Written by TIff | A Grief Moment
Content note: This article discusses the death of a child, violent loss, and parental grief. Graphic details are intentionally omitted. Please take care of yourself as you read, and feel free to pause if you need to.
What brought me to this story
My introduction to the story of Felecia Williams was not through a news headline. It was through a video of the sentencing proceedings involving the man convicted of her murder.
I watched a mother stand before the court, carrying years of pain, anger, and hurt. I watched a father address the man responsible for his daughter’s death with words of forgiveness. I watched a judge attempt to speak through the account of what had happened to a nine-year-old child. And I found myself sitting with questions that extended far beyond the courtroom.
What does grief look like when a child is taken violently from her family? What happens to parents who must live with the reality that their child will never come home? How does a family navigate years of unanswered questions, painful information, and the wait for justice? And what happens when the courtroom finally reaches a decision, but the person at the center of the loss is still gone?
These are the questions that brought me to this story.
As the voice behind A Grief Moment, I want to be intentional about how I discuss Felecia’s life and death. My purpose is not to sensationalize the circumstances of her death or invite readers to dwell on the graphic details of what happened to her. My purpose is to examine the grief surrounding a loss that no parent should have to experience.
My background in psychology also makes it difficult to sit with a case like this without asking questions about human behavior. I find myself wondering what could lead someone to commit such a horrific act against a child. Yet I recognize the limits of what I can know about another person’s thoughts, motives, or psychological functioning from news reports and courtroom proceedings.
I can examine the questions without pretending to have the answers.
And for this story, I want to bring the focus back to grief.
Nine years of life, and a family left to grieve
Felecia Williams was nine years old when she was killed in Tampa, Florida, in May 2014. Her family knew her by the nickname “Sugar Plum.” Contemporary reporting described a child who loved her family and brought joy to the people around her.
Granville Ritchie was convicted in September 2019 of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse. A jury recommended the death penalty that same month, and a judge formally sentenced him to death in September 2020 (Jordan & Greenstein, 2020; FOX 13 Tampa Bay, 2019).
There is a distinction worth making here. The guilty verdict came approximately five years after Felecia’s death. The formal sentencing occurred in 2020, more than six years after her death.
For Felecia’s family, those years did not exist only as a timeline in a legal case. They were years of living with a loss that could not be reversed, while the investigation and court proceedings continued.
I cannot imagine what it meant to move through those years knowing that the person responsible had not yet received a final sentence. I cannot know whether each court date brought renewed distress, whether there were moments of relief, or how the family managed the ordinary demands of life while carrying such an extraordinary loss.
But I can recognize that the legal process and the grieving process are not the same.
A verdict can establish guilt. A sentence can determine punishment. Neither can return a child to her family.
Justice may reach a conclusion, but grief does not necessarily reach one with it.
The grief of a mother
One of the most difficult parts of watching the sentencing proceedings was observing Felecia’s mother.
I saw a woman who appeared angry and deeply hurt, a mother who had waited years for the legal process to reach this point. Her words conveyed the pain of someone who had lived with the loss of her child and the knowledge that another person was responsible for it.
As I watched her, I found myself thinking about the experience of losing a child under circumstances like these.
As a parent myself, I know what it means to place a child in the care of another adult with the expectation that the child will be safe. We make decisions based on the information we have, the relationships we trust, and the circumstances of the moment. Often, we do not anticipate that an ordinary decision about childcare could become connected to a tragedy.
In Felecia’s case, her mother had allowed her to spend time with a family friend. The circumstances that followed were devastating.
I cannot speak for her mother. I do not know whether she has questioned her decisions, blamed herself, or struggled with thoughts about what she might have done differently. I do not want to assign her those feelings simply because I can imagine them as another parent.
But I do think we need to make room to discuss the possibility of parental self-blame after the death of a child.
When a parent loses a child to violence, questions may arise that have no satisfying answers. What if I had made a different decision? What if I had been there? What if I had known? Could I have prevented this?
These questions can become especially painful when the death involves another person’s deliberate actions.
Research on parental bereavement recognizes that the death of a young child can be associated with substantial and sometimes persistent grief-related distress. Morris et al. (2019) reviewed 42 studies on parental grief and found evidence of a significant burden of complicated or prolonged grief among parents whose young children had died. The authors also emphasized the limitations and variability in the existing research.
