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Guest cheerthinker

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Guest cheerthinker

I really need to talk to someone. About 5 days ago, my little boy told me some very shocking things. A year ago, we left his abusive father. I came back to where I've lived most of my life from a foreign country. Had no support there, and packed up as much stuff as I could fit in a uhaul trailer that I could afford, and in my old vehicle drove 2200 miles home with my son.

I guess I'm in shock and a form of disbelief. I believe my son, it's just so unbelievable, what he told me. I had read an article on how to talk to kids about strangers and people who might molest them. I thought it was a really good article, so I decided to follow it's outline and talk to my son.

I had already talked to him about strangers, and how they will lie to you and try to trick you, how they might ask you to help them find their doggie or kitty, or for directions or something and that adults should never ask a child for help, they should ask another adult. He kept asking me to tell him about "strangers" and the lies they tell you to be able to grab you. This article talked about how you should tell your kids that secrets are not okay at all, and that there are people with a problem of wanting to look at or touch other's private parts might also lie to you. So he asked me what kind of lies these people might tell you, and I told him that they might tell you that they will hurt your Mommy or your kitty, or hurt you. So he asked me several times to repeat this, about the lies they tell you to get you to keep a secret that isn't good for you.

So he told me that Daddy had touched his peepee. I asked him, was Daddy helping you in the bath or to go peepee in the potty? And he said no. Then he said that Daddy rubbed his peepee until it got puffy and it got all hard and it hurt. I panicked and I think he heard the panic in my voice, and I asked him how many times that had happened, and where. He said it was in the bathroom and it had happened lots of times. So I just about went out of my mind and I think I asked him one too many questions because then he said, "I was just teasing".

So the next night I told him, "you know the stuff you were telling me you were teasing about, I want you to know that I'm very proud of you for telling me that and I think you're a very brave little boy". I told him that I could understand why he didn't tell me before if he was scared that he would be hurt or Mommy would be hurt or something. So he acted embarrassed a little, then he asked me to tell him about the lies people told to get you to keep secrets again. So I went over it again with him, telling him that secrets are not okay in our family, and that no one should be telling him to keep secrets. If they were, then that is bad and it could be secrets that hurt him. So then he said, "Daddy hates my bum" and this shocked me, and I thought he was just being silly at first and I said, Daddy hates your bum? Why would he hate your bum? No one could hate your bum. He said, because Daddy put his finger in my bum and he got poopy on it. And, shocked, I said, which finger? He said, it was his pinky finger. So I tried to be kind of silly about it and said, eeeeew, he got poopy on his finger? And I said how did you know it was his pinky finger? and he said, because it was the one that is only a stump, the one that he cut off. (his father cut off 4 fingers on his left hand with a table saw, and the pinky on that hand is a stump).

About this time I was gone out of my mind. I asked him, what did he tell you would happen if you told? And he said, "Die" and I said, "who?" and he said, "me die".

I am still in utter and complete shock and horror. I took him to a psychologist who does play therapy on the recommendation of a friend who's boys were molested by their babysitter. She was absolutely excellent. She's on vacation for a week though. Then I went to see a counselor I had been taking him to because of the abuse he witnessed while we were there and his resulting aggressiveness and nightmares (I thought that was the reason). She called the Child Abuse Registry.

My ex has two daughters from a previous marriage, 12 and 15. The older one is already with him for the summer and the 12 year old is going to be there on Tuesday. He lives in Canada, so the authorities are going to deal with this now. I know that they are really good about following up on child abuse there due to their handling of his domestic violence toward me.

He hasn't called our son in a couple months, ignored my messages when he had a very high fever and I had to take him to the ER, calling me a foul name as his response to my message. His response to my leaving him has been to call me crazy and tell everyone he knows that I am insane - now I think he was bracing for me finding out about the abuse of my son (I say MY son because I do not consider that man his father). Yet, now, he is demanding to see him in September and telling me that if I fight him and do not allow him to see him that he will see me in court and I will lose.

