Children In The Middle

Children in the Middle of Divorce. This story is about 2 children that are victims of Drug Abusers. One is 5 and One is 6. The 6 year old is starting to have declining grades in school, goes to school in faded clothes that belong to his younger brother most of the time, hair unwashed or combed at all...The 5 year old has been sent home from daycare for what appeared to me to be enfentigo until it's gone...Both beautiful children. Child protective services has been involved but have such robot like rules that the people can't see beyond the paperwork. This is a long blog about my side of their story...
I am their Grammy. I have been involved in their little lives as much as possible from the moment they were removed from my daughter's womb. Yes, I was there at the very moments, when the first was born naturally and the second by Cesarean birth. They are the most special things to me. Sometimes I wonder how I won't be partial to them if I ever have anymore Grandchildren.
Some time after the birth of the 2ND child my Daughter got addicted to cocaine. she was acting very strange and I knew it was drugs. I asked her and asked her but she lied. She was unfaithful to her unfaithful husband and left him during this period. The persons she was unfaithful with were also Drug addicts. This went on for less than a year at that point she was persuaded to come live in a trailer behind my home where I made the boys a cute under the sea bedroom, where they refused to stay. Instead they opted to room in my home and leave my Daughter and her Addict friend to their evils alone. I knew things were bad but didn't know how or what to do, so I did what I knew how to do and that was to be there for my Grandchildren.
My daughter felt the pressure of me figuring out what was going on as she was getting money from her husband to buy drugs and lying to me and I caught her several times. I even warned the husband (who is an alcoholic and pot smoker) not to give her money," she's on something" I warned. At that point she decided to move back in with her husband. Before she moved back in with him she admitted to my husband that she was doing something, but would straighten up (what he wanted to hear). I was happy and confident that her husband would keep her in check and the boys were happy to be going home. They love their Daddy. This was in October of 2005. My Daughter didn't seem better, she just stayed away ALLOT! At Thanksgiving and Christmas she was so altered at the family gatherings I couldn't stand it. After Christmas I prayed and cried all night...Who could I talk to, who could I tell. My days and nights were consumed with her. she was my first child and only child for 5 years before I had the other 3 of my own. We were all at this time going through our own hell regarding my Oldest Daughter' life and drug problem.
The week between Christmas and New Year Day, my Daughter came over and sat at the bar in my kitchen. She said, " I need to talk to you...You said you knew I was on something and you are right. You wanted to know so I'm telling you. I am on cocaine." Then she started crying and saying she wanted help. I had already been on the Internet looking for chat rooms rehabs and the like, so I directed her to the computer and she sat there and read my forum posts to other addicts and people in rehabilitation. I told her that she had to do it herself. She called Rehabs and called several in Texas were we reside. Only 1 called her back. The commission for alcohol and drug abuse the state based agency. We made the first trip to the offices for her to take the tests they required and talk to the counselor to get information needed to direct her rehab. That's when I found out she was an intervenes user. It was hard for me to hold my composure and stomach.
She checked herself in to the rehab. I will never forget that day as long as I leave. My youngest Daughter and myself took her to an old, high fenced apartment complex in the center of Houston. The neighborhood looked like it was declining badly, lots of closed businesses and trashy houses. The furnishing in the waiting room were things that looked like they had been found on the sides of the road on trash day. The people were impersonal and the room we waited in was dank. When it was time to get my daughter set, they rushed my other daughter and I out and I didn't tell her goodbye or that I loved her and I felt like I had abandoned her. As if I had taken her to a bad daycare and just left her there. She was terrified and I was too. I did call later and ask them to tell her that I was sorry I hadn't said I loved her. Our saying was " I love you forever, I love you Always." She got the message.
At home I took my Grandsons in while she was in rehab. I thought I was helping the husband save on daycare. The point for me was that I knew the boys were being taken care of. The underlying goal was to keep them for my daughter because she had told me that she wanted out of the marriage. She stated that there were things I didn't know. (There was family therapy once a week but her husband only went one time) Oh boy was she right. The whole time he seemed to be concerned, even so.
