How the system and the law failed me:

     I first became involved in the child welfare system when my parents filed for divorce when I was six years of age. In the almost five years that they were a part of my life, I believe they failed to provide me with the support and protection that the child welfare system was set up to provide for children. When I was twenty years old I involved the law in my case, stepping beyond my intense fear of what that would mean, and again, I felt the same lack of support and protection that the legal system is meant to give victims of abuse.  In both circumstances the people and laws that were put into place to protect children from being victimized, and to give them a means to find justice when they are, failed me in every possible way.

     In the custody battle of my parents divorce case my mother expressed concerns to her lawyer that my father may have been molesting her two oldest daughters, me and my sister, a year younger than me. He had been caught molesting my mother's five year old sister before I was born, and was made to seek counselling for his "problem" before my mother would take him back. After some questionable comments that my sister and I made, she now suspected he had done the same to us. My sister and I were sent to a child psychologist to attempt to determine if we were being sexually abused by him, but the sessions were inconclusive. According to the rules regarding evidence in court, a child cannot be directly asked about whether or not they were being abused as the questions could be leading the witness to answer in a certain way, causing enough doubt as to the truthfulness of the statements in the court of law. Instead, we were given a doll house and dolls representing our family, and we were encouraged to act out certain scenes as they would happen in our household. I remember being so careful not to paint my father in a terrible light (as I knew he could be if I were totally honest) because I didn't want to be responsible for him getting into trouble and being taken out of our lives. I knew the decisions being made as a result of these sessions would determine how our life with our mother and father would be from then on, and all I wanted as a six year old girl was for my family to be together again. Even though our father was an abusive man, he was our father and we loved him dearly, as all children love their parents. He was the only father we had. 

     While there was not enough conclusive evidence to prove that we had been sexually abused by our father (although the psychologist greatly suspected it), he was not granted custody of his daughters due to his having to admit to receiving counselling after he was caught molesting my aunt (psychiatric records could be brought up in court). While the courts were right not to allow him custody, he still had full visitation rights and could take us for weekends. Not only were the allegations of sexual abuse of his daughters not investigated any further, my sisters and I were allowed to be placed directly in his care for visits where he could potentially harm us again. At that time he had remarried and had a new family and did not have much time for us anymore. Fortunately, we did not have to suffer any more abuse by his hands.

     Not long after my parents divorce, the lives of me and my siblings were completely ripped apart. My mother, suffering from serious health issues, found it increasingly difficult to care for her four children. She decided to give up custody of my little brother to my father and his new wife. She then placed her three daughters into foster care until she could get well enough to care for us. From that point on, the system had control of our futures. My youngest sister was placed in a home on her own, while my other sister and I were placed in a family together. The family had two teenage sons and a number of other foster children. We were completely neglected by the parents who let their teenage sons parent and discipline us as they saw fit. Living there was nothing like having a family should be. I remember my sister and I being so miserable and all we wanted was to go home again.

     Within a short while after being put into care, Children's Services informed our mother that due to her health and financial instability, she would only be granted custody of one of her three daughters, and that the other two would be put up for adoption, a terrible decision for any mother to have to make. When my mother discovered that her youngest daughter was being beaten in the family she had been placed in, she couldn't bring her back to them and so she made the decision that she would be the daughter she would keep. My mother's side of the family fought hard to get custody of her other two daughters again. Even my grandparents tried to get approval to adopt us, but they were denied. My sister and I could never go home again. 

     Not only did Children's Services make the decision to tear us away from our family, our mother, they then made the decision to tear my sister and me apart. After six months of living in care, we had been fighting a lot, taking out our frustrations about the situation we were in. Our mutual love and familiarity made us easy targets for each other. They decided to place me into another home on my own to separate us. Now, I was torn away from everyone that I loved! 

     I was in my next foster home for two years before being adopted. They seemed like a nice family, and they had a biological son who I became very close with. On the outside it appeared that I was happy in a loving family environment. What no one else knew though was that my foster father molested me almost daily during the two years that I lived there. 

    Needless to say, the families I was placed in who were supposed to provide a safe and protected environment for me, were worse than the family they had taken me away from! 

     Although I had a really nice social worker who did her best to look out for me, she did not have the time to be my therapist. I never felt like I could really open up to her about personal feelings and experiences I was having. I did not talk to her about the abuse I was suffering at the hands of my foster father. By this time in my life, I was trained well to keep my mouth shut about the pain I was suffering inside and out. From my experience, it did no good anyway. Suffering was just a part of living, and it was something I had learned that I had no control over. 