I have been dealing with my little one's having terrible insomnia and nightmares, that have persisted all this time since we left. After he told me about the abuse, this has escalated to extremes. He didn't fall asleep until 5:30 in the morning yesterday and 2 a.m. this morning. I have a problem with severe insomnia as well whenever I am upset by this man.

I must say, that I was concerned about his behavior soon after becoming engaged to him. His ex wife left their two daughters, ages 6 and 9, in his care for 6 months while she moved a thousand miles away with her new boyfriend. The plan was that each keep them for six months at a time. This made me really wonder about the Mom, and then I thought, she must really trust him as a father.

Then some things began to really bother me. His six year old daughter's bedroom was adjacent to ours. It seemed to me that he was purposely leaving our bedroom door open during sex and I was having to get creative on how to get away and shut the door. He seemed to really be preventing me from shutting the door. This made me very uncomfortable. The other thing is that he was extremely loud during sex. I asked him if it bothered him that his girls could hear this and wouldn't they wonder what was going on? And he said, "oh, let them listen".

Another thing is that while he claimed to be very modest to me, and somewhat embarrassed about being naked in front of me - he would go out of the bedroom to discipline his girls for fighting with each other in the morning stark naked. I really puzzled over it. I hadn't had any children yet and felt that I didn't have any perspective about it.

I finally became more alarmed when his older daughter, who is a very talented artist even at a young age, drew a picture of him naked with his pubic hair and privates.

Also, he seemed to be leaving porn around. He would print photos out from the computer at night, then leave it at the computer so that they could find it in the morning, it seemed to me. He knew they were up before he or I was usually and the first thing they did was go to the computer to play computer games. I had gotten up earlier a few times and found really graphic porn sitting there within easy view.

Then, I found the youngest crawling through our bedroom in the middle of sex! I was horrified! She also was very aggressive toward me, would climb all over me and refuse to get off, and finally I went to a motel to stay after she climbed on my back and pinched my breasts purposely. She also grabbed my hand and pulled my arm into her crotch and said, "this feels nice". In addition, she told me that she liked to rub on the edge of the bed and it felt really good. At the same time she was having a problem with "accidents" in her pants, at school and all times of the day, and she would wet her bed at night. Then she would hide her messy underwear and wet sheets under stuff in her bedroom. Her father was shaming her for it, so I looked the problem up on the web and came up with "encopresis" - and I printed a huge stack of information on it out for him and for him to give to her Mom. In the research that I did, it said that this was a warning sign of sexual abuse. By this time I had some severe alarm bells going off and had begun to really worry.

However, by this time I was pregnant with my son, and very very sick.

Other signs - the laundry room was right by the bathroom, and he claimed he had to make sure that the six year old washed herself. So he would stand in the bathroom the whole time she was taking her bath. It made me nervous, but he said, she's only six and of course she needs help. I still didn't really have a perspective on this since I hadn't had my son yet and I hadn't been around kids in a long time - plus, every family is different. When I had asked him about running out there naked in front of his girls instead of throwing on a robe like he made sure to do if there was someone at the door - he said he didn't want his daughters to feel ashamed about their bodies like he was made to feel. Yet- a few years down the road he made a very definite point to make a big fuss about me seeing him naked, and to hide from me if I happened to walk into our room while he was undressed. Conversely, he seemed to have a knack for walking in on me while dressing or undressing and made a big show of averting his eyes. I thought this was a bit much for people who have had a child together.

Later, I began to feel that he had no interest in me sexually. He would tease me all day and then make sure nothing happened at night. And I mean, he made sure. I cannot tell you how many times he would be at the deciding moment of seduction, of maybe an hour or more even, then say to me, "I really need to sleep" and roll over to go to sleep, until I realized this was purposeful behavior. He did this enough times that I knew it was no accident or just a tired person. I began to go over it and over it in my mind trying to figure out what was wrong until I was exhausted.

Then I began to notice that he only seemed really interested in me when his girls were around. I talked to the psychologist we were seeing for his ripping the bedroom door off it's hinges - and she said, if that continues and you can see there is a correlation then that would be an indicator that he's a pedophile.

