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))) !
So here is the situation. My daughter told me that she was sexually abused by her mother's ex-boyfriend. She is 14 and this took place between the ages of her earliest memories and 3rd grade. She has lived with me for the last three years. Her mother is a real piece of .... work. She had verbally, emotionally, and physically abused my daughter since our son was born. She became the bad child somehow. We divorced because she was screwing her boss's husband. That did not sit very well with her boss, nor myself. So enter the boss's husband. My daughter was about 2 at this time and my ex-wife remained with him till my daughter was in the 3rd grade. It was at this time that my ex-wife found out that he was cheating on her. The Karma train has arrived at the station. So she leaves him. About a year later she meets a Navy guy online. He comes to town to see her for the first time for a month and he leaves married to my ex-wife. My daughter has always been terrified of her mother. There were times when I would pick her up and my daughter would burst into tears as soon as the front door shut. My ex has also been arrested for felony injury to a child. I have had to fight this woman constantly for visitation and she is really evil incarnate. I truly and deeply hate this woman, but I digress. My ex-wife's new husband gets stationed in the U.S. and she decides since she can't move the kids out of the county that she will just leave them with me. No argument here. That was the best thing to happen to them. So over the next few years my daughter came out of her shell and became a great kid. All is well, or so I thought.
So the Ex returns. The kids spend spring break with here and come back wanting to live with her now. My son, I can understand. He has been so emotionally wrapped up in his mother it is ridiculous. When she left with her new husband my son was like a ten year old toddler. It took me a year to bring his maturity up to par. I could not understand this from my daughter. So I asked her why? Her mother has two new infant daughters. My daughter told me that she needed to be there to protect her baby sisters from her mom. She then began to cry harder. She told me that her mother did not protect her and that she would not protect her sisters. I asked her what she meant. Then she told me something that would fracture my psyche. She said her mother's ex-boyfriend (the boss's husband) had touched her. She did not want to give me details and honestly I don't think I could stomach it. I asked her if she would be comfortable telling the police and she said yes.
The next day I took off work and took her to the police dept. DID I MENTION THAT I AM A COP!!!! AND THAT THIS PIECE OF SH!T LIVES SIX BLOCKS FROM US. AHHHHH!!!! Before I picked her up from school I sat in front of his house, gun in hand, trying to think of a reason not to end him. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the fact that my daughter would have to go back and live with her mother. I even thought about killing her mother to prevent that. Oath be damned! Then I thought of my little girl growing up without me in her life. She told me the night before that that she loved me and that I saved her. I get emotional just thinking about it. So I let him live, for now.
So fast forward to today (three months). She had the forensic interview and I learned more details as to what was done to her. I can't repeat it. My soul can't handle it. She has been going to counseling and the therapist said she is doing great.
So, the waste of air turns himself in. Judge sets his bond at $30,000. I can't f*cking believe it. Like this guy broke into a car or something! He bonds out and doesn't even spend the night in jail. So here I am again. I WANT BLOOD!!! I want to watch the life drain from this animal's eyes. I have so much hate in me I can't hardly stand it. It is so hard acting normal at home. But, cracking up wont help my daughter. So I act OK. Sometimes I spend an hour hitting my heavy bag and it helps. But I have access to weapons and I am am very proficient in there use. Sometimes I zone out in my office thinking about holding his life in my hands. I will let the justice system do their thing, but if they fail I will do my thing. It may be ten years from now, but I will KILL THIS MAN.
I am having a hard time dealing. Cops don't cry. I told my daughter how I felt and that I will never allow anyone to harm her again. She actually said that she didn't realize it bothered me that much. Cops can be a bit emotionally detached. We have to be or the job would kill us.
Any advice???
So the Ex returns. The kids spend spring break with here and come back wanting to live with her now. My son, I can understand. He has been so emotionally wrapped up in his mother it is ridiculous. When she left with her new husband my son was like a ten year old toddler. It took me a year to bring his maturity up to par. I could not understand this from my daughter. So I asked her why? Her mother has two new infant daughters. My daughter told me that she needed to be there to protect her baby sisters from her mom. She then began to cry harder. She told me that her mother did not protect her and that she would not protect her sisters. I asked her what she meant. Then she told me something that would fracture my psyche. She said her mother's ex-boyfriend (the boss's husband) had touched her. She did not want to give me details and honestly I don't think I could stomach it. I asked her if she would be comfortable telling the police and she said yes.
