A Good Old-Fashioned Callout Post
⚠Trigger Warning⚠
neglect, transphobia, narcissism, abuse, sexual coercion, marital rape, CSA, self-harm, suicide
From 2011 through 2021 I was in an abusive relationship with Erik Garlington who many know from his band, Proper. The nature of the abuse is critical context for what happened after we separated—Erik played a pivotal role in the suicide of Katelyn Bartelt. For almost two years, Erik has been lying to anyone and everyone who will listen about our relationship and Kate’s death. My intention today is to share my experience and set the record straight.
I am ready to reclaim my ability to enjoy life in this city without looking over my shoulder, awaiting Erik’s punishment. He accused me of ‘spreading lies’ and ‘turning people against him’ before I ever said anything to anybody about this. I told one mutual friend that we were getting a divorce, and Erik sent me a long threatening email the next day. It quickly formed into a fully fledged smear campaign, so I decided to remove myself from everyone I knew to avoid upsetting Erik again. I was trying to gain control of my life for the first time as an adult and could no longer tolerate his abuse, even digitally.
I have done EMDR, DBT, somatic therapy, and years of extensive talk therapy to process what occurred during this relationship. My panic attacks have debilitated me for years after a decade of Erik's financial, emotional, and sexual abuse. Only recently, with several medications and treatments, have I been able to gain parts of my life back. I have dedicated myself to processing what happened and healing from it, while also enduring a year and a half in court to be granted a civil order of protection from Erik, which is public record and active through March 2025. It was nearly a criminal order, but Erik leveraged our broken justice system by filing a frivolous retaliatory order to muddy the case. It is common for abusers to do this until the judge or referee is fed up, which is what happened.
The dynamic between us from the beginning, when I was 17 and he was 20, has always been imbalanced. He was always older and insisted he knew better—he held power over me for my entire adult life until I left in 2021. The pressure to have sex was pervasive throughout our entire relationship. Erik and I began dating when I was behaving in a hypersexual manner as I had done in high school and college, trying to reconcile my childhood sexual trauma. Over time, as I became less willing to have sex and more affected by trauma from childhood, this pressure escalated until I was being coerced into having sex regularly.
This became the basis for entering a completely one-sided “open relationship”. The pressure to have sex was constant. My sex drive was so low and Erik would get mad at me every time his cajoling didn’t work—this agreement was the only thing that provided temporary relief. Looking back now, I wish I had said no to this, but I'm not even sure that was an option. Under Erik’s direction, I would post risqué photos on social media, use toys, and perform sex acts with him—all of which I was uncomfortable doing, but forced myself because I was made to feel like I was wrong to not want them. I only stopped experimenting sexually on December 3, 2017 after an attempt at BDSM in one of the many online short-term rentals Erik insisted we live out of turned into assault. I had a panic attack which Erik blamed me for, along with our lack of sexual compatibility, then immediately left me alone to go see St Vincent on a date with someone else. I cried myself to sleep that night.
In 2018, some friends began a group chat that started with discussing that Erik’s manipulative behavior with our roommate was turning dangerous and eventually encompassed his behavior towards me. I essentially silenced that group because I could not face the truth: the only person I deemed safe in my life, Erik Garlington, was abusing me severely. I had a breakdown at a mutual friend’s birthday party in 2020 because of this. Ignoring and shutting down this group of people is the biggest regret I have from this time in my life. I have learned a lot about myself and the world around me since then. I have apologized to key parties for my behavior during those times—I am so grateful for their grace and the healing we were able to foster for one another.
That same year, Erik crossed an expressly agreed-upon boundary which resulted in my contracting chlamydia. He was not using protection and lying to me about it, which I only discovered because he left a video open on our shared computer, as if he intended to get caught. When confronted, he said he's not using protection with "certain long-term partners", whatever that means, and gaslit me until I agreed to change the boundary. I underwent two rounds of treatment, later learning that I have a compromised immune system. He told me that “STI’s need to be destigmatized, and chlamydia is treatable”, so I didn’t have a real reason to be upset. To this day, he invalidates this experience at every opportunity.