This research does not tell us what Felecia’s mother experienced. It does, however, help us understand why the grief of a parent who loses a young child deserves careful attention.
For a parent, grief may involve not only missing the child but also confronting a future that will never unfold as expected. There will be birthdays, milestones, and ordinary moments that the child will not get to experience. There may be reminders of the last conversation, the last embrace, or the last time the parent believed everything was okay.
When a child’s death is violent, the circumstances can add another layer of distress to the loss itself.
I keep returning to the thought of a mother who expected her daughter to be safe and instead had to confront a reality she could never have anticipated. I cannot imagine the weight of that experience, and I would never presume to know how she has carried it.
What I can say is that parents who lose children deserve compassion, not assumptions about what they should have done, how they should feel, or how long they should grieve.
The responsibility for violence belongs to the person who commits it. A parent’s decision to trust another adult does not make that parent responsible for another person’s crime.
When grief is accompanied by guilt, trauma, and unanswered questions
One reason I wanted to approach this story through a psychological lens is that grief does not always arrive as sadness alone.
A traumatic loss may bring anger, disbelief, fear, guilt, intrusive thoughts, or a persistent need to understand what happened. People may find themselves revisiting details of the loss, questioning decisions, or struggling with the difference between the life they expected and the reality they now face.
Not everyone experiences these responses, and no single reaction tells the whole story of a person’s grief.
In the research literature, the term complicated grief has historically been used to describe persistent, intense grief that interferes with a person’s ability to function. The current diagnostic term is prolonged grief disorder. Szuhany et al. (2021) explain that while many bereaved people experience intense distress that gradually eases, some continue to experience persistent symptoms that cause significant impairment.
This distinction matters because grief itself is not a disorder.
A parent can continue to miss a child years after the death without that, by itself, meaning the parent has a mental health condition. Grief can remain part of a person’s life even as they return to work, care for other family members, participate in relationships, or experience moments of happiness.
Prolonged grief disorder involves a more specific pattern of persistent symptoms, duration, and impairment. It cannot be determined simply by observing a person’s emotions at a sentencing hearing or learning how long ago the death occurred.
I also want to distinguish prolonged grief from traumatic grief. A violent death may be traumatic for surviving family members, and trauma-related symptoms can complicate the grieving process. But these concepts are not interchangeable, and we should not diagnose people whose experiences we do not know.
What interests me about this case is the possibility that grief and trauma may intersect in ways that outsiders cannot fully see.
A parent may be grieving the absence of a child while also struggling with the circumstances of the death. A court proceeding may bring the loss back into public view. New information may change how a family understands what happened. The pursuit of justice may require repeatedly confronting a painful reality.
These possibilities deserve attention without assuming that every bereaved parent experiences them in the same way.
A father who offered forgiveness
Another moment that stayed with me was hearing Felecia’s father address the man responsible for his daughter’s death.
His words conveyed forgiveness. He spoke directly to the man who had taken his daughter’s life, expressing a willingness to forgive him.
I found myself wondering what it takes for a person to arrive at that point.
How does someone sit with the knowledge of what happened to their child and then stand before the person responsible and offer forgiveness? What does forgiveness mean to someone who has suffered a loss of this magnitude? Does it bring peace? Does it coexist with anger and sadness? What has the person endured privately before reaching a point where they can speak those words publicly?
I do not know the answers to these questions about Felecia’s father.
His words were powerful, but I want to be careful not to interpret them as proof that he had completed his grieving, reached acceptance, or found closure. Forgiveness is not a reliable measure of how much pain a person carries.
A person can forgive and still grieve deeply. A person can choose not to forgive and still find ways to live with a loss. Neither response tells us everything about the person’s relationship with the deceased or their healing process.
I also do not want to suggest that forgiveness should be an expectation placed on bereaved parents. No one should be pressured to forgive the person responsible for a loved one’s death as a condition of healing.
What I took from watching Felecia’s father was not that forgiveness is the correct way to grieve. It was that grief belongs to the person experiencing it, and the ways people respond to devastating loss may be very different.
His words were his to offer. His grief is his to carry.
And the meaning of that moment may be something only he can fully explain.
Do the stages of grief explain what we saw?
As I watched Felecia’s parents address the court, I noticed that their expressions and words differed. Her mother appeared to communicate anger and hurt. Her father expressed forgiveness.
