Maddie Haakma, 17, of Dallas Center was friends with Sabrina Ray when they were in the third grade at Perry Elementary School in 2010. Haakma wrote the poem below in her English class at Dallas Center-Grimes High School on the first anniversary of her childhood friend’s death.
Haakma is the daughter of John and Lindsay Haakma of Dallas Center.
“We have struggled with the what-ifs over the last year,” Lindsay Haakma said Tuesday morning. “Sabrina told Maddie she was so happy to finally have a family of her own. We look back, and my son, Chance, went to their daycare, trusting them that not only was my child taken care of but Sabrina, too.”
The exposure of the conditions in which Sabrina and the other adopted children lived in the house of Marc and Misty Ray of Perry, from her physical abuse by a brutish older brother to her alleged starvation death at the hands of her adoptive parents, still shock the community.
“Maddie, John and I just pray that justice will be handled appropriately,” Lindsay Haakma said, “so that we can have closure. Maddie needs desperately to heal and move forward. We are so proud of her. Sabrina would be starting her senior year in the fall had she been properly careed for. My husband and I would have adopted her in a heartbeat, and that’s what hurts us most. Maddie adored Sabrina.”
Maddie herself spoke equally fervently about her friend: “I was really close with Sabrina Ray as a child, when she was still attending the school before Marc and Misty Ray adopted her. She told me herself how excited she was during the process. I wrote a personal narrative paper and poem about her, in remembrance of Sabrina Ray. She was a loved and cherished friend of mine.”
