Advocate for my Children, Advocate for Myself...

by Callie Mitchell
(Kootenays, BC, Canada)

I have tried and tried to be the parent I should be according to society, let him see his kids, be the bigger person and let things slide. For two years I have given him access to the children and every time against my better judgement. I have followed court orders, he has not! I have done what I have been instructed to do, he has not. I lived in a Woman’s shelter for three weeks with my children. I have moved FIVE TIMES in the last two years to protect myself! We came to Castlegar after being given, by the police, 2 hours to enter our house in Kelowna to “grab what we can” and get away, before they released him from custody. I am no longer willing to put my safety and the safety and wellbeing of my children at risk.

This man is dangerous, unstable and wants to severely hurt me or kill me if he can’t have me. I refuse to be a statistic! I have three beautiful children to raise and I have the right to do that! And I have the right to do that without living in fear. My children have the right to have a mother who can raise them to the best of her ability! They are suffering because of all of this. I feel that by allowing my children to go to him I am putting them at risk, If I let them go to him and something happens to them, I am just as responsible for that act as he is for committing it. If I meet him to give him the children and he hurts me again in front of them, they live with that for the rest of their lives!

THEY DO NOT DESERVE THAT!

I am now going to advocate for my children and put my foot down. The children are better off without this person in their life. I grew up without a father, I wanted more than anything to raise my boys in a family settling and that’s why I stayed in this relationship longer than I should have. People ask me all the time why I didn’t leave sooner… because I wanted my family together and because I was TERRIFIED TO LEAVE. I tried to get Jarret to go to counseling, he walked out on the 3rd apt. I stayed, begged, pleaded, cried, bruised, ashamed, hurt, broken… nothing got better, nothing changed, and it only got worse, AND IT’S STILL GETTING WORSE.

I am not letting my children go to this man anymore. I AM NOT LETTING MY CHILDREN GO TO THIS MAN ANY MORE…but what happens when I sit in front of a judge, without counsel, because I don’t have thousands of dollars to protect my children, when they order me to give the kids to him for visitation? What then?

What he does:

• Has made a plan with his brother to burn my house down so that I am left with nothing so that “she will have nothing and have to come back to me”


• Has threatened to blackmail me in order to keep me from going to seek legal counsel (have proof on recording)


• Has a friend that lives in my new town that works on his crew that he has spying on me, has known times and dates of places I have been, stores that I shop at and at what times


• Has threatened to tell authorities that I am a drug user, in order to try to make me look like a bad parent


• Has threatened to “shut my mouth permanently” if I reported anything


• Has followed my mother and threatened to kill her dog, sat outside her place of work until she was off and followed her home


• Has tried to get his brother to follow me to find out where I live and where my mother lives


• Almost killed the kids puppy by collapsing her lungs


• Abused the puppy in front of the children


• Has abused animals since he was a child


• Hurt our child while attacking me


• Has attacked me several times, and has been charged with assault against me (thrown full cans of baby formula at my head, shut a car door on me, thrown me over a king sized bed and slammed my head on the corner of a bedside table, thrown full glasses of ice water in my face, thrown me through a bathroom and into a glass shower, shut a door on my arm so hard that the door jamb broke, slammed my hand in a door so hard the end of my finger split open, violently ripped the baby out of my arms hurting him and my other son that was holding onto my leg, stepped on my son holding my leg ripping his toenail off, put our ones sons head (Cruz) between the couch and the coffee table and pushed on the coffee table so his head was squeezed between the two and held it there applying pressure while our son was screaming, slammed a bed mattress into my belly when I was 8 months pregnant


• Walks through our no contact orders almost daily! (But does so in a way that the family court order protects him as they are written so loosely he can still harass me daily!)


• Refuses to meet in public location


• Refused at x-mas to return the kids unless I went to his house ALONE to get them (Dec 2014) have on hidden video him getting angry about this


• Gets very angry and threatens me if I don’t show up alone


• Made us drive through winter storm for visitation and never showed up. We sat in a blizzard on the side of the road for over an hour (Nov 2014)


• Never is on time when picking up or dropping off children


• Never agrees to a date easily, always a problem and changes his plans if he finds out I’m doing something


• Makes me do all the driving, no help financially, and if I tell him to come get them if he wants them he won’t return them


• Gives me 2 days’ notice when he wants to have them for a week, never knows his schedule or shares it with me, makes things difficult for me on purpose


• Has made threats of planting drugs (cocaine) in my car to get me in trouble with the law so he can “have his kids” (my car was broken into on Jan 6th and reported to police, the door panel was tampered with)


• Has drugs (cocaine) in the house while he has the children (he does not use drugs, he bought this specifically to plant on me or the children,) that was the plan he told his brother


• Tried to get his brother to hit him while holding our youngest child (Dec 2014)


• Is violent to others in front of the children when he has them


• Repeatedly verbally abused my oldest child Blaize (not his biological) name calling, calling him gay because he is sensitive, a girl because he cries, he has asthma and mocks his coughing, saying he should be adopted out to someone, buying things and taking them away


• Drives very unsafe with the children in his truck (has sever road rage), his truck is not safe to be on the road, has no brakes and a cab exhaust leak


• Has left the children alone in the house when he is emotionally distraught


• Stole my car and took the tires off it so that I couldn't leave


• Calls me horrible names in front of the children (bitch, slut, whore, disgusting, etc…)


• While holding the children says things like “oh I know you don’t want to go to mommy, I know you want to stay with daddy” makes them cry and then says “see they don’t want to be with you” (just one example of many)


• Very emotionally disturbing to the children


• Very manipulative


• Very controlling: I can’t turn lights on in the house, can’t use high water pressure, cant fold socks a certain way etc…


• Cruz says “mommy, daddy said he won’t hurt you anymore and you need to go home, he was just mad” “daddy said you did this to us”


• Constantly texts and phones me (10 or more times a day), does not know my current cell # so emails me to try to convince me to give him my new # or when he calls to talk to the children on the house phone he tries to constantly talk to me instead of focusing on talking to the children, tries to get me to tell him my cell# Tells me that he still wants me back and that he can’t get over me, can’t accept the fact I’m gone, tells me he can’t live without me


• Speaks of me to his brother as if I’m a possession, not a person


• Refuses to give me any of my personal belongings…he still has all of our stuff, mine and the children’s, in our house that he lives in, that I am not legally allowed to go to. Tells me if I get a police escort he will get rid of all my belongings. I have tried to make three different arrangements to get our things and he has ruined each attempt by not vacating the house and giving someone access to let us in. Won’t let me go there unless he is there, he knows I only have two years to obtain my things until I no longer have entitlement to any of it…he is doing this on purpose


• Made a fake profile on Facebook (under the name of Scott Waters) to contact my boyfriend, has harassed him, called him and texted him for almost a year. Threatening him and trying to get him to come and meet him (threatened to come to his house with something and it won’t be a bat)


• Has thrown cell phones in my car to track my location (found out where my boyfriend’s parents live)


• Trespassing on friends property to look for my vehicle (caught on surveillance camera)


• His brother tells me that he is very fearful for my safety, tells me to watch my back, to not be alone and to protect myself in any way possible. He says that my ex has severely hurt him, his mother and his sister in the past. Tyler calls me frequently to check on me to make sure I’m OK and still safe. He has been kicked out of his brother's house in Kelowna because he refused to burn my house down and to carry out other acts against me, also stole his truck and money from him as an act of control to try to get him to agree to carry out these acts against me. Tyler refuses!

I can't take it any more and I'm not even with him any more...