THOMASTON — Sharon Kennedy, serving decades in a Maine prison alongside her ex for the murder of her 10-year-old daughter Marissa Kennedy, is talking publicly for the first time as the March guest on a podcast hosted by Patrisha McLean, the CEO and Founder of the nonprofit Finding Our Voices.

Marissa was found dead in Stockton Springs in 2018 with horrific injuries that officials determined were sustained over many months. Kennedy was sentenced to 48 years in prison for depraved indifference murder with her ex Julio Carillo sentenced to 55 years on the same charge.

Sharon's father Joe Kennedy told the court during Sharon's 2020 jury trial that Carillo, "changed Sharon from the caring, loving mother we all knew into a scared, domineered shell of her former self," according to a news release from Finding our Voices. 

Kennedy's defense attorney argued at her trial that there was no physical evidence linking her to the murder of Marissa, and that her confession to detectives was false.

Kennedy did not testify at her trial. 

"I feel like I was not heard," Kennedy said in the podcast conversation with McLean. "I was not able to talk and tell my story, and it is time to get everything out there and let the public know what I went through and what kind of domestic violence that my daughter and I encountered." 

After Kennedy was sentenced, the Department of Health and Human Services released a 12-page report detailing two years of interaction with the family by police, medical staff and DHHS caseworkers, including Julio's insistence on being present whenever Kennedy or Marissa were questioned.

In the hour-long podcast episode, Kennedy talked about how the man she thought of as kind when they worked together at Wal-Mart steadily gained control of her including moving her to Maine away from her family and friends in New York.  In the podcast, she listed dozens of ways he abused her and Marissa including: ”Broke my eyeglasses so I couldn’t see, forced me to have sex even in front of my kids, and strangled me in front of Marissa until I thought I was gonna die.”

Said McLean, in the news release: "During International Women's Month,  I am calling for officials to re-examine Sharon's draconian prison sentence. The 35 episodes of my podcast are filled with examples of men who are repeat violent offenders getting no or very little prison time for strangling and otherwise brutalizing their girlfriends and wives. For Sharon to be looking at serving basically the rest of her life behind barbed wire when she was a victim of extreme coercive control is a travesty and an outrage."

McLean got to know Kennedy when Kennedy joined McLean's domestic abuse awareness-book club at the Women's Unit of the Windham prison. Kennedy has since become a certified victim's advocate and is studying for her bachelor's degree in mental health and human services through the University of Maine,  according to the release.  

Maine Commissioner of Corrections Randall Liberty was a previous guest on McLean's podcast, Let's Talk About It: Conversations with Survivors of Domestic Abuse, talking about growing up with a father who was a domestic abuser. 

Finding Our Voices is the grassroots nonprofit breaking the silence of domestic abuse in Maine and providing resources to its sister survivors including Get Out Stay Out funding, access to donated dental care, and an online support group. The nonprofit is currently touring middle schools and high schools with an innovative and impactful dating abuse-prevention program that includes a young person sharing their personal story..