Labor leader pays for slain tot's headstone

Written by John Ellingsworth

Wednesday, 07 July 2004

JOHNNY DOC: IT'S A WAY TO SHOW RESPECT By Jill Porter This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it SHE WAS poor and powerless, a child whose intense suffering was ignored until it was too late. But one of the city's most powerful men has made sure that Porchia Bennett is respected in death the way she never was in life. Labor leader and Democratic Party official John Dougherty has paid for a headstone to mark the little girl's grave. The stone will be engraved and ready to be installed in August - a year since Porchia's barbaric murder left the city shaken and the Department of Human Services scrambling for an explanation. The three-year-old was starved, suffocated and beaten and found dead in a squalid South Philadelphia apartment after a DHS worker delayed responding to a hotline report. The child's aunt and the aunt's boyfriend have been charged with her murder. I found it unconscionable under the circumstances that Porchia wound up in an unmarked grave at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia. When I confronted former DHS Commissioner Alba Martinez about the situation in March, she offered to pay for a headstone. When she mentioned the situation to Dougherty, he volunteered to help. Last week, Dougherty paid $2,353 for outstanding funeral expenses and the headstone - from a charity he founded that's administered by his daughter, he said - and rescued Porchia from eternal anonymity. Obviously, Dougherty has political ambitions and it would be fair - if incorrect - to assume he did this for the publicity. Although he's more prominent for political muscle than being a mensch, Dougherty is also known for charitable gestures both big and small. This was not an aberration, he said, but part of what he does all the time. He also quietly paid $1,200 for part of Faheem Thomas-Child's funeral expenses, he said. "I've done 15, 20 things like that," he said. "With me being so out in front, it starts looking like it's pure political." Dougherty, business agent for Electricians' Local 98 and treasurer of Democratic City Committee, agreed to talk only when I told him I was going to write the column anyway. He declined to have a photograph taken of him at the gravesite. And frankly, even if Dougherty had paid for the headstone for the sake of good publicity, it wouldn't matter to me. What matters is his gesture is a small redemption for a child who was failed by everyone in her life. Porchia Bennett's battered body was found wedged between a bed and the wall on Aug. 17. Much has changed since then. The social worker who waited too long to investigate the hot line report retired rather than face disciplinary procedures. DHS reopened 310 case files that had been closed when the families dropped from sight - just as Porchia's mother had disappeared years earlier. Only 34 families are still actively being pursued. All but nine of the other families have been found and reassessed. Staff was added and many other reforms instituted before Martinez recently left office for a new job. Much is owed the little girl who died so horribly. At the very least, she'll finally have a headstone to mark her grave. It will read simply: In Loving Memory Porchia Bennett 7-7-2000 8-17-2003 "I live five minutes from where this little girl lived," John Dougherty said. "At least we can show her some respect in death because she obviously got none in life." http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/8981183.htm

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 29 November 2005 )

 

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