The Injustice System

Let's start with a little history of me. I was sitting in my middle school classroom learning about sex education while my teacher was explaining that the things that my dad was doing to me were wrong. I was humiliated and confused. No, the teacher had absolutely no idea what was going on in my home, nor did anybody else. I had always been a quiet, reserved kid for fear of being judged or punished for what I said or did.

Sex education was new to schools still but it was an important class to start holding in schools indeed. After all, had it not been for this class, how long would it have been before I figured out that what my dad was doing was wrong? I will never ever forget the embarrassment I felt that day in the classroom when my brain twisted what the teacher said into the exact story of my life and I sat there feeling like all of my peers were staring at me and laughing even though they had no idea.

Now, that was 18 years ago. And I sit here today with the comfort and strength I've gained since coming forward the very next day and stopping the abuse. I'm a survivor. After my father went to prison, I went to court appointed therapy with my family and I learned how to be a survivor and how not to be victimized again.

Yet, a decade later I find myself married to a controlling, narcissistic man that deems it necessary and appropriate to hit a 1 year old baby for discipline. I'm not even going to touch the controversial issue of spanking in this article, we'll save that for another article. All I am saying right now is that there is absolutely no reason on Earth to hit a baby at all. My husband hit him on the arm leaving his fingerprints on my baby. He and I had an argument immediately about his excessive discipline. The baby simply told us he was full from eating by throwing his bowl of food on the tile kitchen floor. He was a year old. My husband and I argued for about an hour before reaching an agreement that neither of us would ever use spanking as a form of discipline as there seemed to be issues with anger management.

A year later, the baby was in the bathtub and was dumping water out of the tub onto the hardwood floor. I told him to please stop dumping water out of the tub. He was just playing and having fun, but water doesn't seem to get along with hardwood floors. I had walked into another room and about 5 minutes later I heard a slap that shook my bones a few seconds before hearing the worst, shrill scream I have ever heard from my son. I charged into that bathroom to find my baby so upset that he couldn't breathe and my husband with this horrid anger face. Needless to say we had another fight. This one was very close to physical. I do not agree with fighting in front of the kids. I never did. I will admit I lost my mind the very moment that slap shook me. When I walked into that bathroom I saw my husband's entire hand print on my baby's backside down to the very lines in the palm of his hand. He spanked him for dumping water out of the tub after I told him not to. He was two years old. This did not warrant a spanking and was far too harsh for a two year old.

I came very close to calling the police that night. There were several reasons I didn't. When I disclosed of the abuse I was enduring as a child by my father, I was immediately removed from the home and my mother had to fight to regain custody of me. My mother did not abuse me, nor did she know what my father was doing. I know this for a fact. She did not deserve the agony that the state put her through over what my father had done. The main reason I did not call authorities this night was for fear of losing my son in the battle. My husband managed to get me cornered during this argument blocking the doorway and tried to threaten me with his tone and body movements. Little did he know I am a survivor. I believe the term I used was "My son is in the bathroom all by himself right now and if you do not move out of my way, I will run you over." He kept his stance until I started towards him, he moved rather quickly. Good boy. During the fight, I told him, if you ever hit my son again, you will never see him again.

A month or two later, I was recovering from surgery and one night I was laying in bed with my husband trying to go to sleep. This was the first night in bed with him due to the surgery preventing me from climbing the stairs to get to my bedroom. However, the night before this, my husband fell asleep while he was supposed to be putting the baby down. When he did, the baby got into his chewing tobacco. Poison. Luckily, my son didn't try to eat it. But I wasn't going to risk any more stupidity that could kill my son. So I climbed the stairs so that I could pretend to sleep while my husband put my son down for the night. My son was laying in bed with us and reached over and was petting my hair because he knew mommy wasn't feeling well. For this, he was awarded a smack on the hand from daddy. This absolutely infuriated me.

