I am proud and honored to announce and introduce to you all, the wonderful, strong, detourist Amy Oestreicher. I am thrilled that she wrote a guestblog for lifesurfer.net and I am sure you will love it too!
So here goes; *drumroll* Amy Oestreicher!
Originally posted for Amyoes.com as part of the #lovemydetour series. To read the original blog, click here. To read more about #lovemydetour and Amy Oestreicher, click here.
You have that lovely feeling in your tummy and throat when you feel immensely happy and can’t get that grin off your face? I have that feeling almost every day, but the thing is… I don’t have someone I have a crush on.
No, my life isn’t and wasn’t perfect. I was sexually abused by my uncle for more than ten years, and I was raped and mentally, financially, physically abused by an ex-partner who I met when I was only 14 and he was almost 22.
Due to one assault, my children were born prematurely, and when I escaped, my ex-partner vowed to take the children away from me, which he has tried to do ever since, making use of the judicial system but never once inquiring after the well-being of our children during this same time. I lost almost my entire family, but I regained a family of the heart in return.
There are many memories of when I thought I was at the lowest point in my life only to sink into a deeper hole. But as I look back, I notice that every sinkhole was actually a detour resulting in the happy life I lead now.
My most important detour was the moment I decided to be the author and creator of my own life. It laid the foundation of how I would handle difficulties in the future.
I was 24 in 2010 and the relationship with my second boyfriend had just come to an end. As I lay in bed weeping, I realized that it wasn’t so much the end of the relationship that I was weeping about but more the feeling of despair and not feeling I was capable enough to handle things on my own.
This was the same feeling that led me to the relationship with boyfriend no.1 in the first place and while I was escaping the troubles of boyfriend no.1 I gave myself to an even older man, boyfriend no.2 who was, in essence, a copy of no.1 although no. 2 wasn’t physically abusive. However, the emotional abuse was more refined and worse than with no.1 – they even shared the same name!
As I stopped weeping, my friend asked me: “Do you want to change?” “Yes!” I cried out. “Okay,” she said. “But it is important to work on yourself first. You are capable of handling things for yourself, and I will be here to help you hold the mirror.”
At that moment, I chose to be strong and to become my own author, to love myself unconditionally. I started to heal myself, find the spots within me that needed TLCG (Tender, Love, Care, and Growth). I broke the bonds with people that were draining the life out of me; I educated myself and traveled a lot with the boys.
In 2013, we hadn’t heard from my ex-partner for years, and a part of my university program was to study abroad for 6 months. My dream was to work for the United Nations, helping others so they could lead a life without abuse. Due to the controlling and abusive nature of my ex-partner, he suddenly showed up and used the judicial system to prevent us from going, and as a result, I couldn’t study in America to accomplish that dream.
But I didn’t break. I just found ways around this while still achieving the core things I wanted to do in life: helping women after trauma discover how to recover and to create a happy life for themselves. Sometimes the “how” or the “way” can change but it doesn’t mean our “what” has to change, too.
What I learned in the past 5 years is that I can always rely on myself. Always. I am incredibly strong and am resilient like a rubber band. I have learned to love my own company and to watch myself form the sculpture of my own life.
The most important part in all this was to love myself unconditionally and to discover who I am and what I need to create my ideal life, making decisions based on how I want to grow as a person. And to remember; it all starts with a decision.
You see me pictured here with the Oldehove, a churchtower in Leeuwarden (Netherlands) which was never finished due to the sagging of the tower. Some say that the Oldehove is a failed project, it stands here in this state for almost 500 years now.It’s something to be ashamed of as a city.
But to other people it is an symbol with a story to tell about all those people walking the 183 steps to the roof for hundreds of years now; muscisians, families, soldiers during the worldwar II and people from all over the world. They truly enjoy the view and stepping in the past for a few moments and some feel even proud of this unfinished tower.
To me the Oldehove is the symbol of a very powerful detour, full of resillience despite being ridiculed, challenged and threatend by nature, fire and even by it’s own citizens. Yet, still she stands tall for almost 500 years. Call that a detour!
Or like Mahatma Gandhi said: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Recently I asked an survivor whether she had questions for my blog that would let me help you. The questions she asked were namely “Why” questions about the abuser:
An abuser makes himself a victim because from this position:
1.) he does not need to take responsibility for his actions,
2.) he can lay the blame on you,
3.) and because from the position of a victim he does not have to think about his actions (because it is your fault) and also, this way he can easily push away potential feelings of shame and does not need to seek help for his behavior.