     Thankfully, after my adoption at ten years of age, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a loving, stable, and secure environment and I flourished. However, my experiences with abuse, especially sexual, had left their mark on me. 

     When I was eighteen I reunited with my birth family, including my father who I wanted to reconnect with so I could have a relationship with my brother. That reunion ended up triggering some well buried emotions about what had happened to me as a child, when I confronted my father about the abuse that I remembered, and he adamantly denied ever having touched me that way. He claimed that my mother's side of the family put those ideas into my head so that they could prevent him from getting custody of us. 

     My anger over his denial turned into a desperate need to take action against the men who had done me wrong as a child and I decided to take my stories to the law, and to charge both my biological father, and my foster father with sexual abuse. I wanted to make sure they could never harm another child the way they had harmed me and likely others. I also decided to try seeing a therapist for the first time in my life, to help me work through the feelings all of this was bringing up for me, although I only went to a few sessions. I was really not ready at that time in my life to address the emotions attached to the abuse I had suffered. 

     Making my statements to the police/RCMP about what had happened to me at the hands of these two men was terrifying and caused me considerable stress. The officers needed every last detail about what I remembered of the abuse, and I was shaking uncontrollably while telling my stories. The two cases were separate and so I had to go through the experience twice. Thankfully a very close friend of mine sat with me through it all, offering his unending support and comfort. I could not have done it without him by my side. 

     A few weeks later I was informed by the officers dealing with the case against my biological father that since I was the only one of my siblings who remembered being molested by him, it would end up being my word against his, and with no other evidence, the charges would not hold up in court. Then, my aunt, who my father had molested before I was born, came forward to lay charges, hoping that her case would add weight to mine. However, because the situations happened at different times, the charges had to remain separate. My charges were dropped, but since the evidence of my father seeking psychiatric counselling after it was discovered he had been molesting my aunt had been brought up in court during my parents custody battle, there was proof that he had molested her, and her charges could be brought to court. He got two years of probation, and a small paragraph mentioning the case in the back of the local newspaper. 

     In the case of the charges I had laid against my foster father, I never heard from the officers again. After how the case against my biological father turned out, I had no faith in the process, and no more energy or confidence to pursue it any further.
     Around ten years later in my late twenties, after I had taken on my journey of healing, I began to wonder why the case against my foster father appeared to have gone no where, and I decided to investigate. Not only was I upset about not getting justice for myself, I was also riddled with guilt over how many other children this man may have harmed since me, and I wanted him stopped.
     After many phone calls I was finally put in touch with an officer who was familiar with the case and who could answer my questions.When asked why the charges against my foster father appeared to have been ignored, he explained that the investigation was closed after it was determined that there was not enough evidence to take him to court. Again, it would have been my word against his, and without any other evidence (physical or unsolicited disclosure to others while in his care or shortly afterward), the case would not hold up in a court of law. I was also told that because I had sought and received counselling outside of the court appointed system (someone approved and regulated according to the court of law), it could be argued by the defendant's counsel that I may have been led to believe I had been molested during those therapy sessions, and that they would have argued false memory syndrome as a defence. Again, my story would not hold up in court. I was told that the charges were dropped because the crown determined there would not be enough evidence to convict him, therefore the case was not worth going to court.
     My anger and frustration over this information led me to go at the situation from a different angle. If the law couldn't take the case any further, maybe something could be done through Community Services (used to be Children's services), the people who put me in his care, and who allowed many other children to be put into his care over the years he and his wife fostered children. While I had been told they no longer fostered children, I had hoped Community Services (CS) would do some sort of investigation into the years children were in his care, and possibly come up with some more information that could lead to actual justice being done, not only for me, but for others he may have harmed, or may be harming still. I called the CS office that was entrusted with my care when I became a part of the system and I told my story to someone I was told could help me. She said they would open up an investigation, but that nothing could be done until they requested and received  my files from the years I was in care through The Freedom of Information Act. After a month, I did not hear from them and when I called they said they were still waiting on the information to be released. After getting the same response from them for almost a year, I finally gave up that avenue for help as well, and have not pursued any other means of justice since then. It had become obvious to me that no one else really cared enough to attempt to keep this man from harming other children, something I can say with absolute confidence that he has done many more times in the thirty five years since I was in his care. While my biological father had impulse control issues, which is bad enough, my foster father was different. He was a predator of children, the type to put himself into a position of power with vulnerable children, and to constantly seek out new victims to victimize. I often think about my foster brother who I was so close with in the years that I lived there, and I wonder if he ever had children. The guilt I feel when I think about his daughters and what they have most likely suffered at the hands of their grandfather because I was not able to stop him, overwhelms me sometimes!
     While I would like to think that someday I will find a way to not only receive justice, but to stop a child predator from victimizing any more innocent children, the reality of the situation, made obvious by my unsuccessful attempts, is that justice is simply not an option for me. Both of the men who did me wrong and affected my life in seriously detrimental ways are left to be free to harm others the way they harmed me, and I am left dealing with the pain and guilt, a lifetime sentence, even as healed as I have become.
     I would love to be able to offer up a solution here, some way that we can set up a system that not only protects children from becoming victims of abuse, but also gives them an effective means to receive justice when they are, and to ensure the people who harmed them are punished and not allowed to victimize others. However, all I can give is a place to start.
     In my experience, the system that is supposed to be set up to protect and provide justice for victims of abuse has been made much less effective due to efforts made to avoid false allegations on accused perpetrators of abuse. It seems that the system cares more about protecting those that are falsely accused, than protecting those that are actual victims, the number of falsely accused being almost nothing compared to those accusations that are valid. Something needs to change. How, I cannot tell you. I don't know enough about the Child Welfare System or the law to know just how it can be made better for victims, but I do know that as it stands now, it does not work! Victims are not being protected and they are afraid to speak out, and when they do, they are not being heard, and the perpetrators are allowed to be free to victimize others. I suppose the first step would be to acknowledge that there are serious flaws in the system, and to start taking steps to learn how to make it better.

