Life is an ass, people can be worse

[Tiamat 201]

I've been inactive recently, whether noticed or not, due primarily to dealing with the fallout from shittiest father I've ever seen.

 

A couple of people on OC already know the story, or most of it, and with the amount of shit I've been jumping through to deal with it, stress piled up.  I felt a need to post about the incident and fallout somewhere, and frankly the Open Carnage community is anonymous enough that I feel I can, so I hope it's not out of place or unwelcome here.  So here goes.

 

First, a bit of reference.  I live in the middle of absolute nowhere, Pennsylvania.  My nearest neighbor since the previous nearest burned down is about ten miles to the south.  Two kids, one adopted daughter and one biological son, both at college.

 

A couple of weeks before now- 11/20, it would've been I think- I was up super-late playing games, probably about 1:30 AM.  Not too unusual since now that the kids are at college I sit on my ass doing nothing most days, but nonetheless I was tired as hell, so my brain was a bit foggy.  The window was cracked a bit because I'd left the heat on too long and was letting air in; I started hearing some weird groaning coming in through the window.  My brain didn't connect the proper links for several minutes, until the various parts started to flow in: middle of the night, middle of nowhere, weird groaning, trespassers.

 

So I grabbed my sidearm(because I'm ever paranoid these days), quit my game, and went down to find out what was groaning outside.  I traced the noise to the side of the house and shone a flashlight to see and what do I find?  An emaciated teenage girl looks up at me, leaning against the house, and she immediately falls at my feet begging me not to call Social Services.  And then starts sobbing.  Fuck.

 

I managed to coax her to a standing position, and half-carried her inside the house.  All she said was that she'd run away from home, and then just said she was hungry.  Since she was clearly starving, I sat her down and gave her some leftovers from that night's dinner, which she ate all of, and then I just about gave her half of my pantry.  (I recall being surprised she didn't vomit.)

 

When she finally slowed down, I started asking her some questions, which she answered rather quickly.  I found out the following in pretty short order:

1. Her name is Laura, she's 16 years old, and she's been on the run for about(by her count) three or four weeks.
2. Her house is about thirty minutes up the road... by car, on a highway.  About thirty miles, assuming she beelined here.
3. She has about as many survival skills as the average American teenage girl(zero), so she nearly starved and froze to death in the onset of PA country winter, since farmers are emptying their fields and she didn't have the skills to survive off the occasional wooded area.
4. She's been abused physically, as she sort of tangentially mentioned, and I suspected that she may have been abused sexually as well.

From there, I called my adoptive daughter Katrina at college, who answered a bit annoyed given the hour, but regardless listened as I told her what'd happened.  She has some... experience with abuse of all types, which is another story entirely, but suffice to say she knows quite a lot about what the experience is like.  She told me to hold Laura until she got there(as I thought she would), and proceeded to acquire a ride from her roommate down here at about 4 AM(against my advice), arriving an hour later.  Before she arrived I put Laura to bed after cleaning her up a bit, and there's little else to say for that night except we slept on it.

 

The following day, Katrina, Laura, and I got together and started seriously talking about what we should do.  My options were pretty limited:

• Call Social Services.  Laura flips out and has to deal with that shitty system.  I feel like an ass.
• Call her parents.  Laura flips out, probably ends up running away again or killing herself.  I feel like absolute trash.
• Keep her.  Illegal, like I-could-be-a-felon illegal.
• Try something nuts.

So we tried something nuts.  Namely, Katrina, who is... persuasive, when she feels strongly about anything, called Laura's parents anonymously using the phone book and got the father on the phone.  They went back and forth for about forty minutes, and I could hear the father getting progressively louder and more irritable over the phone.  Finally, as Katrina quoted verbatim after he did so, he said "Take the fucking girl then, she's no use to me" and hung up.

 

That didn't exactly make this entirely legal, but it meant we could take a little more time to decide how to go about the problem.  However, before we got terribly far into talking about our next step, the mother calls about half an hour later.  I get on the phone with her and she asks me some questions about how Laura's doing.  I answer honestly, and in a soft voice she says, "Is she happy there?"  I direct the question to Laura and she nods vigorously; apparently she likes it much more here.  When I tell the mother that, she sounds like she's gonna cry but she says she'll agree to sign over custody of her own daughter to me- a complete stranger- in that case, if I'm willing to take her.  Rather stunned, I agree, and we set it up for the following afternoon.

