Christine Beatty and Kwame Kilpatrick’s first kiss was when she was only 14-years-old and a student at Cass Technical High School. She never forgot it. It’s what she reveals to Essence magazine readers in the November 2013 issue. Blinded by love, she says today she is on a journey of forgiveness for an adulterous affair with Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick’s chief of staff when he served nearly two terms as mayor of Detroit, “I could barely breathe” and fell to her “knees sobbing” at her pastor’s house when the scandal broke, telling them “it’s over.”
In 2008, Beatty pleaded guilty to two felony obstruction of justice charges after the Detroit Free Press published intimate text messages that showed she lied under oath about her six-year-long affair with Kilpatrick during a police whistle-blower trial.
She served 70 days in the Wayne County Jail and moved to Atlanta in February 2010.
In the Essence mag article titled, “A Real-Life Scandal,” the mother of two pre-teen daughters divulges that men are able to bounce back after political scandals but women are left with a bad rap sheet.
“For years I would think fondly of our first kiss, the one we shared sitting on my mother’s couch after our first date,” Beatty writes. “That kiss, passionate yet gentle, was the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.” As her marriage to Lou Beatty III started failing, she became intimate with Kilpatrick in 2002. “I knew immediately that we had crossed a line, but there was no turning back.” She separated from her husband in 2004.
Kilpatrick landed a six-figure job when he was released, but things haven’t been so good for her. She does temporary consulting.
