I am a near 50 year old mother of two girls, now 10 and 13. When my youngest daughter was 3 she started to disclose to my mother and I that her father with whom I had separated was sexually abusing her. This was nearly 6 years ago and after 2.5 years in the family court he was found culpable. I have spent the last 3 years rebuilding our lives the best way that I can, but now, because he is demanding more time with my youngest daughter (the eldest likes to think of him as dead and he was called Voldemort by her for some years) we are back in the court system. I looked for resources, people to talk too, but because others like me can’t share their experience it is few and far between. We were failed by the social workers and the police, and as many say it really is a postcode lottery.
I am a big believer in justice, it is the thing that can make my blood boil. So ironically, here I am blogging anonymously because for the last 5 years I have been constrained by the legal system and desire to protect my 2 girls when all I have wanted is to share so those who have failed can be held accountable.
So from here on in I will share my experience from when I became a MOSAC (mother of sexually abused children) in the summer of 2017, what I have learnt about the system, the failings and the aftermath.
A bit of background, I was separated from my husband, the father of my two children and had been for about 18 months. He was emotionally abusive to me and my eldest daughter so I ran when Lily was 2 and Lola nearly 5. We split time near 50:50, and it was hard. The weekend I left him his mother died, the timing was horrendous. So I let him move back in, as I was worried that my leaving him would tip him over the edge. During the last few months of our marriage I would wake in the night with panic attacks, him lying next to me, wondering how I could get out of this situation. He was in denial there was anything wrong with our marriage, and I naively thought it best to ride it out till the girls were older. The tipping point was seeing Lola withdraw, he wouldn't let her colour/play as it made too much of a mess so she had a resident spot on the sofa, crouched in a corner watching Charlie and Lola.
We lived like it for 2 months, I was in total fear that he would murder us all in our sleep or take the girls and kill them. I felt I was being paranoid, but then again not, it was a real gut reaction.
Over the 18 months post separation I noticed a change in my children and put it down to the breakdown of my marriage, but they would return from weekends with him full of gifts and words about their theatre trips. They became super high. Unable to come down from hysteria, a particular memory is one Sunday when they came home and whilst eating a roast Lola put her face in the gravy.
One Sunday evening they came home and Lily was in a trance. She wouldn’t communicate with me, or acknowledge me and remained that way for the rest of the evening. I had no idea what had caused it. I now know it was disassociation.
A year or so after the separation he took them to LegoLand for an overnight stay, I had been away with work so returned home at a similar time to them. After he left Lola told me ‘he slept next to me naked in bed’. I was flummoxed. I messaged friends, many of whom said their partners would be naked in front of their children. One of my family had worked in the NSPCC and so I called her. She advised me to share the pantosaurus song. It is a great film and one I would recommend watching.
I shared the film with Lola but she didn’t seem upset, so I called him. He hung up then went awol for the rest of the day. It worried me, his reaction, but then he wasn’t/isn’t normal so I decided I had to park it, I trusted Lola who was 5 at the time to tell me if anything was wrong.
A couple of weeks later they went on holiday with him to the Isle of Wight, they screamed as he drove away. I spent a week away from them painting yet again another room with another new F&B colour. I was always anxious when they were with him, I had left him because of the emotional abuse he inflicted on me and Lola and I worried for their emotional and physical safety.
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