The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

BY JENNA PORTNOY

Democrats Elaine Luria, Abi-

gail Spanberger and Jennifer

Wexton flipped GOP congres-

sional seats in Virginia last year

with help from suburban female

voters to give their party a majori-

ty of the state’s congressional

delegation.

Now, the trio is trying to tap

into the growing political power

of suburban women to help Dem-

ocrats win a majority in the state

legislature.

“Women have been the key

voting demographic — especially

college-educated women,” said

Rachel Bitecofer, an analyst at the

Wason Center for Public Policy at

Christopher Newport University,

said of recent Virginia elections.

“When we think about what

has been happening in national

politics, one of the key ingredients

of the blue wave was women,” she

said. “They’re absolutely funda-

mental.”

All 140 seats in the General

Assembly are on the ballot on

Tuesday, with Republicans pro-

tecting slight majorities of 51 to 48

in the House and 20 to 19 in the

Senate; each chamber has one

vacancy.

If Democrats win control of the

legislature, they will join Gov.

Ralph Northam (D) to consolidate

power over state government for

the first time in 26 years.

They promise to pass a raft of

measures that a recent Washing-

SEE VIRGINIA ON B3

“Independent resources and

infrastructure will be required,”

she told lawmakers. “I don’t want

to give a premature number, but

what I can say is if we’re going to

do something, let’s do it right

and let’s do it great. And if we’re

going to go, let’s go big.”

McDuffie said the D.C. govern-

SEE GO-GO ON B4

cil members — also would create

education campaigns and a pro-

gram to archive and preserve the

music’s history.

Angie M. Gates, director of the

D.C. Office of Cable Television,

Film, Music and Entertainment,

declined to estimate how much it

might cost to create and main-

tain a historical go-go archive.

BY MARISSA J. LANG

The coronation began with a

familiar bongo beat bouncing off

the walls of the John A. Wilson

Building.

There was no vote taken or bill

approved, but the crowd that

gathered around go-go group

Black Passion Band in the middle

of the District’s city hall this past

week was confident that go-go is

on its way to being enshrined in

law as the official music of Wash-

ington.

For 2^1 / 2 hours, nearly 50 musi-

cians, activists and D.C. residents

testified Wednesday about the

music genre’s impact on the city

and its people. They called go-go

the heartbeat of the city, the root

from which D.C. culture grows.

The go-go bill introduced by

D.C. Council member Kenyan R.

McDuffie (D-Ward 5) — and

co-sponsored by all 13 D.C. coun-

no sign of any remorse. You were

in a position of trust where you

should have been protecting

them instead of acting as a preda-

tor.”

Fairfax County Assistant Com-

monwealth’s Attorney George

Freeman IV relayed some of the

shocking facts of the case before-

hand: Both victims, ages 29 and

33, are so impaired they could

not fully communicate the abuse

they suffered or understand what

was happening to their bodies

when they became pregnant.

Both women attended a day pro-

gram at MVLE, where Betts-

King, of Springfield, was a behav-

ioral technician.

The brother of one of the

victims said after the hearing

that he was “relieved” and agreed

with everything the judge had

said in the sentencing. The man

said his 76-year-old grandmother

is taking care of the child and

that he might in time become the

girl’s guardian. The Washington

Post is not naming the man, his

sister or the child because it

SEE SENTENCING ON B2

BY JUSTIN JOUVENAL

A former employee at a Fairfax

County center for the intellectu-

ally disabled was sentenced to

two life terms Friday for raping

two clients, both of whom be-

came pregnant and later gave

birth.

Fairfax County Circuit Court

Judge Bruce D. White told Ber-

nard Betts-King, 62, that some

crimes “are so vile” that the

defendant can’t be allowed liber-

ty, before handing down the max-

imum sentence in the 2017 and

2018 sexual assaults that oc-

curred at MVLE Community Cen-

ter in Springfield.

“You have been found guilty of

rape of the most vulnerable peo-

ple in our society,” White told the

defendant. “Until today, I found

BY ERIN COX

Janice Hayes-Williams was just start-

ing out as an amateur local historian two

decades ago when she found out a

prominent black man had been deeply

disrespected.

The grave holding the remains of

Smith Price, founder of the first free black

community in Maryland’s state capital,

had been dug up during an urban renew-

al project in the 1980s.

And for years, no one she talked to

knew where the bones had gone.

“How do you dig up people and take

them away?” Hayes-Williams said in an

interview earlier this week.