Peace and Love to Everyone. Kristina. <3

The Cycle of Abuse

The cycle of abuse is a vicious one. It is self perpetuating and very difficult to break. Being a victim of abuse in childhood often translates into either becoming the victim of abuse later in life, or becoming the perpetrator of abuse on others, or both... and the cycle continues on!
     I don't know how the cycle of abuse began in my family before my parents. I don't know what experiences my father had that taught him it was okay to treat his wife and children the way that he did, and I don't know what experiences my mother had that taught her it was okay to allow him to treat her and her children that way, but I have no doubt that the cycle of abuse in their lives did not begin with them and their marriage.
     What I do know is how the cycle began for me in my family. Before I was even born, the first of four children, my father had been beating, raping, and emotionally torturing my mother for years. Not long after they got married, he was caught molesting my mothers five year old sister, and my mother stayed with him (hoping she could help him get better, something most victims of abuse feel), having four of his children. He went on to beat and emotionally torture us as well, and molest at least two of us, until my parent's divorce when I was six years old.
     My father was not my only experience with abuse as a child. In my first foster home, the parents neglected the foster children, and allowed their teenage sons to discipline us as they saw fit. The sons emotionally abused us, enjoying their power over us, and although I was never sexually abused by them, one of them used my obvious fear of this happening as a way to torture me, another form of sexual abuse. In my second foster home, where I lived from 8-10 years old until being adopted, I was molested by my foster father almost daily. Even after I was adopted, he molested me while on a weekend visit with the family for my foster brothers birthday when I was twelve years old.
    Children learn much of their understanding and beliefs about themselves and relationships through what they witness in their families growing up. Out of the four families I was a part of as a child, I was abused in three of them. Obviously, the messages I received about relationships, love, sex, and self worth, were not positive or healthy ones.
     As a result of witnessing my mother have such little respect and love for herself that she would stay in the situation she and her children were in, I learned to have just as little respect and love for myself. By seeing her so desperately and continuously seek those feelings of respect and love from him, instead of realizing she should be getting those feelings from herself, I learned that those feelings could only be given by a man in my life, and that I was not capable of giving those things to myself.
     Also, as a result of being molested by two father figures in my life, I learned another extremely detrimental and false belief about myself and love. I grew up believing that love from a man could only be attained though sex, and that to get feelings of love and worth I needed to be sexual, and to give my body to them. For me, love from a man came to equal sex.
     By the time I became sexually mature (physically that is), I was so traumatized and misguided about the topics of love, sex, and relationships, that I struggled with more than the usual confusion and sexual issues that teenagers are destined to endure in those years. I was extremely promiscuous in my teens and early adult years, constantly seeking feelings of love and self worth from the men in my life through sex. The feelings of love I received were fleeting and un-fulfilling, and instead of self worth, I only developed a deeper sense of self loathing.
     The sex was inconsequential, and indeed, as a result of the abuse I suffered, I rarely enjoyed it at all. I usually spaced out during the act of sex. In those years, I allowed a lot of men to take advantage of me sexually. While there were many times that my mind was screaming "NO", and sometimes even my lips (although that was ignored by both involved), my body and heart kept saying "yes", hoping that maybe someday I would find the way to experience real love, the kind I knew existed, but did not realize I had my own capacity to feel.
     In my late 20's, towards the end of an emotionally abusive relationship I had been involved in, I finally realized I was continuing the cycle of abuse I had grown up with as a child, and that if I didn't address this issue, the cycle would continue on with me, and likely my children when it came time to have a family. I vowed to myself then that I would do whatever it took to end the cycle with me. That was when I chose the path of healing.
     Even after making this choice, I still ended up in another emotionally abusive relationship. However, this time, there was a difference. I was on a different path, and while I stayed with him for over three years, and dealt with his abuse, I did not simply allow him to treat me that way. I started fighting back. I started defending myself. Even if he did not get the message that I deserved better and was worth more than that, I eventually did! I also learned another very important lesson that I needed to learn. I realized that the only person I had the power to change was myself, and that using my energy for self change would have a much greater effect in my life than trying to change him. These were extremely valuable lessons when it came to breaking the cycle.

