Part I

A couple of year’s back I got a frantic call from my mom who wants my wife and me to come and take my niece back to our place. My niece shared with my mom that she is tired of what her stepfather does to her. The phrase “does to her” was disturbing enough so after some further investigation the current information revealed that, my niece was tired of the fighting and head games that her stepfather plays and that she did not want to return. When my sister returned to my mom’s house to pick up my niece, my mom told her that she was not got to let her return with my sister. My sister’s response was, “Great, I have to deal wish his (stepfather) BS all weekend and now I have to deal with yours”, nice response to your daughter sis.

My wife and I agreed that, knowing my sister we did not want to get any kidnapping charges or worse laid against us if we did not take the proper steps. Therefore, when my wife went to my mom’s place, she contacted the local Children’s Aid office to notify them of the unfolding circumstances; they granted us emergency care of my niece. Now my sister being the knot head she is needs someone to blame for what happened so, she blames my mom for her inability to keep her mouth shut and contacting the local Children’s Aid office. To this day, my sister still says she does not have a mother.

Part II

After bringing my niece back to our place, I drove my mom back to her house and on the way, I found out some of my sister’s dark secrets on how she had been living her life over the past several years. Now I have not had any real contact with my sister over these past years, just sporadic news here and there so, most of what mom told me was news. She said that my sister had been hiding out from the Children’s Aid Society for some time now, which is probably why my sister was so mad that CAS was called. It turns out the stepfather was a convicted pedophile and he was not suppose to be within 500 yards of children under the age of 16. Now this is not just one charge, these are several convictions against him. Hmm… I am thinking a very high probability that he will re-offend. The kicker here was she knew it when she married him, not sure, how she was able to justify this one in her feeble mind. This person was a real prize, I only met him once and sometimes you can sense the evil that dwells within and he was radiating it. He was lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut, pond scum, get the picture. In retrospect, I guess mom did not know what to do. She was afraid that if she did anything, my loving sister would drop out of sight and never allow mom to see her grand kids again. She also kept my wife and me in the dark about her goings on because mom knew that my wife and I are not the sort of people who would stand idly by and watch this happen. Mom knew me very well.

My wife and I rather suspected there was more to my niece’s story, why she did not want to return home but without any disclosure from my niece, it was just suspicions. For now, the important thing was to provide a good loving Christian home that could support her as she was emerging from the living hell she had to tolerate for so long.

Part III

Now for the first year with us was very interesting, behavioural issues my wife was seeing. You see, my wife has a graduate degree in Social Work, spotting, diagnosing and understanding different behaviour issues are part of the program. Good thing she was able to make sense of these behaviors because I was at a loss, at least at that time. The Children’s Aid worker was a real scatterbrain obviously over worked and really disorganized. In many ways I felt for her, she had a good heart but I do not think she had the managerial backing to do the job. My wife decided to get my niece hooked up with a good counselor, may be sure could break through and discover why my niece was having so many behavioural issues. Between these sessions and getting her involved with activities at our church, we were starting to see an improvement. One of the things we discovered was that you were NEVER to discuss family business outside the home. This was one of the behavioural issues we saw a lot of was the lying, the constant lying about the littlest things. We just kept trying to be supportive but let me tell you, it was tough.

Children’s Aid had quite the file on my sister that stretched back further that I was led to believe. Apparently, she had been ducking them for a long time. If they were getting to close, she would just move to another town. My niece is a year behind in school because my sister never had her attend school that year because she was hiding out and was afraid CAS would discover her whereabouts. In the beginning, CAS kept my wife and I in the dark about because we were not a party in any part hence, not privileged to find out what CAS had on my sister. This was extremely frustrating because we did not know how deep the rabbit hole went and why CAS was actually moving to have my niece to be made a crown ward. They had us record the phone calls between my sister and my niece but we did not know why. Then one supervised sleepover visit, CAS said that they could not get a driver to bring my niece and they asked me if I would drive her. At the time I know it was the last thing that I wanted to be doing after a long week on a Friday night but, call it fate, call it divine intervention, call it whatever you want I was able to draw the strength to take her and to this day, I am glad I did.

Part IV

Now my niece has been with us for about one and a half years, my wife and me have introduced her to a true spiritual walk, truth is always the better path and what a “normal” or “close to normal” family is suppose to be. I believe these three simple concepts were really gnawing at her and she was starting to figure some things out for herself. Suppressed horrific memories began to bubble to the surface, emerging as conscience thought, which ultimately started the flood of disclosures. It begun during that visit I was asked to take her to. She disclosed to her friend that she was sexually abused for 5 years, which stopped when she went to my mom’s place. The abuse started when she was only five years old. How could anyone do that to a little girl? She kept this horrifying secret buried all this time, she tried to tell her mother but she would not listen. The scumbag even told my sister that he was abusing my niece during one of the many fights.