Child endangerment

I'm not sure where to start with this...it will most likely be long but please bare with me. This is really hard for me to write and I hope at least a few of you will make it through to the end because I really don't know what to do about this.

I'll start with some background on my home.

I live with my mum and step-dad (married over 11 years). They have two daughters (9 and 10). We have lived together in this house for 9 years (I think). Before that they lived on an RAF base and me brother and I would visit on weekends. Meanwhile my brother and I lived with my Dad and his parents.

Now some quick background on me.

For some reason I excel at working with children. I don't know why but they make perfect sense to me. Working with children comes as naturally to me as breathing. I worked in a primary school for four years. I have become very familiar with behaviour and strategies through guess-work, trial and error and dumb luck. I can calm most children and get them to talk to me about things.

I am also crippled by authority.

My dad is a decent guy, but he was not as far as I can see, a good father. I'm sure he had his moments and was probably great at times, but as far as discipline goes he was bad. He took after HIS dad. He had a very short fuse and most things my brother and I did wrong would result in being shouted at and smacked on the bottom repeatedly.

We were always taught by both parents to respect authority absolutely. This meant that at home I was scared of getting smacked and at school I was scared of teachers. To that end, at 23 years old I worked in a school and it took everything I had to force myself to go to the staff room because the teachers were there.

I don't think like my family. Thoughts make sense to me. Logic makes sense to me. Emotions never have. It is only now I've accepted who I am that I am starting to learn about how emotions work properly. But that isn't what this is about. I have always thought differently to my family and always had different opinions, this has always left me in a bad position.

If I did anything bad, even without proof I would get shouted at and if I didn't admit it I got a smack.
Once I brought up evolution at the dinner table. My grandmother yelled at me like I was evil.
Once I wore nail varnish and my granddad threatened to throw me out of the house if he ever saw it again.
When I wanted to grow my hair longer my dad shouted at me many times.
When I wanted to stop going to church my mum forced me to go more and has tried to guilt trip me into going back ever since.
When I started reading the Satanic Bible my mum declared me to be evil and started listing the reasons I was bad and obviously was doing things to hurt her.

My point is, every time I did something different I got shouted at or physically hit.

In addition my dad had a tendency to use me to prove a point. If he could break the eldest the rest would follow. He used this tactic to try and control my step-sister. This resulted in a fight and a period where I refused to have anything to do with him.

I guess the reason I'm telling you all this is because I know what it is that even though this is small stuff to what some people go through, I know what it is like to have your every move watched over and every slip up resulting in shouting or pain. It makes you scared of mistakes, scared of being wrong.

For reasons I do not understand, my mum married my step-dad. He is an angry and unpleasant man. I have tried to get on well with him, I really have and at times he is a decent guy but he is a bad husband and a bad father as far as I can see. I have no respect for him at all.

I am now scared that he is going to do to my sisters what my dad did to me.

One day last month A (10) had a homework project to do. She did it with my step-dad and he took some pictures. She wrote down what was going on in rough so she could do a proper version later.

The next day I hear my mum and A having an argument. Mum was accusing A of being lazy because A wanted to write out her science experiment step-by-step and insisted that her descriptions were enough to make it clear. Mum insisted that she was just being lazy and needed to include a picture for each step. I asked mum what was going on (even though I could hear her yelling and A not getting a word in).

I took A away and spoke to her for a little while. Within a couple of minutes being away from constant shouting and being accused of laziness she was calm and listening perfectly. When she was calm she explained what the problem was. She said that she thought her descriptions would be enough and that she didn't feel she needed pictures, but even if she DID need them, she didn't have pictures for every step anyway. Within about a minute I explained mums position to her and she agreed that the experiment wasn't too hard so we could just do it again quickly and get the photographs she needed.

This all took about 20 minutes to do. She now had the pictures and was prepared to do as mum had wanted in order to make her happy.

The next day I come back from my volunteer work to find A bent double backwards over the kitchen counter with my step-dad yelling at the top of his voice. He was leaning in so close to her face she literally couldn't move, his face was as red as can be and he would not let her speak. I heard what he was saying and I ran in and told him to stop.