4.) In addition, from this position he receives empathy and validation mostly from other women (“oh what a nasty ex you have”) and sometimes even female professionals, whereby of course often some of the facts are omitted from the story, or respectively added to it.
Why an abuser behaves the way he does, is difficult for me to indicate from sitting behind my desk. Of course there is a lot to say about it from the psychological point of view, but the possible answers are very diverse and as a matter of fact, the most of us will not be able to find out precisely why. It could be due to a personality disorder, but sometimes an alcohol addiction plays a role. An abuser who mistreats due to a borderline personality disorder does it because of different impulses/motives than someone with an alcohol problem.
What can help for example is to find out what kind of an abuser he is. For that, I use Dutton’s distinction, you can read more about it on the following website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64431/
In conversations with clients, I am not that much interested in their abusive partners though. I am more interested in the “why” of the victim. ‘The fear is beaten into you with the first hit” says a friend of mine, but another question is; what did you tell yourself that made you want to continue that relationship? When did you have enough?
In the first phase there is tension building; the abuser is moody, attacks verbally about little things, belittles the victim, shouts and criticizes.
The victim responds by trying to calm the offender down, being quiet or on the contrary talking a lot, ensuring that no one irritates the abuser. That is why, for example, she will ensure that the children stay quiet. She is passive, withdraws and walks on eggshells.
In the second phase the physical abuse starts. The victim is kicked, beaten, pinched etc. The victims respond to this by protecting themselves, for example, by going away or calming the partner down. At this stage some children or neighbors call the police.
Thereafter the third phase follows, in which the abuser apologizes or asks for forgiveness. He declares his love and says he will never do it again. Cries. Says that he/she cannot live without the victim. Gives her an important feeling and position. Threatens with suicide if the victim leaves, appeals to her tendency to care for him. This behavior of the abuser keeps many women in the relationship and causes mutual dependence. The reaction of the victim is that she agrees to stay, tries to stop legal proceedings and becomes hopeful for their relationship in the future. Another group of abusers threatens during this period with a lot of conviction to kill the wife and/or the children, or to take the children away. In this case there is no period of remorse and empty promises, but the abuser will simply ignore what he has done to the victim. The woman knows these are no empty threats and remains to stay alive or to protect her children. After that, the first phase starts again.
The point is that many women become ‘addicted’ to their feeling of wanting to save him. Both the abuser and the victim convince themselves and each other that together they can conquer the world. The victim has the feeling that she has to keep standing behind her husband.
A process called “traumatic bonding” is activated. Traumatic bonding is the result of continuous cycles of abuse characterized by an interrupted alternation between a punishment (abuse) from the abuser towards the victim and bigger rewards (to keep you in the relationship). Powerful emotional bonds are created here. Negative emotions are pushed away while the positive ones remain. These bonds discolor both the past experiences as well as the hoop for a better future.
The difference between the man who commits abuse and the man in the third phase is so great that women want the most to forget that in reality this man has just one body, and want to ignore the science. Moreover, many abusers say that ‘it wasn’t at all that bad’ and that ‘she should not make such a fuss out of it.’ The victim adopts these sentences like a mantra.
The question, therefore, is not that much why he did what he has done, because the chances are very high that you will never get the answer.
Even more, the why-question about the abusive partner diverts from what it really should be about; how is it possible that a woman as wonderful as you has entered such a relationship and remained in it after he started treating you wrongly. What did you tell yourself about yourself, the other person and the relationship? Why have you stayed? Was it out of fear or were there other processes at hand? Why did you feel attracted to him?
You cannot change someone else, but a better life for you does start with you understanding of yourself. Do ask yourself, above all, about what you need to make yourself mentally and physically resilient and to live your life up to your wishes. Stop focusing on what you can’t change, it’s a waist of time.
Do you want to learn how to no longer let fear govern your life, how to make healthier choices or do you want to become more self-confident? Or do you simply want to move on with your life in the new direction?
-X- Alianne
P.S.
If you want to look from a scientific perspective towards partner abusers, I can wholeheartedly recommend the books of Donald Dutton. The abusive personality is one of my favorite books EVER but is not meant for people who don’t read on a regular basis or dislike reading about in-depth psychology.
P.S. 2 I think this short video of Matthew Hussey can help you out. It’s not as much about partner abusers but it is about toxic relationships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9JjyvHv9A4
My lovely friend Lisa wrote the beautiful blog below and I really would love to share with you all. It’s all about the mind of an abuse survivor in a relationship. I love how Lisa can explain in detail what she experiences as an survivor in the relationship with her husband (yaaay!!).
