My abuse story - part 2

They took his ass to jail and I packed my 4 mos old to move in with my parents as I was told that if I stayed there CPS would take my child because I would be keeping my child in an unsafe environment. So I left this abusive environment and didn’t live with him from that point on. Because I was breastfeeding I didn’t have to share custody. But I had this friend who got it in my brain that my child would think negatively of me when he was an adult to learn that I didn’t encourage his relationship with his father. I took his father to court to get him to pay child support and in turn he wanted time with him – and the court system wouldn’t let me bring up the fact that his father was abusive towards me. So I had to share custody. He still manipulated me but now instead of doing so directly he would do so through my son. Although this would frustrate and irritate me, I didn’t feel like I have the ability to stop it. Hell, most of the time I didn’t even realize that I was being manipulated.

When I left him he was pissed. So to try to hurt me he started to date my good “friend”. He was even able to get this woman to go to the police and accuse me of assaulting her and I was charged because he backed her up on fake charges. It was me against them. He knew ppl in the police system and so it didn’t matter whether it was accurate. He even sent himself an email from MY personal email and then used it against me in the custody fight. I had no idea where it had come from but I couldn’t remember if I had sent it when I had been angry. But one day when I was going through my email looking for pictures that I KNOW I had sent myself and were gone – as were some emails that he had sent me when we were dating – and I just had this feeling that something was up. Eerily enough my mom and I were talking about her workplace and she mentioned that her boss’s son was just promoted to the sergeant of the new cyber division of the police force. It was like God had put this person in my path to help me cuz boy I was crying out for help by this point! I went to him and put forth all the information and he went to bat for me. We were able to connect the email that he used against me in court to the computer that he used – his personal computer and so he was charged federally with theft of personal information (and a couple of others that I don’t remember right now) because he went into my personal email without my permission (obviously) and sent that email.

Now, at that point I was still SOOOOO controlled and manipulated that he was able to convince me to contact the court and write a letter indicating that he should be shown compassion and shouldn’t go to jail!!! Geeze I was blind! I thought that I needed his child support in order to survive. I didn’t even think that there were things in place that would have supported me had I said anything to anyone! Because of my letter he got away with what he did (essentially) – he was found guilty but didn’t get punished really. Because when I took him to court later on, I wasn’t even allowed to use this information to just prove the type of person that he is, I wasn’t allowed to!

Anyways, it wasn’t until I met my current husband that he showed me how I was being manipulated and controlled. He was so frustrated that he put his foot down and said that I could only communicate with him by email because that was the only way that I was recognizing his bullshit and could feel like I could say no. My ex was seriously upset of this that he even threatened myself and my husband with being charged/arrested – entirely possible with whom he knew – because it’s entirely a “he said/she said” situation.

We felt unsafe and when I was pregnant with little tyke, we had the serious conversation about our future. We decided that we would move from that area because we didn’t want to live in fear. We didn’t want to have to always watch over our shoulder or have a body guard/babysitter. So we moved 7 hours away so where we could be safe but also still be able to get our degrees. The unfortunate thing is that the court system wouldn’t let me take my son with us and we had to leave him with his father – against our better judgement. My husband was right though who said that if we left him there that he would change and his father would manipulate and brainwash him and he was right. 8 yrs now we’ve been living where we are and I no longer see him down here. I only see him if I go back up there and if I go out of the house I always make sure that I have someone with me or else I don’t go out.

I tried to tell my son about what I've gone through (some of it) and because he's been so brainwashed by his father to think that they are so good but I am so wrong & bad - he doesn't believe me. I hope that as he gets older that perhaps he might see how things actually occured. I don't hold out much hope unfortunately. I guess we'll see.