Well, anyone that has read this so far, thankyou for sticking with it. I have been unable to talk about this to anyone and am in a state of panic. Today I think, something should be happening regarding this up where he is. I had put in a call to the mother of the girls, his ex wife, but she has not called me back. The psychologist who made the report told me to just let the authorities handle it, because people can react very strangely to this stuff and you never know how it will go - and that if I called her and told her myself I could be putting myself out for getting abuse I don't need on top of all this.

Today I am going to talk to my attorney, since she is about to file my papers for sole custody - but this just came up and now we need to discuss it.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Any and all input would be appreciated. Any help in helping me to see that this is really happening and how to help my son. Any thoughts on whether my perceptions have been correct, all my fears that have been destroying me from the inside out until I finally got out of there - do they resonate with anyone? Do all of those things make sense?

Thankyou,

Cheerthinker

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(cheerthinker) :hug:

your story made me :cry: - i'm so sorry for all the pain you and your son (and his other children) are going through right now! :hug:

don't listen to your husbands threats of taking you to court- there's no way any judge would ever let that sick bastard have custody!

Any help in helping me to see that this is really happening and how to help my son.

your already doing an incredible job with your son!- believing him and offering him love and understanding are to of the most important things and you are already doing those things- you are a very strong woman! that your son felt able to talk to you about these things is a credit to how good a job you are doing- all i can say is keep it up!

just continue to do what you are doing- tell your son how much you love him, let him know it wasn't his fault, and let him know how brave and special he really is and i'm sure that one day you will both be able to put this behind you and begin to rebuild your lives! :hug:

we are all here for you- any time you need to talk!

emmax

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Hi Cheerthinker,

Welcome to the forum, although your reasons for being here are sad and one shouldn't have to be here for them. From what you've said about your son and your ex, you are doing the right thing. As Nicole said the man is a monster and has already done a lot of damage to his daughters. Hopefully you've gotten help for your son quickly enough and your continued loving support will also help him to make it past this horrible thing that's happened to him. How can anyone treat their children like this and get away with it??? Heck, for that matter how can they look themselves in the face in the mirror every day and not see themselves for the monsters they are?

Best of luck to you in this situation. I think it is imperative that you keep your son away from this person, and I am confident that you will do whatever is necessary to achieve this end. You will find, I think, that this forum is full of caring and supportive people.

:hug:

Ardatha

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Guest queenie

((Cheer))

I am so so very sorry for what has happened to your son and to his daughters. I am very glad you have sought out a support group for this, we are all here to listen and help in anyway we can.

How can anyone treat their children like this and get away with it??? Heck, for that matter how can they look themselves in the face in the mirror every day and not see themselves for the monsters they are?

I agree, How can he even bare to live with himself?! How utterly disgusting.

I really applaud you taking it upon yourself to call the mother of these daughters...I understand where the therapist is coming from-you infact do not deserve any of his abuse-nobody does, but it was definately worth the try to help save these little girls. I also applaud all you have done so far for your son. Telling him that he is a very very brave boy is exactly what he needs to hear. He needs to know it is safe to tell mommy or the therapist/officals what has happened. A very important way, which I think is key to helping your son, is to help and take care of yourself too. He can sense no matter how much you thing you are hiding it, that you are in a state of panic...you and him both have a very difficult road ahead of you and you need each other to get through it. What are you doing for yourself at the moment? Are you speaking to a therapist as well? It may help you. We of course are always here to listen and lend our support.

I am very sorry for all you and your son and those innocent girls have endured. We are all here for you.

Much Love

:throb:

Jen

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Hi Cheer

Welcome to AS, you're very brave to have come this far and I really am proud of what you've achieved! You're an amazing woman and a wonderful mother!

Unfortunately the signs that you have told us really do indicated sexual abuse to the young girls. You've done the right thing! You remember that. I'm glad you've taken action against this bastard and I hope he is convicted and succumbs to the inmates in the prison he rots in!

Take precious care of you and your son

~Janene

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Guest qtchickaj

Cheerthinker,

Atleast I can say you have a positive attitude. First you need to remind yourself what a good mother you are. It takes a very strong person to face these things instead of trying to ignore them I commend you!!!!