Trying to have a relationship when you are an abuse survivor is more difficult than most. There are the obvious difficulties with attachment and trust, but people who have not experienced abuse (thankfully) need to understand the mind of the abuse victim in order to have a successful relationship.
Speaking from personal experience, having a relationship after abuse is extremely difficult. But, it is difficult not just because you have to fight the intimacy issues, and the hostility issues, and learn to deal with your anger appropriately, or because of the low self-esteem. It is difficult because of the special senses us abuse survivors gained during our abuse. This doesn’t just apply to survivors of child abuse, but also adult abuse, for example in domestic violence cases.
Let me explain. When you are being abused, you learn how to cope. You detach yourself from the situation. Many people have heard of this, and it seems very logical. Your mind just sort of wanders from the abuse, especially during violent outbursts. You detach yourself from the pain, both emotionally and physically. You endure.
Eventually, you lose who you are. You methodically go through the motions, not really knowing what you like or dislike, what drives you and what bores you. You don’t know these things because your life is about more than these frivolous things. You can’t afford to have interests, to like things. Disliking something or being bored by something? Don’t be ridiculous. You have no idea what people are talking about. Your life is about survival, plain and simple.
Surviving abuse involves a great deal of detachment. It also involves the formation of a sixth sense. If you are to ever try to have a successful relationship with an abuse survivor, you need to understand this crucial point.
Abuse survivors have learned how to anticipate, and in the process, diffuse the situation. I learned this around the age of five. I had perfected it by the age of seven. I learned these skills from being physically, psychologically, and sexually abused for 10 years, in a very crucial time of my life – from the age of 2 until 12 years of age.
During this time, I learned how to read micro-expressions. I started to become even more skilled, the more violent my home life became. The more times I entered my home not knowing what to expect, seeing a smile on my abuser’s face, assuming safety, only to find the maliciousness behind that smile, the more sophisticated my new sense became. My life depended on it, after all.
I started to be able to sense the air, the atmosphere of the room. I learned to ‘feel’ it, to understand it. I could feel the tension dripping from the air when I would walk into a room and he was looking for a fight. I began to recognise the smile he showed to others to give a sense a safety and trust, but really showed the anticipation he felt for what the near future held – the pain he would soon inflict on me.
I knew the rules of the house. I dared not break them. I now also understood the hidden rules. I could now anticipate his moods, his words, his feelings, and certainly his actions. And I learned to use this to my advantage, naturally. I used all this to adapt my words, my actions, and even myself. I could give him what he needed in order to avoid certain pain later.
Generally speaking, this ‘special’ sense saved my life. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It is the reason I am alive today.
Here’s the problem, and what anyone trying to love an abuse survivor needs to understand. That was 30 years ago. I have not been in a situation where my life has depended on that skill a single time since then, yet I still do it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Every day, in every situation, I assess my situation. I determine how critical it is. I ‘read’ each person in my environment to determine the threat.
I especially do this in my relationships. Every relationship I have ever had, from friendships to romantic relationships, I have ‘felt’ the atmosphere in the room. I read something into everything. This is a skill that is part of me, and no matter how much time passes, it will never leave.
I can walk into a room and tell you who is upset at someone, who is down-right fighting with someone, who is in love, who is shy and intimidated, and who is attempting so hard to gain trust. I can also tell you who cannot be trusted, with no evidence what-so-ever.
I always second guess myself, thinking I am being pessimistic, reading too much into a situation, only to find out later just how right my instinct was.
Great, right? Sure, if you want someone in your life that is constantly assessing the situation. However, if you are hoping to marry, as my fiancé is, well…. you have a bit of work ahead of you. Marriage is not going to change anything. Abuse survivors are always going to be, well, survivors. I am always going to assess the situation, adjust to the ‘feeling’ in the room, be what the people in that room need me to be, and do what I need to do to survive.
Thankfully I have learned to verbally express what I am feeling. And even more thankfully, I know I have a man that understands, because I verbally express myself each time I need to. I tell him what I’m feeling, and we speak openly of my abuse. He hates that it happened to me, but recognises that it was a lifetime ago and I have done, and continue to do, what I need to to grow from my experiences. He knows that when I react in a way that is not ‘normal’, or tell him I’m sensing something that I can’t put my finger on, that this is who I am, because of the abuse.
