Angie Ballantyne has three daughters and all of them, she said, are daddy’s girls.
“They have such a special relationship,” the Vancouver woman said. “Every night, he would put every girl to bed. He’d rock them and tickle them and sing to them. … They have a lot of anger because they don’t get to see him.”
The reason they can’t see their dad is one that carries with it a lot of stigma and emotions: he’s in prison for murder. Brad Ballantyne is serving a 25-year sentence in Oregon State Prison for fatally shooting Kimberly Jean Dunkin in Portland on Jan. 1, 1993.
When Angie met Brad Ballantyne, she knew he’d been involved in crime in the past, but didn’t know that he had killed someone. So she was surprised when, in 2010, police showed up at their North Image neighborhood house to arrest her churchgoing husband for a brutal crime he committed 17 years earlier.
“That’s when my whole world, I saw it all crumble,” she said.
With her husband in prison, Ballantyne has spent the past five years living the life of a single mom, balancing work and taking care of her girls, who have behavioral issues.
“They’re about to be kicked out of their sixth day care,” she said. “When they’re tired, they just want to see him. It’s heartbreaking. They just have tons of anger and sadness.”
Whenever she needs help, Ballantyne turns to Families on the Outside, a nonprofit in Vancouver that helps those with a spouse, parent, sibling or child in prison. She said it’s hard to know how much the organization has helped her because it’s become so ingrained in her life.
“It’s just part of my life now,” she said.
Sidney Carter founded the organization after he got out of prison and saw a lack of resources for those who had a loved one serving time.
“When I came home, I saw what my family went through,” he said. “When you go to prison, you have this mindset of ‘it’s all about me.’ You don’t realize that there are others suffering as much as we are. … I started seeing what the families were going through — the hurt and pain they were facing.”
Carter said that while he was serving five years for drug crimes, his children received presents on his behalf. The gifts were donated through a church.
He was so grateful for the gesture, that when he got out of prison in 2003, he helped grow the gift-giving event, which was named Angel Tree.
“For a brief moment, you are somehow bridging a parent and a child,” he said. “For one night out of the year, you did something magical in their life and connected the two of them together.”
From there, his efforts grew to include putting on events for these families and organizing support groups. The entire endeavor became Families on the Outside, which gained nonprofit status three years ago.
Mostly, Carter said, he doesn’t want the children of prison inmates to follow in their parent’s footsteps.
“These kids aren’t worthless; there’s a huge value to these kids,” Carter said. “To be able to be a part of their lives and watch them grow up and make the right decision, it’s an honor to be a part of that.”
Events geared toward children — which include a fishing trip to Klineline Pond, horse rides with Grace Therapeutic Horses and the Angel Tree Christmas event — all try to show children that there are other kids in a similar situation.
Ballantyne said she’s grateful that the organization exists to help her in the tough moments. If she needs help affording groceries one week, she calls Carter. If she needs someone to watch her girls while she runs to an appointment, someone she’s met through the nonprofit steps up. She attends support groups, where she talks to those who understand the complexities of loving someone behind bars.
“You’re treated a lot of the times like horrible people,” she said. “People think, what kind of life does she live with a husband in prison?”
She said that more people have loved ones in prison than most people know because few people talk about it. Families on the Outside, she said, creates a safe space for that conversation.
“It feels good to know someone who loves us also loves him on the inside, even though he committed a horrible crime,” Ballantyne said.
