The Feminist Matron – My Hell

I went through a long bitter divorce.  During the marriage, I did not meet up to his wish for me to accept
his always submissive and controlled wife.  The more I insisted on my feminism being respected, the angrier and downright degrading he became. He never has respected my ideals of everyone having equal rights or my tolerance for other people’s lifestyle or life choices.

He would get particularly angry at me when I teach our sons my morals and values as a feminist.  I received beatings by him throughout the marriage and marital rape once, towards the end of our marriage after I decided I no longer wished to sleep with him, all because of his rage against me for who I am and what I stand for.

During the divorce a Guardian Ad Litem was appointed.  I gave her all the information that would lead to proof of his acts of violence and a lead to where she could investigate a psychological evaluation when he was diagnosed with a mental disorder.  She did not investigate anything I had provided her. In fact, she only interviewed both of us for a half an hour each in her office, did not speak with my sons, and she did not do a home visit.  Yet, she determined that it was in the best interest of our children to be placed in his sole custodial care.

During the closing arguments, their father’s attorney accused me of lying and attempting to manipulate the courts to be swayed to give me custody of the boys, in order to alienate the boys from having a relationship with their father.  He gave this dramatic scenario of me having emotional issues that would harm the boys’ ability to have a healthy relationship with their father.  He threw in that my emotional issues could cause the boys to adopt my unstable mental abilities as their own and cause all kinds of problems for them down the road.

No matter what I said or what I did, nothing seemed to matter.  With the slam of the gavel, I was mortified when I listened to the Judge hand my sons over to my abuser.  I felt like I was totally assaulted and absolutely betrayed by the system that was suppose to empower me as a protective mother to protect my  right to protect my children.  The expression on the father’s face of pure gloating that he gave me as he walked out of the courtroom with his lawyer was mere salt in the wounds.

It wasn’t until the following school term, that I went down to the elementary school where my sons attend, to discuss the educational goals the staff had for them and to avail myself to help out in anyway I could, that I found out that during the divorce my rights to make major educational and medical decisions was stripped away from me. They provided me a look at a copy of the parenting plan that their father provided for their school records.  It was the first time I had seen the parenting plan, because the father’s attorney failed to send me a copy of it as was court ordered.  And, to my horror I found that, without my knowledge, I lost my power as their mother to fully enjoy my rights to make major medical and educational decisions for my sons as I saw fit.

My major decision rights were never brought up in court as an issue at any time, so that I could have the lawful right to defend why I should not have had those restrictions placed on me.  This has completely stopped me from having any say in the matter regarding their medical or educational needs.  I have tried so many times to at least make myself available to their father to discuss the educational and medical issues of my sons, but I get no willingness on his part to allow me to have any say or suggest anything that I feel is in our sons’ best interest. Most importantly, these restrictions prevent me from full exercising my parental rights, which were clearly violated when major decision rights were stripped away from me without my due process rights being given to me.

In addition to that, I saw that I was court ordered to get one on one therapy to work on my trust issues so that I could become cooperative with the father in the raising of our sons.  To this day, I am unable to find a therapist that will enter into a counseling contract with me, to counsel me to trust the father who battered me and they refuse to counsel me to be cooperative with him to support his abusive parenting style.  The therapists I have spoken to are all baffled as to why the Judge would order this, when it goes against their desires to empower battered women and teach them how to respect, protect and love themselves.  My need for one on one therapy was never brought up in court as an issue at any time, so that I could have had the lawful right to defend why I should not be ordered to do so. How am I suppose to be in compliance with this order if it is impossible to do?

I also saw that I had been court ordered to enter into a parenting class to learn about how conflicts between the parents put children in high risk situations, in addition to the court approved parenting class that dealt with the same issues, that I had already taken.  This was ordered without being brought up in court so that it would give me the chance to defend why I should not be forced to do so, by showing her that the court approved parenting class covered parent conflicts and high risk children.

Ever since the father has won custody, he is constantly using the boys to continue his abuse and control over me by abusing and controlling them.  However, since the boys are now motherless in their dad’s home, I am not there to protect them from his escalating abuse on them.  They have suffered from his abuse and now his new wife, who is also diagnosed with a mental disorder.  Both of my sons have been held back a year and has had behavioral issues at school.  My sons report to me that they are being bullied at school and when they defend themselves, they get into trouble along with the bully.

When this happens, they are given a white slip that they must take home to show their dad. They say that when they show the white slip to their dad, they are made to drop their pants and bend over his knee while he gives them 20 spankings.  They say they are forced to count out each spanking, and if they cry or move, they get extra spankings.  In our parenting plan, there is an order that neither parent shall use corporal punishment on the children.   They both say that they are tired of being sent to school with only part of their homework done just to get into trouble by their teachers, because neither their father or his wife will lay aside their television habits to help them with their homework.  They say they are yelled at if they interrupt their father and his wife from watching a show on television, to ask for help.