My sexual desire rapidly diminishing, Erik escalated his behavior. In 2020, Erik repeatedly and knowingly initiated sex with me while I was sleeping. It has taken years and multiple therapists to come to terms with the fact that this is rape. We were married, and I’d known him so long I didn’t want to believe it, but I was asleep and without the ability to consent. I would regularly wake up with him on top of me, groping and attempting to penetrate me. All I could do was push him off and have panic attacks. Erik claims he was ‘sleepwalking’ and wasn’t aware of what he was doing, so I had no reason to be upset. The effects of this on my mental health has been staggering. Instead of listening to my experience, let alone apologizing, he continues to invalidate me in indirect/third party contact to the few close relationships I have left in my life in blatant violation of my order of protection against him.
Erik’s behavior escalated until I was no longer capable of having sex at all without pain. The last eight months or so of our marriage, we did not have sex at all. He would demand I “admit” I was asexual. As I began untangling the complex web of trauma that had shaped my life in therapy, Erik told me I was “making therapy my entire personality” and he felt “tricked” that I was not able to have sex while I was actively working to process these things for the first time. It was a constant argument and ultimately, I believe, the root of all the abuse.
Erik took advantage of me financially. For years, he spent money from our joint bank account disproportionately and strategically so I was not able to make purchases for myself or advance my education and career. One micro example: our outfits for our fifth anniversary cost over $400 for his and under $40 for mine. After spending so much on clothing, the $375 dinner he booked left me hardly anything for a dress. When I brought this to his attention in real time, he said I ‘clearly didn’t care about our relationship’. This is just a morsel of what was a regular pattern: rideshares, eating out, shopping, even basic human needs were all disproportionate. I have only been able to become financially literate since leaving Erik.
Erik took advantage of me professionally. We got engaged and moved to New York in 2014, both dedicating a great deal of time, energy, and money on Erik’s band. I was happy to do the work, practice my photography, and make new friends. However, I also worked full time, and Erik insisted on same-day turnaround for most photo and video edits. Between helping load in and out of shows, networking (he would introduce me to people whose names he’d forgotten so he could get their name again), and/or constantly lugging Ikea bags of merch shipments to the post office on my back, I never had an opportunity to rest. Erik told me I should quit my job, but we weren’t stable enough financially for me to do that. He'd insist that if I just lied and doubled up on doing medical studies like him we'd make enough money, so I had no reason to be upset. I’d shoot his shows while having active migraines, after a twelve hour shift, only getting paid in booze. I thought it was punk at the time, but it was just exploitation.
Erik made every decision for both of us. He knew I didn't understand the power dynamics in our relationship. He decided what diet we were on and shamed me into going to the gym saying I “would never make progress if not for him”—I wholeheartedly agreed because of how deeply indoctrinated I was. We lived in a garage off of the Marcy J for two years even though I begged to move after a few months and began to SH because of how depressed I was, which ‘disappointed’ him. He once made me switch seats in my own car when he got pulled over speeding with a suspended license. He told me I was ‘too unhygienic’ to use a menstrual cup. He told me I was being childish, neglectful, uncommunicative. I would beg him to keep “helping” me "get better", which I now recognize as Ambient Abuse. It's so clear now that he is a Narcissist and I was his supply.
