When Giving Up is the Only Choice
Told by Anonymous
Written by Ashley Ortiz Felix and Laurie Grobman
In a moment of desperation, Kallie (not her real name), who’d never before been in trouble, set her family’s house on fire. Her young son was with her. Kallie pled guilty to first-degree felony arson, served three and one-half years in prison, and was released in 2016. As a result, Kallie has no contact with either of her two sons: “That’s my consequence. Prison was nothing compared.”
Kallie takes responsibility for her actions: “Nobody put a gun to my head. Nobody made me do it. It was my choice. Clearly, 100% the wrong choice.” But Kallie is a survivor of domestic violence: “My ex-husband was abusive in every way you can think of mentally, verbally, sometimes physically.” Her son witnessed it. Both her family and her husband’s family knew what was going on. Her parents came to her home often to bring her son out of the home when Kallie and her husband were arguing. No one, including Kallie herself, ever reported it. Kallie never told anyone else about the abuse except in confidential therapy and small groups in prison because she “didn’t want our son to lose his father too.”
In that awful moment that changed her life, Kallie made a “spur-of-the-moment decision” because she “couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t know how else to leave.” Despite the abuse, she had stayed in the relationship for the sake of their child. She also still loved her husband, her abuser: “It’s hard to walk away from so much because then you’re leaving your child.” She didn’t want him to grow up with divorced parents. The reality is that now, Kallie hasn’t seen her son since he was 3 ½ years old.
Surprisingly, Kallie’s ex-husband requested that she communicate with her son once per week while in prison. Once she was released, the Parole Board prohibited her from any contact with her son: “They wanted me to get on my feet and build a life. And I understand that. Because my son was with me when I committed arson.”
The last time she spoke with her ex-husband was when she went to her parents’ house to pick up all her belongings. He asked how she was doing, and vice versa. But that’s all. Now he won’t communicate with her at all. But he did encourage Kallie to write to her son via Messenger. Kallie did just that: “I told him how sorry I was and that I had always loved him. I asked him to give me an opportunity just to talk.” He wrote back: “To someone I used to know. I don’t know who you are. I don’t love you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. Please stop bothering my family. Why did you do this to me and dad?” Kallie’s ex husband had cut off his son from her parents. Her heart broke again.
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Kallie’s parents would not permit Kallie to live with them when she was released from prison in 2016. She’d always had a difficult relationship with her mother, who always wanted Kallie to “be a certain way, act a certain way, talk a certain way, look a certain way, and weigh a certain amount.” Kallie’s mother never visited Kallie while she was behind
bars. When Kallie went back to her parents’ house to pick up her belongings, she went to give her mother a hug, but her mother said, “Don’t be so happy to see me.” Later she told Kallie she looked chubby. Kallie learned on Facebook that her mother had died. Her mother banned everyone in the family from telling her that she had cancer. She “didn’t want Kallie to know.” Kallie realizes now that her mother abused her: “I will say this. A mother’s words leave more of a scar than any physical mark can.”
But Kallie’s father was Kallie’s staunchest supporter and her protector. When she was in high school, Kallie’s dad was at every sports event and everywhere she performed, whether choir, Church, the Allentown Fair, and Music Fest. He’s the only reason she was able to survive. He visited her in prison, and they would talk for as long as they could over the prison phone. He was proud of his daughter obtaining a college degree while incarcerated. He visited her once in Reading after her incarceration. But when Kallie’s father died at 69, her mother refused to let her attend his funeral: “I never got to say goodbye to the one support that I’ve had all my life through everything.”
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Kallie was sent to a halfway house in Reading upon her release from prison in 2016. Three months later, Kallie married her current husband. She knows it sounds “crazy.” While applying for a job at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel, she was mesmerized by a man playing the piano: “Absolutely beautiful. John Legend’s ‘All of Me.’ Went in, did my interview. I came out. And I went up behind him, and I sat there, and I listened. Then I said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re amazing.” They’ve been married for nearly eight years. People told her it could never work. Her husband is autistic and has ADHD. It’s been a struggle, but Kallie was taught to not give up: “And that’s actually my father coming out of me.”
Kallie gave birth to her second son in 2017. Three days later, when she and her husband were about to bring him home from the hospital, she got a phone call: “‘We’re taking him from you.’ Same reason. Because of my past. I had done everything. I went to classes. I went through therapy. Didn’t matter.” They gave her husband a choice to be with his wife or his son. Kallie begged him to choose their son. But he wouldn’t do it. He was only 24 years old. He did not feel he could raise his son without his wife. They were both devastated.
For the next year and a half, Kallie and her husband had visitation with their son and fell deeply in love with him. But when he was adopted, they lost all contact. She doesn’t know where he is or who his parents are.
Then COVID hit. Kallie had been working at Queen City Restaurant for three years. Sabrena Elmarzouky, her boss, and Elsayed Elmarzouky, the owner, treated her wonderfully: “I owe them more than I can even put in words.” But in December 2020, they closed the restaurant.
Kallie went on unemployment. Her husband invited another man to live with them, who introduced him to Methamphetamine (Meth). Her husband got addicted and “turned into someone I didn’t know.” He cheated on her with a woman living with them: “I’d be sitting in
one room two doors down. He’s cheating on me with somebody else. Because she smoked meth too, it was like an all-around meth house. I knew she was in there but not what they were doing because I never went in there.”
