piece of trash in her yard, so Williams tossed a cup of acid on Al'Yana.
The prison sentence seemed to give Al'Yana some relief.
"She's playing a lot more. She was smiling a lot more," said her mother, Shinika Clark.
Clark said the attack also brought Al'Yana and her two sisters closer, although Al'Yana still has crying spells and mood swings. She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
She doesn't like to go out in public as much as she used to, and sometimes she keeps her jacket on indoors with the hood up to cover a web of scars on the left side of her face, around her eye, mouth and on her neck. She also has scars on her chest, arm and abdomen.
"The saddest part," said her grandmother Earlene Williams, "is when she asked me, 'Why did that lady do this to me?'"
. . .
Earlene Williams celebrated Father's Day, June 17, 2007, with a family cookout at her house on Drewry Street in South Richmond.
Al'Yana, who is now 11, was running around outside with other children. Jean Williams, who is not related to Earlene Williams, lived four doors down.
Al'Yana said she remembers seeing a boy skip past Jean Williams' house and toss a plastic juice bottle over a fence and into her yard. About 10 p.m., Al'Yana, along with two of her cousins and her 8-year-old sister, Ke'era Hicks, passed the house of Jean Williams, who accused them of throwing the litter, prosecutors say.
The children said they didn't do it. One of them picked up the trash and threw it away. But Williams walked away and returned with a cup of sulfuric acid, a corrosive substance that can be used as an industrial-strength drain opener, and threw it on Al'Yana.
The little girl ran back toward her grandmother's house, crying out in agony and yelling, "Grandma." The acid had dissolved part of her shirt. "She just kept saying, 'That lady, that lady . . . that lady threw something on me,'" her grandmother recalled.
Al'Yana's mother tried to wipe off the oily substance, but her daughter's skin started falling off. "It didn't hurt," Al'Yana recalled recently in her quiet way, "and then it did."
Someone called 911 as soon as Al'Yana said her skin was burning, Earlene Williams said. Relatives took some coolers from the party and emptied the ice into a bathtub. "We put her whole body in the tub and just held her head up out of the water" until an ambulance arrived and took her to VCU Medical Center, Earlene Williams said.
A few days after the attack, Jean Williams' daughter, Lois Jefferson, stopped by Al'Yana's family's apartment in the nearby Hillside Court public-housing complex to apologize for what had happened.
"She was just real sympathetic," Clark recalled.
Jefferson left something with Clark to give to Al'Yana: a $20 bill.
. . .
Al'Yana has had to undergo seven medical procedures for her third-degree burns, including skin grafting. She probably will need to have an additional procedure each year until she stops growing.
"Al'Yana had a hard time with all of the procedures," said Christina Blottner, a nurse practitioner who treated Al'Yana at VCU Medical Center. "She went through a lot of anger and sort of a grieving period."
"She's got a wonderful mom who's been very supportive of her," Blottner added, "and I think she's going to end up being OK."
Vivian Mann, a clinical social worker at ChildSavers, a mental-health-care center for children, noted that the attack came when Al'Yana was at an age when children are seeking acceptance from their peers and in a society that emphasizes beauty.
Children who undergo such an ordeal sometimes want to disappear and not be noticed, but they might also turn outwardly.
"Rather than be the victim, they actually take their power back by becoming the aggressor, by becoming a bully," Mann said. "They're actually reacting normally to a very abnormal situation."
. . .
Al'Yana's mother, Clark, 31, is separated from her husband and takes care of four children in the Hillside Court apartment. She recently lost her job at a bagel shop and is considering moving the family out of Richmond to escape the daily reminders of what happened to Al'Yana.
On a recent afternoon, she cooked chicken and rice for the kids after they got home from school. Al'Yana played with Ke'era, dribbling a tiny basketball around the kitchen.
Al'Yana suddenly withdrew after a mild reprimand from her mother and sat silently for several minutes, finally burying her face in her arms on the table. Then she walked upstairs.
Al'Yana's counselor, Roxanne Barnes, said Al'Yana is happy-go-lucky some of the time, but that it's easy for her to become irritable. Barnes has been working to help Al'Yana improve her self-esteem and said it is fortunate that she is such a strong child.
"She lets few people into her circle," said Blottner, the nurse practitioner. "And I think when she lets you in, she's just a phenomenal person who cares and who really appreciates what people do for her. She's a fighter, and she's going to make it."
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or rwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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