In 2021, Erik and I worked on a small team at a startup. Erik was on the music team, and I was the head of operations. Nobody at work knew what our home life was like. I did not tell anyone. He was put on probation and then fired for several reasons, including not turning in assignments for peer review and blatant misogynoir—he was attempting to usurp the head of writing, discrediting and running a smear campaign against them. He also tried to manipulate me into leveraging my role at the company in his favor, urging me to tell the founder, Mark Burstiner, that she couldn’t do the job, wasn’t taking the job seriously, he would do the job better, etc…
Unbeknownst to me, there were suspicions of how Erik treated me, because of how he was observed behaving on calls and in DMs with the team. Mark and the head of writing agreed to fire Erik while I was away visiting family because they feared how he would react to me getting to stay and wanted me to be far away and safe. During this time, he was also 'diagnosed' with autism and while self-diagnosis and professional assessments are both equally valid, I'm not sure how valid it is to be assessed by your girlfriend. I urged him to get evaluated by someone else due to their personal connection, but he insisted to Mark that he was being fired for having ‘Aspberger's’, using Autism as a shield, insisting ableism.
August 29, 2021 after I had returned from Arkansas, Erik was berating me via text and calling my phone relentlessly as he is known to do while I was at a work event running over time; there were drinks involved. When I finally stepped away to answer, he was upset that I wasn’t coming home on time. I had a panic attack on my way to the subway; I could not make myself get on the train to go home and face another argument. The panic attack, of course, delayed me further. He was due soon to leave for a week-long clinical trial, so he left early to punish me, stonewalling once I got home.
That night, Mark stayed with me during my panic attack which led to our relationship blossoming. I was in an open relationship, but Erik and I agreed that we would not engage romantically with people we knew. Erik had been violating this agreement for years, and the emotion that came up for me while receiving care was overwhelming. Mark and their partner Katelyn had also been discussing polyamory long prior to this night, but there was a communication breakdown in their relationship as well. Mark, like me, was willing to appease their partner and, in this case, attempt Polyamory after 8 married years of being ardently opposed. Kate was not honest in this endeavor, using polyamory as a manipulation tactic, but I am not proud of the choices I made during this time. Mark and I have been dedicated in joint and individual therapy to make sense of the factors leading up to this night and the following events. None of us, Mark, Kate, or I, were communicating properly. If I could go back and change anything, this is where I would start.
The next day, Erik told me via text that I didn’t appreciate or enjoy my life in NYC and to go back to Arkansas, so I did. I had limited resources and very few friends I could trust to help me relocate to my family’s to regroup. Erik later harassed those who did help me, which led to them cutting me off, isolating me further. If you have ever had an argument or disagreement with Erik Garlington, you know he has a habit of calling and texting repeatedly to demand attention when people are not interested in engaging with him. He has, multiple times in my presence, called several people 20+ times when they have explicitly asked for space to process before continuing to engage.
I handled ending our lease, the divorce papers, and paid for our electric bill, which Erik did not *allow* me to pay during lockdown, and had accrued $2000+ in arrears, by myself. I did everything to separate myself from Erik. I went to therapy twice a week for almost a year, and remain committed to recovery today.
This ends context for what happened before and during our separation. I hid all of this and pretended to behave normally in public anytime we were with friends and family. I have built from nothing since leaving Erik.
Of course, Mark went to Kate immediately to make things right. Kate decided I should be let go from the company, and Mark agreed. In October 2021, I was terminated with ample severance, cashing out any stake in the company I may have earned, and did not talk to Mark or pursue any form of communication after that. In April 2022, Mark and Kate separated. They were discussing divorce and beginning the process of filing paperwork. Kate’s untreated Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders escalated severely during this time. Kate expertly deployed Reactive Abuse, resulting in many outbursts and destructive arguments between Mark and Kate which they later would share with Erik during a dissociative episode in an attempt to hurt Mark. Since they were kids, Mark has been trying to help Kate. This was a cycle they were both familiar with and Mark’s intent was to truly end it, stay in therapy, stay together, and heal.
This continued until May 15, 2022 when Mark reached out to me to make sense of what happened the previous October when I left the company. Kate's story had been changing and I had answers about my one-on-one conversation with Kate which they were keeping Mark from. Through these revelations, we both realized we had been in abusive marriages, and that Kate had also manipulated me when we had met alone that night. Mark and I became very close and began a relationship in August 2022 when I visited New York, long after Kate had moved into their own apartment.
