Off Record: A Mother on Trial (with Samantha Michaels)

Summary

The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

Off Record: A Mother on Trial (with Samantha Michaels)

Date: May 14, 2026
Hosts: Hannah Smith & Pasha Eaton
Guest: Samantha Michaels (Investigative Reporter, Mother Jones)
Topic: The impact of "failure to protect" laws on mothers—especially abuse survivors—through the case of Carrie King

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on "failure to protect" laws: statutes intended to protect children from abuse by criminalizing parents or guardians who do not prevent harm. Journalist Samantha Michaels joins the hosts to discuss her investigation of these laws, highlighting the story of Carrie King, an Oklahoma mother jailed for not stopping her abusive partner's violence—even though she herself was a victim. The episode scrutinizes how these laws often punish abused mothers more harshly than actual abusers, discusses racial and gender bias in the justice system, and explores advocacy for reform.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scope and Purpose of "Off Record" Episodes

• Format Update: "Off Record" episodes now include more interviews with crime-adjacent guests—experts, advocates, or attorneys, not only direct victims or witnesses.
• Goal: Highlight ripple effects of crime, often unseen, via a broader lens.

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2. Case Updates—Listener Follow-ups

• Dusty’s Case: (05:00) Dusty (a previous subject) is back in custody over an alleged parole violation regarding sex offender status. His defense contends it’s a misunderstanding.
• Internet Crime Complaint Center Resource: (06:14) Chancey, a scam victim from a past story, inspired Hannah to recommend using ic3.gov for reporting internet crime and scams.

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3. Introducing the "Failure to Protect" Investigation

• Focus: Samantha Michaels’s reporting for Mother Jones—especially her article “She Never Hurt Her Kids, So Why Is a Mother Serving More Time Than the Man Who Abused Her Daughter?” (09:08)
• Carrie King’s Story: A mother of four, imprisoned for 30 years while her abusive boyfriend received 18 years for child abuse.
• Systemic Issue: These laws often target mothers who are themselves victims of abuse.
  • “The problem is that often these laws are enforced against women who are being abused by the same man that hurt the kid. And we're throwing these women in prison because they're not strong enough to stop their abuser.” (Samantha Michaels, 02:17/42:55)

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4. Samantha Michaels on Investigative Journalism

• Path: 10+ years at Mother Jones, focusing on criminal justice, police misconduct, and conditions in prison. (10:10)

• Research Process: May involve years of interviewing, reviewing court records, and “following [subjects] over the course of many months and learning all about their life.”

• Challenges: Mixed responses from prosecutors; often stonewalled when exposing flaws. (11:46–12:41)

  Notable Quote:

  "Some prosecutors are more open than others...Other times, people are pretty stonewalled. They don’t really want to share much information." (Samantha Michaels, 12:02)

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5. The Story of Carrie King

Background:

• January 2015, Tulsa: Carrie, a mother of four, lives with her abusive boyfriend John Purdy. She notices unexplained bruises on her 4-year-old, Lila. (16:28)
• Carrie witnesses John assaulting Lila and intervenes—punching John, attempting to protect her daughter. John assaults Carrie and threatens her life if she tries to leave. (17:04–21:15)
• The next morning, a roommate secretly alerts authorities; police find Lila injured and Carrie battered. (21:15–24:31)

Police Response:

• Instead of help, Carrie is interrogated a week later for not stopping the abuse, for “holding down” her daughter (under coercion), and for not calling 911. She is charged with "enabling or permitting child abuse," i.e., failure to protect.
• “They said, you know, you're a parent. You have a duty to protect your child, and you failed.” (Samantha Michaels, 26:56)

Trial Dynamics:

• Carrie, a Black woman, faces a mostly white jury and an aggressive prosecutor.

• Her abusive history is weaponized against her; her attempts to protect her child are dismissed.

• She is sentenced to two concurrent 30-year sentences while John receives 18 years via a plea deal.

  • “The jury ultimately finds her guilty, and she's given two 30 year sentences...John, who got 18 years because he took a plea deal.” (Samantha Michaels, 37:42–38:48)

• The jury wasn’t told of John’s lesser sentence; a juror later says this knowledge would have affected their verdict. (39:06)

  Memorable Moment:

  "Carrie threw her body over Lila's. And so Carrie is actually taking, like, the belt lashes on her own body." (Samantha Michaels, 17:03)

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6. How "Failure to Protect" Laws Work—and Fail

• Origins & Spread: First in the '60s; increased after high-profile NYC abuse case in the ’80s; as of 2026, about 29 states have such laws. (42:55–45:54)

• Gendered and Racist Enforcement:

  • 90% of those charged in Oklahoma are women, even though the law is “gender-neutral.”
  • Black women are disproportionately targeted: 19% of those convicted are Black, vs. 8% of the state population. (52:01–55:08)
  • Women are often punished for being victims; many cases show mothers getting more time than abusers.

  Notable Quote:

  “We get more mad at the mother that's not able to protect her kid than we do against the man who actually did the abuse.” (Samantha Michaels, 46:43)

• Legal & Social Implications:

  • Prosecutors use threat of life sentences as leverage, often refusing to support reform. (58:07)
  • Attempts at reform repeatedly stall due to political fears of appearing "soft" on child abuse. (58:07–61:35)
  • Recent laws (e.g., the Oklahoma Survivors Act) have not meaningfully helped the failure-to-protect convicted; focus remains on visible acts of violence (women killing abusers). (58:07–68:01)

• Impact on Families:

  • Incarcerating mothers often leads to more trauma and instability for children. In Carrie’s case, her children lost both parents and landed with extended family. (61:35)

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7. Activism & Solutions

• What Can Listeners Do?:

  • Vote in key elections, especially for District Attorney, who has great discretion. (69:03)
  • Push for legal reform—shorter sentences and exceptions for abused mothers.
  • Write to legislators and local officials.

  Notable Quote:

  “Prosecutors have a lot of power, and prosecutors are elected officials. So I think, really, that is where people can make the most difference—by voting in local elections.” (Samantha Michaels, 69:03)

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8. Carrie King's Own Words ([72:23]–[75:51])

Short phone call:

• Expresses exhaustion, longing for her children, and grief at being portrayed as a “horrible mother.”
• “They always twist the narrative to favor whatever the police are saying in. It's not always the case...I just know that they had made it seem like I was just this horrible person, this horrible mother...” (Carrie King, 73:35)
• Finds ongoing strength through her faith and supportive fellow inmates, but feels the weight of waiting for justice.

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Key Timestamps

• Failure-to-protect laws: Main problem introduced: 02:17
• Carrie King’s story: 16:28–24:31; 29:38–41:33
• Trial & Sentencing: 32:54–38:48
• Law origins and sexism: 42:55–47:41
• Statistical findings on the law’s impact: 52:01–55:56
• Direct quotes from Carrie King: 72:23–75:51
• Action steps and possible solutions: 69:03, 83:14

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Notable Quotes

• "We're throwing these women in prison because they're not strong enough to stop their abuser." —Samantha Michaels (02:17)
• "She did hold her child down in that moment...but as you've talked about...there's so much that goes into that psychologically, especially as a victim of abuse herself." —Hannah Smith (27:38)
• "You can't win. You get thrown in prison if you take action and you kill your abuser. You get thrown in prison if you don't take enough action and you're not able to stop your abuser. There's no way to win." —Samantha Michaels (57:10)
• “I would just like the truth to be told, not any perverted versions of that make you look like you’re just this horrible person.” —Carrie King (73:35)
• "We get more mad at the mother that's not able to protect her kid than we do against the man who actually did the abuse." —Samantha Michaels (46:43)

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Memorable Moments

• Host Hannah reflects on the chilling realities of how these laws are wielded, stressing the need for legislative overhaul.
• Emotional phone call from Carrie King, highlighting her isolation and hope for truth to prevail (72:23–75:51).
• Detailed account of Carrie King’s efforts to intervene and the subsequent failures of law enforcement and justice.

