I suspect that my ex may have been abusing my daughter... (4 years old) as I caught him masturbating in clear view of her (he was in her bedroom).
It's been 6 months since we seperated. And he would always ask to continue seeing the girls... But Showed little interest in seeing the boys.
I guess my biggest concern is because it's not the first time... When he was younger he was accused of sexually assaulting his cousin... Although it was never proven or disproven...
So how do I make sure she wasn't? And is 6months later too late? There's been so much going on with escaping the relationship I've just been trying to get as far away as possible and now that things have settled down and my kids are happy and settled I want to know so it can be dealt with.
3 Replies
You speak to police and child protection in your state and you let them sort it out. Mastirbating in sight is a form of abuse/grooming. He doesn't have to touch her to abuse her. Report immediately and get legal advice.
Not too late. Seek legal advice, don't ask her anything about as they will organise someone to talk to her. If you discuss it first they can try to say you coached her. Do not under any circumstances give him unsupervised visits, not even taking her to the toilet in a park!
It is not too late legally or for your daughters sake. First step is to talk to the police, gp etc. Get her into a councillor that specialises in child sexual abuse. You need to deal with it now or it will become a huge problem. I was raped at a similar age and my parents chose to ignore it (other than the legal side) and while I forgot about it for a few years it all came flooding back when I was around 8/9 and because no one ever spoke to me about it I felt like it had to be a big secret and couldn't talk to anyone about it. It took me another 10 years to be able to acknowledge out loud that I was raped and even over 20 years after it happened I still find it incredibly hard to talk about sometimes. I also believe that because it was such a secret it paved the way for me to be abused by a family member until I was 19 which I was never able to tell anyone except for my husband. Please don't let your daughter feel the way I did. I know it's so hard to accept that something like this has happened but she needs to know that you are there for her and she can always talk to you about it.