To give you a short summary on me I was molested by my mothers husband from the age of 6 to 17 at which time he beat me to near death. My mother caught him in the act when i was 10 and ignored the situation except for treating me like "the other woman." I put the SOB in jail by myself and lost all forms of family due to me "ruining my mothers life and last chance at happiness." As you can see I come from a less than intellegent gene pool. :-) Anyways I plowed through life strong & proud until 2 years ago when my (then 5yr old) daughter was molested at her day care, This is what broke me!!!! Blah blah blah...I only tell you this because my advice comes from enough life experience as opposed to theory.

Medically I find the best resources for children can come from your areas largest Children's Hospital. You will need to contact your area's Department of Social Service or Children's Services. They will start a case file and turn these allegations in to reality. Which will be needed when you go to court.

You mentioned that he was fond of computer porn. Personally I would contact the computer crimes task force in his area with as much DOCUMENTED items as possible, this would help them get a search warrant for his computer, If they find any kiddie porn on his hard drive (which can never be fully erased) he will get charged with that....I would do this first as it would help lock in your custody case.

Restraining Orders can be filed in the county that you live in, but unless you first request a transfer of record the custody proceedings will have to be in the same county you were divorced in. If this was Canada you will want to do the transfer first for home court advantage.

The most important thing you can due is stay unreactive infront of your son. He needs to feel that he can talk to you about anything. If he sees your pain he will be reluctant to share any further. I have created a rule in my house that anyone who tells the truth doesn't get in touble. Even if it's koolaid on the white rug when I said no...the truth gets respect...(& I can clean up before the stain sets :-). This is then backed up by Santa Claus knowing everything & lyers get coal! My daughter now tells me everything asks me questions you wouldn't expect & seems to be moving past this because she is dealing with her feelings as opposed to hiding them or acting out in other ways. If you need a moment to compose yourself I find the bathroom is the best place to hide.

And most importantly don't forget to take care of number one. You are a fabulous woman and a fabulous mother and you deserve to be spoiled rotten! This is going to suck the energy from you so if you don't give yourself a little TLC you are going to crash eventually.

I am so proud of you and you should be too!

I wish you the best,

AJ

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Guest cheerthinker

Oh my gosh, thankyou so much to everyone for the replies.

It is just now starting to hit me, the horror. I am fading in and out of numbness and this feeling of it happening to someone else, someone else's baby.

To Nicole: Thankyou for the support. I have felt like a bad mother that he kept having problems and I didn't know why, and I couldn't fathom what was wrong. I have kept using all of my energy to figure out what is going on, never thinking that THAT was possible. We left when he was still 3, almost 4! Tomorrow he will be 5. I am so horrified.

I haven't been able to talk to my attorney either and am just frantic. The restraining order is a very good idea and I am going to pursue it.

The mother of the girls hasn't called me back, but then the 15 year old daughter told me that she would tell her that I called, and she was at her father's house so I don't suppose the mom got the message.

My ex has threatened me through ICQ that he is coming down here in September and if I fight him on this he will see me in court and I will lose my son. I told him that I want no further contact with him and he should contact my attorney. Then tonight he sent a sugary sweet birthday message over ICQ, after not acknowledging his birthday last year nor sending him anything. Then he said he wanted to hug and tickle him (how do I put in that angry emoticon)

I do hope he goes to prison, and thankyou for the thoughts, prayers, and encouragement, they mean more to you than you might know.

Betty: I'm sorry that you cried, I've realized that people put a message "triggering" by their posts and I will do that in the future. You are very tenderhearted. And thankyou for what you said about the threats. I talked to the play therapist today and she told me that there is no way he will get custody, and likely not visitation either. I told her it's just that you can't forget the horror stories that happen and it really is scary until it's taken care of.

