*The daughters of Jayson Williams have slammed St. John’s University for inducting the former NBA All-Star into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
As reported by The Associated Press, the teenage sisters, Tryumph and Whizdom Williams, wrote open letters to the university in which they condemned the school for honoring their “deadbeat” dad. The girls claim Williams was an absent father as well as emotionally and physically abusive. They also noted his role in the 2002 fatal shooting of a limousine driver.
When Williams was sentenced for the shooting in 2010, he made a tearful apology to the victim’s family but his daughters wrote that he has never made amends with them. Williams, who served more than a year in prison for the accidental shooting, reportedly paid the victim’s family more than $2 million in 2003 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.
“I knew that I couldn’t change who my father was or the way he viewed and treated me,” Whizdom wrote. “I knew that the contrition and apologies were never coming.”
READ MORE: Jayson Williams Calls Himself a ‘Coward’ For Covering Up Limo Driver Shooting
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Jayson was reportedly inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame during Saturday’s homecoming weekend. In the letter, Whizdom, 18, accused her father of being an alcoholic and “a deadbeat father who lacks any sense of remorse.”
Tryumph wrote that St. John’s University is “possibly, fools, misusing money to honor Jayson Williams.”
“Why are you being honored and inducted into the hall of fame when I’ve always had to earn my survival, let alone my success, in spite of you? St. John’s University — you should be ashamed of yourself,” she wrote.
Despite the sisters’ objections, St. John’s said in a statement that “Jayson Williams’s life journey is one that includes childhood trauma, time spent in a homeless shelter, addiction, incarceration, and recovery; issues that impact countless American families. The family dynamic between Jayson and his children is not a matter that St. John’s University will discuss,” Brian Browne, a spokesperson for St. John’s, wrote in an email to the AP.
“Part of the recovery and redemption process is restoring trust, accepting help, and finding comfort and support in the journey and that, coupled with his athletic accomplishments, is what St. John’s University recognizes with Jayson Williams during this Homecoming weekend,” the statement continued.
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