The next day I took off work and took her to the police dept. DID I MENTION THAT I AM A COP!!!! AND THAT THIS PIECE OF SH!T LIVES SIX BLOCKS FROM US. AHHHHH!!!! Before I picked her up from school I sat in front of his house, gun in hand, trying to think of a reason not to end him. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the fact that my daughter would have to go back and live with her mother. I even thought about killing her mother to prevent that. Oath be damned! Then I thought of my little girl growing up without me in her life. She told me the night before that that she loved me and that I saved her. I get emotional just thinking about it. So I let him live, for now.
So fast forward to today (three months). She had the forensic interview and I learned more details as to what was done to her. I can't repeat it. My soul can't handle it. She has been going to counseling and the therapist said she is doing great.
So, the waste of air turns himself in. Judge sets his bond at $30,000. I can't f*cking believe it. Like this guy broke into a car or something! He bonds out and doesn't even spend the night in jail. So here I am again. I WANT BLOOD!!! I want to watch the life drain from this animal's eyes. I have so much hate in me I can't hardly stand it. It is so hard acting normal at home. But, cracking up wont help my daughter. So I act OK. Sometimes I spend an hour hitting my heavy bag and it helps. But I have access to weapons and I am am very proficient in there use. Sometimes I zone out in my office thinking about holding his life in my hands. I will let the justice system do their thing, but if they fail I will do my thing. It may be ten years from now, but I will KILL THIS MAN.
I am having a hard time dealing. Cops don't cry. I told my daughter how I felt and that I will never allow anyone to harm her again. She actually said that she didn't realize it bothered me that much. Cops can be a bit emotionally detached. We have to be or the job would kill us.
Any advice???
It may be time for you to either start learning or start practicing some anger management techniques. This is going to be a long and angry road. In hindsight for me, I wish I had given the anger management stuff some more thought in the beginning. Many instances came up (and may still!) where it would have been helpful for me to have some coping skills so that I didn't lose my cool in unbelievable situations. Because ultimately losing my cool could have made the situation even worse. A therapist may be a good place to start. But also online, books, etc. Zoning out at times is normal while dealing with this. It is understandably difficult to function as you cope with the new information. Getting good exercise and sleep will help.
Having some anger in this situation is good and healthy of course and will allow you to see this through with a goal in mind. The justice system is slow and allows the perps so many rights! But at least he turned himself in and the ball is rolling.
As a bit of background to our situation, our daughters, who are 13 and 15, disclosed just over a year ago that their brother had sexually abused them for years (about 7) from the ages of 4/5. He himself was about 8 when things began to go so wrong and it became worse as the years went by. He did stop of his own accord and happened to move out the week we found out what had been going on. So often I have felt sick beyond belief facing the details of what he did. I am still in a state of disbelief that this happened, right under my nose. Being my son complicates things too as I am trying to process my emotions towards him. I have not spoken to him or seen him in over a year. As a mother that is a very unnatural thing to do, but it is the right thing.
I hope that you will find strength, comfort, peace, wisdom and encouragement here and elsewhere. You are an awesome father with some very difficult decisions to make and emotions to process. It is very normal, what you and your daughter are experiencing for sexual abuse. It is a hideous crime and when it is committed against children it is even more evil, but I don't need to tell you that. I hope that you can find a way through this that brings you peace and comfort. As hard as it sounds, your daughter is not responsible for her sisters. She has enough on her plate and is still a child herself. I don't get how your ex is allowed to have access to children. I know that here in Australia the bureaucracy is inadequate in protecting children as the system is clogged up with cases.
You have done an amazing job so far and you can keep doing this. One day at a time, one second at a time sometimes. All the best.
I don't know what state you're in and how this crime is handled there, but in my sons' case a local sex crimes detective and a county prosecutor's office sex crimes detective worked together to interview my sons and to do the investigation after obtaining a taped overhear where my one son got the perp to admit everything. The investigation included taking the perp's computer and searching all it's contents, investigating if he had become close with any other students before or after he befriended my sons, searching all his texts and phone calls, etc Unfortunately, as in your case, he was arraigned at 8am after being jailed at 2am and assigned $100,000 bail with no 10% option which curiously was posted for him immediately which the detectives were not expecting, and the first thing he did was delete all his facebook activity.
Grand jury indicted him unanimously, he hired an aggressive lawyer with an aggressive private investigator who tried to dig up any dirt possible on us, the police, the prosecutor, etc, but found nothing, so he took a plea. The judge at sentencing thought this was all just immaturity on his part since his victims (my twin sons) were 15, so he gave him a suspended 3 year sentence, Megan's law sex offender registration, 15 years parole, no contact with anyone under 16 without a court approved supervisor present, a restraining order for all of us which was somehow never put in place, a psycho sexual evaluation that resulted in an unlikely to reoffend level 1 status so he's not on an online registry, he's just in some database somewhere. At sentencing, one thing that swayed the judge was that he had almost a hundred letters of support from family, friends, students, and students' parents from the school he was teaching at then. We never thought of getting people to write letters to the judge in our favor, or against him since there were people in our community who were really not comfortable with him (which we didn't know about until after the fact--we thought he was a great guy just like the students and parents in that school system). But how would we have done it anyway since our kids were anonymous because of their age?