     Journal entry, October 15, 2003: Neither one of us is at fault here. We're simply following the patterns, the roles we learned as children, the cycle of abuse. Both of us, me the victim, you the abuser. I grew up imprinting my mother's behaviour, you, your father's. It's a perfectly predictable relationship. Our most influential role models in life are our families, especially in our earliest years. You've never seen a problem with your family, with the way you were raised. Therefore, you would never recognize that there may be a negative pattern you learned, one in which the man is in control, and makes himself feel more powerful by putting down others around him, especially your mother. This type of role model seems far more appealing to aspire to than women who are the victim to men much more harmful and abusive than your father ever was. This was my role model. So it does not make either of us bad people for simply doing what comes naturally to us. However, the thing is, I see the negative effects this pattern, this cycle of abuse I have continued on in my life, has caused in me, and I want these things to change. For a long time I convinced myself that I could help you to see the cycle in yourself too, to want to stop this with me together, but what I have learned in the last little while is that I can only change myself, and I can only make choices for myself. Those choices need to be based around myself not being a victim, and therefore, not being with someone who's patterns are blindly based around a role model who was abusive. Until you are ready to recognize this pattern in yourself, by seeing what you witnessed growing up as some sort of abuse, and choosing for yourself (not for me or anyone else) to break the cycle, we are not good for each other. We only serve to keep each other in the cycle, me the victim, and you the abuser.

     I learned so much about how to love and respect myself in those years with him while learning to heal, and I eventually found my way out of that relationship, and into a relationship with myself, something I had never really had before.
     That was in 2003. I stayed single for eight years after that, working on my healing, writing my memoir, and generally learning to love and respect myself. I learned a lot in that time, and have developed a relationship with myself that I never even though was possible. It is truly the greatest and most important relationship I have ever had! I can assure you from the core of my soul that now, I would never let anyone treat me or my children the way that my father treated us! For me at least, the cycle has been broken.
     The sad thing is, I am one of the lucky ones. Many victims of abuse are not given the opportunity to live in a happy, healthy family after being victimized as children. Many are never given the message that they deserve better than to be treated that way, and they never learn their own capacity to make their lives good and whole. Many never get the chance to tell their truth and to be heard. All of these things I was given, and for that I am extremely grateful!
    I believe that the very first step in ending the cycle of abuse that is so very prevalent in our society (whether we want to believe it or not), is to make victims feel welcome and safe to share their story, and to get help and support. They need to be given a voice and they need to be heard! None of that will happen though unless they feel protected. While I think our society has worked hard to put supports in place for victims of abuse, and giving them a place to be heard, we are still lacking in the protection department, as will be more evident in my next blog post. Sadly, oftentimes perpetrators of abuse are protected more than the victims. I believe this makes ending the cycle very difficult for a lot of people. At least there is much more effort being put into changing how society deals with this subject today, and hopefully, one day, all victims of abuse will not hesitate to stand up and defend themselves when they are victimized, and real justice will be had!