Communication is key, and what I failed to have in other relationships, including a previous marriage. I communicate not just the facts of the abuse, but when my senses have kicked into high gear. And because I’ve communicated this, he is more patient. Let’s face it, sometimes he is giving off negative energy because of work, or other stresses. The world does not revolve around me, so not everything happening around me has anything to do with me. But I will perceive it this way, because this literally saved my life for 10 years. No amount of time is going to change that. Luckily, me learning to communicate all this, to a man who is strong enough to attempt to understand it, has led to my first successful relationship in my entire life.
There is a large part of me that feels I am still in that house, still fighting for my life every day. It makes me need to fight every day to attach myself to this life I have created, with my man and his wonderful sons. I fight to let them, and others, in and I fight to let them stay. In my survivor’s mind, I will always be looking for the way I can save myself if things go wrong. I will always be on heightened alert. I will always have one foot out the door.
That is not just my battle, it has also become his. He fights through this with me every day, not really understanding it, but respecting it. It’s not every man that can do that.
To have a relationship with an abuse survivor doesn’t just mean you need to listen to what they endured years ago. It means you need to be able and willing to live with the consequences of that abuse for the unforeseeable future, because how she survived that abuse is now her nature. It has made her who she is, and it isn’t going anywhere. But, isn’t that what drew you to her in the first place? Didn’t you fall in love with her because of who she is?
Lisa Cybaniak has spent her entire adult life dedicated to helping others, for the first 16 years as a Registered Massage Therapist, Reiki Master, Acupuncturist, Lamaze Childbirth Educator, and Doula (someone who helps couples during the emotional time of labour and delivery), and the last 3 years as a Secondary School Science Teacher – yep, a science nerd!
Despite all this experience with helping others, the experience that shaped her and had the greatest impact on her life, was the childhood abuse she encountered for 10 years, and the subsequent 30 years she has spent overcoming it, in essence, learning how to help herself.
The next natural step for Lisa then, is to use what she has learned over her lifetime, to help others do the same – help themselves to live the life they deserve, one full of love and respect, success, and laughter. She focuses on sharing her experiences through her blog, ‘Life, like you mean it!’, and on Motivational Speaking, where she focuses on motivating people of all ages to overcome the challenges they face each day, whatever they may be, to be the best they can be.
Join Lisa in this adventure called life!
“We terrorize ourselves with fears of reliving childhood traumas, but if we survived our childhoods – a time of fewer options and resources- we are surely likely to prevail as adults”
Alan Robert Neal
On November 7th, 2006, my ex-partner abused me so much that due to the abuse and stress it caused, my children were born 7 weeks prematurely.
For a few years after that, each year I would feel the same mix of emotions I felt on November 7th , 2006: sad because I realized that the idea of a happy family without violence with this man was just a fairy tale all along, disappointment because I felt like less of a woman because I didn’t carry the children full-term, disappointment because I had a C-section instead of birth in a natural way, anxiety about the well-being of the boys , fear for my abusive ex-partner, fear for what the future held, and, of course, the fears woman regularly experience when they become a mom (of twins). I felt so much shame towards my sons because I had brought them into a situation with an abusive father.
I felt also relieved because I knew that despite some setbacks and things I have to think about regarding the health of my children, they are mostly fine. And the emotional trauma they got due to the court order that they had to see their biological father whereafter he abused them, will pass in time I am sure. Sadly the physical trauma of one of my children will never go away.
What do you do when you are unexpectedly confronted with the family who abandoned you after you told them about being abused by a family member?
That’s a question I had to answer – within 5 seconds.
My mom and I made plans to eat with eachother at my moms house on a friday evening, a few weeks ago. And as we arrived I walked into the entrance hall, unaware of what was about to happen. As I was about to open the door towards the living room, my mom suddenly said: “watch out that the dog doesn’t escape.”
All kinds of alarm bells began to ring in my head because the only dog that visits my mother’s house is the dog of an uncle of mine. The children were walking behind me, waiting for me to open the door as I went deep inside myself to gather all the pieces I had within me as I replied: “Why? Which dog?”
If I could tell you one thing today let it be this:
Instead of focusing on the abuser; what he must be thinking, what he is up to next, if that last message he has sent was narcissistic or not, what he… whatever… just stop it and instead focus on what is right for you. What makes you feel empowered. What makes you feel loved. What makes you feel happy. What makes you stronger. What makes you feel alive.
You don’t have any control about what the abuser is up to next and your strength is not in what you can’t control but in what you can do to make yourself stronger. All else is wasted energy. The only thing you have any influence on is you and how you respond to things happening to you and to your life.