What I heard went something like this:

"What on earth are you doing it like that for! You're not making a comic! You don't need a picture after every point you stupid girl!"

You will note at this point that is the complete opposite of what mum had told A the day before. Mum was standing in the same room and did NOTHING to stop it.

I ran in and admittedly lost it for a moment. He was being WAY to aggressive with A and I couldn't take it, she was clearly scared and I got flashes from the past and freaked out and I raised my voice at mum and step-dad.

I told them that they had both told her completely opposing things and she couldn't possibly please both of them. I told them that they needed to actually talk to each other if they both insist on helping with homework at different times. I told them that they need to stop shouting blue murder at their children.

Mum told me that A could have told him that, but it was quite clear she was never going to get to speak.

In the end I was forced to apologize to step-dad because I undermined him.

I explained to mum why I yelled at him. I will protect my little sisters with my life if I have to, and I WILL NOT have them turn out like me. I won't have them lose all respect for their parents at a young age and fear everyone with any authority. I will not have them grow up thinking they can't talk to anyone because if they say the wrong thing everything will get worse.

Anyway things moved on. I should point out this isn't the first time something like this has happened, it was just the most significant in the last couple of months.

I found out recently that he has been harbouring a grudge against me for the last 11 years for an argument we had when they got married.

Anyway that incident made me so upset I spent all evening crying. I decided to make a list of times he flies off the handle about things.

The next day I had 2 new new entries:

“You cheeky little cow! Get into bed!” - rude, inappropriate but fairly tame. Then there was this.

"Stop shouting at me or I'll rip your head off!" - Now this bothers me. You don't tell a child that you will literally kill them if they don't do as they are told, you just don't. What is worse is that this man is literally so quick to anger that even I don't know if he would do it or not, so I know damn well my sisters don't.

There have been various things like this every day for as long as I've known him.

Today he gave me another:

He was yelling at my youngest sister, B (9)

“If you don't do as I say I'm going to take my slipper off, put you over my knee and smack your bottom very hard because you are such an ungrateful child.” + several other comments about smacking B.

At this point all I could hear from B was 'no no no' so I went out of my room to see what was going on. I found step-dad blocking the door of her bedroom with his slipper in his hand, glaring down at her all the while yelling that she needed to pick up her toys.

I get that she wasn't doing it, but clearly this wasn't the way to make it happen.

Now when he left, I went in to make sure she was OK, because I am CERTAIN I heard him say something about a slap in the face.

She told me what the matter was - she had been hit twice by the door, first when A had come in, then when step-dad had come in. She admitted that she should have done what she was asked to do and tidied her toys away quite happily almost immediately.

Now I know for a fact that at her age, I could not have done anything if my dad had threatened to smack me because I got too scared. I know how much it hurts because he'd done it before. Not to mention that step-dad is MASSIVE. Not muscular, just BIG and to a child big in any way is damn scary, especially when they are red in the face and threatening you.

The reason I'm making this thread is because I don't know what to do. This man has WAY too short a fuse to deal with children. He knows he has a problem but he refuses to work on it. If he is in a bad mood he will pick on people. He often comes to me because he thinks I will get more angry than him and he will be justified in saying or doing something mean. He used to like to take away my internet for literally anything he didn't like, whether it was my fault or not. He used to do this because I didn't stand up for anything or if I did I got mad. Now I used logic and talk him into silence and he goes off angry. He just glares and storms off and takes it out on someone else, like mum or the girls.

He also does things that just seem like exercises in power demonstration. On good friday every year we have the same argument. He won't let us eat meat in the house. Now I asked every christian person I know and not one of them has ever heard of this custom outside of medieval catholicism. This is a man who goes to church ONCE A YEAR and shows no other signs of being remotely christian. A man who knows full well I am completely atheist.

Now my brother and I every year complain about this stupid rule, but it's his house so we opt to go somewhere else for our meals on that day. At this point he decides to get angry because we are going around him, and if he doesn't do it he will complain at mum and make HER guilt trip us about it.

