His Troubled Marriage to Halle Berry’s Mother Jerome was married to Halle Berry’s mother, Judith Ann Hawkins, for many years. When they were both employed at a psychiatric institution in Cleveland, the former couple had their first encounter with one another. Judith was working as a nurse at the medical facility at the time.
Hawkins is of Caucasian ancestry and hails from the city of Liverpool in England. Even though the two people in the relationship belonged to different races, they were inseparable and moved their relationship to a more committed level in the early 1960s.
In October 1964, the couple’s first child, a daughter named Heidi Berry-Henderson, was born to Jerome and Judith, a couple of years after they tied the knot and began their lives together as husband and wife.
In August of 1966, Hawkings gave birth to the couple’s second child, a daughter named Halle Berry. This was the moment that the couple became parents for the second time.
Before the two began experiencing a steady decline in the quality of their marriage beginning in the late 1960s, the couple enjoyed many happy years together as a married couple.
In 1970, after having been married for some time in the neighborhood of eight years, Jerome and Judith decided to go their ways. According to Halle, the couple’s daughter, Jerome’s aggressive behavior toward his wife was the root cause of their split, even though neither of the parties admitted that this was the real reason for their divorce.
“‘I watched while my mother was beaten, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. My father was a dictator, and he constantly yelled and berated her for no reason. I have been through what these women have gone through because I felt the repercussions that it had on our family when it happened.
In addition, during an interview with the host James Lipton, Halle disclosed that her late father had never physically assaulted her, but that he had struck her older sister on multiple occasions. In her words:
“The most difficult thing for me was the fact that he never abused me. Because I had witnessed my sister go through the ordeal of receiving severe beatings, I was suffering with a great degree of guilt.
Because I didn’t do anything and I couldn’t do anything, I felt like a coward and powerless at the same time. I spent a significant portion of my younger years attempting to make sense of everything, as well as to recover and locate my sense of self-esteem.
In 1992, Berry stated that she did not feel any remorse for the fact that her father had been away from her life ever since he had divorced her mother. She made the statement, “I haven’t heard from him since.” The Hollywood star added,