The next day, I spent my birthday in the District Attorney's office applying for a Protection order for my son so that I could safely remove his father from the house. Well, part of the process of getting a Protection Order for child abuse is pressing charges against the offender. So I filed police reports in two different jurisdictions. Child Protection Services was called and did an extensive interview with me. During this interview, they commended me for attempting to handle the issue myself and then told me that I was a criminal for doing so. This is when I learned that leaving a mark on the skin for more than two minutes is considered excessive discipline and thereby being child abuse. And because I didn't call the police and report it the first time, I allowed it to happen and I was a criminal too. This after the very same state agency had previously put their finger in my face and told me to "stop traumatizing that child" after I reported that my step-daughters grandmother threw a fork at her face.

Child Protection Services showed up at the house a few hours later to see the baby and interview everybody in the house. My husband was still at work and we were living with a family friend at the time. After the interview and after examining my son for bruises, I was placed on a child safety plan. I was to have supervised visitation with my son, I was ordered to complete a series of courses on parenting and spotting abusive behaviors. Failure to comply would result in losing my son and going to jail. My husband was put on supervised visitation and ordered to complete an anger management course.

Doing the right thing had led to me being told I was just as bad as the offender and posed the threat of me losing my son. I am a survivor. My husband was told that evening, by me, that he was to get his things and leave. After several hours of argument and me not disclosing to him where I sent our son in the meantime, he finally left. The next day he called the house 27 times. I called the District Attorneys office only to find out that the Protection Order I had requested for my son had been denied and the restraining order I requested for my safety was denied as well. So calling the police to begin with would have done exactly what for me? At the times that my husband hit my son, I did not know that the law was that a mark had to be there for two minutes to be considered abuse. My understanding was that it had to leave a bruise, it didn't. My mistake. I will live with that forever. And I will teach my son that if he ever sees an adult hit a child, he is to call the police immediately no matter what.

However, as a pre-teen, I was ward of the state for a very long time while my mom fought to regain custody of me. And I was told I was a criminal and given the very same consequences as a child abuser because I attempted to handle the issue myself without violence or additional trauma to my child. Let's not forget that I had an unclear understanding of what was considered abuse and calling the authorities only to find out that it wasn't excessive enough would have put my child and myself in even more danger. I was steadily losing confidence in the system. Again.

It was only a month later, after moving out of state to keep the man away from my son, that I was served with a restraining order that my husband had filed and been granted. It was served to me in the car with my son sitting next to me as we were on our way to Sea World. At that moment, I had no hope at all for our children. I understand that there will be many people out there that think I was wrong for not calling the police to begin with. But at 11 years old, I was put in an institution with juvenile delinquents and tormented for 24 hours to keep me safe from my harmless mother. My husband did not brutalize my child. He did not sexually abuse him. He did not beat him half to death. He slapped him too hard. My son is four now and doesn't remember that his daddy ever did anything wrong.

Today, my ex-husband has court ordered supervised visitation until my son is 5 years old. That will be in 7 months. The last visit was 11 months ago with my ex-husband's parents supervising. During this time, the three "adults" argued over the fact that my husband finally admitted that I was right to leave and that our son is better off where he is now. My son sat at the very same table during this argument. My potty trained three year old came back to me in diapers that were too small because he had a few accidents while he was with his dad after I pre-warned them that uprooting him and destroying his entire routine instead of compromising a little with his school schedule would cause a negative reaction in his development. A temporary step back was inevitable. The damage control after that one visit took me almost six months to fix. My question is this. The three times that I saw the man hurt my child, I handled it. Maybe I didn't handle it the correct way according to the law, but I handled it. I was a criminal for that because I didn't call the agencies that are sworn to protect MY child. So where were they at the last visit? And where were they when I requested the Protective Order that very same day that they told me I was to come to them for help? And where will they be a year from now when daddy dearest finds out that his five year old likes to get his way? Who's the criminal here?

I have a lot to say on the topic of child abuse. This story was not what I intended to write about. It took a different turn but it will lead into the next article and help you understand my perspective when I write it. For now, I will end with this, I do have hope in the future of our children. I do have faith in the justice system. However, I do also feel strongly that the system needs to change to better benefit society as a whole. Too many children are dying and being hurt. Too many children are shooting up our schools. Too many survivors are being victimized repeatedly. And too many pedophiles are running the streets with our children. We need to find a way to stop this.