That’s sounds easy and it isn’t, I am aware of that. But if you want to become a stronger version of yourself you have to stop giving power away to things you can’t control and start focusing on you , your progress, and making your life the best as you possibly can.
So if that means you have to block him on facebook and whatsapp to regain some sanity, do it. Actually, that is one of the most important things you actually can do. If you have children together and there has to be some kind of interaction; ask someone to do that for you. Give yourself time to become a stronger version of you without becoming confused because you are reminded of the person you once were and the power difference and inequality that has been in the relationship between the two of you.
Become aware when your mind is drifting of to thoughts like whatever he should have done, must do, has done or whatever… realise why you still have those thoughts (anger, fear?), tell yourself that you will release those thoughts/won’t act upon them and go do something totally different. If you don’t have something to do; do pilates, or yoga, or the dishes. If you don’t have dishes to clean, come to my place, do mine. You have better things to do in your life than wanting to change things that won’t be changed, to busy yourself with things you cannot change, to give power away to someone not worthy of your precious time and energy. You have better things to do.
Remember: you are A.W.E.S.O.M.E.
And you totally got this.
In every interview done on this planet (for example, in every interview I have done so far) are some mistakes (or some facts are removed), or there is some shuffling with the timeline to make the story flow better.
Usually that’s not a problem, but in a situation where our family is still (or can still be) under a magnifying glass, I have to represent my side correctly ever since I started doing interviews, to prevent misunderstandings.In order to tell my whole story once and shine a proper light on what actually happened in our life, I have written this blog.
First of all, I would like to clarify something. In this article I am very critical towards the Dutch youth care, the Council, family law and the legal system. Because I have talked to many youth care workers and aspiring youth care workers for LifeSurfer, I know that there are loads of good staff members who work in a ‘rotten’ system. But the unmotivated, uninterested, uninformed staff and the devastating impact they have on the lives of the families who have to deal with them, with all its consequences, while the staff member in question continues to another ‘case’, are put in the spotlight in this article, because they are the staff members that I unfortunately had to deal with the most.
I was 14, he was 21, when my ex and I started a relationship. In the very beginning of our relationship he was very nice to me on the one hand, giving me compliments and telling me he couldn’t live without me. On the other hand, he took my virginity by raping me and manipulated me from the beginning. For a while he kept up appearances with nice behaviour and presents, but underneath was the violent behaviour that I considered as incidents at the time. From the beginning I became more and more isolated because he was jealous and suspicious. However, I also considered this as some kind of compliment. I didn’t realise that my world was becoming very small.
My pregnancy didn’t just feel like a miracle; it was a medical miracle. Since my thyroid functioned very badly, my internist told me I couldn’t get pregnant. When I was 33 weeks pregnant, my ex abused me during a tantrum, squeezed my throat, shouted, pulled me by the hair, pushed my face straight against the wall and ultimately threw me flat out on the ground, which caused the children to be born way too early.
I could only leave my ex once the children were one year old. Agencies didn’t help me, or I didn’t get referrals. Without an alimony I didn’t get a house and without a house I didn’t get an alimony, so that was a big puzzle at first, because I lived alone in his house with the children, without an income or financial support. I can still see myself with two prematurely born children, sitting at the dole office and the housing office. When I got a house, I fled with the children. People came to help us move and we put my children’s and my stuff in the cars in one go and left.
One day he was suddenly standing in the middle of the living room, when he had “accidentally” taken my keys, which I discovered when he was suddenly standing in front of me. Afterwards, he would sometimes come in. I once found him under the shower. While I was looking at him with astonishment, he was masturbating. Despite all this, I still gave him the kids a few times when he wanted it, because I still wanted to try to stimulate a parent-child relationship.
Consequently, he would arrive at my mother’s house within half an hour because he said he didn’t know what to do with the kids. When my ex noticed that he couldn’t force me or push me to have sex with him anymore, it happened less and less that he would arrive unannounced at my house to demand sex or the children from me.
At the point when he had once again put the children, who were then almost three years old, under an ice-cold shower as a punishment, I told him I wouldn’t give them to him anymore. He would not understand that a shower with ice-cold water is pure abuse and that, apart from the pain the cold shower causes, such young children don’t understand why they are being punished that way. For years, they were terrified of the shower as a consequence.
After I told him he wouldn’t get the children anymore, he threatened that he would “take the children away from me” (literally his words) through Youth Care and started a lawsuit to request shared parental authority and visitation rights. After all, he wanted to get “his money’s worth” because in the meantime he had to pay child alimentation to Social Affairs. I had previously explained the situation to Social Affairs and begged them to never contact him or my old address. Here I found out that professionals often care more about rules and protocol, and don’t really understand how serious a situation is and what the result of their actions can be.
