I have tried to start writing something here a few times now, and ended up writing a novel and then deleting. I'm just going to quickly share my situation without the long drawn out story and ask for help/advice. 

You will probably all hate me after reading this but that's okay, I hate myself enough already and always will. 

Background- I am a mom of four kids. I became a mother at 17. My oldest daughter's bio-dad was not involved in her life in any way and made it clear that he wouldn't be. Having my daughter completely changed my life and from the minute she was born, she was all that mattered. I finished school, worked and got myself through college, and spent every second I wasn't in school or work with my precious girl. 
When she was a very young toddler, I met my husband. I thought he was wonderful. He was attending a private christian college near by and we attended the same church. He was a linguistics major but planning to go on to Seminary and then become a pastor. I thought he was going to be the best dad ever. 

Fast forward... We got married when my daughter was 3. My husband became her legal father, and he thought the best way to raise her would be to believe that he was her biological dad, so that she "always feels loved and wanted" and the plan was to tell her the truth some day when she was older and mature enough to process it all. The thought was that she would feel like she had been raised by the best dad possible and that she hadn't missed out on anything. I felt uneasy about it, honestly, but our pastor at the time was in agreement with my husband so, that's what we did. My daughter grew up believing my husband was her biological father.

We had another daughter a year and a half later. Then two boys. (The younger three are each one year apart.) Life got busy and crazy and expensive. I stopped working when our first son was born and became a stay at home mom. My husband quit seminary and got a "real" job that could support our family. 

Ugh, I keep writing this all out, realizing I wrote a novel, and deleting it and starting over. 

One night when my oldest had just turned 11 years old I woke up in the middle of the night and my husband wasn't in bed and the door to our bedroom was shut, which was very strange. I went to find him, thinking he'd gone to the kitchen to get water or something, and he was nowhere to be found and the door to the room that my girls (11 and almost 7 at the time) shared was shut, which was very unsual as we didn't shut any bedroom doors at night. I opened it and was very surprised to find my husband in there, in the dark. He told me to go back to bed and he'd be there in a minute. He ended up saying that he'd gotten up to check on our dog that was sleeping in the girls' room. It honestly made no sense at all, and left me with a super uneasy feeling but I was totally stupid and naive and didn't consider that he would have been in there to harm our girls. 

I'm just going to get to the important parts. LOOOOOONG story short, my husband molested our daughter repeatedly during the summer that she'd just turned 11. At the end of the summer, several weeks after the night I'd found him in the girls' room, she came to me and said that she woke up during the night and "daddy was rubbing my legs." She didn't say anything else. I wish I'd asked her more questions. I was so afraid of the truth. My husband promised and swore on our lives and marriage and kids' lives and everything else that nothing bad had happened. He tried to say that sometimes before he went to bed he would just go to "tuck the kids in."
We had a house full of little kids and I didn't have an income at the time and I know that I was afraid of being alone and homeless if we didn't have him to support us. Also, even though he was a lazy and un-inolved father (he spent ALL of his time that he wasn't at work, playing online computer video games that he was completely addicted to) I still thought he was the love of my life and my best friend. I don't think my brain would really let me accept the truth, as stupid as that sounds now.

A year after my daughter's partial disclosure, police showed up at our door. They said our daughter had told someone at school that her father had sexually abused her. They also said that the investigation included possible charges against me for knowing that abuse had happened and for not protecting my daughter or reporting it. I know that my daughter heard that part and was afraid of something happening to me, or that she and her little siblings would be taken. So she denied everything. 

I should include that my husband is a total classic narcissist/sociopath. (Which took me a long time to see.) He's 6' 5", handsome, very charming, great with words, super confident. He charmed the police, and later the lady from child protective services. I know now that he lied through his teeth, all while remaining calm and collected and confident. He had the police laughing with him. All in front of my poor, sweet daughter. 

So, all charges were dropped and we were declared a happy little family. 