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Takeaways and Tone

• The conversation is empathetic yet critical, highlighting the human stories lost in legal language and statistics.
• Both hosts express deep frustration with a system that punishes survivors, and awe at the rigorous, emotionally taxing work done by investigative reporters.
• The episode ends with a passionate call for reform, political involvement, and continued awareness-raising.

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For further resources, Hannah and Pasha recommend reading Samantha Michaels’s article and watching the accompanying Mother Jones documentary (linked in episode notes). The hosts urge listeners to get involved locally, especially where prosecutors and judges are elected.

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Transcript

[Pasha Eaton]

This is exactly right.

[Samantha Michaels]

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[Hannah Smith]

That's innerbalance.com this story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[Pasha Eaton]

The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the knife or exactly right media.

[Samantha Michaels]

The problem is that often these laws are enforced against women who are being abused by the same man that hurt the kid. And we're throwing these women in prison because they're not strong enough to stop their abuser.

[Pasha Eaton]

Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Pasha Eaton.

[Hannah Smith]

I'm Hannah Smith. We have an interview with an investigative reporter for you today. But first we want to talk a little bit about our off record episodes and what we're planning on doing with them. We've been doing the show for a little over a year now, which is

[Pasha Eaton]

mind blowing to think about, truly.

[Hannah Smith]

And in the very beginning when we started these off records, they were mainly places for Patia and I to tell stories that we couldn't get interviews for. There's a lot of stories that we pursue that just don't end up working out for an episode and we didn't want to just throw them away. Also, our crafted narrative episodes are really time consuming.

[Pasha Eaton]

They are so, so time consuming. And they are worth it. And if we could put one out every week, we would, but we can't.

[Hannah Smith]

We can't. So we wanna bring you an episode every week. And we're still gonna do those style of off records where Patia and I will discuss a case as it arises. We've also decided to bring in additional interviews on the show. These are more straightforward interviews, no narration. And we're taking a wider lens. We have encountered a lot of people who have really interesting stories in the scope of crime or the criminal justice system who aren't necessarily victims who've lived through a crime. And we want to be able to tell those stories too. So it might be an interview with an attorney or an expert in some area or an advocate.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. And often those interviews will still be rooted in a story, something that they worked on. So it's still a crime story, but it's just from the perspectives of someone more peripherally related.

[Samantha Michaels]

Right.

[Hannah Smith]

That's the short little update. We'll have a lot of interesting interviews coming your way, so stay tuned. We're also going to do updates on these off record episodes as they arise on the show. Sometimes we cover an episode and you all have additional questions or thoughts or comments or opinions or opinions, which we love. And that sounded sarcastic, but we really do love it. We always appreciate people reaching out, even if it's with the criticism. Feel free to reach out. We had an episode recently that was quite controversial on social media. That was the Dusty episode. We do have sort of an update. Not a huge update, but do you want to kind of tell people what we know?

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. The update is that Dusty is still back in custody after the alleged parole violation because, you know, his lawyer and him are fighting it and very hopeful that he will be re released. And it would be really important that Dusty get Back to Indiana, which is his home state and where he really wants to be. And just to put this all behind him. But the alleged parole violation had to do with Dusty's sex offender status, which because of Billy Brown's actions on that night that Jennifer was murdered and Dusty's presence there, he's on the sex offender registry, which means that he has to alert intimate partners of that status, which he did. But for whatever reason, which I'm sure this will all come to light at some point, he was seen as having violated his parole. So he and his attorney are disputing that. And those intimate partners have both said they were well aware of his charges and his sex offender status. But, yeah, my opinion, having spent so much time speaking with Dusty and reviewing the case, is that I hope he is released and can go on with his life after this.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. So we are still waiting to hear updates from his attorney on that one. We also have one more note. After our episode with Chancey, we got an email from someone pointing out that there is a segment of the FBI called the Internet Crime Complaint Center. And you can find that at www.ic3, the number3.gov. And I think it is a great call to use that resource to report crimes that are committed against you on the Internet that would cover, like what happened to Chancey, if someone scam, scammed you and you lost money. I think it's a great thing to report that to the FBI. Now, it may or may not be helpful in getting your money back or getting anyone caught, but I think it helps, as we see more and more of these scams, to have a catalog of the scope of it and for a law enforcement agency to understand how big of a deal it is. So it's still good to make that report and it might help you. You never know.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah, Chancey's episode. A lot of people reached out and expressed concern for Chancey and compassion for what he's been through. And just to know that there is someplace that people in that situation can go and even file a complaint, I think will help our systems and resources like the FBI. Even filing a complaint, if it doesn't result in getting your money back, can tell the FBI this is a place where we need to be putting resources because it can help them see the scope of the problem, which they no doubt do see. But real people and real stories go a long way.

[Hannah Smith]

Absolutely. So for today's episode, we speak with investigative reporter Samantha Michaels about an article she wrote about the controversial failure to protect laws, which many states have these Laws were written with the intent to protect children from abuse. Samantha's reporting shows that this is not at all what these laws are actually doing. In fact, they are often targeting mothers.

[Pasha Eaton]

So this interview focuses on Kerry King's case, a mother of four who is currently incarcerated because of the actions of her abusive boyfriend. We wanted to interview Carrie, but we're not able to do a full interview with her since she is in prison. But we did have a short recorded phone call with her, which you can hear at the end of the episode. And as always, we will be back at the end of the episode to discuss it. So stick around. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram and Blueskyenife podcast. You can also email us at the knifexactlyrightmedia.com let's get into the interview.

[Hannah Smith]

Samantha, welcome to the Knife. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Samantha Michaels]

Thanks for having me.

[Pasha Eaton]

Really looking forward to speaking with you today. I mean, you've done so much research and work looking into the case we're going to speak with you about and beyond. So really looking forward to it.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. So, okay. We first reached out to you because we read an article that you wrote. It's called she Never Hurt Her Kids, so why Is a Mother Serving More Time Than the Man who Abused Her Daughter? And we are going to talk today with you about Carrie King's case, as well as other cases that fall under the failure to protect laws. But, you know, I was thinking about how I wanted to start this interview with you, and I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about being an investigative journalist, just because I feel like that term gets thrown around so much these days, especially in the podcasting world. Sometimes Patia and I will be called investigative journalists, and we're like, let's be clear, that's not what we are.

[Pasha Eaton]

Like, flattering, but no, thank you.

[Hannah Smith]

We do not spend three years usually working on a story, and we're not breaking news. We do a lot of research. But you're like, you're a legit investigative journalist. So can you just talk about that a little bit and tell us, you know, how you chose that path?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So I am a reporter at Mother Jones magazine. I've worked here for a little over 10 years. And I guess I kind of always knew that I wanted to be a writer. So that's kind of what got me started down this path as a kid. I was like, maybe I would want to be a children's book author or novelist. And then as I got older, I started thinking Maybe journalism. So I went to journalism school, and when I started reporting for the first time, I realized that I liked that just as much as writing. I considered myself kind of a shy person, and it seemed like an excuse where I could go and talk to people with very different lives and ask them all different kinds of questions. And I think it kind of appealed to my curiosity and my sense of adventure and my desire to help people. So, as an investigative reporter, I mostly write about the criminal justice system. I write a lot about police misconduct, conditions in prisons, prosecutors, and I will sometimes spend, you know, a year looking into a story. I spent more than a year working on this piece that we're going to talk about today. Other times, I'll spend a few weeks or a few months. I've spent more than two years looking at a story, and it can take all different forms, but often it's meeting somebody and following them over the course of many months and learning all about their life. It is looking for trial transcripts and court records and talking with police and talking with prosecutors and people on all different sides of the story to figure out what happened.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And when you introduce yourself to, like, a prosecutor, as a reporter with Mother Jones, do you typically find that people are open and willing, or do you ever get into situations where there's, like, pushback against what you're doing because you're trying to expose something?