Visitation rights are easily granted. A woman from the Council visited my ex twice for an hour to see if he could control himself. Even though I had asked her not to leave me and the children alone with him, she did when I came to get the kids and walked to the car. Outside the car, my ex severely threatened me, but she consequently wrote in the final report that dad had had a friendly chat with me next to the car. She couldn’t hear what he said, because she didn’t accompany us to the car and stayed inside. Based on her behaviour during the Council’s “investigation” and her later report, she thought my fear was pure nonsense.
For such staff the easiest reasoning is the most pleasant one, so a situation in which there is domestic violence and child abuse is quickly discarded as a divorce battle in which two parties are equally guilty of every conflict or difference in insight that occurs. They don’t try to find out the truth and have no interest in it, because that makes the determination of visitation rights much more complex. A researcher chooses the explanation that suits her best and that she can emotionally and psychologically cope with, so she sees what she wants to see, hears what she wants to hear, and is literally and figuratively deaf and blind for what happens in front of her eyes in terms of intimidation and manipulative behaviour of an abuser.
I think the helplessness is the worst. You know your children are in danger.
You know they are not safe with your ex because of his tantrums and what he considers normal in terms of his way of “upbringing and punishing”, but those who are supposed to protect your children do the very opposite.
You expect that people of the Council and Youth Care have insight in recognising child abuse, but the moment you find out that they are working towards a conclusion, when they look at you with glassy eyes when you know more about different types of violence and different types of abusers than they do, that a reply is considered unwillingness in the context of a divorce battle… Oh, it caused so much pain and trauma at the time.
I would love to open their eyes, but experience teaches that many staff members of the Council and Youth Care are blind and deaf, (and literally copy each other’s reports, even when a year or more has passed and the situation has changed), so there you are. With empty hands, you are being accused of everything that isn’t true. The father can tell lies about you, and nobody, not even a judge, questions that.
Nobody wonders what father means with certain statements, such as that he is in favour of a strict and severe upbringing, what that implies to him, how that looks according to him. Nobody questions the father’s lack of interest in the children, nobody asks anything about that, while you have told them that he considers abuse a normal type of punishment. Thank God I knew that I wasn’t on my own and had people around me who helped me stay hopeful, because otherwise I would have gone insane from the helplessness, fear and loneliness this brings with it.
At one point the visitation rights were determined for 1 x a weekend every two weeks and half of all school holidays. At that point the children were already almost four. He cancelled the first two times, because the first time he wanted to go on a holiday and the second time something else was more important, even though he swore to the judge during the trial that he missed the children terribly. That ‘missing’ is something he still claims now, even though he has rarely shown any commitment in the past 9.5 years, and has never asked me or others for information about how they’re doing.
But in front of the judge or the agencies he pretended to be the victim, the nice, well-meaning father whose vengeful ex wouldn’t let him see his children whom he loves so much. His behaviour shows the contrary of what he claimed, but no judge wants to open their eyes or see it. It’s easier and more comfortable to go along with his story about being the victim. In that respect, judges don’t differ from staff members of the Youth Care and the Council.
Unfortunately, my experience and that of many other people is that (family) judges don’t make their own judgement in any case, but blindly follow the “professionals’” advice. That comes down to laziness and idleness of the legal system, which is shocking and almost unbelievable if it hasn’t happened to you that a judge says, even before the court session has started, that they will follow the Council’s advice either way.
If a criminalcourt tells you before a trial has even started that a verdict has been made he or she will be fired and rightly so. But in familycourt within the Netherlands this is allowed and even normal behaviour.
After their first curiosity, the children quickly became increasingly upset when they had to go to him. I have loads of voice tapes in which you hear me trying to convince the children to look at the visit positively. Apart from that, I had received 15.000 euros in penalties in the meantime, when I didn’t want to give him the children for the whole weekend. I didn’t, because after the first two times that they had been with him on Saturday and Sunday, they wouldn’t calm down anymore.
Three to four days before a visitation day, the children were upset, and three to four days after. When they had been with him for two consecutive days, that became two weeks. That made me refuse to let them stay with him for a whole weekend and made me change the visitation back to one Sunday every two weeks, so there was one week of relative peace in between.