On Friday, she stood in St. Anne’s

Cemetery in Annapolis and ran her hand

along a pair of custom wooden caskets.

“At last,” she said, “they’re home.”

The bones presumed to belong to Price

and his young son were again being laid

to rest, after a solemn ceremony attended

by 125 people in the church that Price

helped found more than two centuries

ago.

Price was eulogized by Lt. Gov. Boyd K.

Rutherford (R), the second African Amer-

ican in state history elected to that job,

who spoke of “resilience in the face of

conditions we really can’t understand

today.”

Born into bondage in the 1750s, Price —

whose father was white — spent most of

his life as the property of the first

president of the Maryland Senate, Daniel

of St. Thomas Jenifer, an Annapolis man

who built some of his wealth participat-

ing in the slave trade. Price was such a

talented blacksmith and artisan that

Jenifer rented him out for hire.

Freed in 1791 after Jenifer’s death, Price

leased land from white men, cultivated

an orchard and prospered — enough to

purchase and donate the land for what

became Asbury United Methodist

Church, which Hayes-Williams’s family

has attended for generations.

He also bought freedom for other

enslaved people, some of whom helped

create a thriving free black community

outside the Annapolis city gates six dec-

ades before Maryland abolished slavery.

Price died in 1807. He and a son both

were buried behind the church he helped

found. Their bodies presumably stayed in

that small graveyard until the early

1980s, when the poor black residents who

still lived in the neighborhood were

displaced. The area was bulldozed to

make way for townhouses they could not

afford.

“We had told these developers there

was a cemetery there, but I don’t think

they took it to heart until they dug a

basement and found the skeletons,” said

Robert Worden, who lives in the neigh-

boring community of Murray Hill and has

written about the discovery of the re-

mains.

It was actually Wayne Clark, then

SEE BONES ON B2

‘At last, they’re home’

The bones of a former slave and black leader were missing — until a historian’s hunch

KLMNO

METRO

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/REGIONAL EZ RE B

THE DISTRICT

Plan ahead with details on

the parade celebrating the

Nationals’ World Series

victory. B4

RELIGION

A Christian faith group at

the State Department

underscores the influence

of Mike Pompeo. B2

OBITUARIES

Sadako Ogata, 92, led the

U.N. refugee agency and

was a pathbreaking figure

40 ° 51 ° 56 ° 50 ° for Japanese women. B5

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 4 p.m.

56

°

Precip: 5%

Wind: SSE

4-8 mph

A female

force in

Virginia

politics

Care worker gets life for Go-go poised to be D.C.’s o∞cial beat

raping disabled women

Victims, who attended

Springfield day program,

each gave birth

Bill would enshrine,

promote, preserve city’s

trademark music genre

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

ABOVE: Pallbearers stand over the caskets containing what are believed to be the remains of Smith Price, a freed

slave who prospered in Annapolis in the early 1800s, and a child believed to be his son, during a ceremony Friday at

St. Anne’s Cemetery. He and a son both were originally buried behind the Annapolis church Price helped found, but

the remains were dug up and removed in the early 1980s when the area was bulldozed to make way for townhouses.

ANDRÉ CHUNG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Rare Essence guitarist and co-founder Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson

plays during a D.C. performance by the go-go band in August.

BY PETER HERMANN

A D.C. regulatory agency never

created a file or properly acted on

a complaint of dangerous condi-

tions at an illegal rooming house

on Kennedy Street in Northwest

Washington and stopped pursu-

ing the case two days before a fire

killed two occupants, an inde-

pendent investigation has found.

Because a formal process was

not followed, housing investiga-

tors and others did only cursory

checks of the property, failed to

follow up with the D.C. police

officer who made the complaint,

and then aborted their inquiry

“without appropriate documen-

tation and approval,” an outside

consulting firm hired by the

District concluded.

The report was made public

Friday, 10 weeks after the Aug. 18

fire at 708 Kennedy St. NW killed

Fitsum Kebede, 40, and Yafet

Solomon, 9, who lived in separate

rooms in the basement of the

rowhouse in Brightwood Park.

The renters, mostly Ethiopian

immigrants, lived in tiny rooms,

some no bigger than a queen-size

bed, and shared kitchens and

bathrooms.

Kevin Donahue, the District’s

deputy mayor for public safety,

SEE FIRE ON B6

Multiple

failures

before

fatal fire

AUDITOR FAULTS

D.C. REGULATORS

Formal process wasn’t

followed, report finds

Democrats hope 2018’s

blue wave is repeated in

state legislative elections