She got out of rehab in February and right out of the box was a different personality. She volunteered at my son's Senior Serve event and had a stay busy schedule lined up. That was a wonderful time. People were so happy to see her and how good she looked. She looked so happy and sober. She was still on an outpatient therapy basis every Saturday in Houston. I didn't know she was staying at MY Mothers allot, but on the Friday before she was suppose to go to her therapy she stayed at her husbands and I kept the kids. That night she relapsed. The husbands older son called me and asked me why would my daughter was walking around like she didn't know anybody or even see him, and now would be sleeping on the floor in the hallway sitting up My Youngest daughter and I jumped in the car and got to her house. I walked into the house and you could smell the drug smoke. I went in looking for my Daughter and found her in the bed with her husband. Nothing like what the older son had described, but the phone cord was torn up and looked to be rewired, I found a drug spoon and crushed beer can with ashes and such in the master bathroom. I yelled at the top of my lungs and my daughter was unstirred, almost lifeless. Her husband was altered himself. I proclaimed to him that he would never see his kids again and we dragged my daughter to the car and called the police. The police got there and the husband acted like her didn't know anything about what had happened, that he was remodeling the house, he was obviously impaired but the cop was only worried about my daughter. the cop bagged the spoon for evidence, but by the time he got into the bathroom the crushed can was gone. I was hysterical and all the while my other daughter holding her into the back seat to take her back to Houston. When we were going there she could not wake up. I was terrified. When we got there she staggered into the counselors office and two counselors did there bit. When they got her awake enough she told my what happened. She told me that her husband and a friend were holding her down blowing crack smoke into her face and holding her in force. She said then she knew her life needed to be over so she found some sleeping pills and took a handful, she just wanted it to be over. The pills made her sick and while she was trowing up in the toilet, her husband was raping her as she was bent over the toilet. She did not use cocaine for herself that night. She didn't use a needle I found nothing like that when combing the bathroom earlier. We finished therapy and went home to my house. She was lucky to have not died over the pill overdose. They told me to keep her comfortable and make her respond periodically.
When we got home we showered her and put her to bed for a while. Later that night when she got up and was in the living area with the my other daughters and her sons and myself we noticed busing. Her arms shoulders, legs at the lower calves...We took pictures and we convinced her to talk to the police. Nothing ever came of it. She talked to her husband and had made an agreement not to press charges if he just gave her the boys and a divorce. And he did...for a while.
She filed for divorced and over the next few months her husband hired a lawyer and scared my daughter with the help of her legal aide lawyer out of custody. They told her that she didn't have stable income or a home of her own, and that the courts were going to give the children to the father, because those reasons along with the rehab and relapse would be enough to get custody totally away from her. They talked her into joint custody and no support. I begged her to fight until the death for her children no matter what. She gave up, depressed and feeling like the world she had made for herself was always going to be against her. She surrendered the boys to the husband, hopped on the 18 Wheeling boyfriend and left the state on a cross country adventure. Running as fast as she could from the perils of real life, and her boys. I kept my relationship with the husband the best I could for the boys. knowing all the drugs he used and alcohol he consumed. I held my tongue...for the boys...For a while.
In October of 2006 the boys were there visiting my daughter home from her truck driving adventure temporarily. At that time her boyfriend noticed a watery bruise at the base of the younger sons spine. It was so bad and painful that the child couldn't sit on it and didn't want it touched. But he was too young then to tell us what happened. We noticed other buses on the boys that were faded also but dismissed them..they are boys after all...But when I called the father about their Halloween costumes I asked him about the bruise and he said" Yeah, I noticed that...I don't know where he got that..." I couldn't believe that his son had an accident at daycare or home and he didn't demand to know! But as I have come to know that is how it is with their Father. He leaves the care to whomever or the will of the boys to fend for themselves...The busing continued and we figured out after the oldest of the two sons made an outcry of sexual abuse that it had to be the drugs and soon to be step mother. We reported it to Child Protective Services but somehow everything got turned around onto the fault of my daughter...saying she was being malicious in her report. I'm sorry but if someone was beating and sexually abusive to my children I would be vigilant too. And that's what I saw in my daughter not malis. The courts didn't care, Cps didn't care. They did nothing. You see the Husband never admitted any drug abuse an alcohol is legal so.....it was all on my daughter once again. To this day she is the one at fault about everything and disregarded when the law enforcement is involved. The husband's Sister is a county deputy, and used to be married to the sheriff, and is still very close to him and runs the sheriff's office ( and develops the digital photos of buses that..."didn't turn out"...even though they were find before the other deputy taking them checked to make sure they were clear before he left the house.), the husband's family knows the judge and the husband's lawyer and all of the above go to lunch together after court? Yeah...Colorado County...My daughter will never have a chance to get her children back.
My daughter has been clean and sober for all this time and still is. And through it all has developed Hepatitis C and gone through a short treatment of Chemo for it. But with no insurance the Dr. gave up on her too. Medical costs were too high to allow her to be hospitalized for her treatments and monitor them so they stopped them. The good news is that the hep is in remission and they will check again in January 2009 to see if it's back and if so they will start chemo again. Meanwhile, the boys are being abused by the stepmother and the Father is allowing it. It is just easier to ignore it then do something about it. But my daughter and us as a family are vigilant about showing the abuse to others in hopes that someone will help us. The stepmother was seen just yesterday uptown buying drugs. The husband knows and as far a I'm concerned, he doesn't do anything because the stepmother has land in her name he wants and she's holding that over his head at his children's' expense. Shameful and sick...I don't know how to help. Cps doesn't help, the police don't help, the county doesn't help. The father drives and goes boating with the kids drunk, is reported being on the Colorado river and they can't find him....Bull! It's like the whole county is ignoring us. What happens when the boys really do get hurt. Either the drugged up stepmother and father hurt the kids, or a wreck happens...How do I live my normal everyday life with that on my mind? And when something bad does happen what then will we have left to win?
If anyone has advice please post it. And this is not my last blog on this subject. I will be keeping a dated journal of updates.