The result was, thanks to the legal system, the refusal of all agencies (and even the judge) to believe me and recognise that the children couldn’t mentally and psychologically handle more than one day every two weeks (and even that with a lot of trouble and behavioural problems), that he can demand 15,000 euros at any point. This has been hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles for five years now. Considering his vengefulness and power play, it will remain there until he can cash in.
During the visitations, my ex cut the children’s nails until they bled. He cut in the pink part, which they call ‘the life’ in the Netherlands. This is strange behaviour, which he also applied to me during our relationship. Even then he had some kind of tic with how long nails are allowed to be, which in his opinion, is very very short.
He used to sit on top of me so I couldn’t get away and, despite my begging, he then used to cut my toenails deep into the life, which caused me to walk around with painful feet for days. In other words, I have an idea of how my children felt and what kind of fear this inflicted on them.
Before going to him, they begged me to cut their nails, and according to them, it was never short enough.
When the children even stood puking in the corridor, because they had been forced to eat all kinds of food they aren’t allowed because of their early birth and reflux, because those irritate the stomach; when the children told me he mentally abused them by, for example, telling them they smelt bad so that out of fear for smelling they rubbed their whole bodies with deodorant; when they told me that Sem was punished very often and always had to sit on the stairs; that he was told not to cry when he was crying because he didn’t know what he had done wrong (he had replied honestly to the question if he thought his dad was nice – the answer was no, so he was punished), because crying isn’t “cool” (he was a four-year-old who didn’t even know the word “cool”); that he had gone for a ride with Tycho in the front seat, even though they had to be in a child car seat for their safety; and that Sem would maybe be allowed to go next time because Tycho had been so cool; etc.; etc.; this made our family go through hell, and nobody wanted to listen to us, nobody wanted to believe me and the children, or take us seriously.
But the final straw was when both children told me how their father had beaten Sem on his whole body, and Sem showed me how he had beaten him on both ears simultaneously, which caused him to be permanently hearing impaired in one ear. It was abuse my ex had also applied to me. It is probably superfluous to say that such abuse is extremely painful and makes your ears whiz for hours. It was and is indeed a method which, as he had mentioned in the police interview, doesn’t leave bruises (“if I had beaten the child like she says, he would have had bruises,” he claimed). He is smart enough to abuse without leaving bruises and broken bones.
Of course I am angry at my ex for what he has done to the kids. However, I am even angrier at the agencies and all the so-called professionals who have been poorly trained and are so stuck in the dogmatics of youth care and the Council that they have become blind and deaf to a difficult and complex reality. You ring the alarm bell, with a cry for help, but nobody listens, helps or even recognises your worries. That may be the largest trauma. Every child deserves to be safe. Nobody believed me; whatever I tried to draw attention to in the interest of my children was dismissed as insignificant and unimportant.
After all, in the eyes of some of the staff of youth care and the Council, I was and still am the evil mother who only blames her ex so she could take revenge by taking his children away from him. Due to the limitations and the inability of these “professionals” to see the truth and not reason, based on the assumptions that suit them best, their blindness and the tunnel vision they suffer from, that won’t change. That hurt so much and made me feel so helpless.
You can’t defend yourself against what people think of you and what they determine are your intentions and your motivation. Again and again (to this very day), I have had to fight against enormous prejudice. It is a fight against windmills: completely useless, but you can’t escape it.
As long as children and mothers are the victim of this and have to go through the same things, I will continue to help women stand in their power. I won’t let them be belittled and insulted by a completely unjust and indifferent system that doesn’t respect their rights.
For a long time, I have walked around with anger towards myself caused by feelings of guilt. It took time before I could forgive myself and understand that I had done the best with the knowledge I had at the time. I blamed myself for having let my children be acknowledged by him before their birth (it is a juridical procedure where he claims to be their father), even though he didn’t want it at all; for dreaming of a miraculous change in him once the children would arrive; for holding on to that dream for a while, even though the reality was the exact opposite; and for the fact that my fear, first of him, and then of the legal system and the power of the Council and Youth Care, had been stronger than my urge to keep my children safe so that he traumatised them with his abuse during visitation throughout a whole year.
After the kids had visitation, from shortly before their fourth life year until shortly before their fifth life year, they recovered well right after I had put an end to it. We had a period of 2.5 years of peace. My ex didn’t bother us and didn’t ask about the children. In the meantime he had a new partner and had a child with her, after which he moved to the other side of the country with them.
Unfortunately, he saw the opportunity to start playing his power games again, when I needed his permission as a parent with parental authority to stay abroad with the children for half a year for my studies. Even though he had no idea how they were, because he hadn’t seen them or asked about them for 2.5 years, he considered it irresponsible to take them abroad for half a year and didn’t give his permission.