One of the most destructive choices Kate made during this episode was to try to hurt Mark by contacting Erik Garlington in September 2022. During this time, he sent Kate a photo of me with Mark that we had no knowledge of being taken with the express intent to inflict extreme emotional distress on both Kate and Mark. It caused Kate to have a dissociative episode so severe that it lasted the remainder of Kate’s life. Mark has done tremendous work to untangle Kate’s struggle and understand the chain of events that has lead to the most heartbreaking event in both of our lives.
For the entire month, Erik colluded with Kate. Erik did not know that Kate was dissociating and lying, but Kate was clearly looking to him for help, in which he saw opportunity. In turn, Erik lied to Kate, saying I was making up my childhood neglect and CSA, making Kate hate me more and more. We all could have talked about this together if not for Erik goading Kate into further dissociation for his own benefit. Around the same time, Erik also left a threatening voicemail on my phone and mailed a threatening letter to my aunt’s house, where I was staying at the time saying I was disgusting, everyone hated me, etc... He also sent a second barrage of threatening messages to my friends who helped me move, and went as far as messaging my cousin who was a minor and still in high school at the time.
That wasn’t the end of Erik’s contribution. Kate was estranged from their birth family—they were no contact for three years and for good reason: their biological father is an alleged sex offender and the entire family has addictive, abusive, and manipulative streaks. Erik claims Kate was his friend. If this were true, he would have known how much Kate despised their blood relatives. Instead, Erik contacted all of them to make them aware of Kate’s death, strictly against any and all of Kate’s wishes. Today, Erik continues to be a menace, subjecting Kate's name to battery as he shields himself with it.
When Kate realized the momentum of their choices, the shame spiral was too much to overcome despite Mark forgiving Kate for everything. On October 3, 2022, after reconciling with Mark, Kate reached out to Erik for the last time to try undo the damage by getting as much info from Erik to Mark as they could with the time they had left. Erik has routinely, repeatedly, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress, for which Kate wrongfully paid with their life.
Mark is Kate’s rightful next of kin. They saw each other twice before Kate made the choice they made and left everything to Mark, including all the passwords for their accounts so they could finally have a clear picture and know what is true. Kate told Mark to ‘protect themselves’ because they had backchanneled so much to Erik.
If you know me personally you know that until this month, I have not been active on social media, speaking to anybody I knew from music, or generally being social. This has all been out of fear that Erik would retaliate against me for his paranoid beliefs that I was “out to get him”. The only reason I am speaking out now is because Kate is dead and Erik still wields their name in terrible faith, talking to Kate’s 'friends and family', completely misunderstanding the depth of the damage he has caused, and totally refusing to acknowledge any of it. He has not offered his condolences one single time, and still to this day insists that Mark killed Katelyn…that he was worried ‘he was next'...
Erik Garlington is a predator. I wish I had listened in 2018 when several people tried to confront the issue of Erik’s behavior. I wish I had not covered for him. It only led to his behavior escalating until he enabled someone to take their own life. Today, Erik continues a smear campaign to privately circulate harmful rumor after another, rather than address the allegations against him publicly in a forthcoming manner.
Kate deserved more. I stand shoulder to shoulder with Mark to face the consequence of our role in this daily. I’m not afraid of the truth, and I’m not afraid to face the things I’ve done in my life or the things that have happened to me. Erik would have you believe that I am 'crazy', that I’m lying, that I gave ‘consent’ to everything in our relationship willingly. If you read all of this and still believe that, that’s truly okay. I’m not trying to convince anyone—I’m just sharing my experience because I’ve finally processed enough to speak about it.
That’s all I’ll say for now, though I know Mark has more to share. The gravity of saying this out loud will likely set in as soon as I post this, so I will be taking time to myself to regulate and stay focused on my wellbeing. I have worked hard for some semblance of peace.
Stay safe,
Nikki