The woman was already crying when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Anxiously, she waited for her 11-year-old daughter to step off a plane after a trip to Florida that was supposed to last three weeks but was now almost three months.

Before she left, the rail-thin girl had spent days bragging about the vacation to classmates at her East Orange school, about spending her 11th birthday in Florida, even skipping her sixth-grade graduation for the trip.

But as the child exited the jetway, the mother’s sobs turned from elation to grief and horror. Black chemical scars framed her daughter’s mouth. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut by deep bruises, her front teeth chipped so badly they looked like fangs. A long bandage covered her left cheek, hiding pink abrasions and cuts flecked with blood.

"I didn’t even recognize her," her mother recalls.

The little girl (we will call her "J") left New Jersey on July 17 as a guest of Patricia Williams, a 48-year-old Florida woman and longtime friend of her mother. But authorities say she quickly became Williams’ prisoner and punching bag.

For weeks at a time, and for no apparent reason, Patricia Williams allegedly beat the girl with fists, belts and cords.

Some nights, Williams left J locked on a porch in the Florida heat with no food and amid a swarm of mosquitoes, police said. At times, police allege, Williams would swap pain for humiliation, gagging J with a sock or soaking her clothes in bleach, then forcing the girl to mop the floor with the garments.

For three months, J’s mother lay awake each night more than 1,100 miles away, concerned about her daughter, but completely unaware that the girl was going through the summer vacation from hell.

J’s story is one of alleged torture and betrayal at the hands of a woman introduced to her as a friend, and it’s a tale she is unlikely to forget. As the length of the trip dragged on, J’s mother said grew worried, repeatedly calling Williams to ask when the girl was coming home. Every time, J would pick up the phone and soothe her mother.

But Williams, according to the girl, was standing over the girl, coaching each conversation, threatening J if she didn’t play along.

Williams was arrested the day after the mother first laid eyes on J’s battered frame, charged with aggravated child abuse, battery and neglect, according to Florida authorities.

Florida courts will have to decide what, if any, punishment Williams will face for the horrors she allegedly visited on J. But for the victim’s mother, the story isn’t about crime and punishment, but about a mounting fear that her little girl has lost a child’s sense of safety and trust in the world.

The J that left New Jersey in June isn’t there anymore, her mother said. During interviews, J’s eyes dart around the room and she fiddles nervously with her hands. Her mother says she sometimes picks through her food, like she’s afraid something was slipped into it.

"She's never going to forget this summer. She's never going to forget her 11th birthday," the woman said. "Her life is just destroyed."



IT STARTED WITH A DANCE

It was praise dance — a form of religious expression that involves dancing to up-tempo music related to scripture — that brought the mother and Williams together again earlier this year.

Williams, who grew up in Newark and was a mentor to J’s mother before she moved to Florida, returned to New Jersey in June to arrange a memorial for her own mother, who died in 2012.

The affection for praise dance carried from mother to daughter. J began performing when she was only 7 years old, and her talent for the art form led her to Williams, who wanted the girl to perform at her mother’s memorial.

The days leading up to the ceremony marked the first sign of trouble. During a rehearsal, the girls said Williams grew incensed when J stumbled over a dance step.

"I’d never been yelled at like that before," the little girl said, adding that she cried as Williams lectured her.

Despite the tears, J performed well at the memorial. Afterward, Williams invited her to a "praise dance" convention in Alabama, and then a multiweek vacation at her home in Fort Pierce, Fla.

J had never been to Florida, and she was quick to tell friends about the trip.

She left June 17, and she was supposed to be home in time for her 11th birthday on July 9.

PUNISHMENT BEGINS

J offers little detail about the trip until someone mentions July 8, the day before her birthday.

"That’s when it got bad," she whispers.

J was excited, like any other 10-year-old. She bounded around Williams’ home, repeatedly quizzing her about birthday plans.

"I was asking what are we gonna do, and I got in trouble because she was very busy," she said.

The first punishment seemed simple. J says she was ordered to stand up straight, and not move until Williams woke the next morning. But J grew weary, eventually slinking into sleep on a nearby couch.

She was awoken by Williams, who demanded the little girl run laps through the home’s hallways, then perform 200 jumping jacks, J said.

When the girl grew tired and slowed, J says Williams began to pummel her.

For weeks, the beatings were almost daily, sometimes with a belt, others with an electrical cord, according to J’s family. The girl wasn’t allowed to sleep on the couch, forced to curl up on a hardwood floor and then clean the spot where she lay with bleach, using her own clothing as a mop.

She was gagged with a dirty sock for hours and forbidden from cleaning herself after using the bathroom, relatives said. In one instance, police allege, Williams threw the girl with such force that she chipped two teeth.



WORRYING CALLS

Week after week, the mother would call Williams, asking why J hadn’t come home. The excuses varied, the mother said, but near the end of every conversation, Williams would hand the phone to the girl, to put her mother’s mind at ease.

The mother started worrying when she noticed a change in her daughter’s voice. During the phone calls, J answered nearly every question with a "yes, ma’am" or "no, ma’am."

"(She) didn’t talk like that," her mother said.

But apparently, Williams was standing guard during each call.

"I didn’t tell Mommy because when we got on the phone, first (Williams) told me what to say before I got on the phone, and then on the phone, she had it on speaker," J adds.

Williams told J that she would never let her see her mother again if she didn’t cooperate, that she had security guards monitoring the house in case she tried to run.

After leaving the airport, J’s mother called police. The girl was taken to a hospital, where her mother saw the extent of the havoc wreaked upon her daughter for the first time.

A report taken by the East Orange police about the girl's wounds reads: "This officer observed severe scars which appeared to have gotten infected and did not heal properly. There were also open wounds all over her body and she appeared to have been burned over most of the entire portion of her mouth area with some sort of chemical, possibly bleach."

"She looked like she’d been freaking tortured. They started to examine her and take off her shirt … and I couldn’t’ stay in the room," the mother said, shaking as she spoke. "That was the first time I saw her body. All I could see was pink marks."

The report drafted by East Orange Police after they first spoke with J sums up the damage in one painful paragraph.

"This officer observed severe scars which appeared to have gotten infected and did not heal properly. There were also open wounds all over her body and she appeared to have been burned over most of the entire portion of her mouth area with some sort of chemical, possibly bleach," the report reads.

LEGAL CASE

The case was turned over to Fort Pierce, Fla., police, who immediately interviewed Williams, Sgt. James Gagliano said.

"She denied ever abusing the child, and said the child came to her with all those marks several months ago," Gagliano said. "She said she never brought her to a doctor because she did not want to be accused of beating the child."

J’s relatives were ruled out as suspects early in the investigation, according to Gagliano, because pictures of the girl taken days before the trip show her smiling and unharmed.

Williams was charged on Sept. 1 and jailed in lieu of $90,000. She was free on bail the next day.

She faces up to 75 years in prison if convicted on all counts and served with consecutive sentences, according to Robyn Stone, the assistant state’s attorney in Florida who is prosecuting the case.

"You’ve seen the photos," she said. "When someone brings us a case with those photos, the bottom line is we take them very seriously."

A message left at Williams’ home was not returned, and Stone said she does not have an attorney.

Some of J’s wounds have healed, but the fading black scars around her mouth are still visible. She is attending school again and visiting a therapist.

Despite all the damage done to her daughter, and the fear that J will have to relive it all if she testifies at Williams’ trial, the mother lulls herself to sleep with one thought.

At least her daughter is home again.

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