Before I continue telling this, I need to tell the reason for my timing.

These are the reasons I’m advocating for freedom from abuse right now.

1. Our children are almost 15 and 17 years old. They are loving and kind-hearted and smart. They need to be allowed to be kids for once.

2. We are still being abused. If you ever wonder why I sometimes still act like an abuse victim, know that we carry this weight— my kids and I — because we are still being abused. He steals our joy no matter how hard we try to ignore his behavior and plays for power and control using the court and medical care to wage war on us. All these versions of us suffered and witnessed his abuse at that time. The smiles show how resilient we are as human beings. We have been alone in this because abusers isolate. We are battered beyond the point we can take. We need support to help us be free from abuse. I have tried so hard for so long to free us by putting in boundaries and caring for our children when they are harmed by continued abuse, but I have not been able to achieve this despite all my efforts, attorneys, and legal help.

3. Our kids are bullied about therapy and medical care while with their dad. He won’t take them to appointments or makes them so late they miss. He tells them not to talk about him to their therapists. He has bullied them about their broken bones, refused X-rays, diminishes their needs, and lies to them about abuse they have witnessed or continue to witness. They were there for the horrible abuse that was and still is heaped upon us. He tries to convince them it didn’t happen. They know better because he hurt me in front of them and abandoned us repeatedly, always coming back to promise never again. He doesn’t promise that anymore. He promises to use them to hurt us and he does.

4. Our kids are used to seeing him harm me and this harms them. They are tired of being pawns to this sick game. It is a living nightmare. It weighs our whole family down. It is breaking us. This person needs help and boundaries. These boundaries don’t exist for him. We are still suffering horribly. Our kids and I need to heal. He does too. But that’s his business and responsibility.

You may know his sympathetic, nice guy persona.

He writes extensively about this not being his real self and how ashamed he would be if everyone knew the horrible ways that he behaves out of sight. These are just some of the things: texts from I was thrown into a desk, bitten, pushed into a sliding glass door — notes I wrote after we escaped to friends’ houses and hotels that I took with me to an appointment with his psychiatrist.

5. Our kids therapists have let them know that what they are experiencing will not likely change. So did our marital therapists. All are willing to testify in court but have been refused by the court. He lies to the court. We’ve now lost our home. Our youngest is sad that we will not have our full holiday decorations this year as we prepare to sell our home. It may seem simple, but we live a simple life because of this abuse, and the small things we have are the joys we share despite facing this abuse for so long.

6. Our lives are a his mercy. He has no mercy for us. He stole our joy and continues to do so. I have seen glimmers of joy like this from our children and myself but sporadic, not steady. He kept friends and family away so that we became truly isolated where he could control and punish us without us having outside resources, starting around 2017/2108.

7. He manipulated us by blaming his abuse on his mental health problems for years — he went as far as having a neuropsychological exam and brain MRI to show that his abusing us was not his fault or on purpose. For years, through sexual addiction, batterer’s intervention courses, and 12-step programs, we carried this weight for him. He then turned and told everyone I have mental health issues I don’t have. He went as far as to fabricate a diagnosis in 2013 the first time post-kids I tried to leave. The therapists he mentions (C, Carol, and L, Laura) never said these things and are willing to testify to the contrary. I’m dropping it right now for myself and our kids. I drop it daily, repeatedly, but it always comes back. Freedom is my closure.

Above: Whiteboard I was using while recovering from vocal chord surgery around the time of the assault where I was picked up and thrown into a desk.

Below: His 2014 “research paper” where he invents my mental illness and makes up stories to argue I am mentally ill to force me back into the marriage with him after separation.

8. We (our kids and I) are incredibly defeated, depressed, suffering from crippling anxiety, and wish for the abuse to end — all three of us are trying to get mental health counselors to help us but they do not have a forum to help us. This abuse continues, even in the worst of times — while going through stage three cancer treatment and healing, for instance. Imagine our children having to face my cancer in 2021-22 on top of almost losing me to abuse twice before in 2019 to horrific abuse incidents. He and his family made fun of my cancer, told people I was faking it, and attacked me on my GoFundMe posts for being a fraud. Rather than support or help heal and move forward, he tears us down. This is not normal contested divorce. This is abuse.

9. He’s in Buffalo today for what he told our kids was “making his (also abusive) sister like Mason,” our transgender son, because he wants a place to stay for free when he goes there. We were abused by both him and his sister in that house. Prior to that, his stepfather kicked him out of his mom’s house for being abusive to me when our first baby was born. This is why his sister is the only place he has to stay while he is there. Our children deserve parents who are proud and supportive and don’t subject them to the hatred of an aunt who drunkenly already called their 12-year-old cousin an asshole and refused to see him too for some two years.

10. The above are a horrible messages to our children. He uses our children against each other as well. He calls one a loser and tells the other that he is the only hope for the family. He tells the other who he calls a loser that he is the second parent in the family. He bullies them, neglects them, and uses all three of us to abuse us and manipulate us. He is well aware that hurting one of us means hurting all of us. After four years of divorce, this continues to plague our family, and we have found no true reprieve.

11. Today, December 11, is the anniversary of my abusive ex-husband becoming romantically involved. It marks a day that I was still a student in his class in 2002, when he decided to come onto me instead of being my mentor. He was my Honors Thesis Chair. I’m not mad that he did something he shouldn’t have. I’m mad that it’s 21 years later and I’ve been his prisoner for that long. He abused me, almost killed me, and won’t let me or us be free. Enough is enough. I shouldn’t have to leave town to be free. We are barely surviving this. We deserve to thrive.

Not only have I not been able to move on, our kids are not able either.

We are weighted down by someone still trying to control our narrative and fate.

Lies and silence got us here. Lies and silence made us vulnerable to abuse. Lies and silence keep us tethered to abuse.

Why speak now? After four years of nonstop, divorce nonsense, after cancer, and after more and more abuse, we deserve to move forward and have our lives back. Not being able to do so is harming all of us tremendously. Not even stage three cancer was worse than this abuse.

Thank you for reading our story and supporting us as we move on with our lives a little more every day. We are more free than we once were.

💘Tori