THE NEEDIEST CASES
After Years Caught Up in Violence, a Second Chance to Reflect on Fate
Released from a seven-year prison term for robbery and assault, Raheem Watson plans to stay on the straight and narrow.
By ANDREW KEH
Published: November 23, 2010
¶Words flowed from Raheem Watson in a stream, thick with assurance, buttressed by years of quiet introspection. But one question gave him pause, forcing his gaze down to his lap.
Every year since 1911, New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. Articles will appear daily through Jan. 30, illustrating the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.
Last year, 10,428 donors contributed $6,280,242, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.
¶Did he have a choice?
¶“Wow,” he said. Seconds passed, the first quiet moments of the night. He had two decades of strife to ponder.
¶Mr. Watson, 26, was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His father, he said, abandoned him when he was 4. His mother, in his words, “was into the streets,” meaning she dealt drugs, and as a child, he followed in her path, running errands for neighborhood dealers.
¶“It was like, ‘After I do this, I’ll have enough to buy me a pair of sneakers,’ ” Mr. Watson said. “I didn’t think it was anything serious.”
¶Things grew more serious when he was 12. That spring, his mother, who had been missing for three days, was found dead; she had ingested cocaine laced with rat poison, Mr. Watson said. The following day at school, he fought with another student. He picked up a chair and hit the other boy with it repeatedly.
¶The episode landed Mr. Watson in juvenile detention centers, where he remained for two and a half years. The centers reminded him of the movie “Gladiator,” he said, for their constant violence.
¶After Mr. Watson was released, he was referred to the Adolescent Employment and Education Program of Brooklyn Community Services, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
¶Tammy Samms, the director of the program, remembered him then as “a very dynamic young man” who nonetheless struggled to emerge from his destructive patterns.
¶“You don’t always see it on the outside,” she said of troubled youths. “You see it in the decisions they make.”
¶In winter 2003, Mr. Watson was arrested and charged with robbing and assaulting a man in Brooklyn. He was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. (He maintains that he was wrongfully accused.)
¶Mr. Watson exhaled hard as he remembered his life in jail. “It was like being buried alive,” he said.
¶But it was there that his transformation began. For those seven years, he kept mostly to himself — reading, writing and pondering ways to better his life. He took advantage of classes offered there and obtained his high school equivalency diploma and an electrical trade license.
¶He was released last February “as a mature adult,” he said, with a renewed sense of purpose and responsibility.
¶Since June, he has been waking up at 5 a.m. every weekday to travel from Bushwick, Brooklyn, to New Jersey, to attend a licensing course in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.
¶He has been searching desperately for a job, e-mailing his résumé to any and every listing he sees online. But he has had no luck, and it pains him to respond to application questions about past felonies. “Maybe if I leave it blank, I’ll actually get an interview,” Mr. Watson said. “But it’s like a Catch-22.”
¶With no regular income, Mr. Watson has been staying at the apartment of a family friend, getting by with help from relatives. He has also reconnected with the adolescent employment program at Brooklyn Community Services, and he visits the office regularly to dole out advice to young enrollees.
¶This fall, the program helped him obtain a grant of $200 from the Neediest Cases Fund, to help cover the cost of getting his driver’s license — from applying for a permit to taking driving lessons — which he believes will add a valuable skill to his résumé.
¶Mr. Watson said he sometimes felt the troubles he had faced were a product of fate — a notion that seemed at odds with his stated desire to steer others away from the path he took.
¶So, the question again: Did he have a choice? He rolled it around in his head, struggling with its implications.
¶“Yeah,” Mr. Watson said. “I had a choice.”
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