Nicole Bryant
SALINE CO. – A Harrisburg woman is reaching out to women in the southern Illinois area after a horrific event of domestic battery nearly claimed the life of her daughter.
Christy Bryant Hughes, a Registered Nurse at Harrisburg Medical Center, is sharing what’s happened to her daughter, Nicole Bryant, shown at right, who currently happens to be under charges in Saline County on Residential Burglary and multiple Theft counts.
Bryant, 33, is the woman that newly-convicted Brian Potts, 33, beat nearly to death back in December 2016, in one of his last criminal forays before his April 26 conviction on Felon in Possession of a Firearm and May 17 conviction on Possession of Meth Precursors.
Potts, who has no compunction against telling people that he works as a federal nark, was sentenced to 14 years in IDOC; the sentences on each were 7 years, but in a rare move, Saline County State’s Attorney Jason Olson asked for and received consecutive sentencing instead of concurrent, meaning that he wasn’t allowed to serve sentences on both crimes together.
Hughes said she pushed the prosecutors to give Potts the maximum sentence he could get. And, once the reality of Potts actually going to prison for a meaningful sentence set in, Hughes decided it was safe enough for Bryant’s children to expose what it was Potts had done to their mother.
Hughes posted to her Facebook page about Bryant, stating that the single photo in the lineup that didn’t show Bryant battered was what she really looked like…before the drugs set in and before Potts nearly killed her.
“She left rehab one week after entering to get Potts out of jail for eluding police a few days prior,” Hughes wrote of the events of December 4, 2016, “and this is how he thanked her.”
Hughes said she received the photo of Bryant in the form of a text from a number she didn’t recognize, and because of the photo, “I went looking for her.
“This is what Brian Potts did to her, he nearly killed her. He choked her causing her airway to swell the day after the beating, endangering her life. Had I not got her and took her to the hospital, she would have died; he would not have taken her. Obviously he beat her face severely. WHAT A TOUGH MAN HE IS.”
Hughes said that drug abuse and co-dependence is horrible, and that the family begged Bryant to leave Potts but she never would.
“No one deserves this kind of abuse,” Hughes said, and now “my calling is to reach out to females and try to empower them with mental strength to not let this happen to them.”
It’s a reality for too many women, who stay in an abusive relationship for whatever reason: Intimidation, threats against the children in the home, even threats against the woman’s parents if she leaves. Many women are completely financially dependent on their partners; some women endure the shredding of their clothing or destruction of other belongings so that it becomes difficult for them to get out of the house for any reason; their partner isolates them from the rest of their family and friends, and intimidate any child in the home to “not tell” about the abuse that is ongoing and chronic. This leads to more dysfunction as the children in the home grow up, and begin the cycle of either an abuser or the abused, all over again, having never learned anything different.
Bryant’s children will be fortunate enough to not have to endure that, as Hughes has adopted all three…including Potts’ young son.
Hughes said that it’s now her focus to help young women get out of the nightmare of abuse. She teaches karate and self-defense, and wishes to include that as part of her purpose for abused young women.
“This is my calling and I am going to help them if I can,” Hughes said. “I hope to prevent women from suffering at the hands of those that ‘love them,’ making bad choices and making decisions to climb out of the hole they are trapped in.”
Hughes can be reached at Facebook at Christy Bryant Hughes in Harrisburg.