It would be easy to look at those differences through the familiar stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
But I do not believe we can use the stages to explain what either parent was experiencing.
The stages of grief model, associated with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, is widely recognized. However, the American Psychological Association describes the model as nonlinear: the stages do not necessarily occur in a particular order or within a prescribed period, and they may overlap or recur (American Psychological Association, n.d.).
More recent clinical literature also emphasizes that grief follows different patterns rather than a fixed sequence of stages (Szuhany et al., 2021).
This matters because grief is not a checklist.
Anger does not automatically mean a person has not accepted a death. Forgiveness does not mean that sadness has disappeared. A person who speaks calmly may still be experiencing profound distress, while someone who expresses intense anger may also be finding ways to adapt to the loss.
We must also remember that a public courtroom is not a complete picture of a person’s private life.
What we see is a moment. What we do not see may include years of sleepless nights, conversations with loved ones, moments of despair, faith, counseling, isolation, or small steps toward living with a loss.
We cannot know those things simply by watching a video.
This is why I want to approach the grief of Felecia’s parents with humility. I can describe what I observed and explore what psychological research tells us about grief. I cannot tell readers what her parents felt behind closed doors, and I do not need to in order to recognize their loss.
The grief of those who witness the tragedy
As I watched the proceedings, I also found myself thinking about the judge.
She was responsible for presiding over a case involving the death of a child and addressing the circumstances of that death during sentencing. The difficulty of speaking through such painful material stayed with me.
It made me wonder about the emotional weight that can come with repeatedly encountering cases involving violence, suffering, and loss.
Judges, attorneys, investigators, first responders, and other professionals may be exposed to disturbing information as part of their work. Repeated exposure to traumatic material can be emotionally demanding, although the effects vary by person, role, and circumstance.
We cannot conclude from one emotional moment that a judge is experiencing grief or trauma. But we can recognize that people who work with painful cases are human beings, too.
The same consideration extends to the people who follow a case through news reports, documentaries, or sentencing videos. Some readers may feel sadness, anger, disbelief, or a strong need to understand what happened. Others may recognize their own fears as parents or recall losses they have experienced.
These reactions are not all the same, and feeling disturbed by a story does not necessarily mean someone is grieving the person who died.
Still, the emotional impact of a violent death can extend beyond the immediate family. The story may affect a community, those involved in the legal process, and people who encounter it years later.
For me, the sentencing video became an entry point into questions about grief. For someone else, it may bring up questions about safety, justice, parenting, or the vulnerability of children.
We should make room for those responses without losing sight of the family whose lives were changed forever.
What about the child at the center of this story?
Throughout this reflection, I have focused on the grief surrounding Felecia’s death. But I do not want her life to become secondary to the pain of those who survived her.
Felecia was nine years old. She had a family, relationships, experiences, and a future that should have had the opportunity to unfold.
Her story should not be reduced to the circumstances of her death.
When we discuss childhood traumatic grief, we are often talking about children who survive a traumatic death and struggle to process both the trauma and the loss of someone important to them. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network explains that trauma-related reactions can interfere with a child’s ability to grieve and remember the person who died without becoming overwhelmed by distress (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, n.d.).
In Felecia’s case, I think about the children and other family members who survived her. What does it mean to lose a child, a sister, or another loved one under violent circumstances? How might the loss affect family relationships, memories, and the way surviving children understand safety?
These are questions that research and clinical practice can help us explore.
I cannot speak to the specific experiences of Felecia’s siblings or other family members. But I can recognize that when a child dies, the loss may reach beyond the parents and affect an entire family system.
A family may be grieving the same child while each person is navigating a different relationship, different memories, and different needs. Children may need age-appropriate explanations and reassurance. Adults may struggle to find words for their own pain while trying to support younger family members.
There is no single way for a family to grieve, and there is no reason to expect everyone to move through the loss at the same pace.
What matters is that their grief is allowed to exist without comparison or judgment.
When the courtroom empties
I keep returning to the difference between the legal conclusion and the emotional reality that remains.
Felecia’s family waited years for the criminal case to reach its verdict and sentencing. The court ultimately imposed a sentence, but Felecia was not coming home.
I wonder what it was like for her family to leave the courtroom that day. Was there relief? Exhaustion? Anger? A sense that something had finally been acknowledged? Did the decision bring any peace, or did the absence of Felecia remain just as present?
I cannot answer those questions for them.
