Sister-in-Law Katarina Saw Aaron Smith-Levin Mistreat Her Family and His Own

Katarina recalls Smith-Levin living rent-free at her parent’s house—screaming at her father and playing Xbox while his pregnant wife went to work.

TRANSCRIPT:

I know Aaron because he is my brother-in-law. He’s married to my oldest sister, Heather.

He came to live with us when my sister Heather was pregnant and I was 16 when they came to live with us. And he was somewhat nice in the beginning. They lived with us for about a year, I think it was. And he just slowly started having moments where he would snap. Such as like, he was living there rent-free. He would just leave dishes in the sink, mess around the house and my dad got upset ‘cause he was 70, working, supporting everybody. And Aaron went and started cursing and screaming and yelling at my dad, backed him up into a wall—screaming like, inches from his face. And I went over and I was like, “Don’t talk to my dad like that!” And he then got in my face and tried to back me up into a wall, and I just walked away and went upstairs and he continued screaming and yelling at me.

Heather was pregnant, and she was probably like 6–7 months pregnant at this time. He didn’t have a job, she didn’t have a job. They were trying to like—she didn’t know how to pay for having her baby so she went out and got a job. And he stayed home playing Xbox all day while she was working to make the money to have her baby.

I actually was nannying for Heather and Aaron for each of their kids, each of their three kids from basically birth up until they were, you know, 5, 6, 7. And so I was around them a lot and I would see how Aaron treated his family, treated his wife. He was rarely ever, if ever, kind to Heather or his kids.

Almost every single time I was ever at their house, he would get annoyed in some way by one of the kids and he would curse at them, tell them to “Get the f—k out of the room.” “Shut the f—k up.”

The kids did seem to be afraid of Aaron a lot. He was quick to hand out spankings and yelling. So, obviously there was fear there.

He seemed to use his kids as, like, a tool to manipulate or get, sort of, his way with my family. He knew how important they were to my mother and father. And if they got upset with him or disagreed with the way he was acting or what he was doing, he would threaten, like, “You’re never going to see the kids again.” He would use that with Heather, like, “If you try to, like, leave me, I will take the kids. You’ll never see them again.”

I just feel for his children who have to grow up with that father figure in their life and not being able to see their grandmother and their grandfather before he passed and any of their cousins or their aunts and uncle who love them. But we can’t see them ’cause he’s choosing to take them away from all of us.