I haven’t written a domestic violence blog in a long time, but despite the fact that our divorce papers have been signed, the abuse has renewed. This time in the form of manipulating my daughter. He knows that I would do anything for her if I could. She’s 14 now, and not the happiest camper about moving to Florida, away from her friends in East Texas. And despite the fact that he didn’t even call her for her birthday this year, he has promised her that if she came to live with him, he could give her what I can’t (at the moment), a place back in Longview. Even though he doesn’t work there, and can’t sign a lease due to his drug felony.
There’s a clause written on our custody issue that says the three of us, my ex, my daughter, and I, can sign a paper at some point in the future agreeing to dismiss supervised visitations and submit it to the court, which he agreed to when he signed the divorce papers. I have not seen any change in his dangerous behavior, and I am not willing to sign anything of the sort at this time. However, he took it upon himself to misread the papers, saying that the “parties” referred to in that paragraph were him, my daughter, and his parents who are listed as the supervising parties. (For the record, he did not have a lawyer at our court date.) I still have yet to see this paper. So even though the county has an “agreement” on file, according to my lawyer, it wouldn’t hold up since I never signed it.
And that’s where it started again. He told my daughter to tell me that if I didn’t open a “civilized” line of communication with him about removing the supervision, he would report me to CPS for child abuse. He sent a text to me himself saying he knows I hit my daughter and I don’t want the consequences for not cooperating with him. He had his SIL call and leave a message warning me that Florida will take a child first and ask questions later, and that I didn’t want to make him mad like this. I have only responded to Amy, who I continue to talk to and text, even though she is staying with her grandparents right now. My response to her was, it can’t be civilized if it begins with a threat.
So last Thursday, I spent an hour talking with a CPS investigator, crying through half of the discussion. It was incredibly painful to hear the allegations, and to have to rehash the reasons for our divorce and the supervision in the first place. I was accused of slapping my children around on a regular basis, as this is my preferred method of discipline, and I do it also when I’m stressed, which is often. I was accused of medical neglect, and of pulling my children out of school to pretend to homeschool them, so that I could move to Florida to be with a man I met online.
When the investigator left, she suggested that I probably should get go back to counseling. The thing is, I was ok for a long time. He was leaving me alone. I’ve just become his target again, perhaps because he broke up with his girlfriend, or perhaps because he’s honed in on my weakness again, that I’m not working and feel like I’m not providing enough for my children.
I’ll wrap this up with another link, one that I wanted to share with my daughter, especially the part on consistency. She wants to believe that he’s changed, that he can be the father everyone else would like him to be. And it’s very hard to break her heart and to try to convince her why he’s acting the way he is now.
From The Batterer as Parent: Addressing the Impact of Domestic Violence on Family Dynamics
“…in the context of domestic violence, the following factors should be taken into account, based on our experience: a) Batterers who disappear from their children’s lives tend to be high in selfishness and self-centeredness, with resultant increased risk to damage mother-child relationships (as in the case example that opened this chapter); b) Batterers who are inconsistent parents tend to remain so, and thus the children may grow close to him only to lose him again, setting back their healing process; and, c) Granting extended visitation privileges to a batterer following a disappearance can reinforce his belief that he will not be held to a reasonable standard of parental responsibility. “
Peace