But most shockingly, her husband also violently abused her: “I’ve had my head cracked open three times. Bloody noses, bruises. He would push me onto the floor. He would stomp on me. He would kick me. He would hit me. He would punch me. I had my arm broken. And it wasn’t anything like that until started smoking meth.”
Kallie stayed with him “because I don’t give up. He needed help, not someone to walk away.” He had a rough life, in and out of children’s homes. Kallie had seen his files and “knew what had been done to him. He was abused in every way, shape, and form since he was a kid. Nobody wanted him.” And he had been there for her, loved her, and married her despite her past. He had been off meth for three years, back to being the person she fell in love with and married: “We are who we used to be.”
But it did not last. It’s not the ending to her story as she had thought it would be. Receiving love and understanding from her husband again was short-lived, and then it got “as bad as it can get.” On April 16th, 2024, Kallie returned from work to find herself locked out of their home by her husband, who was on the lease only as the person living with Kallie. He
wouldn’t open the door for the police, so they told Kallie to obtain Protection from Abuse (PFA) to immediately evict him and keep him away from her. Ten minutes after he was served, her husband violated it–not once, not twice, but three times. Kallie sat on her neighbor’s porch, sobbing, as the police walked him away in handcuffs and put him in the back of a van: “It’s not what I wanted to happen, but it was the only way to get him to realize what he was doing.”
Kallie’s husband was released the next day on $5,000 unsecured bail. He didn’t show up to any of the four court hearings and was arrested again in mid-May and held in jail until his court date a week later. Kallie cried when her husband entered the courtroom in shackles and chains, his eyes on her. The judge asked Kallie directly what she wanted to happen. She told the judge, “Your Honor, he needs help. That’s all I want for him. He doesn’t need prison. He needs help. I’ve been with him for almost eight years, and I do love him. Despite everything that he’s done to me, he needs to get better, and you’re the only one that can do it because I can’t.”
The judge then asked Kallie’s husband if he had anything to say. He spoke: “Your Honor, I love this woman with all my heart, and I will do anything I have to do to make this right. The fact that she’s standing here right now after everything that I have done to her and she still wants to help me is one of the reasons why I love her so much.” The judge acknowledged the awful things her husband had done to Kallie, and told him Kallie’s desire to get him help, rather than send him to prison, shows her love for humanity and her love for him. The judge continued the PFA and released him to Hope Rescue Mission with six months parole and the PFA. Crying, Kallie’s husband looked directly at her: “He didn’t understand at first,
and he looked at me. He didn’t look at anyone else. He didn’t ask anyone else. He just looked at me. And I said, ‘You’re free.’ And he just smiled and cried.” The judge gave Kallie’s husband a second chance because Kallie requested it: “I was so happy that I finally helped somebody because that’s what I’m meant to do.”
It didn’t last. A few days later, Kallie’s husband showed up at the DoubleTree Hotel, where she has been employed for several years, and violated the PFA and his parole conditions, trespassing on a property he’s prohibited from. It was humiliating for Kallie: “There were kids here. There were people here. Officers kept coming to talk to me. Everyone had to stop what they were doing just to make sure I was okay because they were afraid he would harm me.” Kallie was also furious: “I just wanted to yell and scream at him, ‘Why would you do this after I gave you a chance to get better?’”
He was arrested and jailed, and Kallie is waiting for the court date. She will appear again. But this time will be different: “I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.” My original saying is from my dad, ‘I don’t give up.’” But she will not help him this time. What she’d like to say to her husband if given a chance is this:
You don’t do this to people you love. I gave you a second chance to get yourself right and you threw it in my face. After all you have done to me, the emotional, verbal, mental, and physical pain that you caused me. You beat me, stomped on me, punched me, kicked me, cracked my head open, and even broke my arm. And I still stayed. I never walked away. Because I don’t give up. You gave up. You gave up on us. You gave up on me and you gave up on yourself. I’m done getting hurt by you. You will always have a special place in my heart, but this time, I’m giving up. I’m walking away. Goodbye, my husband.”
Kallie cannot and will not continue to help somebody who doesn’t want her help. She “can’t continue to feel like this anymore. It is slowly breaking me. It’s hard to sleep. It’s hard to eat. I have to stop. I have to worry about me.”
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The holes in Kallie’s heart for her sons will never heal. But she continues to move forward with her life. She works at the DoubleTree Hotel in Reading with people she calls “her second family” in a supportive environment providing strength and encouragement. She started as a server and was promoted to lead hostess/administrator. Kallie appreciates the “second chance” philosophy of Craig Poole, Adam McGrath, and DJ Gibson who “had faith” in Kallie from the start.
Today, Kallie is moving forward with her life, giving herself a fresh start–new apartment, continuing her wonderful job, and with the support of her friends. She is divorcing her husband.
Kallie will continue to offer support to people who are willing to accept her help. She wants people to know that “you can get through it and walk and keep going.” Perhaps one day she’ll see her husband again: “Maybe I’ll be able to say hi. And maybe by that time, he’ll have had the help that he needs, and he’s better. That’s all I can ask for.”
Kallie has experienced an extraordinary amount of abuse and pain. She takes responsibility for her crime and has paid the price. But it doesn’t define her: “I am one of those people who has learned to overcome it. I have not forgotten any of it. But I have and will continue to overcome it, move on, and better myself with great support systems.”