Mum’s letters aren’t coming as frequently as they used to. I contacted my brother and one of my sisters to see if they are still getting them – they are. So I have no idea if dad’s stopped sending them to me for mum (as he’s the one that manages the computer and email) or if it’s purely co-incidental and they’ve gotten lost in cyberspace somewhere. I got one a couple of weeks ago but none last weekend again.

My brother rang dad on his birthday but didn’t speak to him for too long and mainly chatted with mum. He says dad sounds bitter now. I suffered a brief moment of guilt and then thought ‘why should I feel that way? It wasn’t me who did the wrong thing’.

How I hate what this has done to my family! My 50th is later this year and whilst I’m planning to have a party mum and dad won’t be invited. That saddens me – I’d like to see mum and make sure she’s ok but I won’t invite them here otherwise some of our daughters won’t want to be here and this is the home they grew up in. I really hate that dad’s done this to our family and I guess he never ever thought of the consequences either when he was having his ‘playtime’. Ughh!

bitter feelings, moment of guilt

It was dad’s birthday last Friday. Part of me wanted to ring him but how could I wish him a happy birthday? There’s nothing happy about it at all – not for me, and not for my girls. So I never rang him and just let the day pass. I didn’t even mention it was his birthday to the family but my eldest daughter did SMS me because she had remembered and I expect she would have called him – she was one daughter he didn’t touch.

It’s Sunday and my mum’s normal weekly letter hasn’t arrived. It could be for all sorts of reasons – problems with their computer again or their internet connection, but it’s just possible dad doesn’t want to send it for mum because I didn’t make contact last week for his birthday. Who knows? So hard to know what to do. Part of me knows I should be doing something about forgiveness, especially with my beliefs, but the trust that he broke all those years ago when my husband and I thought that our daughters would be safe with him is still very hard to take. And the knowledge of what he did is still so raw and new, it’s only been a few months. I probably should go back and see the counsellor – I hate having this thing oscillating inside my head, and not knowing what to do all the time. How do others deal with this?

We went to a friend’s funeral yesterday. We’d known him for around 12 years and he was 69 years old. He’d had cancer and finally lost his battle and went home to be with our Lord.

Whilst I knew this man reasonably well he wasn’t a close friend and I didn’t expect the funeral to reduce me to tears but it did. To watch the way his family lovingly told his story, and for his grandchildren to get up, talking and sobbing, about their beloved Pa, I began to grieve in a way that hadn’t yet taken place through our experiences over the past few months.

My husband and I had briefly talked about what would happen when my father dies. We know that it could be soon, or he might still be around for a few years. He is weak and with each winter he gets worse. Hubby has already told me he won’t be going to the funeral but I’m very torn with having to make a decision. I don’t want to be there but feel I should for my mother’s sake. But I dread hearing people talking about my dad in a way that is no longer real to us anymore and I know I will feel like a fraud being there.

I spoke with my former pastor yesterday after the funeral. He’d not known of the events of the past few months and I felt it important he knew the rest of the story – it had been unfinished during the time we were at his church. And to share how I had had to contact my siblings to tell them, in case their children had been affected too, and the rippling effect of something like this and how it reaches out to others was an enlightening thing for him. I could tell, just by the widening of his eyes at each new portion I added in my telling our story, that he hadn’t come across this before and hadn’t realised just how far reaching child sexual abuse can be. It’s not just the children that are affected, but the parents, other siblings, other relatives and close friends of the family. The offender has no idea just what far-reaching consequences there can be when they do something to a child that should never be done.

Of course, I am assuming that it won’t have gone public what dad has done before he dies. If it does, and he gets formally charged, then his funeral will be a completely different thing altogether and I expect there might not be many people there at all. And what will that do to mum? Dad has no idea how what he’s done has and will affect my mum in a big way too. In some ways, it would be much kinder for her to pass on before he does. A sad thing really – for him to do something that gratified a need or feeling at the time and it ends up affecting his life and his death, not to mention where he could end up eternally. How I pray my father will come to know the Lord before his life ends on this earth.

offender, child abuse, non-offender, sexual abuse

The shock of what my father is hasn’t worn off, but I don’t break down over it now. I try not to dwell on it and I can go days without thinking about it, but it’s still very raw under the surface.