Thankyou for the comments about my son being able to talk to me. I think I went overboard, because last night he told me that he didn't ever want to talk about it again. Plus, he's said some things that make me think it's the tip of the iceberg. He started talking about a "slime monster", and I thought he might have been talking about a silly movie where these trolls have slime coming from their mouths and noses, so I asked him where the slime comes from on these monsters. He told me it came from their belly button. And he has hinted at a lot more secrets. He basically told me he is afraid to tell. I asked him what did he think would happen to him if he told me the things that he was teasing about, and they were true. He said, I hate daddy, and if I hate daddy, then I will die. He has been talking about Mommy dying and everyone dying. He also told me that a neighbor boy across the street (age 6 at the time) told him that I am a bad person - that his Mommy is a bad person. What I got out of this is that it was actually his father telling him this and I am just starting to get horrible glimpses of emotional devastation. Anyway, he told me once again that he didn't want to talk about it.

This terrifies me, because I have a suspicion that he is unusually intelligent, and he has been very aggressive. He came and told me he had been "rough" with the cat, and I asked him what he meant and he said that he pulled the hair on his head until he cried. I also caught him hitting the kitties once, while hiding with them in my van. I just see such a depth of fury that terrifies me! I am so scared of how he is going to deal with this, and then he has been clamming up and I'm sure he senses how important it is to me to try to clear things up with him - and every time I try to clear something up now I am seeing this huge monolith underneath and don't know how I'm going to deal with it, and how he's going to deal with it.

Another thing is that he has been sexually acting out - he started this thing out of the blue with playing with himself while we were still with his father and I just knew it wasn't from natural discovery. It became difficult to get him to stop doing it, especially without making him feel ashamed. Then we came down here, and he was ok for a while and then started that again. Then he's been forgetful of it for a while, and since telling me the first of this abuse it seems to be something of a problem again.

Isn't every mothers worst fear in the universe that her child will end up abusing another child or something? I hardly dare write the terror down in words, it is so horrible to me. If anyone had asked me what was my worst fear in life regarding relationships, I would have instantly told them that it was the terror of finding out the person I was with was a child abuser. And I've just found out that horror was true.

Anyway, thankyou Betty for your encouragement. I am going to try to find it in me to stay as positive as I can and hope he can confide the rest of this horror, because I am sure as a mother can know with mother's intuition that there is a lot more in there and I hope I haven't made him bury it with my reaction and pressuring him too much.

Ardatha, thankyou too. You said, "How can anyone treat their children like this and get away with it??? Heck, for that matter how can they look themselves in the face in the mirror every day and not see themselves for the monsters they are? " - and I could not agree with you more. I don't know how they can do it, I still can't get my mind to process it, it just makes no sense whatsoever.

I know that I used to puzzle over him saying, "you make me want to be a better man" - ( "as good as it gets"was one of his favorite movies) And I also wondered, why doesn't this man have more self esteem? He is successful in his business, he is a very hard worker (a little too hard, for whatever reasons) he owns his own business, blah blah blah it just didn't add up where the low self esteem was rooted.

So in his case, I think he does know he is a monster. Also, early on in the relationship he told me that I looked about 12 years old when we were "in bed". He also told me I have a very sexy voice - and the main thing most people say about my voice is that I sound like a little kid. All this made me wonder at times if he thought he could carry off a relationship with an adult woman if she was child like enough. Of course that's before I had my baby. And then I thought of Priscilla Presley's autobiography where she wrote that Elvis wouldn't touch a woman who was a mother and he never was intimate with her again after she had their daughter. And we know he was a pedophile. @#$%!^&*! I don't know, it's just sickening.

Queenie:

Oh, your words are also music to my ears, the comment about his being a brave little boy. It is so hard to know what the right thing to say is, and I want to say exactly the right thing, exactly the thing that will make him feel better. I hope so much that I have done something right in this situation and your words are very reassuring. Although I seem to have undone some of the good. And thanks for asking about me, I could see clearly tonight if I didn't face it before that it will be a very tough road ahead. Right now I am talking to one of the psychologists, and the play therapist has me call her to talk about the session afterward so my son can't hear what we talk about, and she's very compassionate and a good listener, so that has helped.

Today I also called the wonderful counselor that I went to before I got out of Canada - she was my only support and I wouldn't have gotten out without her. It felt so good to hear her voice and talk to her for a while. I updated her on my situation and thanked her for helping us get out. She gave me a book that was my best friend on scary nights and I would recommend to anyone "When Love Hurts" by two friends of hers, researchers in Canada. I will put up the names of the authors if anyone would like it, you can order it on the web.