On the contrary, he demanded that they would come live with them, because all that time I hadn’t respected the visitation rights, and that he alone would get the authority, as well as an increase of the penalties to 50,000 euros. Of course, the Council and Youth Care mostly went along with this, so I didn’t have the opportunity to finish my studies leaving me in student debt. Moreover, my children had to start going to a visitation centre to start seeing their biological father again, a stranger to them, whom in their eyes they had first got to know when they were almost four, and with whom they had no connection whatsoever and also hadn’t built one during visitation, but because of his behaviour, had developed an aversion to.
Both children were obstinate in their refusal of renewed contact with the man they refused to call father. The fact that Youth Care can ruin more than you want became clear once more. They put extremely heavy psychological pressure on the children to get in touch with my ex-partner, which they refused more obstinately every time.
Even when three adults applied pressure, by asking them in turn whether “daddy” could play with them, they kept saying they didn’t want Alex (they called him by his first name, or A., and refused to call him daddy) to play with them.
The fact that the three adults started to tell the children they weren’t being nice, that they weren’t good kids, that they weren’t being fun, and making arrangements with the children only to break them from the moment I wasn’t around, etc., didn’t change their mind. I am proud of the fact that apparently I have been able to teach my children that you don’t have to do something against your will when you have good reasons and you really don’t want it. The only person who has the right to demand this from them is me, the parent they have known for their whole life and with whom they form a good and safe family.
They have acquired traumas from the pushiness and coercion of Youth Care and from having to see their father again. They are going to therapy for the aftermath, but at school they immediately made huge progress after the process in the visitation centre had stopped.
In the visitation centre my ex-partner and I had to sign a contract. My ex-partner couldn’t commit to his part of the contract, because he indicated a new job would get priority over visitation with the children. He took a job that meant he couldn’t follow the contract anymore, and yet the final report states it is my fault the process failed. Even the fact that the children and I got in a bicycle accident while we were on our way to the visitation centre – the result of which was a hospital visit – was interpreted by them as obstructing the process. In the visitation centre our situation was dealt with as a ‘divorce battle’, but you can’t a treat a situation in which serious partner violence took place that way. Neither my ex nor I recognised ourselves in the treatment method as it was executed. That was one thing we had in common.
For the last year we have received a family guardian due to everything that happened before. This person seems to put the children’s interests first. You can tell from the way the children express themselves that it can take a long time before they will be ready for contact (let alone regular visitation) with their biological father. In the meantime the last contact moment was in May 2014. A lot of peace has returned since then, but they now distrust adults because the staff members of Youth Care lied to them during the process of the visitation centre. They don’t feel as safe as before, because their father can suddenly re-appear in their lives, while they are terrified of him and absolutely don’t want to see him.
The helplessness, as well as the dogmas, prejudice and assumptions used by the Council and Youth Care, the gigantic lack of knowledge and insight among these agencies in terms of abusers, both partners and parents, means you spend an enormous amount of time and energy in explaining, declaring, defending yourself, again and again, in front of people who couldn’t care less that their assumptions about you, your children and your situation are completely wrong and based on thin air. Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a child dies at least once a week due to violence – and that the perpetrator and bystanders get away with it.
I have chosen to infringe the law and the legal system that fails on every level in this respect (which is unimaginable for the civilised country the Netherlands think they are) because I refused, and will continue to refuse, to see my children reduced to an article in the newspaper as victims of a “family drama” (which I call murder). Not my children, not me! Because if that had happened, Youth Care, the Council and the legal system that causes this type of dramas, would have blamed each other (like they always do) and everyone would have pretended to be innocent, which is unfortunately how it always goes with every incident that is published in the newspapers.
Maybe it looks I found it very easy to infringe the rules, but believe me, it is everything but easy.
The consequences of opening up your mouth are severe and there was even a time when I was counting to have to finish my studies in prison (at the time my ex wanted 50,000 euro penalty payments and he wanted me be held hostage if I did not stick to the visitation rights). But I can not put my children at risk through ignorance of insufficient specialized staff, who are firmly convinced in their hearts that they are doing good, but simply lack the knowledge to make right decisions.
Of course there are good youthcare workers. I have met and spoken to them for LifeSurfer. But if you meet an unmotivated and for your case unskilled youthcare worker, things can go wrong, irreversible and very seriously wrong.
Infringing the rules because of the consequences isn’t easy. But it is a necessity. It is my duty. As a mom.