What I can recognize is that justice and grief occupy different spaces. Justice addresses accountability under the law. Grief involves living with the absence of someone who mattered.
The two may intersect, but one does not automatically resolve the other.
Some people may find that a verdict brings a sense of validation or relief. Others may find that the end of a trial leaves them facing the reality that the legal process is over but the loss remains. A family may experience several emotions at once, including emotions that seem to contradict one another.
And sometimes, there is no clear answer to the question of closure.
Perhaps this is why I hesitate to describe sentencing as the end of a family’s grieving. We do not know what the years after sentencing have looked like for Felecia’s parents. We do not know how they remember her, what helps them through difficult days, or how their relationship with the loss has changed.
We do not need those answers to understand that a child has been lost and that her family must continue living without her.
What I want readers to take from Felecia’s story
I began this reflection with questions about human behavior. I wondered how someone could commit such a horrific act, and I found myself trying to make sense of something that may never feel understandable.
But the longer I sat with the case, the more I returned to the grief.
I thought about a mother who had to confront the violent death of her child. I thought about a father who chose to speak words of forgiveness. I thought about the people who had to investigate the case, present the evidence, hear the details, and make decisions. I thought about the years between Felecia’s death and the legal outcome.
And I thought about the limits of what any of us can know about another person’s pain.
As a parent, I can imagine the fear of believing my child is safe and then discovering that something terrible has happened. I can imagine the questions that might follow, the desire to go back in time, and the difficulty of accepting a reality that cannot be changed.
But imagining those feelings does not mean I know what Felecia’s parents have experienced. Their grief belongs to them, and their story deserves to be treated with care.
This is where I believe our conversations about grief need to become more thoughtful.
We need to understand that grief is not always visible. It does not follow a universal timeline. It does not look the same from one person to the next, even within the same family. And it cannot be measured by whether someone cries, expresses anger, offers forgiveness, or appears composed in public.
We also need to make room for the complicated questions that follow traumatic loss without assuming that every question has an answer.
How does a parent live with the loss of a child? How does a family move forward when the circumstances of the death are painful to remember? How does someone navigate the possibility of guilt without accepting responsibility for another person’s actions? How does a family live after the legal system has reached its conclusion?
These are not questions I can answer for Felecia’s parents. They are questions worth exploring because other families experience traumatic loss, too, and those families deserve understanding, compassion, and appropriate support.
I do not want Felecia Williams to be remembered only for the way her life ended. I want us to remember that she was a child whose life mattered, whose family loved her, and whose future should have been allowed to continue.
And I want us to recognize the grief that remains when a life is taken violently, when justice takes years, and when those left behind must find a way to keep living.
We may never fully understand another person’s grief. We may never know what happens behind closed doors or what it takes for someone to face another day after a loss of this magnitude.
But we can choose not to judge what we cannot see.
We can listen. We can make room for different expressions of grief. We can approach families affected by violence with care rather than speculation. And we can remember that behind every headline is a life, a family, and a loss that cannot be reduced to the details of a case.
For me, that is the reason to tell this story.
Not to glorify a death. Not to dwell on the violence. Not to claim that I know what another family has endured.
But to pause long enough to consider the grief that remains.
Because when the courtroom empties and the headlines fade, the people left behind must continue learning how to live with the loss.
Give yourself a moment to pause, reflect, and process.
References
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Stages of grief. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/stages-of-grief
FOX 13 Tampa Bay. (2019, September 26). Life or death: Granville Ritchie to be sentenced for murder of 9-year-old Felecia Williams. https://www.fox13news.com/news/life-or-death-granville-ritchie-to-be-sentenced-for-murder-of-9-year-old-felecia-williams
Jordan, D., & Greenstein, D. (2020, September 12). Granville Ritchie sentenced to death for rape and murder of 9-year-old Felicia Williams. Bay News 9. https://baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/09/11/granville-ritchie-sentenced-to-death-for-rape-and-murder-of-9-year-old-felicia-williams
Morris, S. E., Fletcher, K., & Goldstein, R. (2019). The grief of parents after the death of a young child. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 26(3), 321–338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-018-9590-7
National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Childhood traumatic grief. https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/traumatic-grief
Szuhany, K. L., Malgaroli, M., Miron, C. D., & Simon, N. M. (2021). Prolonged grief disorder: Course, diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. FOCUS, 19(2), 161–172. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.20200052
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