[Samantha Michaels]

I think it depends what I'm writing about. It also depends a lot on the prosecutor's office. Some prosecutors are more open than others. I think sometimes you'll find prosecutors offices that do want to share information and also expose their side of the story. And then, of course, other times, people are pretty stonewalled. They don't really want to share much information.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Pasha Eaton]

When they don't want to share information, does that make you like, okay, I'm onto something here

[Samantha Michaels]

sometimes. Yeah. And then you get creative and try to find other ways to get that information.

[Hannah Smith]

Nice. Okay, so we want to talk to you about this article and your investigation that led to this article. You know, Patia and I have a bit of a running joke on this podcast that every single story we cover takes place in Oklahoma. I don't know how it's happened, and it's not every single one. But this is probably like, our sixth episode about something that happened in Oklahoma,

[Pasha Eaton]

and we've only been on a year, so.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah, the criminal justice system in Oklahoma is especially messed up.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. Not something to be proud of of my home state, but, yeah. So this is also An Oklahoma story, or at least Carrie King's story is. So can you tell us, you know, what was that first seed of the idea that made you want to go down this path? Like, what was the question or that first investigative nugget that came across your desk?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So in 2019, I was just reading the news, and I saw a story in the New York Times about a woman in Oklahoma who was getting out of prison. Her name was Tondaleo hall, and she had basically been in an abusive relationship, and her boyfriend had broken bones in her kid's legs, and she had not been able to stop him from doing that. And as a result, she had gotten 30 years in prison, and he had only gotten two years in jail. So there was this article because she was being released from prison early. There was a massive commutation in Oklahoma, and she was getting out after about 15 years. And I saw this, and, you know, it was supposed to be kind of, in some ways, a good news story. She's getting out of prison. But I was outraged at the disparity in these sentences. She had gotten 30 years, and her boyfriend, who had actually done the violence, had gotten two years. And so I called the ACLU in Oklahoma, and I was like, tell me more about this. How is this even possible? And the aclu, an attorney there, explained that there's this law called failure to protect in Oklahoma that allows, you know, a parent to be incarcerated for failing to stop somebody else's violence against their kid. And the ACLU also told me that it was not just this one exceptional case. Tondaleo hall was not the only one, that there actually were many, many women in Oklahoma prisons that were serving time for this sentence. But nobody knew exactly how many women, because it's very difficult to track failure to protect offenses. And so I wanted to figure out how widespread this was, how many women were serving time, and I wanted to dig into some other cases. So that's kind of what got the ball rolling.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. So how did you first hear the name Carrie King, or how did you come across her case, and why did you choose to follow her?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah, so I was, you know, asking the ACLU about this, and they mentioned many different names of women who were in prison for failure to protect. And so I started looking up some of their court records to learn more about their case, and I found court records for Carrie. Carrie was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and her abusive boyfriend got 18 years old.

[Hannah Smith]

I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about Carrie and walk us through that Time and what you've learned from court documents, as well as speaking with her. Can you take us to January of 2015 and sort of what was happening in her life? Where was she living? Who was living in her house? Give us an idea of what was going on with her.

[Samantha Michaels]

So In January of 2015, Kerry King was living in Tulsa. She was living with her boyfriend, John Purdy. And she was the mother of four children. The oldest was Persia and then William. And Lila was 4 years old. And then she had a baby named Trinity.

[Hannah Smith]

How old was Trinity at that time, do you remember?

[Samantha Michaels]

About one year, I think.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

And she had had Trinity with John Purdy, her boyfriend that she was living with.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Samantha Michaels]

The older three children were from a former marriage. So Carrie's relationship with John was pretty abusive. He had been abusing her for about a year. And one day, Carrie was giving a bath to her four year old daughter Lila, and she saw bruises on Lila's legs. And Lila said something like, John was mean. And Carrie was kind of confused, like, what did you mean? Lila didn't really explain. So Carrie had been abused for about a year, but she had never seen John hurt any of her kids. And so she asked John about it, and he said that Lila slipped on the ice. And so Carrie stays home from work just kind of to make sure that nothing else happens. Then a couple of days later, it's late at night, it's about two in the morning, and Carrie wakes up and she's groggy and John is not in the bed with her. So she gets out of bed and she sees that there's a light on in Lila's bedroom. So she walks down the hall and she goes into the room and she sees that John has his hands around Lila's neck. And John says, like, oh, you know, we're having a pillow fight. But Lila is like whimpering. And so Carrie, you know, does the only thing that she can think of. She, you know, makes a fist and she punches Jon in the face. And obviously this angers Jon. He's like, you know, you think you can hit me? And he takes her and he slams Carrie's head against the wall. And then he says, you know, Carrie, hold down Lila. Lila needs to be punished. Hold her down. You know, we're gonna spank her. And Carrie, you know, has to make a choice here. And she kind of reluctantly agrees to hold down Lila. She's sort of thinking, maybe if I hold her down, you know, he'll go faster. Maybe he won't go as hard If I'm here, you know, if we go along with it, if we don't fight him on it. But he starts to hit Lila, you know, once or twice. And as soon as Carrie sees how hard it is, she throws her body over Lila's. And so Carrie is actually taking, like, the belt lashes on her own body. And John rips Carrie off. And so Carrie starts to run out of the house, or she tries to. She wants to go out and try to get help from a neighbor or the police or anyone, but John blocks her at the door and says, you know, you're not going anywhere. And he drags her by her hair to their bedroom. And he says, you know, if you leave here, I'm gonna kill you. And then he goes into Lila's room and he locks the door. And he has Carrie's phone in his pocket so she's not able to call someone. And she's afraid to leave. You know, she can hear her daughter behind the locked door crying. And she feels paralyzed. She doesn't know what to do. And so she, you know, begs with John, please stop. Please come out. And eventually she convinces John to come out and to take a shower together. She's like, trying to distract him. And at some point in the night, John leaves her phone out. And so she texts her mom and she says, help me. And then she deletes the text message because she doesn't want John to see it. And a minute later, her mom, who was like woken up from this text message, calls and says, what's going on? And John answers the phone and he gets really upset. And so he, you know, slams Carrie into a wall and is like, why did you call your mom? He makes Carrie call her mom back and say, you know, everything's fine. We're totally fine. Nothing to worry about. Like, I was just kidding. And so then they go to sleep. And the next morning, they have a. They have a roommate. John won't let Carrie or Lila leave the house, but the roommate sneaks out and tells a contractor, like, please call the police. And then the police come and they find Lila in a room by herself, crying. She's got bruises and cuts and chunks of her hair are missing. And they take her to the hospital.

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[Hannah Smith]

I mean, it's just horrific and you know, also thinking about the Fact that she has, like, a 1 year old and has been being abused by him for a year, that means, like, right after she gave birth would be the timing that he's been abusing her that first whole year of her youngest child's life.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm.

[Hannah Smith]

So then, are the other three kids in the house as well?

[Samantha Michaels]

No, the older two, William in Persia, had been staying with Carrie's mom in the Chicago area at that time.

[Hannah Smith]

But the baby is there, I think.

[Samantha Michaels]

So the baby doesn't really, like, appear in a lot of the narrative from that night in the court records.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay. Yeah. And so fortunately, her roommate was able to sneak out and call the police. The police arrived and see Lila and the extent of her injuries, which, from, you know, your article and what I've read it, sounds like. Or really bad. Like, really horrible. And so I assume that she's taken to the hospital. And what happens to John at that time?

[Samantha Michaels]

So John is arrested and he's taken to jail and is ultimately charged with child abuse.

[Hannah Smith]

So he's just charged with child abuse.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay. Interesting.

[Pasha Eaton]

Do you know what the roommate that snuck out told the person or police that they called for help? Do you know how they described the situation?

