SUMMERS: Samantha, you have looked at hundreds of failure-to-protect cases. So I didn't see how I allowed him to hurt my child. MICHAELS: I feel like I did everything I could with what I had available to me. We heard from her kids earlier, but I'd like to play a little bit of what King said about the night that she tried and ultimately failed to stop her ex, John Purdy, from hurting her daughter. SUMMERS: There's a short documentary that accompanies her story that includes interviews with King, as well as her family.
And they started telling me about Kerry King. And as I was talking with them, they told me that there actually were many, many other cases like this. And so I reached out to the ACLU of Oklahoma trying to learn more. And it made national news because she was getting out of prison. And she had gotten 30 years in prison, and he had gotten two years in jail. I was reading the news and I started reading about another woman named Tondalo Hall, who had been sent to prison because her boyfriend had abused her children and she hadn't known about it. MICHAELS: I first found out about Kerry King back in 2019. Samantha, how did you first find out about Kerry King and what's been happening to her and her family? SUMMERS: And we should note that we will discuss details about domestic violence and child abuse in our conversation. She covers criminal justice for Mother Jones and joins me now. Her story is laid out in a new investigation this month by reporter Samantha Michaels. SUMMERS: And she's not the only woman serving more time than her kids' alleged abuser in Oklahoma. KERRY KING: I mostly call them, but I do occasionally write letters trying to, you know, just give them some advice and just show them that I love them more than anything, no matter what their mom (inaudible). So King wound up with a prison sentence 12 years longer than her ex's. They said she hadn't done enough to protect her child. Her ex pled guilty to child abuse and neglect, but police charged King, too. Kerry King said her ex-boyfriend beat her and her daughter in 2015.
SUMMERS: It's been hard for other grown-ups in their lives to explain it or understand it, too, but it comes down to a kind of law known as failure to protect. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: She's in prison because - I don't really know how to explain it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: It's because, like, I kind of know why she's in jail, but I know she's not supposed to be in there. Kerry King is a mother of four serving a 30-year prison sentence in Oklahoma.
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