Children alienated from their dad for fifteen years
I’m Tom. I’m coming up to my sixtieth birthday soon, and I’ve not seen my two sons for fifteen years and didn’t see my daughter for thirteen years.
I got divorced 15 years ago. It was particularly acrimonious and my ex-wife has remained very bitter towards me, even though it was her who had an affair and ended our relationship. We have three children, one girl and two younger boys, they were 14, 12 and 10 when we split up.
My oldest girl is now nearly thirty and I have now started to meet her at last, and we are trying to rebuild our relationship and somehow make up for the fifteen years we were forced apart.
Immediately after we split up, my wife blocked me from seeing my kids. She went to court to get an order denying me access - she was allowed to accompany them and speak in court, I wasn’t. She then began poisoning them against me, my daughter now realises this is what happened to her and her two brothers, although at the time they naturally believed what their mother told them.
“You may be their biological father, but you'll be never be anything else to them”
My wife’s parting words to me were “Although I know you are their biological father, I’m going to make damn sure you’re never anything else to them”.
I moved out of the house, but when I realised she really was going to take my children away from me my whole life literally fell apart. I lost my job because I couldn’t cope with the stress and was almost penniless for years, moving between a string of temporary jobs, trying to rebuild my life without my children.
The courts were no help at all. Although I got a contact order allowing me to see my kids my wife just wouldn’t allow it and the courts did nothing.
So for the last fifteen years I’ve been devastated, unable to see my children and only imagining the things they were told about me. Even when they were old enough to decide for themselves, they didn’t want to see me.
I’ve always paid towards child support, and in the last few years I have managed to get myself back together financially, so I paid most of the costs of the children to go through university. I never receive any thanks from them though, they saw me as purely a cash supply!
Met daughter by lucky chance
My life changed when I met my daughter by chance a couple of years ago. I invited her to meet with me and have her say. She shouted and ranted at me for a long time, she said I had deserted them all and believed all sorts of bad things about me. Now she has calmed down and accepts they were unfairly poisoned against me for years by lies their mother told them. At last we are now starting to become friends and getting to know each other again.
My daughter’s boyfriend has told me recently that she and her brothers are all still too petrified of their mum to go against her. Even though they’re all now in their twenties, she still has a hold on them.
I know my boys live just 50 miles away, and they come back home to see their mum quite often. Every Saturday for years I’ve wandered around town like a zombie in the hope I might see them. But I never have.
I just want to see my boys again
I try not to hold too much against my ex-wife - she was a good mum to them in many ways - I just want to get back a relationship with my children before I’m too old. They’re obviously too confused to realise I have always loved them more than anything - not a day goes by when I don’t think about them.
I’ll do anything to reconcile with my boys, it’s the one last thing I want to do with my life, for their sake and mine. Hopefully my daughter will be able to help her brothers understand and meet me, given enough time.
So many wasted years.
When I first spoke to Tom about his situation he displayed a remarkable degree of acceptance of what has been done to him and his children.
He said to me “she was a good mother to them”.
I’m afraid I had to strongly disagree with him there, and point out that – as far as I was concerned – she had emotionally abused her children (and him) over many years. We can see the result of her abuse in these three screwed-up adults.
These ‘children’ remain so damaged by their ordeal that they are still unable to have a normal relationship with their father, even in their twenties.
This is something else the family courts never see (or indeed prefer not to see). Their actions don’t just ruin children’s lives in the short term but often help create another generation of dysfunctional adults – who will likely always have problems forming stable emotional bonds with other adults.