[Samantha Michaels]

I'm not sure. I was never able to talk with that person.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay. I really liked how you, in your article talked about this moment being kind of like a moment where a bunch of different things could have happened with Carrie. There was a lot of different options that law enforcement could have taken. Can you talk a little bit about that and also tell us then what ultimately happened with Carrie?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So, I mean, Lila was taken to the hospital, but Carrie also had bruises. Carrie had also been beaten that night. And it was pretty clear. And so I think in an alternate universe, you know, there's the potential where law enforcement might have actually tried to help Carrie and recognize that she was also in this abusive situation. Maybe, you know, also get her medical care, take her to a women's shelter, counseling, basically give her resources to help her as well, treat her as a victim of abuse. Instead, what happened is that about a week after the incident, police came to Carrie's house, and they asked her to come into the station to talk with them about what had happened to Lila. And Carrie walked them through it and explained, you know, that she was trying to protect her daughter. But the police wanted to know why Carrie had held Lila down initially. Remember when John said, hold her down. We have to spank her?

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Samantha Michaels]

The police also wanted to know why Kerry did not call 911. Why didn't Kerry, get help somehow. Why didn't Carrie stop it? And they said, you know, you're a parent. You have a duty to protect your child, and you failed. And so because of that, they charged her with failure to protect the official charges, enabling or permitting child abuse. And I watched video of this interrogation, and Terry was crying and saying, you know, I'm not a bad mom. Like, I really tried. But they took her to jail, and ultimately she ended up spending a year in jail before her trial.

[Hannah Smith]

And Mother Jones did a short documentary as a result of your investigation and partnered with your article. And there's a bit of that police interview included. And it's just really hard to watch because these two police officers, who are, I think both women, by the way, are really harsh on her and basically, do say, like, you failed as a mother. Like, your job as a mother is to protect your child. You didn't do your job. We're gonna arrest you is the line that they give her. And it feels like comes down to such semantics of, like, she did hold her child down in that moment. There was potentially a moment when he went into the bedroom with Lyle and locked the door that she could have, in theory, run out of the house at that time. But as you have talked about and as we'll get into more, it's like there's so much that goes into that psychologically, especially as a victim of abuse herself. Right.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm.

[Pasha Eaton]

So Carrie has bruises on her body from John Purdy, who also had abused Lila. Were those injuries acknowledged by the police in her interrogation a week later?

[Samantha Michaels]

I'm trying to remember. It has been a few years since I've watched that video. I remember seeing in the documentation, like in the legal documentation, photos of Carrie, so you can her busted lip and some of the cuts. I'm not sure if they talked about it in the interrogation, though. I think that they would have.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. And I mean, by the way, like, the idea that your child is behind a locked door being abused, and then to physically put distance between you and that door, that would be an excruciating decision to have to make. And I have a daughter about that age. I cannot imagine.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm. Yeah. Carrie described how she felt paralyzed, like she was unable to move. And you also have to remember she had tried to run out of the house, and John had stopped her and said he would kill her if she went anywhere. So there's just a lot of calculus going on. Like, the decision to try to leave and go get help is not that simple.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And like, that threat he would kill Her. It's like, we don't know. That could be real. Like, there's so many instances of people in domestic violence situations that when they do leave or they try to leave, things become incredibly violent and sometimes deadly. And so, you know, that doesn't, to me, sound just like a flippant threat, especially if you're in that moment and you're just, like, really heightened and trying to survive and protect your kid.

[Samantha Michaels]

Totally.

[Pasha Eaton]

And if moments earlier he's thrown her head into a wall, I mean, that alone could kill a person.

[Carrie King]

Mm.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. In the past, he had, like, cut her with a kitchen knife. Like, he was a pretty violent person.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And one thing that we didn't talk about was that he was also using drugs. Right. And it sounded like started to force her to use drugs as well.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. Which also complicated the case. So that night that Lila was abused, Carrie and John were both on heroin. And John had been using for a long time and had forced Carrie to. He and his friend had, like, held down her arm and injected her. And so that had happened, like, a couple of weeks prior. And so they had been high on heroin at the time.

[Pasha Eaton]

So prior to this incident of abuse with Lila, where these arrests unfold, John Purdy and a friend of his had held down Carrie's arm and forced a heroin needle into her arm. But when the heroin was in her system later on the night of Lila's abuse, do we know if that was a similar circumstance or if she had then become addicted?

[Samantha Michaels]

I asked her about that, and she said that initially it was forced, and then she liked it. And so it was not forced that particular night, at least not physically. You know, arm held down.

[Hannah Smith]

Right.

[Pasha Eaton]

I mean, addiction is its own sort of tidal wave of harshness, like how if you're up against that, can be very difficult.

[Hannah Smith]

And so she's arrested, she's waiting for trial for a year, you said. And was she able to see her children during that time?

[Samantha Michaels]

No. So her oldest two, Persia and William, they continued to live with her mom in the Chicago area. Lila, when she came out of the hospital, went to foster care, and then went to live with her ex husband's mom. And then Carrie, they took away parental rights for her youngest kid, Trinity, the one year old. So Carrie was devastated. She was, like, losing her children. Even though at that point she hadn't been found guilty of anything. She herself was a victim of abuse.

[Hannah Smith]

Talk to us about the trial. Where and when did it take place? And I'm assuming she went to trial because there wasn't a Plea deal or she declined a plea deal.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So she had this decision while she was in jail, like, is she gonna take a plea deal or is she gonna go to trial? And at the time, her mom was encouraging her to go to trial, and she also was thinking it made sense to go to trial because she was like, I didn't do anything wrong here. Like, I was a victim. I tried to help my daughter. I didn't do anything wrong. I don't deserve to go to prison. So she decided that she was gonna go to trial and fight her case. And the trial took place actually on Halloween in 2016, or that's when it started. And so, you know, they brought Carrie from jail, and she was up against a Prosecutor named Sarah McAmus, who had a reputation for fighting child abuse cases. Sarah McAmus was very passionate about these types of cases. Had said in the past, you know, that she disapproved of women who got into relationships with men that maybe they didn't know very well who then hurt their kids. She talked about how child murder victims were, you know, looking down from heaven to make sure that justice was achieved. And so the trial begins. Carrie is black. Most of the members of the jury appear white. Sarah McAmus kind of in her opening statements, talks about how Carrie was part of the abuse. Carrie held her daughter down. And throughout the course of the trial, Sarah McAmus talks about the abuse that Carrie has endured, but uses it to say that because Carrie was being abused, Carrie should have known that her children were at risk. Carrie was abused, and therefore Kerry was a bad mom. The prosecutor talked quite a bit about Carrie's previous relationship with her ex husband. So that's Lila, Persia and William's dad. And he had also been abusive. He had, you know, been abusive to Carrie for many years and had ultimately gone to prison for shooting up their house with an AK47.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, my gosh.

[Samantha Michaels]

And the prosecutor was, like, saying, oh, you were a bad mom for this. Were the kids having fun, like when he was shooting up their house with an AK47? But again, in that situation, too, Carrie actually had, like, shielded the children with her own body. So the prosecutor was just very, very harsh. And there were child welfare investigators that testified about how badly Lila had been injured and how sort of devastating that was. Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

What was Carrie's defense? Who was representing her or did anyone testify on her behalf?

[Samantha Michaels]

Um, so Carrie had a public defender, so she testified, like, for herself, which was also quite difficult because she's having to relive that night in detail. She's Facing a prosecutor who in some ways is kind of using, like, intimidation tactics that kind of mirror some of the abuse that Carrie has been through. And it did not go well. The prosecutor, Sarah McAmus, really got under Kerry's skin with some of her comments about how bad of a mom she was. And so Carrie got kind of snippy with the prosecutor, and the jury didn't like that. It kind of made them think that, okay, Carrie can be aggressive, like, maybe she could have hurt her daughter, which

[Hannah Smith]

just feels so racist. Also, like, let's just say it. I think anyone who's like, a mother being questioned and told repeatedly about what a bad mom she is would probably have that urge to be like, screw you. You don't know what you're talking about. But, I mean, you can see how it becomes this perfect storm where then she reacts and suddenly she's being judged for that.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm. Totally.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. It's also shocking to me that someone would advise her to take this stand in her own defense. I guess my understanding of that is that it can be very dicey to do that, especially when it's such an emotionally difficult case.

