This TV-dramatization tells the story of marital abuse, but with a slight twist in the formula: the abuser and abused are young, upper-middle-class newlyweds. Kellie Martin is fresh-faced wife and young-mother Katie Liner, who goes against her parents' better judgment and marries the good-looking but shady Jimmy Pettit (Ivan Sergei). As soon as they have their first child, he starts beating her everyday, but repeatedly accepts his apologies. When she gets pregnant again, it's getting worse. So, after doing everything in her power to hide the truth from her police-officer father (Kevin Dobson), she finally comes clean to her family and tries to leave, facing the ultimate confrontation with Jimmy. Then she kills him in self defense and her father arrests her and she goes on trial and is found not guilty. And here's the moral for this movie: How many of you have been hit? Who among you beats their wives? Well, this is against the law. This is wrong. And you know what? Everyone including her parents (including her mother (Linda Kelsey)), her older sister (Kristin Dattilo-Hayward) and her neighbor (Ted Hayden) watched it happen to Katie and they did nothing. You have a responsibility to the people that you care about. When you see them hurting her, you see them in trouble, you step in and you tell someone so that this does not happen again.
Who plays Katie Liner?
Kellie Martin