I haven’t spoken to him since September now, possibly earlier and mum I haven’t spoken to since October. I write the occasional email in answer to her weekly newsy email – which is just signed off as ‘mum’ and not ‘mum and dad’. It hurts to think I no longer have the relationship I had with them – I’d always thought of us as a close family, even if we lived in different states.

However, my brother and sister are I are much closer now. After I contacted them by letter and outlined what had happened, both rang me for a long talk. Turned out they had more pieces of the story puzzle that I had no knowledge of and it shows that dad has had a history towards this for a very long time. Just how long we do not know.

I pray and hope that the children in his street are safe and that mum is keeping vigilant when they are in their house – as I know the children are still visiting. Although mum reports in her letters that their parents are there too at the same time. She probably won’t mention if the kids come alone anymore. The authorities in that state have been notified and they told me that he will be under surveillance.

As much as I would hate it, I want him caught and charged. I want him to acknowledge and accept that what he’s done is wrong and I want him to be counselled and healed before he leaves this earth.  Dad is in his early 70s and suffers from enphacema so I know that realistically he may not be with us for much longer.  I know once he knows and accepts that what he has done is wrong he will undergo tremendous guilt and pain but he needs to go through that.

We pray for the protection of those children. We do not know their names and we do not know how to contact their families but the authorities are aware that children had been visiting the house prior to our contacting them.

In the meantime our family life has improved and the relationship between my step daughters and myself is now much better. The air has been cleared and the girls now know that their father and I weren’t ignoring them and what had happened all those years ago, but that we genuinely had not known anything about it at all and if we had, that we would have taken immediate action. Whilst the relationship I had with the girls when they were little will never be reinstated, we at least have a much better, stronger and more understanding relationship now and the girls know I really do love them and care for them.

authorities, sexual abuse, child abuse, surviving abuse, non-offending parents

Well, it’s a few more weeks down the track now. I’m mainly over being constantly teary. After I’d written my mother a couple of letters (a second in answer to her answer to my first) I also spoke to other daughters in our family who we believed had not been touched by their grandfather. And we were right in that they hadn’t. We weighed up all the evidence and timing and came to the conclusion that the eldest one was too old in the year he abused our other daughters, and she confirmed to me that she would have come tell us – as I know she would have. There is value in children coming to ‘tell tales’ – I just wish one of the others had back then. The other was too young at that stage. Both were in shock when we told them, and both have handled it in different ways. We had to make sure for the first couple of weeks that they were ok – one wanted to talk all the time (and I know how she feels) and the other didn’t really want to discuss it anymore, but has been told we’re here if ever she has the need.

We made arrangements through our church for family counselling to be available if ever there comes a time when the girls want to get together and tell us more about what took place. We know we don’t know everything, but we know enough, and to know the girls are telling the truth.

I’ve been able to get back into my work and focus better now, but it took me many weeks – I felt a bit like I’d been out of circulation for nearly three months and those with whom I work must surely be wondering what’s up with me, but how can I possibly tell them? And even if I felt I could, I wouldn’t – our daughters have the right to their privacy and until such time they decide to go public with what’s happened (and that might be never), then I really don’t have the right to expose what happened to them. So, I’ve also had to be choosy who I speak with, in working through my own grief and anger – although it’s mainly grief now.

Why grief? All sorts of reasons, but I guess mainly because I’ve lost the father I thought I had. He is no longer the loving man or hero I had in my growing up – he’s now someone I don’t know anymore and I don’t know that I could ever look him in the eye again without hearing our girls words in my head of what he did to them. And I feel a lot of sorrow too – I always thought I’d had a ‘normal’ family upbringing, but now it’s been tarnished.

My husband and I have been undergoing a course over the past few weeks through the church, which has had an element of ‘cleansing’ to it and this has helped considerably. The timing for this was impeccable.