[Hannah Smith]

Mm.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So that didn't go well. The other thing that really kind of sunk the ship, I think, for Kerry was that the prosecutor mentioned that while Kerry was in jail, she was talking on the phone with John, and the jury did not like to hear that. Carrie said that basically in the beginning she talked to John because she wanted to understand, like, why he did what he did.

[Hannah Smith]

He was awaiting trial as well.

[Samantha Michaels]

He was incarcerated as well. He ended up not going to trial. He took a plea deal.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, okay. Okay. And it's during that time that they were chatting on the phone.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm. But the prosecutor was, like, painting this as just more evidence that Carrie is a horrible mom and that she's complicit. Carrie's attorney read quotes from those phone calls, and you can hear in those phone calls that John is still being quite abusive. You know, he's saying, like, tell me you love me, I'll cut you. You know, like, he's, like, making, like, physical threats to her and that there's still, like, a lot of abuse going on in those. In those phone calls. So, yeah. The trial concludes, and the jury ultimately finds her guilty, and she's given two 30 year sentences. The judge says that they can run concurrently. So 30 years in prison compared with John, who got 18 years.

[Hannah Smith]

Because he took a plea deal.

[Samantha Michaels]

Because he took a plea deal.

[Hannah Smith]

So again, another case where the person who did the abuse is serving less Time. Yeah. I mean, it's just unbelievable.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

Was the jury made aware of John's sentence or plea when they were determining Carrie's guilt?

[Samantha Michaels]

No. So I actually talked with a member of the jury, and she said that they had asked about John's case. But a lot of times in these failure to protect cases, the abuser and the mother, their cases are separated. They're heard separately. And so someone on the jury had asked the judge about John, and the judge had kind of said, don't worry about that. That's a separate case. So the jury didn't know how much time he had. And the member of the jury that I spoke to was shocked when she found out. And she said that if she had known, it would have changed her mind. And she thinks it would have changed the mind of others on the jury as well.

[Hannah Smith]

Kerry's mom, was she at the trial? Did she take the stand, do you recall?

[Samantha Michaels]

I'm not sure if she was at the trial. I know that her ex husband, who had gotten out of prison for the abuse, was there and some of his family was there. They actually did not think that Carrie should be convicted. They were rooting for her in this case. They were absolutely shocked when she was convicted and got 30 years in prison. They thought it was just an absolute travesty. And when I spoke with them, they told me that Carrie was a good mom, that they had seen that she was a good mom and that she really cared for her kids.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, I mean, it is really shocking, especially because as you already laid out, there was multiple instances in which she tried to ask for help. And even that text to her mom, help me. And then deleting it quickly. You know, you could play devil's advocate and say, well, why didn't she say call 911? Or why didn't she try to call 911 quickly? But you can imagine in that scenario, you might have just like one second to do this thing. And she's also afraid for her life at the time and her daughter's life. So being able to even have the presence of mind to think to text someone and then delete the text to me shows so much effort in crying out for help, really. But, you know, it also shows how much control John had over her. Cause he then was right there to answer the phone when her mom called and was able to convince her to then lie to her mom. So it just shows this extreme control from my perspective, that he seemed to have over the situation.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah, totally. Like when her mom called back and said, what's going on? John handled it and hung up the phone. And then he, like, threw Carrie against another wall. Like, you know, he used more violence and forced her to call her mom back. And then as he was forcing Carrie to say, like, we're all fine, John had, like, Lila on his lap and was, like, covering Lila's mouth with his hand. So, I mean, there was a lot going on behind the scenes that was affecting Carrie's ability to call for help.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. I mean, I imagine in that moment, you have this, like, incredibly violent man. Either your daughter's on his lap or within his reach at any moment. And if he can fly off the handle that quickly, I think it would be not right to judge her reaction in that moment, because she's in survival mode, truly, from one moment to the next.

[Carrie King]

Mm.

[Hannah Smith]

And later, I wanna talk about if she has a path forward or where her case stands now. But I wanna get into talking about the failure to protect laws. Where did you start when you started to look into the failure protect laws in Oklahoma? Can you talk to us a little bit about what you learned, like, the history of that law, how it came about, and, you know, what it was intended for? I guess so.

[Samantha Michaels]

Failure to protect laws. Actually, like, a majority of states have these laws, and they basically say that as a parent, you are required to protect your child from harm if you know or you reasonably should have known that another adult was abusing or might abuse your child. Oklahoma has had one of these laws since 2000. But I think 29 states have laws like this. And the intention behind these laws, I think, is good. They're trying to prevent child abuse. If a parent sees that a kid might be harmed, they need to step in and intervene. But the problem is, you know, as we see with Kerry's case, that often these laws are enforced against women who are themselves victims of abuse. They're enforced against women who are being abused by the same man that hurt the kid. And we're throwing these women in prison because they're not strong enough to stop their abuser. The history of these laws. So the first ones kind of started springing up in the 1960s as child abuse protocols were changing. Around that time, you started having a requirement that doctors become like, mandated reporters if they see signs of mistreatment or abuse. And so the same kind of theory is at play with failure to protect laws. If a parent sees signs of mistreatment, they have to step in and intervene. But these laws became a lot more common after a very high profile case in New York city in the 1980s, there was a child abuse case. There was a man named Joel Steinberg, and he had adopted a six year old girl named Lisa. He beat her unconscious and he and his girlfriend did not call 911 for many, many hours. Lisa ended up dying. And at the time, both Joel and his girlfriend had a NSBA were charged. But prosecutors ended up dropping the charges against Hedda when they saw that she had been brutally abused over the course of the relationship. She was malnourished. She, you know, had. She had been very abused. They didn't think that she could have hurt the little girl. They didn't think that she could have even stepped in to intervene. So they dropped those charges. But there was a lot of public backlash at the time. People were really split. Is the girlfriend a victim or is she a co conspirator? There were, I mean, op EDS in the Washington Post saying, how could a mother sit by and watch this happen to their child? So it was a huge case. The public was very, very divided. And after this case, a lot of lawmakers in different states were kind of compelled to pass failure to protect laws and to start enforcing them. So they became a lot more popular then.

[Hannah Smith]

It's just wild when you break that down in the history of this. It's like, oh, in my view, and I obviously don't know a lot about that case you're referencing, but when you describe how malnourished the girlfriend was, it feels so clear that she's also a victim. The prosecutors in my mind, did the right thing there, and they went after the person who was causing the abuse, the person who was perpetrating the abuse on everyone else in the household. But it's so wild that society can't accept this. And if there's a woman in the household who's a motherly figure where abuse is happening, then she must be punished. Like, that's what it feels like, you know, like, why is it not enough that the man was punished who was doing the abuse?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah, we have such high expectations for women and mothers, such double standards that, you know, the woman should be the moral center of the home. The woman should be able to rein in the man's, like, bad impulses. The woman should be able to protect her kid, even if it means sacrificing herself. I think we get more mad at the mother that's not able to protect her kid than we do against the man who actually did the abuse. And there's a lot of, you know, sexism, even in this case in New York city that I was talking about, people were outraged that Hedda, you know, the girlfriend, continued to defend Joel, that she didn't cry very much, that, you know, she didn't appear like so remorseful. So I just think there's a lot of sexism that goes into these cases.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

And I have to imagine when these laws were being written, that they weren't accounting for the impact of abuse on someone and what it means to live and exist in an abusive relationship yourself. Because in other cases, maybe I don't know specifically about if this was the case with Carrie, but leaving your abusive partner could mean being without housing, you know, without food. It's not as obvious.

[Samantha Michaels]

Totally. And also, if you're in an abusive relationship and you go to the police for help to try to stop, you know, abuse of your kid, if the police don't actually step in and do something and you have to go back to your partner, it could be even worse. He could kill you. I mean, like, that could escalate things. And you're right. I mean, when these laws were passed, they weren't really considering intimate partner violence. The lawmaker who passed the law in Oklahoma was asked about this many years later explicitly, and she said it hadn't really been on her radar. She hadn't been thinking about it. Most states that have these laws have no exception for women that were being abused at the time. And some of them have really harsh sentences. Oklahoma's is like one of the most extreme. But in Oklahoma, you can go to prison for life for failing to protect your kid.

