I met Kelly a few years ago at work. I believe at the time she had two young children, the oldest is currently 5. She was also already married to Kevin [26M], who is a stay-at-home-dad, they homeschool and she is the sole provider. I've met Kevin and the kids a few times, but don't really know them, and we never really talked about the kids too much.
We eventually started hanging out outside of work and early on in our friendship I learned that after their first child died, her parents had called in a wellness check on her and Kevin, which really upset her. I didn't pry for more details, but she and her husband moved across country, to where I online, and the relationship with her parents was severely strained.
Between her pregnancies and the pandemic, we didn’t see each other for a while, but hung out again a bit over a year ago. She tells me something that I press and I find out Kevin is emotionally abusive. I tried to convince her to start seeing a therapist and to consider leaving him. But by this time they have three children, and she doesn’t have any family here. I kept checking in and telling her that it is not okay how he treats her and offered her my guest room, etc. At some point she seems upset with me about it, so I back off. Then she gets pregnant again and I drop it.
The baby was born with a condition that meant he was going to be disabled his entire life. When I saw Kelly a few months later, she seemed exhausted but okay, she didn't really talk about Kevin, and gave me a vague response when I asked.
Next time we talked I found out that Kevin had decided he’s in love with someone else, and either Kelly is okay with it or she can leave. I tell her how fucked up that is, she says Kevin is just honest and that's why he told her. She talks about taking her new baby and disappearing, leaving the other three with Kevin.
Then I don't see her at work for a few weeks because our schedules change a bit. I get a text from her that she just got out of jail. She had been arrested for child neglect, and Kevin was arrested for child abuse. Her parents had posted bond and hired a private lawyer. From an article I found out the baby was at the hospital in critical condition. At this point I'd assumed it had been an accident or something. I texted to check-in, but didn't see her again for a few weeks.
From what I know, I think the baby was shaken. When the police interviewed her, she didn't tell them about any of the abuse. She said it was after she was out of jail that she “woke up” to what was happening. Her other children where removed from her care and put with her in-laws. She was still talking to Kevin, who called her from jail several times a day, telling him that she loves him, until her lawyer convinced her to go NC.
Overtime I learn he was abusing all the kids, she saw him do it, she told me she'd taken an older one to the hospital for stiches and lied about the cause. She also says he was physically abusing her.
I go to court with her, try to help her with the in-laws, convince her to reach out to her parents, hangout whenever she needs someone, etc.
About a month later, the baby is in hospice and passes due to his injuries. Kevin is charged with murder and still in jail. While Kelly is angry at him, she still tells me how he wasn’t a bad guy, how she is going to continue to raise the three remaining kids with his parenting philosophy (she says the abuse wasn’t discipline) and no one is going to tell her how to raise her kids. She believes in being honest with them, so she told the 5y that their father was in jail for killing their brother (she gets phone calls and supervised visitation once a week). Overall, she seemed more upset about Kevin being charged then the baby passing.
Yesterday she found out she probably isn’t going to get her kids back. It isn’t official, just what her family lawyer told her. But even before that, every week she wants them to be living somewhere different, based on how her MIL was acting, including putting them into foster care. One of the big blowouts with the MIL was over a missed visitation due to the children being sick. While I have heard her talk about how much she misses Kevin and how much she wants her kids back, she doesn’t really talk about how she misses her kids the way she does Kevin.
Obviously this is a really complex situation, with overlapping layers of grief and trauma, and I will be the first to say I know nothing about kids or marriage. I come from a not great home and I don’t always have the best grasp of what normal relationships look like. So I don’t know how to feel. Part of me empathizes with protecting your abuser and how naked it would have been emotionally to leave. But part of me also feels like she owed her children better then leaving them home alone all day with their abuser, that she should have left him after the first time it happened and that she shouldn’t have continued to have more kids (they were all planned). I haven’t told her and it makes me feel like a really shitty friend who is lying to her when she brings up things I don’t agree with. She feels like the whole world is against her and I don’t want to be someone else pilling on. She also doesn’t have many other friends. Any advice?
TL;DR I am afraid I am being too judgmental of my friend going through a really difficult situation.
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