He also randomly decides now and then that certain things are 'bad luck' and goes MENTAL if you do them. I can't even count the amount of times he has yelled at someone for doing something because it's bad luck. My sister came home with a brand new pair of shoes in a box and put the box on the table for a moment so she could take her shoes off. Not a table we eat off or anything, just a side table. He yelled at her for at least 10 minutes about this.

I have tried calling him out on his bad behaviour. Then mum comes in and starts to try and make me feel bad. "It's different when it's your children" she will say, and I'm sure it is, that doesn't make death threats OK. "He's just having a tough time dealing with his problems" she says, but that doesn't make it alright to take those problems out on your family.

Thing is at times I feel like I need to call someone about it because I really don't know how far he would go. Sometimes I really think he would seriously hurt them if they rubbed him the wrong way.

There are 2 responses to fear usually and they manifest themselves in different ways. B is stuck with flight. She breaks down in tears when threatened. She is so scared of being wrong that if you ask her about something bad she did IN FRONT OF YOU she doesn't dare to admit it. She will admit it to me when I talk to her and anyone who doesn't yell, but she is so used to the response from step-dad that she just lies now. A is worse. She got fight. She won't break down, instead she just laughs. She can't help it, believe me we have tried to change that. She just sees him go off on one and just starts laughing, which makes him worse.

The thing is, if you don't shout, she doesn't laugh. She will accept what she has done and make amends immediately if you talk to her normally. They both will. if you talk to them instead of shouting, they will both learn from mistakes and apologise. Instead they both find themselves (as I did when I was their age) paralysed in one way or the other, completely unable to do anything to make the situation better.

What should I do?

 

The last time I really argued with mum about this she admitted that she had given up trying to make him improve. She lamented that he wasn't always this way. She then told me that she couldn't bare to put my sisters through what she put my brother and I thought (the divorce).

Sometimes she is happy. Other times she clearly isn't.

Thing is I could ring social services but it would destroy my life if I did and they decided to investigate. Mum would never forgive me...in fact I think she would kill herself. Step-dad would probably kill me, I mean I'm fairly confident I can take him but I'd rather not have to. My employer has just been through the mill with social services and would never trust me again. If mum DID live through it, I'm pretty sure it would end her marriage which would screw us all and I'd be homeless, even though I think in the long run it would be good for her because she deserves better than him.

 

Un-fucking-believable.

So I decided to tell mum about last night. I knew exactly what would happen if I did, so I asked her not to be upset with me when I told her.

I told her exactly what I saw.

Then she reacted as a expected. She started defending it. They behave so badly. He is under a lot of stress. They never listen. That's how his father did things, and mine.

What I didn't expect was what came next.

She decided to blame ME.

She accused me of being 'holier than thou' about the whole thing. Once again she told me its different when its your own children. She told me how he's been 'incredibly patient' with me over the years (he hasn't) and he's never tried to manipulate me or my brother for the sake of power like my dad (he has). She told me that it's my fault because I was badly behaved as a teenager and they've learned their responses from me. That one perhaps has some merit, I accept I've never had any respect for step-dad and that may have come across, but frankly if he had given me a reason to it would have been less of a problem.

Then she blamed my transition.

Oh well he still doesn't know what to think about you so he's very stressed. You changed the family dynamic for everyone. You never think about that, do you! You don't care that we are stressed.

Then she told me the following:

"They aren't your children they are your sisters. It doesn't make any difference to you if they turn our to be awful, irresponsible people."

I have never been cut so deeply by anyone in my life. No, they are not my children, they are my sisters, but I love them as if they are. Since the day A was born I have tried to help them grow up well. I helped in their primary school and went on class trips because mum and step-dad were working. I've helped with homework. I've talked them through so many things and they respect me.

They are not my children but so help me I love them more than anything in this world and their futures absolutely matter.

So now I'm left feeling like I'd rather just die and solve all their problems in one go...I won't, don't worry about that, but my day is ruined if nothing else.