Christine Beatty
Christine Beatty hugs her ex-husband Lou Beatty.
Christine Beatty, the chief of staff for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who had an affair with Kilpatrick, gave her husband Lou Beatty plenty of reason to resent her while they were married. But she says he forgave her.
Appearing Wednesday on the "Steve Harvey Show," she explained how she had an affair with Kilpatrick and how both her and the mayor lied in a lawsuit and denied having an affair. Then text messages surfaced showing they had an affair and both ended up behind bars. At some point, Beatty and her husband got divorced.
Beatty was one of three women featured on Wednesday's show, who had fallen down in life, and are starring on a series on Centric, a BET cable station, called "From the Bottom Up. It's about women who have fallen out of grace and are on “on the verge of a triumphant return.”
Sitting next to her ex-husband, Beatty on Wednesday said:
"For me , I know I've said I'm sorry to you a million times, but I never said 'thank you.' I've never taken a moment just to tell you 'thank you' , for one, standing in your manhood. To be a black man already is tough enough, but to have stood through what you stood through and you didn’t say 'get away from me.'
She went on to explain why it was good to have him on the show.
"I needed to show the world what forgiveness looks like, what strength looks like and what a strong black man looks like."
Lou Beatty explained what he was going through while the scandal was unraveling and his wife was going off to jail.
"It was pretty devastating. We had been through a lot as a family as she told you earlier. There was the releasing of the text messages, which was pretty painful...So by the time, Christine was going to jail, I was in kind of like a mode of survival and my main goal was to insulate my children from it all. Through the grace of God, we have a good support group and we were very loved people so we were able to do it as a family."
She ended up leaning over and hugging Lou.
At the start of the segment, Beatty talked about good times.
For me life was great. I was the chief of staff in the city of Detroit which was a huge honor for me because I am a diehard, born and raised Detroiter. . . . I went to college, got my bachelors degree, my masters degree.
Came back home, Kwame Kilpatrick, who was the mayor of Detroit, well, we were good friends since high school.I had the opportunity to be deputy campaign manager for his first winning campaign, which was a huge honor. I became the chief of staff. I helped to build the administration work in the administration. I was married to my high school sweetheart, two daughters. So at the time for me, life was awesome.
Then she talked about her demise.
For me in 2008, I was a part of, unfortunately, a text message scandal. At the time, Mayor Kilpatrick and I were having an affair. And it was something none of our family and friends knew. We were part of a civil case and when asked on the stand whether or not we were having an affair, we both lied and perjured ourselves and said 'no.'
From there our text messages were released publicly and it was discovered that we did perjure ourselves...so I ended up spending three months in jail.
So, here I am going from chief of staff sitting in a room with Sen. Obama, talking about his upcoming presidency to sitting in a jail cell watching him give his inauguration on television. So it was a terrible, terrible circumstance.