Over the following years I knew in my heart that something really had happened but I never had the guts to directly ask my daughter about it. I went from a happy, active person to a depressed, anxious, withdrawn person. I stopped running and working out, and gained weight and just felt sad and worried all the time.

As time went on I found out disturbing things about my husband. He'd basically been living a double life for our entire marriage. He'd been having work affairs, habitually visiting prostitutes, and had an EXTREME porn addiction. (I even found out later that he'd had an affair with one of our son's best friend's MOMs, and they would have sex IN OUR HOUSE, IN OUR BED while I was gone at volleyball tournaments with my oldest daughter and my husband was supposed to be in charge of the younger kids. So, the younger kids were IN THE HOUSE while he was having sex with this friend's mom in my bed.)

At first, I'd only found out minimal stuff (porn addiction and visiting "happy ending" massage parlors.) My husband said he'd realized that he was a sex addict and he joined a group and started therapy. The more I found out about him, the more I KNEW the stuff with my daughter had really happened.

Miraculously, as she grew up she continued to be a completely amazing kid who excelled in school and in sports, but now I know that she carried this horrible secret and that inside, she loathed herself and had no real self esteem.   

He said he was sorry, and that he'd come to realize he was a sex addict. He was going through therapy and attending groups. I was starting to work and prepare for how I would leave him. I continued to bring up the past things with my daughter, and he kept denying that stuff. Then one day, completely on accident, I found a folder on his computer that was titled something to do with work. I clicked on it and to my horror it was full of pictures of our daughter when she was younger. They weren't pictures that he'd taken, they were technically harmless pictures that *I* had taken. But there were pictures of her at 11 that I'd taken while we were on a camping trip and she's in a bikini, and he'd cropped them just to have the close ups of her bathing suit areas. There were also other random pics and videos of her in there, mixed in with the cropped bathing suit pictures. They were all from when she was 10-12 years old. 

I LOST it. I was sick to my stomach, and full of rage. He finally admitted everything. Yes, he'd abused her. Yes, it had all been true. He'd been too ashamed to ever tell me, and he'd REALLY believed he'd caused no harm. He said something about having an obsession with her. 

I kicked him out of the house. 

That was almost two years ago. My oldest daughter is now in her second year of college. We still haven't talked openly or in detail about the past, but she's made comments about keeping "that child molester" away from my other children, or that he's disgusting or a monster. 

At first after he left, I wasn't sure what to do from there. For a while I even attended counseling with him, but it was at a place in Beverly Hills that is all about sex addiction and recovery and is all about protecting the addict. It was insane. 

Every time I threatened to go to the police about the past, my husband would make it clear that the kids and I would be destitute and homeless without his financial contributions. 

For a while after we separated, he was still seeing our younger kids once a week to take them out to lunch. After several months, my younger daughter said she no longer wanted to see or speak to him. I was so afraid that something had also happened to her, but from what I've gotten out of her, she remembers that he used to come into their room at night to abuse her sister and she finally got old enough to piece things together and realize what had been happening. 

I stopped allowing any contact with him and our children last year.

I retained an attorney and shared all of the details with her. Her advice was to get divorced and demand full legal and physical custody, along with child and spousal support. She basically said that having him go to prison wouldn't really help the kids and I, because I am not really in a position to fully support all of us financially. This way I have full custody, but he is still contributing. 

He's been dragging his feet and drawing this out for what feels like forever. Every day, I am in pain and I am consumed with sadness over the things that happened and how they were all handled. I know that my daughter won't be able to push down the things that happened to her forever, and that someday she's going to have to deal with this trauma. 

Right now, I'm struggling so much. I don't know if I should continue pushing to finalize the divorce and just focus on getting custody and support, or if I'm going about all of this wrong and I should instead be pushing my daughter to press charges. Would anything even come of that at this point? 

My daughter just turned 20, and it's been almost 9 years since the abuse happened. 

Thank you to anyone who even made it through reading all of that. I probably didn't even make any sense. I'm just so desperate to move forward, and I'm still so trapped and such an emotional mess over everything. I carry so much guilt, it's debilitating.