Parents Whose children have been sexually abused Community Group
This group is for parents whose children have been sexually abused. We welcome both Mothers and Fathers. Here, we can offer support to one another. We can vent, cry and lift each other up. No condemning or criticizing allowed. We are here for support. We LOVE (((HUGS))) !
Hi All,
This is my first time here. I arrived to your site through the link provided at MOSAC.net (another super helpful site for mothers of sexually abused children).
I confess that am kind of scared to write here, since I now mistrust everything, everyone, and I wonder who maybe reading my post now... sorry for that...
At the same time, I need your advice so much... My husband and I are doing therapy altogether with our abused children, but although the kids seem to be improving, our marriage is getting worse than it was before the disclosure by one of my kinds.
I have three boys, aged 4, 2 and 0. Numbers 1 and 2 where abused by my husband's father, their grandfather, whom they (and we) adored. He is 68. He raped them violently (especially number 1) and tried to pervert their little minds in ways hard to imagine. My babies. We went to the police and an investigation is taking place, but where I leave there are usually low expectations for justice on Earth. We will have to wait for God's justice.
We trusted my father-in-law so much, he and his wife live in our same building and he took our children to kindergarten along with me and our husband, had breakfast with us at home, was always available if I needed anything (I work part-time and had 3 boys in 3 years)... he always told us that grandma was inviting them for tea time, and the big mystery to me and my husband is: where was she when grandpa was abusing our angels?
Only the baby was spared... thanks to the courage of my eldest who has just turned four years old and decided to speak out (around 5 months ago) in spite of the bribes and threats of the molester. My eldest told us (my husband and I) that grandpa had told him of his plans of raping his baby brother within some months as well, and he decided it was time to protect his siblings. My eldest revives the abuses day and night, through nightmares, crying, fighting, saying how much it hurts and asking for her mammy... myself, who could not protect him. I am such an idiot, trusting my in-laws...
I am a walking dead. We love our children so much, as you do. We do our best for them... they were so wanted, I had them when I was over 36... I always felt blessed to have them. I have not shared this with anyone with the exception of my parents and the Police and Doctor/ Therapist. But therapy is not working for us (it does for our kids, as I said). My husband just lost his job. We have only 5 months of savings left. In the meantime, the wife of the abuser, my mother-in-law, hired to most expensive lawyer in town for the abuser, and decided to fight "HER" sorrow, as she told my husband, by renovating her kitchen...
I cannot breath. I think of committing suicide - but who, then, would take care of my babies? Thank you for any advice.
Hugs
This is my first time here. I arrived to your site through the link provided at MOSAC.net (another super helpful site for mothers of sexually abused children).
I confess that am kind of scared to write here, since I now mistrust everything, everyone, and I wonder who maybe reading my post now... sorry for that...
At the same time, I need your advice so much... My husband and I are doing therapy altogether with our abused children, but although the kids seem to be improving, our marriage is getting worse than it was before the disclosure by one of my kinds.
I have three boys, aged 4, 2 and 0. Numbers 1 and 2 where abused by my husband's father, their grandfather, whom they (and we) adored. He is 68. He raped them violently (especially number 1) and tried to pervert their little minds in ways hard to imagine. My babies. We went to the police and an investigation is taking place, but where I leave there are usually low expectations for justice on Earth. We will have to wait for God's justice.
We trusted my father-in-law so much, he and his wife live in our same building and he took our children to kindergarten along with me and our husband, had breakfast with us at home, was always available if I needed anything (I work part-time and had 3 boys in 3 years)... he always told us that grandma was inviting them for tea time, and the big mystery to me and my husband is: where was she when grandpa was abusing our angels?
Only the baby was spared... thanks to the courage of my eldest who has just turned four years old and decided to speak out (around 5 months ago) in spite of the bribes and threats of the molester. My eldest told us (my husband and I) that grandpa had told him of his plans of raping his baby brother within some months as well, and he decided it was time to protect his siblings. My eldest revives the abuses day and night, through nightmares, crying, fighting, saying how much it hurts and asking for her mammy... myself, who could not protect him. I am such an idiot, trusting my in-laws...
I am a walking dead. We love our children so much, as you do. We do our best for them... they were so wanted, I had them when I was over 36... I always felt blessed to have them. I have not shared this with anyone with the exception of my parents and the Police and Doctor/ Therapist. But therapy is not working for us (it does for our kids, as I said). My husband just lost his job. We have only 5 months of savings left. In the meantime, the wife of the abuser, my mother-in-law, hired to most expensive lawyer in town for the abuser, and decided to fight "HER" sorrow, as she told my husband, by renovating her kitchen...
I cannot breath. I think of committing suicide - but who, then, would take care of my babies? Thank you for any advice.