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[Hannah Smith]

And so when you started to look into some of the statistics in Oklahoma, because in the beginning of the interview you mentioned that there wasn't a lot of information about, you know, how many people were incarcerated due to these failure to protect laws in Oklahoma. What did you find about that when you started to look into it?

[Samantha Michaels]

So it's quite difficult to figure out, you know, how many people across the country are incarcerated for failure to protect. Because when you look at the legal documents, the court dockets, it doesn't say failure to protect. It will just say child abuse. And you have to start digging through the details of the case to see, oh no, this person didn't actually hurt a child. It was just like failing to stop someone else from hurting the child. So it's very difficult to figure it out. And I teamed up with a data reporter, Ryan Little, to try to see if we could get a sense of the situation in Oklahoma. And so Ryan actually scraped more than a million case records from Oklahoma's court websites and went through all of them. And in Oklahoma, there actually is, like, a specific charge, enabling or permitting child abuse that does show up in the records. So he was able to see how many of these cases there were, but

[Pasha Eaton]

it took someone like him, it sounds like, to distinguish between child abuse and failure to protect.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah, I mean, it was quite an endeavor to go through all of these cases. And so he was looking for cases in Oklahoma that said, like permitting or enabling child abuse. So he didn't have to go through, like, all of the records like you would in some other states where it would just say child abuse. But after going through all these records, we were able to find that since Oklahoma's failure to protect law was revised in 2009, 321 people had been charged with failure to protect. And 90% of the people who were incarcerated were women, which is really a stunning statistic. I mean, these laws were written in a gender neutral way. Men can also be charged with failure to protect. Dads can also be charged with failure to protect, but it's not happening in Oklahoma. 90% of the people going to prison for this are women. We also found that 19% of people going to prison were black, Even though only 8% of Oklahoma's population is black. So it's also being enforced in a very racist way. We found that since 2009, over, I think, 130 people had been incarcerated for failure to protect. At the time of our investigation, which was 2022, there were 55 people that were still in prison. A smaller analysis of just about a dozen counties in Oklahoma by the ACLU found that about half of the people convicted of failure to protect were themselves victims of intimate partner violence. That's a huge number of survivors that are going to prison for somebody else's violence. And then we were able to find 15 cases, and this is probably an undercount, but 15 cases where the survivor, someone like Carrie King, got significantly more time than the abuser. More prison time.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow, that's really shocking. And not. But I mean, especially the part where it seems pretty clear that the intention behind the law, even when it was written, as you said, in this very gender neutral way, doesn't really seem like lawmakers set out to say, let's target mothers who are also victims of abuse. But it really just has been put into practice in a way that disproportionately affects this population.

[Samantha Michaels]

I spoke with attorneys who have followed these cases, and some of them said that they had, like, never seen a father charged with failure to protect in this way. It does happen. I found some cases. It does happen, but it's rare. And you have these experts that are saying, like, some of them have never even seen it.

[Pasha Eaton]

As someone learning more about this, it's also just even the language behind, like, the idea failure to protect. It's like you're hearing that someone failed to protect. You're not hearing, like, attempted to protect. You know, Carrie threw her body over her daughter to spare her from John Purdy's abuse. In that moment, she's attempting to reach out for help to her mom to pacify him by offering to take a shower, which I'm sure she didn't want to do in that moment. And yet all you hear is just, she failed.

[Carrie King]

Mm.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. It's such an important point.

[Hannah Smith]

Such an important point. And it also makes me think about, which we haven't even talked about. But the way that I ended up coming across your article was actually that initially I was looking into cases in which women were incarcerated because they had killed their abusive partners, usually in an attempt to protect themselves or their children. And so you also have women in prison for murder because they killed their abusive partner to protect their children.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. You can't win. You get thrown in prison if you take action and you kill your abuser. You get thrown in prison if you don't take enough action and you're not able to stop your abuser. There's no way to win.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

And I have to imagine also just anyone being able to point to, well, Carrie was using drugs. You know, then there's just so much judgment that comes along with that. On top of everything else she was already up against.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm.

[Hannah Smith]

You know, I'm from Oklahoma, and, I mean, I haven't lived there in 12 years, but I had never heard of these laws before. I was surprised to hear it. And I was curious if you came across anyone that you were speaking to, from the ACLU to other, you know, people that you interviewed. Is there a movement to try to educate people and to try to change these laws? What is being done right now?

[Samantha Michaels]

So there have been attempts to reform these laws, including in Oklahoma, but these attempts have not gained a lot of traction. I think it's very difficult to reform these laws because no politician wants to appear weak on child abuse. But in Oklahoma, for example, the ACLU tried to get a politician to introduce legislation in 2019 to reform the failure to protect law. And they were trying to basically reduce the maximum sentence. So I said that, you know, a woman can get thrown in prison for life for failing to protect her kid. So they tried to reduce that, I think, to 10 years. They couldn't get it to pass. People didn't want to appear weak on child abuse. Also, the prosecutors did not want to reform the law. Prosecutors want that life sentence as an option because they say that they need it in order to successfully prosecute child abuse cases. They want the threat of a life sentence so that they can convince women to testify against their abuser. It's like leverage in the case. So prosecutors oppose any reform to this law, and prosecutors have a lot of weight politically. So it's hard to convince lawmakers to change these laws. So that reform attempt in 2019 failed. Then a couple of years later, there was a new push to try to help some of these women in a different way. In 2024, the Oklahoma Survivors act finally passed after years of pushing for it. And this law basically was trying to help incarcerated survivors reduce their prison sentences if they could prove that their offense stemmed from abuse that they had experienced. So this was not just for failure to protect cases. It was also, you know, for cases where maybe someone killed their abuser, maybe someone was sentenced to prison because their abuser had forced them to sell drugs or commit another crime. Maybe they were imprisoned for failure to protect. So, theoretically, this law, you know, was intended to help all of those people, but ultimately, the language was watered down. And the law that passed is pretty targeted to try to help women that killed their abusers or that committed violence against their abusers. You can still theoretically help someone who was convicted of failure to protect, but it's very difficult. And no one has successfully been able to use the law to reduce their prison time. And then in the last session, another bill was introduced to try to specifically reform failure to protect again, to reduce the sentence to 10 years in prison. And again, the prosecutors fought it. It couldn't get any traction, and it didn't pass. So now, you know, the ACLU and other groups are back to just trying to educate people, trying to educate lawmakers, trying to educate the public, and kind of flip some of these narratives so that people understand that this law is not actually stopping child abuse. It's just incarcerating mothers who are themselves victims of horrible abuse.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. And watching the documentary and reading your article, it's also just so clear that in Carrie King's case, her children are aching for her, they are missing their mother, and they are being victimized in a whole new way by having her taken from them.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. And like, something else to point out. So we're taking nonviolent, non abusive parents like these mothers, and we're putting them in prison. Well, then who is there to take care of the children? Do the children go to foster care where maybe they face higher rates of abuse? In Kerry King's case, she went to prison. The state decided to send her children to her ex husband, the man who had gone to prison for shooting at their house with an AK47. The man who, you know, the prosecutor at Carrie's trial said, carrie, you were a bad mom because you were being abused by your ex husband. He shot up your house with an AK47. You are a bad mom. Let's send your kids to that man. Now, to be fair, her ex husband had never abused the children. He only hurt Carrie, and he, you know, kind of turned over a new leaf after getting out of prison. The kids said that they liked being with him. But, you know, in 2022, when my investigation was being published, right before it was published, he ended up getting arrested again for, you know, a gun charge, and he was incarcerated again. So the kids lost, you know, their dad, their mom's in prison. They ended up going to stay with his family. But it's just incredibly difficult on the children losing their mom. So the whole goal of these failure to protect laws is to, you know, protect kids and make their lives better. But it's not always better for the kids to lose their mom.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. I mean, it really makes you question who this is helping, who these types of. Of laws are helping, because you would hope that good laws are in place to help people. Right. Like keep people safer and remove an abuser from children's lives. And it's very hard to see who this type of law is helping as far as the way that it's being enacted, because that's so much instability now that's been created in these children's lives. And even having their mother be taken from them for 30 years, that's their whole childhoods. I just don't know how that can be justified as a good thing.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm. It's really tragic. You know, it's called failure to protect, and we're blaming these mothers for failing to protect their kids. But I think the question that we need to be asking is, like, who is failing to protect who? Like, why aren't the Police protecting these mothers who are being abused. You know, there are systems in place that are failing these mothers, you know, sexism and people don't have the financial resources to leave these relationships. These mothers are being failed as well. But no one kind of looks higher up to see who else is responsible for this situation. Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

I mean, I thought so much about how Carrie stayed home from work after noticing the bruises, because for a lot of people, staying home from work means your paycheck is less next time you see it. And she clearly sought to protect her child by doing that.

