If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence and would like to talk with an advocate, call 866-834-4357, TTY 1-800-437-1220. This free, confidential service is available 24/7 and is accessible from anywhere in Maine.
Speaking publicly for the first time since she was convicted six years ago in the murder of her 10-year-old daughter, Sharon Kennedy painted a picture of her former husband as the sole source of abuse in the family.
Kennedy was sentenced in February 2020 to 48 years in prison for depraved indifference murder in the death of her 10-year-old daughter, Marissa Kennedy, who succumbed to the cumulative toll of months of beatings two years earlier. Kennedy’s husband at the time, Julio Carrillo, was convicted of the same charge and sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Sharon Kennedy didn’t testify at her trial, but jurors were presented with audio and video interviews taken by police shortly after Marissa’s death in which Kennedy, under prodding from detectives, admitted to taking part in the abuse.
Speaking on the podcast of the domestic violence victim advocacy group Finding Our Voices, Kennedy, who is incarcerated at Maine Correctional Center in Windham, said she did not understand then the degree to which she was controlled by her abusive husband.
Prior to moving to Maine, the couple lived in New York, where Kennedy said she had many friends and several jobs, including one working with children. They came to Maine for their honeymoon and ultimately moved to Bangor where she didn’t know anyone because Julio “thought Maine was a nice place.”
“I kinda went along with it,” she said.
From there, Kennedy said Julio Carrillo increasingly isolated her and subjected her and her daughter to physical and emotional abuse.
Some of these incidents came to light at Kennedy’s 2020 trial. Witnesses described Julio kicking the back of Sharon’s knee while she was carrying groceries and on another occasion hitting the gas in the car while she was leaning into the rear door to strap her son into a car seat.
“He thought it was funny to do that,” Kennedy said.
He was also verbally abusive, she said, listing off several harsh pejoratives.
“The one that really got me was ‘worthless mother,’” she said. “It was a big putdown when I was the one taking care of the kids constantly.”
At Kennedy’s trial, many people testified that wherever the Carrillo family went, something seemed very wrong. In Bangor, police were often called about fighting in the home and many reports were made to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. In Stockton Springs, where they lived when Marissa died, the family had a caseworker, who had visited them just days before the girl’s death and noticed she was bruised and very quiet.
Kennedy, whose three surviving children are in the custody of Julio Carrillo’s parents, recalled Marissa as a “very smart girl” who loved going to school, reading and being around Kennedy’s family, “especially my father.”
“If she was still living right now, she would be graduating from high school this year. Her life was taken way too soon, at 10 years old, and what he did to her was the worst thing that a mother can see happening to her child,” Kennedy said.
Patrisha McLean, founder of Finding Our Voices and host of the podcast, attended Kennedy’s trial and said she came away believing that Kennedy showed signs of coercive control by her husband.
McLean later met Kennedy at a book club McLean led at Maine Correctional Center and said she saw the mother gradually recognize the extent of her abuse.
Shortly after Marissa Kennedy’s death, Sharon Kennedy told police that she participated in the abuse in the months before her daughter died. In video and audio interviews, Kennedy changed her story several times and told police she hit her daughter and stood on her calves as she kneeled naked on the kitchen floor.
But a photo presented at the trial showed both the mother and daughter disrobed and kneeling on the floor with their hands in the air.
Speaking on the podcast, Kennedy said it was her husband who stood on her daughter’s calves and that he sexually abused both of them in that position.
“Just watching him do what he did to her, and she had to watch the same thing happen to me,” Kennedy said. “The day she passed away, he showed no remorse at all. Not a single tear came from him. Nothing.”
Kennedy said she believes the Maine justice system got her case wrong.
“Everybody who testified, not once have I got pointed to as being the monster in this relationship, being the one who did this to my daughter,” she said “Everything pointed to him.”
McLean recalled that no physical evidence at the trial directly connected the mother to the daughter’s injuries. She said she believes the jury didn’t understand domestic abuse. Kennedy said she hadn’t understood it herself.
“If I just knew about domestic violence in the beginning of this relationship, it would have come to a stop in a heartbeat instead of escalating like this,” Kennedy said.
In her six years behind bars, Kennedy said she has become a certified victim advocate and is working toward a bachelor’s degree. She also said she started a parenting class.
“I’m bettering myself to prove to the outside world that I’m not the person that everybody thinks I am,” she said.