Hugs
The abuse has stopped and from there you can move forward. I know it feels like you won't get passed this but you will. I promise! The hurt doesn't stop but it isn't as overwhelming. You do adapt to it.
If anything else, when you feel you can't go on, remember YOUR KIDS NEED YOU.
Keep in your therapy. Be honest in therapy. It will work. Give yourself time.
Prayers for you.
Thank you so much for your words of support. As you said, Today, my eldest saved himself and the family. I have found plenty of new perspectives and insights regarding this nightmare.
Naive1, thank you for sharing the Jim Hopper website about memory. He is really a top researcher, seems honest with the results of his research and goes straight to the point. I am saving some energy to read the academic articles in more detail, I want to help my husband, but I also have the hurry to be there for my kids all the time. You know that my counsellor gets kind of frustrated when I cite some scholar article about incest, trauma, passive aggressiveness, and so on... she tells me to "stop' and just focusing on my concrete situation... but, I have discovered that what we are doing has a name: bibliotherapy, understanding and healing through reading about the matter. Regarding this, the book Hurt, edited by Mosac's Julia Webb has been so enlightening, especially the chapter about being groomed as a mother by the perp (in my case, my FIL) and the final chapter about the grandfather who abused his granddaughter and one of his own daughters...
HeartSadx3, you know that I found a recent article about the role of siblings in trauma recovery. I found it moving, and - without any scientific evidence from my side, just a hunch - I always felt that being so close in age, my sons would be able to support each other. Well, this article proves this, that child victims of sexual abuse who have siblings and a warm relation with them have improved faster in emotional regulation aspects. This is the article:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1413-81232014000300685&script=sci_arttext
On the other hand, I am so scared to think that one of my kids can grow up to start "reviving" the abuse and experimenting with one of his younger brother, school peers... and what about the future? I know that it is a myth to think that an abused child would become an abuser as an adult, but you know... I am scared even about my future grand children... Oops, I have to leave now, but I will try to come back soon. Thank you for your support, love for all.
You are so right when you talk about having been "robbed of every certainty that we are the ultimate shapers our children's behavior"... this is what I felt when my son disclosed the every time more horrible details of the abuse... In fact, I felt he was dead. I mean, his PTSD was so strong that he would not even be able to focus his eyes on mine when remembering the abuses, when he disclosed, he let so much dirt out (that he had been hiding in an unbeliable way before the disclosure) that I could see / hear loud and clear virtually all the perverse acts that my FIL had done to him / told him (including a story of my son being grandpa's little Princess - sic - and he was only 3 years old! but he is now confused about who he is, why his grandpa told that thing of Princess to him and his younger brother, etc.).
But, reading one recent post - in another entry - from Charity, I agree with her: our children have NOT lost their innocence. They are still innocent, pure, lovely and lovable children, exposed and programmed by a perverse person, but still babies, still my babies.
I am, at the same time, so scared about the future, as HeartSadx3 said in another post, about reaching milestones and re-opening everything again during adolescence, for instance, on when they first date a girl and remember the "group" experience that my FIL subjected my eldest to, etc.
Really, why did this happen to us? To you, loving mothers as I am? Could I have figured out that my FIL, that I know since more than 10 years ago, long before my children were born, was a perverted perpetrator? Why did my eldest, 3 years old son tell me anything when I asked him about how it had been at grandmother's? How could my grandmother leave her grandchildren alone with the monster, when she told me, every time, that she had been with them all the time? (and she also told my husband, her son, the same story of having been with them all the time!). The sense of unfairness is huge. Sometimes I feel like going to the Police and presenting charges against her for neglect. But, my children need their grandmother... and I still expect she will be sorry and acknowledge her part in all this one day...
So sorry to hear of your pain. A very difficult situation to be in. You have received much wisdom, and I can't really add to what has been said. Praying that you will have enough strength and courage to face each day with wisdom and love. This is such a difficult journey and it does change your life, in some ways, for the better.
I found this group about a year ago but don't post much anymore, mostly because I am too exhausted a lot of the time.
Hugs to you. Stay strong.
This is especially true for my husband, who was a complete passive-agressive person with almost no parental skills due, in a great measure, to his own experience as a survivor (although he has buried his CAS history and is showing dozens of symptoms) and who has improved enormously as a husband, as a father.... His abuser, who is his father, has now abused my 4 and 2 years-old. We have to cut this cycle of violence, of poor, tiny people who are so arrogant (my FIL and my MIL feel they are better than anyone, and are constant bullies to their own family and friends in a covert way)... What a toxic family. We were in counseling as a couple before the disclosure, and my husband was arriving at the fact that he was abused when our sons' disclosed and he shut himself up in this regard... as our counsellor told me in private: of course, he feels he did not protect his own children from the very man that had already molested him! I am ready to give him support when my husband wakes up and assumes his pas as a CAS survivor.... Thanks for your support.