[Carrie King]

Mm.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. And at trial, the child welfare investigator basically was like, that wasn't enough. Staying home from work was not enough. Like, she should have done more.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow.

[Pasha Eaton]

It shows a lot of ignorance, like, people not understanding what. What it means to be in an abusive relationship. And it's a real tragedy.

[Hannah Smith]

And during the year that you spent investigating this, you met Carrie, spoke with Carrie, and I believe her kids as well. Can you tell us a little bit about meeting all of them?

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah. So Carrie is still in prison. And so when I started this investigation, I really wanted to go and meet her, but prison officials kind of sat on my application for a long time, so I wasn't able to go right away. So instead, Carrie and I started talking on the phone. And over the course of the investigation, I think I spent like, 25 hours on the phone with Carrie. We would just check in all the time, but because it's a prison phone system, because it's a prison phone system, we could only talk in 20 minute increments. So we spoke in 20 minute increments for 25 hours. And I really got to know her quite well and got to know her story, and eventually, you know, she trusted me enough to let me try to meet her children in Oklahoma. So I went out to Oklahoma, and I got to meet her three oldest kids and spent some time there and interviewed the family and interviewed other experts on failure to protect and, you know, another mom who had been incarcerated for failure to protect. And then finally, many, many months later, the prison approved my application to come visit Carrie. So in the very end, I was able to go and I was able to meet Carrie in the prison, and we spent a couple of hours talking in person, which was really special.

[Pasha Eaton]

Does Carrie have hope of being released?

[Samantha Michaels]

Carrie is having a really hard time. She still has, I think, around 20 years left in her sentence. And I mentioned this law, the Oklahoma Survivors act, that was passed in 2024 that could help incarcerated survivors shorten their sentence. She reached out to Attorneys when that law was passed, seeing if they could help her. And she heard back, like, a week or two ago, saying that, you know, as I mentioned, the law was written in a way it was watered down. It doesn't really leave very much room to help people with failure to protect cases. It's more so for people who, like, killed their abuser. And so she heard back a week or two ago, and they said that how the law is written right now, they didn't think that they could help her. So she is grieving that a little bit right now.

[Pasha Eaton]

I mean, it's just infuriating to think that John Purdy will walk out of prison before she will.

[Hannah Smith]

12 years.

[Pasha Eaton]

12 years before she will.

[Samantha Michaels]

Mm.

[Pasha Eaton]

It's unbelievable. I mean, he is, based on his actions, a dangerous person. I mean, yeah.

[Samantha Michaels]

I mean, people really were outraged by this story. I heard from people all over the country who wrote to me. They wanted to see how they could help Carrie. I do think that these stories and these investigations can do good. I think it also helped Carrie and her family feel heard. But I think sometimes change is slow. And in the meantime, you have these lives, these people who are just forever changed by it.

[Pasha Eaton]

What can someone do? Could they write the governor? Or what could someone potentially do to sort of say, hey, we need to do something about this, to the people who could potentially do something about it?

[Samantha Michaels]

So let's talk about Oklahoma, just as an example. I think if lots of people started calling and sending letters, you know, explaining that they want to reform failure to protect law, they want to reduce the maximum sentence or create an exception for women who have been abused, I think that's a step forward. I think the other thing we can do is vote in elections. So in Tulsa, for example, there is a district attorney election coming up. You know, the head prosecutor, and right now, the head prosecutor is a man who has prosecuted these failure to protect cases. He doesn't want to reform the law. He has someone who's running against him in the primary. Colleen McCarty. She is an attorney who has spent much of her career actually trying to help incarcerated survivors like Kerry King. Colleen McCarty helped pass the Survivors act in 2024 that tries to help incarcerated survivors shorten their sentences so people can vote. You know, across the country, DA's elections are really important. Prosecutors have a lot of power. They have discretion to decide how they're going to enforce these laws, if they're going to prioritize enforcing certain laws over others. We saw, like in that case in New York City, where they decided that they were not going to charge the girlfriend. So prosecutors have a lot of power, and prosecutors are elected officials. So I think, really, that is where people can make the most difference by voting in local elections.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay, well, Tulsans, go out there and vote. Make us proud. Make me proud. I would be voting if I lived there.

[Pasha Eaton]

We'll never do another Oklahoma story.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. If you don't get out and vote, we'll never cover anything from Oklahoma again.

[Pasha Eaton]

Just make it so there's less for us to cover, please.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

You know, Samantha Hannah and I are investigative journalists, but we try to tackle difficult stories with a purpose and telling them. And I want to just acknowledge that sometimes that can take a real emotional toll. And it's not easy to be in the trenches that long. But I think it's really important work. And I'm so glad we had the chance to speak with you today.

[Samantha Michaels]

Thank you so much for highlighting it. I really appreciate having the chance to come and talk about this story, what happened to Carrie. I still think about it all the time, and I hope that some of this can make a difference.

[Hannah Smith]

Thank you so much to Samantha Michaels. Before we get into our conversation, at the end of the episode, we want to play a short phone call that I was able to have with Carrie King. She didn't want to dig into her trauma or talk about her case, but we did want to say hello and hear her voice and include that in the episode. We had a very limited time to speak, and unfortunately, the audio quality isn't very good. So we're just going to play a short clip for you here, and then Paisha and I will be back at the end of the episode to discuss. I'm just so thankful to be able to connect with you and talk with you. How are you? How are you doing?

[Carrie King]

I mean, I'm okay. I'm tired of being in here, you know, but other than that, like, I'm all right. I mean, I miss my kids. You know, just the normal stuff of not wanting to be in prison.

[Hannah Smith]

Of course, as we're talking, you know, in April of 2026, how long have you been incarcerated?

[Carrie King]

At this point, it'll be 11 years. September 16, 2026. Because it was September I got locked up that they arrested me.

[Hannah Smith]

And how is your relationship with your kids now? How often are you able to talk with them?

[Carrie King]

I talk mostly to my oldest child. My other two, it's been more difficult to talk to them, mostly because they never like to get on the phone when they were little. But I definitely stay in Contact with my oldest child.

[Hannah Smith]

That's tough. I know you don't want to go into details on your case, but I wanted to ask from your perspective, is there anything that you want people to know about your story or your case? Like, what's the most important message for you to get out there?

[Carrie King]

I feel like people like they'll look at what they say on the news, you know, in the media and everything, and they always twist the narrative to favor whatever the police are saying in. It's not always the case. And I just know that they had made it seem like I was just this horrible person, this horrible mother, you know, and made it like I to hurt my kids. And that's just so, so, so, so far from the truth. I just hate that outlook that the police are always right or the media is always right and it's not always right. There's always three sides of the story. There's their side, the other side, and then the truth, you know, And I would just like the truth to be told, not any perverted versions of that make you look like you're just this horrible person. I mean, everybody has flaws, you know, everybody has their own things, their own battles that they have to face within themselves. But you can't just look at one side and immediately just define a person or. And make a judgment on somebody from that 100.

[Hannah Smith]

I think that it would be like, so horrifying to hear you go through this thing in your life and then to hear, like, how it's being portrayed that is like, not your experience is terrible. What is your hope for the future? Like, is there anything right now that is bringing you hope?