I am hoping that someone has contacted the mother of the girls by now. I am going to call my counselor in Canada back tomorrow and find out if she is required to report what I told her herself, since we were/are her clients at the time the abuse occured, and it occured in Canada. I told her that the psychologist here reported it to the Child Abuse Registry and they said they would take the necessary steps to get the girls out of his reach. I am half expecting a stream of invective and hatred any day now to pur out of my icq message thing.

Thankyou Queenie for your words of support and love.

Nene:

Thankyou also. Thankyou for the compliments. It has been a rough road. In deciding to leave the creep, my son was who tipped the scales. He was displaying abusive behavior toward him and it just crushed me. He is the reason I had the courage to get out of there, with no money, a risky vehicle, no job, no home, you get the picture. I am so glad I got out when I did and only wish I could have gotten out sooner.

Something that I have noticed and would like to know if anyone else has observed this also, is that he continually tried to break/loosen/weaken my maternal bond with my son. He tried to get me to not breast feed, then he tried to get me to stop way too soon, he did so many things I guess I should post it as a separate topic and get feedback on that alone, because I have a lot of observations on it and wonder if it is common among these predators as part of their strategy, and it seemed a conscious strategy, especially in retrospect.

The reason I mention it is that I thought he had been trying to do the same thing with his previous wife while they were married and of course after they were apart, and that she succumbed to it, although I think that 11 years of being with him might wear a person down.

I am very concerned that his girls are headed for misery. The older girl has terrible self-esteem and he certainly doesn't help any. He made derogatory comments on both of the girls appearance that were just insufferable, and the older girl seems to think she's only good enough for the riff-raff even at her young age. The younger girl is extremely bright and is pretty much a loner. She was on antidepressants to help her with her bedwetting and stuff, yet he never gave me a full explanation, just made a quick comment when she had left her prescription bottle on the counter. So I don't know what the future holds for them. They definitely have done better when with their mother - it's just, how could she supress her intuition that something really serious was going on in regard to their father? Stuff he has told me lets me know he did the same stuff to her. Refused to have sex with her, and had her frantically dieting when her little one was a newborn to lose all the baby weight. She used to accuse him of being unattracted to her because of a few pounds, and I think, little did she know. He also described her as having big ugly floppy breasts and that he hated big breasts. Well, the truth is she had a beautiful figure and was accustomed to being lusted after and she must have been just as tortured as me to find this MAN was "frigid". I happened to find some "boudour" pictures she had had taken of herself as a present for him, and he had absolutely floored me by telling me how much those photos had disgusted him. Then, I happened to see them and they were very tasteful and she certainly did not have "big floppy sloppy breasts", she looked great.

Oh my gosh it was so painful to be with him I can't imagine what his girls have been through with him, it's horrible.

I hope he does rot in prison, before he does it to some other innocents. I know he's "madly in love" with some unsuspecting person whom he took on a cruise to Alaska in June (yet he can't pay one dime toward his own son's expenses since February, and even then it was just about one dime) I can't help but wonder if this person has children.

I spent so much time, terrified and agonizing on whether all of these things did indicate sexual abuse or not. I was so afraid to tell anyone, thinking that they would swoop in and take the kids and who knows what would happen - so I wanted to make sure myself that I wasn't imagining things! How I wish I had been able to meet you all on this message board and ask if you also thought these things were indicators. I had no experience with anything of this sort, and was just lost in this torture of worry. I wanted to get out just on the basis of it having entered my head, and having to wonder at all. Hope I haven't rambled too much. Thank you Ardatha.

(have to try to get some sleep so I hope you will forgive me qtchickaj for answering yours a little later)

Thankyou ALL soooo MUCH!,

Love,

Cheerthinker :angry:

Edited by cheerthinker
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I am very sorry for all you've been through with this horrible man and I hope he goes to jail for what he's done. I also think it would be important for your son to have some postive male influences with you around for security. I hope you still have him in therapy and I hope you will go yourself. :luck:

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