 

Laura grins ear to ear when I tell her she doesn't have to go back home.  So she relaxes with Katrina for the night, who starts telling her her own story in an effort to get her to open up a bit.  They talked late into the night, and a little after 10 PM Katrina comes down with this look of incredible anger on her face to tell me what Laura's father has done to her.

 

She's been beaten, belted, slapped, spanked, punched, and even hit over the head with a bottle.  Multiple times, for most of those, since she was ten years old.  And a week before she ran away, her father forced her to perform fellatio, violently and several times, on him.  I had to actually calm Katrina down before she went back up to talk to Laura again, and with this in mind, it occurred to me that I might very well have to deal with this ass the following day.

 

So Katrina went back upstairs, and ended up spending the night in bed with Laura as a comfort.  I stayed awake all night, unable to sleep properly with this shit tossing around in my head.

 

The following day, the mother(with a lawyer in tow) comes over with a set of paperwork- custody papers.  No courts, just my kitchen table.  She talks to Laura for a few minutes, and then we get to business.  Just when we're about done reading and signing, I hear a car come up the driveway and a few minutes later some hellish banging on the door.

 

I answer it to find a very drunk man- some sort of alcohol on his breath- breathing in my face demanding to see his wife and daughter.  With not a lot of choice, I lead him inside, and everyone stands around tense for a few minutes before he points at his wife absurdly dramatically and says viciously "You lied to me!"  Which she apparently did, of course, telling him she was going to the store.

 

We stood there for a few seconds awkwardly before Katrina walked over to him- practically giving me a heart attack as I imagine her breaking his nose off- and said something to him pretty quietly.  He just whitened and shut up on the spot.  We even got him to add his signature to the custody signover.

 

Laura's mom said good-bye, and together she, the lawyer, and the father left, and I'm left with custody of yet another teenager.  This one with severe PTSD, if I'm any judge based on my own experience and a few clear-looking signs.  (I'm not a doctor, but a veteran.)

 

Laura and Katrina bonded wonderfully, they're great friends now; whenever Katrina's here the two of them are together almost constantly, along with Katrina spending the night with her.

 

Today Laura went back to school for the first time in weeks, since I let her stay off until after Thanksgiving break.  Her fellow female peers are apparently teasing the fuck out of her for zoning out in a few classes- flashbacks, likely- and for mysteriously disappearing for several weeks, and her couple of friends are now awkward around her.  So it's pretty much just me, Katrina when she comes back from college(every weekend now, she says), and occasionally my son as well who are friendly to her.  The poor girl can't even have some damn friends.

 

Katrina, I get the feeling, wants to flay her father alive and toss his entrails over city hall.  I advised her against anything rash, but honestly, I really understand that feeling right now.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Tiamat7200

[DiSiAC 1,347]

... wow.

 

I applaud you sir.

[Skeezix the Cat 3,089]

I expected the worst when the father came beating on the door.  I'm glad you at least got her away from that horrible man.  I really hope she can recover from all that.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Skeezix the Cat

[Takka 13,376]

Fuck dude, good thing you were in a position where you could help her like that.

[Kvasir 1,482]

Not a whole lot of people left who would make the decision you did, even though it's the morally right one. I hope everything works out for you and her.

[Anthony 669]

honestly sounds like either way you've managed to save her live, she'd have probably (like you stated) killed herself, or possibly her father (ending up in jail for that is pretty much death anyway) or starved/froze to death, i know how PA winter is, i live in meadville, by lake erie.  

you did a damn good job with this. I hope everything works out, but from the sounds of this, it's not over just yet. 

[ForkSpoonz 2,647]

glad you could legally do the right thing. that doesn't happen enough

[Tiamat 201]

Yeah, I'm incredibly glad the mother made that offer.  Otherwise I'd probably end up having to turn Laura over to someone.

[giraffe 794]

You're very generous and have done an excellent deed. If I were in your position, I doubt I would be responsible enough to maintain the welfare of another being's life. No pets or children for me in the foreseeable future. 

[Krazychic 3,311]

Did you ever find out how the mother obtained your phone number?

You've done a good thing Tiamat, and if Laura responds in your care like Katrina has, despite all the uglies she's receiving atm, you are changing the life of yet another victim of abuse for a better experience.

 

Long yards ahead but I know you are strong enough to do it with the support of Katrina and your boy.