Warning: distressing content. A woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison for her ‘failure to protect’ her four-year-old daughter from an abusive partner, who was given only a fraction of that time behind bars
It was not long after Christmas when Kerry King, 39, noticed bruises on her young daughter’s legs as she gave her a bath.
She quickly asked the little girl what had happened, to which the then-four-year-old replied that her mother’s boyfriend had been “mean” to her.
Kerry knew that her partner, John Purdy, had a violent streak – because she had been on the receiving end of it herself for over a year. When she asked Purdy about the marks on her daughter Lilah’s legs, he claimed she had just fallen over on the ice.
But just two days later, he would commit a savage attack on poor Lilah, and despite being a victim of his domestic violence too, Kerry ended up being pursued by the police along with him, who said she had not done enough to protect her child from him.
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Kerry awoke in the middle of the night back in January 2015 to find her now-ex was no longer in their shared bedroom. Her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was also shared with a roommate, but when she went looking for Purdy, she found him in her daughter’s bedroom, strangling her with one hand, and holding the four-year-old’s shoulders with the other, the court heard.
According to court documents, Kerry punched her then-boyfriend’s face in an attempt to get him off her daughter, but this only intensified his rage.
After knocking Kerry’s head into a wall, he then demanded that Kerry hold her daughter down so he could beat Lilah. She claims that she went along with it in the hope that it would mean the ordeal would end as soon as possible.
Herself a victim of Purdy’s rage, she had suffered from his violent outbursts, and even been held down and forcibly injected with heroin by him previously, jurors heard, leading her to take it on other occasions when he insisted.
However, as he used his belt to hit her child, she physically put her body on top of the small girl’s to intercept the blows, before trying to escape the house to get help.
Her attempt to get away didn’t work, and he grabbed her hair and pulled her along by it back into their bedroom, telling her he would kill her if she left the room. The thug then locked himself in Lilah’s room and continued to beat her intensely.
Kerry was forced to listen, terrified, and she later said, feeling totally trapped. He had taken her phone, and throughout the night she begged him to leave her daughter alone, trying to entice him out of the room by offering to shower with him.
He accepted the offer and came out of Lilah’s room briefly, during which time she managed to grab her phone and text her mum for help, before swiftly deleting the message so her abuser would not see it.
Her mother called back almost instantly, and according to Kerry, Purdy then punched her in the face after realising what she had done, before making her phone her mum back and reassure her that everything was all right.
The court heard that hours later, he finally returned to their bedroom, and the next day he insisted Lilah remain indoors, so no one saw the vile damage he had done to the little girl. Her face and neck were covered in bruises, her back in lashes from the beating he had conducted on her back, and parts of her hair were missing.
However, Kerry’s housemate managed to contact the police the following day, and little Lilah, who had been locked in a room, went with her mum and the authorities to get medical treatment.
Purdy would be sentenced to 18 years in prison for his crimes, after reportedly taking a plea deal. Kerry, who was arrested a week later, was handed a much more severe sentence for her “failure to protect” her daughter.
The police who arrested her cited the fact that she had not called the emergency services and had held down Lilah for a portion of the beating to argue she had neglected her daughter and allowed the abuse.
She insisted, while interviewed, that she had been scared herself of Purdy, and that was “not a bad mum”.
Kerry would plead not guilty in her trial, insisting she did not conduct the abuse on her child, but the jury wasn’t convinced. She was given two lengthy 30-year sentences to run concurrently, and remains in prison today.
Lilah still visits her mum in prison once a month, and told Mother Jones that “I kind of know why she’s in jail, but I know she’s not supposed to be there.” The child, aged 11 at the time of the interview in 2022, became tearful.
“I just really miss her. I just want to talk to her,” she added. “You can’t really make memories on a phone.”
For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.