Anyway, I'm telling you all this so it may give you ideas of how you can keep an eye on the investigation and the proceedings, find out everything that can be investigated, who may be his other victims if any, what kinds of seedy things is he into if any, is he on facebook of myspace, etc., but be very smart and discreet. Who knows him well enough that the investigators can interview them? Monitor and help the investigation as much as you can, but be careful not to hinder them or overstep your bounds. A website that can help you with some educational info and support is www.mosac.net , mothers of sexually abused children, but it's for fathers as well. It's very comprehensive. There's also a resources topic in this group, I'll bump it up in the topics.
I hope this helps you, my heart goes out to you and your family....
The best advice I can give you is to focus 100% on your daughter's healing. Get counseling for yourself and your daughter. You will need to be incredibly strong and find ways to work out your anger. My husband and I went shooting together. MY husband got my daughter and I a punching bag so that we could work out our anger on that bag vs on our son. I spent hours on here venting to the other parents. Nobody understood this like they did.
Anger is very normal in the beginning. Once you get that out of your system you will be able to uncover the sadness and grief. The counseling will help you thru the necessary stages of healing. It is important to follow thru with justice but also be prepared if you don't get a conviction. Many of us do not. That doesn't mean that you and your daughter can't heal from this and then move on. Many of us here have done just that. Our son couldn't be charged because he was a juvenile at the time and this didn't come to light until he was an adult. He was never punished or required to get the help that he needed. What matters now is her healing and yours.
I want to give you hope. In the beginning you are so incredibly overwhelmed that you can barely think straight some days. Those are the days that you need to reach out to someone. Post here or call a good friend or family member who can support you and listen to you.
Your daughter is a hero! She told you. So many children do not and then go forward only to face substance abuse, self harm , PTSD, promiscuity or suicide. Your daughter is alive and trusted you enough to tell you . She is one brave young woman. And you will be her hero. Stay strong , my friend. You are not alone. You can get thru this. Our family did it and so will yours.
Laura
I know this will sound disturbing but one thing I had to do was count my blessings. My daughter was strong enough to tell me the "secret" and for that I am grateful. I helped save her from any more torture from her abuser! What happened to her was unreal! She was molested for 5 years and pregnant at 14 from her abuser (her step brother). I have to be here to keep her safe so that's the only reason I haven't done anything to that POS!!! Almost 2 years later and not a day goes by that I don't think about what I would love to happen to him! I hope some day that feeling gets better.
Some days are horrible. You want to stand up and scream and be selfish, I guess. But, then you have to be the strong one to take care of your daughter. Oh man, none of this is fair!!!!! Again, I am so sorry you had to find this forum.
Please look into counseling for the both of you. So far that's the only thing I truly believe has saved my sanity. Even my husband found "some" comfort in counseling. I hope you are able to find peace and healing for you and most of all your sweet baby girl!
Please consult this site for specific information -- it was a first stop for many of us:
www.mosac.net
Sending you strength.
You say you want blood?
I have a better idea...
You're a cop.
This experience has taught you better than any books.
Please pay attention and learn because so many in law enforcement SUCK at catching pedophiles.
Immediately a mom who alleges CSA is labelled a vindictive woman until proven otherwise.
Please set yourself aside from the rest.
Where I live each photo on our sex offender registry screams HELLO CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!!
Our police department lauds itself for these captures with its special sex offender crime unit.
Well... White collar guys do this too.
My 4 kids and I know this all too well.
Our police, CPS, counselors DONT.
You could extract your pound of flesh from that monster and others like his by serving (when you're ready) as an educator for others in law enforcement. Sociopaths often rise to the top because they simply do not care about hurting others, although they may realize that it's best if they seem to care. Successful sociopaths who hurt children seek ways to make it look as if they care about children -- in order to be near children, like Jerry Sandusky, and teachers who make headlines for sexually abusing their students. We need to redefine the term "usual suspects."
I want to point out that even if you and your children are educated it can still happen. This I know for sure. I also know that it is possible to get yourself and your child thru this nightmare. After the fire there can be rebirth for you and your children. Part of the healing process is acknowledging that you did your best and still couldn't keep your kid safe.
Laura