The overt violence towards children is so awful, Hops. I share your outrage. Those headlines triggered me; reminding me of the way my mother used children as `weapons' to hurt her first husband. She din't toss us over a bridge to hurt him, but perhaps only because its illegal!!!
He had three toddlers at the time of their divorce. She says he hated us and beat us up all the time, but he tells a different story (I'm inclined to believe his). In fact, what disturbs me now, knowing how N's project, I fear that my mother did a lot fo beating of her babies!! . I have no memory of that, but I remember her getting into a habit of it with one of my sisters, when she was 5. She would close her bedroom door each night, and beat and `hiss' at her over and over. She would try to get her to read books too `old' for her, and when she failed, my mother allowed herself to beat my sister for many hours. My bed was in the next room, and i could hear it all.
Our mother made us call our real father `Mr Blurky'. We couldn't call him Dad, or by his real name. She violated visitation rights, but she would make us call him and tell him we didn't want to see him. Boy he was graceful about it. He never said a bad word about her in that entire time, and he would only say `are you sure that what's You want?'
Its only in the last year that I learned of their court battle, instigated by him, to have visitation rights. He won, so my mother relocated the family to another state.
She didn't pass on gifts he had bought me. She told me he hated me and didn't want me. the story keeps changing as the years go by, but the one fact that becomes clearer each year is that he wanted his children VERY badly, and she used us to hurt him.
Hops, the really cruel headlines do not surprise me, considering what happens in divorced families.
but they do make me feel very grateful to be alive!!!!
thanks for sharing:)