[Carrie King]

Just really grateful to God that I'm still here, you know, that he's really kept me through being in here. He's put me around people who have really been supportive to me throughout all of the trials that you face in here. I mean, of course it's prison, but it can be really, really difficult dealing with all the different politics that go on inside these types of places. And I'm just very grateful that I've had a really strong support system that God has put really people in my life.

[Pasha Eaton]

That is a heartbreaking story. And I'm so glad there are people like Samantha Michaels who are willing to immerse themselves in something so just gut wrenching in order to expose a system or a law that's not serving us.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. What she does is so cool. Really hard work. And we talked about this at the very beginning, but it's like sometimes people call us investigative Reporters. The thing about being a journalist is like, you don't have to have a degree for it. So technically a lot of what we do is journalism and reporting. But. But when she was talking about going through all of these cases and trying to actually figure out how many people in Oklahoma were incarcerated because of these failure to protect laws which no one had ever counted or reported on, that's like real in the weeds, difficult, rigorous reporting. It's not really something that we do. We do a lot of research and sometimes we do work on a story for over a year. But that type of stuff is just. I have so much respect for what she does because that's such an important piece of information to learn that these laws are targeting mothers.

[Pasha Eaton]

Calling into question a law that is called failure to protect is really brave because the whole point of calling it failure to protect is like, of course if you fail to protect children, well, there should be punishment for that. But it really doesn't speak to the scope of the problem and the layers here. That is why women are being unfairly. And I just thought, wow, like she really took something that on its face, people think of as like, of course, yeah, let's protect children from abuse. We can all get behind that.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

And she questioned it, and rightfully so.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. It is so interesting. It's one of those laws where like, if I just heard about this law, I would probably think, yes, that sounds amazing. Of course I would support that. No one wants to see child abuse happening at all. And we should all want to protect children. But it's so interesting that laws can be created and then the way that they're enacted could actually just be completely different than what they were supposed to do. Like it's actually taking non abusive mothers and putting them in prison and then hurting children.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. And I think it's giving off this idea that a mother is standing idly by or a parent or a guardian is standing idly by while their child is experiencing abuse. And that is just. I'm sure that is almost never the case. And to learn that Carrie is spending more time behind bars than the actual abuser is hard to stomach. And that's what I mean really, when I talk about like, wow, Samantha puts herself in a really difficult headspace to do this work. I mean, we have done stories on our show that we're not spending a year on. And they'll still keep me up at night sometimes. I mean, I often talk to you about that episode Gone Without a Warrant. Like that episode, just the story scared

[Hannah Smith]

me, scared me Their children were taken away in the middle of the night because of an incident at the hospital that ended up being a complete accident. It wasn't child abuse. Great episode. If you haven't listened to it, go listen. It is hard to listen to.

[Pasha Eaton]

It's hard to listen to. And even that kept me up at night. And I can imagine Samantha just putting herself right in front of information that. That is just really hard to process is commendable because we should be looking at the numbers and saying, is this law working the way that it was supposed to?

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. So, as you all heard at the end of the episode, I did have a phone call with Carrie. It wasn't an option to do a video call. It was just a phone call. So I recorded that call. But the audio quality, unfortunately, just is not that great in those scenarios. So we included some of it because we really wanted Carrie's voice in this episode. And we were so grateful that she would talk to us. Samantha helped make that connection happen. Carrie made it clear that she didn't want to go into detail in any of her story and, like, revisit that trauma on the call, which totally makes sense and respected it. There were a few other things we talked about briefly that I just wanted to mention. You know, she has been able to stay in contact with her children to a certain degree, as she mentioned. But it's tough because one of the things I asked her was, do you have an advocate on the outside, someone in your family, someone who is in touch with your children, who can be advocating for you to be able to stay in contact with them? And she said no. So the reality is that how often she sees her kids is not up to her at all. She's at the mercy of whoever is taking care of them at that time, which just has to be so hard. And so she hasn't seen her kids physically, in person in two years.

[Pasha Eaton]

It's unimaginable. As a parent, it makes my stomach just twist into knots to think about a mother being in that position, especially after everything she has been through.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And so that's really difficult. I asked her about her case and if she's doing anything or if her attorney is doing anything. Right now, she's pretty much exhausted all of her appeals options. She at the moment, is just waiting for there to be some movement on these failure to protect laws. So she's always keeping an eye out for that. She doesn't want to file appeals and other things under different laws because I don't know from what she said that could delay her case for years. She just doesn't want there to be anything in motion on her case because as soon as there's some law that can amend these failure to protect laws, or even, as Samantha was saying, maybe limit the amount of time that mothers can serve time to 10 years, she wants to be able to apply to that immediately. And so she's ready. She's hopeful. But as Samantha Michaels also said, change takes time. Getting the word out is really important, but change does take time. She's also working in the kitchen. That's her job. She does inventory planning and management stuff, keeping Excel spreadsheets, ordering, et cetera. And she said she really enjoys that kind of work and hopefully is able to get out, you know, sooner than she's got, like 20 years maybe left. She would love hopefully to get out sooner and be able to continue that type of work on the outside. So it was great to be able to connect with her and we wish her the best. We will keep updated on her case.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah. And as far as seeing movement with the way that we utilize the failure to protect law, there is something we can do to help, which Samantha spoke a little bit about in the episode. But, you know, it can be overwhelming to think about changing a law, but it is doable. And people can vote. We can all vote in the local elections. But if you are In Tulsa, the DA election is this year and Colleen McCarty is running for district attorney, and she has been a huge advocate for the Oklahoma Survivors act and legislation that allows domestic abuse survivors convicted of crimes against their abusers to seek re sentencing.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. She said her campaign will focus on criminal justice reform and accountability within the office. The district attorney has so much power actually over how laws are enacted, and this Oklahoma Survivors act was passed. But from what we've heard, the current DA is not really pursuing enacting it on past cases. And Colleen McCarty is committed to doing that. So when we talk about trying to right wrongs, I just think it would be amazing to have a district attorney who was more concerned with getting things right and writing wrongs and seeking true justice than just reelection or winning cases.

[Samantha Michaels]

Yeah.

[Pasha Eaton]

And for me, it's like this is what the true crime genre is. Actually, this is the reason for it to me is that, yeah, we're listening to these incredibly difficult stories at times, and they can be sad and dark and they can feel really hopeless. But the point of talking about it is to raise awareness that this problem even exists because Carrie King is sitting somewhere in prison unable to see her children looking at what, 20 more years ahead of her. And there is something that can be done. And so that's why these stories are important to tell, despite the fact that sometimes, sometimes they can just be very sad.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. So obviously, because this takes place in Oklahoma and the DA election in Tulsa is coming up, we're going to highlight it, but it's great to tap in and figure out what's going on with your local da, when is that election and who is that person? What are they about? So that's something this episode really made me think about. So really quickly we cut this out of the episode. But Samantha is continuing on with her reporting. She's now working on stories that have to do with immigration, the intersection of criminal justice system and immigration enforcement, which is also really heavy. And she's been covering stories of families ripped apart and children separated from their parents. She said something like, yeah, I guess I just can't get away from stories about kids being ripped away from their moms, which is just intense but also really important to talk about.

[Pasha Eaton]

Yeah, she is doing really important work and I'm so glad she took the time to speak with us.

[Carrie King]

Us.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And we are going to put a link to her article that we discussed and the documentary in the show notes. So take a look at that.

[Pasha Eaton]

Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is the knifexactlyrightmedia.com or you can follow us on Instagram Henife Podcast or bluesky at the knifepodcast.

[Hannah Smith]

This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith

[Pasha Eaton]

and me, Pasha Eaton. Our producers are Tom Breyfogle and Alexis Amorosi.

[Hannah Smith]

This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

[Pasha Eaton]

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

[Hannah Smith]

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

[Pasha Eaton]

Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

[Hannah Smith]

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

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[Carrie King]

What?

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