Here's the gist real quick:
I have a step daughter. We'll call her Jr. Her mother, to whom I am engaged and who lives with me we'll call D. Jr's father we'll call JG.
JG is insane. He is depressed, he's delusional, and he's in denial that he has any problems. Jr is being driven insane by her father.
Jr has panic attacks. I have witnessed them dozens of times and have talked her down over and over. It's not that hard, she just needs patience, a calm voice, and understanding. When she has these attacks in front of her father he accuses her of being a drama queen, of doing it on purpose, and doing it to make him look bad.
About two months ago JG pushed (verbally) Jr to the point where she had a complete breakdown. During this meltdown he threw her (physically) around the house and bruised her. She threatened to kill herself and he called the police so she ended up in the suicide ward at Kosair Children's Hospital for a week. We have copies of the complete evaluation of her from Kosair which says, in no uncertain terms, that the problem is JG. Page after page after page of details of how he is the cause. There is no doubt. But Child Protective Services (CPS) refused to open a case and a judge refused an emergency protective order (EPO) so JG continues to have joint custody of Jr.
I may come back in the future to Jr's boughts with medications in the couple of weeks after she left the hospital (quick summary: Prozac at first, then worsening condition, change to a couple of simpler drugs, withdrawal from Prozac, lots of panic attacks and worry in between) but she's finally on things that seem to help her. Unfortunately they do not change the behavior of her father.
This evening she called me at 6:00pm having a panic attack. She was having trouble with her homework (drawing a large map of the world) and got angry when she couldn't find a reference map online. (Complete aside here but her teacher told her she was creating a Mercator Projection when in fact she was drawing a Patterson cylindrical projection, so that didn't help.) Her father then took the opportunity to berate her for being angry which quickly led her into a panic attack. She eventually ran out of the house and called me. I talked her down.
While I was talking to her, after I had her calm and was talking to her about the project that son of a bitch came out and found her and began yelling at her to talk to him and demanding she tell him why she wasn't working, etc. Truly horrible. I calmly told her what to say to him and he backed off a little though he kept coming back every two or three minutes. The tone of his voice was disgusting, dripping with contempt and accusations. He was snarling and literally whining at her. Eventually she went back in and went up to her room to talk with the door closed. He continued to yell and bark at her from outside. I can't imagine being such a heartless piece of shit.
After about an hour we got her calmed down and she went back to working on her map. We had her leave the phone on speaker so we could hear and I set up my little sound recorder by the phone. Sadly while moving the phone so it wasn't directly in front of the fan I stopped the recorder so we missed the worst of him going after her about a half hour later. However we did get a few segments of him whining on tape a little later, probably not enough to use in a court. I am going to show her how to record on her phone so she can have that going when he starts in. Perhaps some day I'll post some audio clips to demonstrate just how snotty and childish he sounded. There's one adult in that house and she's a 14 year old child.
Sadly it takes at the very least $5000 dollars to force him to take a mental evaluation (which we are both sure he would fail spectacularly) because this is Kentucky where we don't give a flying fuck about the welfare of children until they've been physically injured (and apparently the injuries have to be quite severe as she had visible and documented bruising after the whole suicide threat incident). And we do not have and are not going to have $5000 any time soon to make this happen. A full blown custody battle would cost in excess of $10,000 which we also will never have unless a lottery ticket we find on the street hits it big (I buy one once in a blue moon and D never does and I don't have one right now).
Jr was having suicidal thoughts at school Tuesday and, on the advice of her therapist, we took her to Kosair for an evaluation. They did not admit her. Her father was working very late (?) and at around 8:30 (her bedtime is 9:30) we told him she would stay over with us. Sadly she went home to him today after school and tonight we dealt with him treating her like shit. The social worker that evaluated her at Kosair was livid that JG had joint custody. She said in no uncertain terms that he should not be allowed visitation and that the judge had no idea what he was doing. This is what happens when you elect judges, you get political toads that don't give a flying fuck about justice or the people they see in their courts, and you get men that are more worried about male voters than child safety.
After over 3 hours we finally got Jr to bed despite her father yelling at her while she went up the stairs and contacted her teacher about the map project she is working on, asking for an extension because of the circumstances. Hopefully he will give her a break. Jr's father literally told her she was going to get kicked out of school if she didn't do her homework. Imagine that. Jr is a straight A student. Not completing one assignment is not going to get her anything other than a B at the worst. If only you could've heard the tone of his voice when he was shouting that at her. He sounded like he was doing an impersonation of Eric Cartman from South Park, whining and bitching all at once.
JG has also accused Jr of "trying to make this look like it's my fault." Seriously. This is all his fault, but he is so deeply in denial and delusion the rest of the world is doing this to him, especially his own daughter. He doesn't care about her except as how she reflects on him.
Sadly this saga will continue, I only wish I had started blogging about it at the beginning.
An update as I was about to post this: The teacher replied saying he will absolutely give her an extension. Most of us adults are good people.