Both of them have developed bed wetting issues since they have been in the custodial care of their father.  My oldest son is getting better.  However, my youngest son still wets the bed every night.  My youngest son is made to sleep on a bare plastic tarp, wearing only his underwear, covered only by a small thin wrap throw blanket, and with his heater ducts shut off.  He is also verbally abused for wetting his bed and called derogatory names and is accused of being stupid and lazy for wetting the bed.

When he wets his bed, he is made to get up and rinse out his underwear and blanket and wash the tarp, and then he is made to go back to bed only wearing his clean underwear on that bare plastic, without any covers. He has cried to me many times about how tired he gets from having to do that because all the cleaning takes time and then it’s hard for him to get back to sleep from being too cold.

There are more issues they tell me about, like being hit in the head, slapped in the face, grabbed by the throat, choked, knocked off of chairs, kicked, slammed up against walls and slammed on floors.  My sons are forced to call their father’s wife, “Momma” against their will and if they accidentally forget and call her by her first name, they are punished for that.  These are the type of things that has gone on since their father has had custody of them.  And to no avail, all agencies available that are there to protect my sons are not willing to get involved, and keep telling me it’s a civil matter and you need to deal with it in court.  However, this can’t be done because I am financially unable to get quality legal representation and I am not qualified to handle this type of a legalities on my own.  But, these things that are happening to them have done a huge damage to their self esteem and they have anger issues that escalate easily, and cause them to be extremely violent with the other and they are beginning to get defiant beyond what‘s normal for boys at their age.

However, it’s the past six months of complaints that has me absolutely afraid for their safety and well being that I can no longer ignore the abuse that’s going on and I have got to do something.  I am starting to suspec dangerous cult abuse against my sons.  Their dad and his wife belong to this church.  My sons report to me that before their dad spanks them, they are told by their dad and his wife, that when they are doing something wrong, that they are sinning before God and become evil and lose their relationship as God‘s children, and that the Bible tells parents that they must punish their children when they do wrong, so that they can be saved from their sins and become Gods children again.

My sons tell me that their dad is constantly reminding them that I am a rebellious woman who is in sin and has become an evil soldier for Satan, all because I am not a Christian and refuse to do my duty as a women to submit to his God given headship over my sons.  His wife verbally supports their father and both of them tell the boys that I am going to go to hell if I don’t turn my life over to Jesus to save me from my sins and be born again.  They have described hell to my sons as a huge hole where bad people are thrown into the fire and they are not allowed to die so they can feel themselves be burned forever.

If this isn’t dangerously wrong enough to do to my sons, they also tell my sons that if they want to be like me, they will be for evil and they will be thrown in hell with me.  Then, they tell my sons that if they want to be like them (father and his wife), they will be for the good and they will go to heaven with them.  Then, they are loudly asked, “Which side are you on? Evil or good?”  When my sons tell me this or similar things, they sometimes cry and get angry at their father and his wife, and they tell me that it’s not fair for them to be asked that, because they know I am not evil and don’t want to go through answering that they are on the good side, because it feels like they are saying they think I am evil to their father and his wife and it makes them feel really bad inside.  If you have ever seen the movie, “Jesus Camp”,  the way those kids in the movie are interrogated and brainwashed mirrors the description of what my sons say they go through at their dad’s house.

The sheer stress that my sons and I go through is taking it’s toll on our relationship.  Where we should be spending our weekends happy and full of joy, too much of our time is spent with tension and having to deal with all the emotional issues my sons are having.  My sons keep telling me that they are confused and angry with their dad and his wife, for how they talk bad about me and for the maltreatment they get when they are with them.  They are constantly begging me to find someone safe they can talk to about what’s going on at their dad’s home, because they say they are being told by their dad and his wife that if they tell anyone about what goes on, that they will be punished.  The last time CPS was involved, they did a home visit, despite being told not to let the father know because their safety would be at risk, and sure enough after the social worker left, they were punished.  So, now they don’t trust anyone for fear of going through that again.

It is incredibly painful as a mother to hear her sons cry and beg me to go to the judge and get the judge to let them live with me.  They don’t understand that it’s a much harder process than that.  There’s been so much damage done to my sons and I am scared to find out how they will turn out by the time they are old enough to move out on their own.  But, until the corruption of this system is brought down and all who are involved with making these evil decisions for our children are put to and end,  my children and thousands of other will continue to suffer the trauma from being place with the abusive and some times sexually molesting father.