Stressing Out...

We are facing a huge, ugly situation this upcoming week.

Somehow I still can't believe we're in the middle of this...we're just a "normal" family trying to do the best we can. How did this happen? Why us?

It's so heartbreaking to think of and I still don't know what to do with the anger and regret I carry around with me.

My son was sexually abused by his biological father during a visitation when he was around 3 1/2 years old. He's now turning 8 in 2 weeks and it's only all just come out in the past few months.

I am so angry at my ex, angry at myself for somehow allowing this to happen and angry at the system that the accused has a right to a preliminary trial to decide if there's enough evidence to go to a real trial.

So not only does my son have to testify next week, he'll have to testify again in a trial because his father does not have the compassion to plead guilty for what he did and save his young son this nightmare.

And it only gets worse. My son is not the only child testifying. There is another young child who he has assaulted that will be going through this same nightmare with my son.

And if that's not enough, I found out recently that he had assaulted his own young niece before I met him in his late teens. He was investigated but never charged. And I never knew about this until now.

Talk about hindsight being 20/20....I can't believe I was married to this monster for 10 years and never knew what he was capable of. There were signs along the way that should have made me think twice about having a child with him, but somehow all the years of domestic abuse didn't shine the light on the bigger problem.

I should have done more when I found an explicit email to a young girl on the computer. This was before internet predators were a big thing in the news. All I did was threaten to leave if this was what he was about....oh how I should have seen the writing on the wall.

How stupid can one person be?

My counsellor tells me it's normal to feel guilty about this type of thing as well as be angry. I just don't think it's fair that I should feel guilty at all. I didn't commit this crime, I didn't lie about it over and over again when asked about it, I didn't know he was actually capable of doing such a horrendous things to young children. Why do I need to feel guilty?

I'm so sad for my son who will have to live with this for the rest of his life. I hope and pray every day that he will be able to put this behind him and live a happy life. He's so young...I'm so worried about the years to come when he can fully understand what happened to him and realize how wrong it was.

I'm so sad that I brought a monster like this into my son's world...what if I hadn't married him and my son had been the product of my new marriage instead?

I'm so sad that I didn't have the strength to fight back for myself so many years ago so that I could have left such an unhappy life and not waste so many years.

I pray for the strength to fight back now for myself and my son and do what is right so no other children or women will have to go through what we're now dealing with.

Please pray for us....ask the angels to be with my son when he testifies...doing what no child should ever have to do, send his father to jail.