Hello Shay. I’m very sorry for the situation you and your daughter find yourself in. What an unimaginable nightmare.

In the hopes you do read this, I just want to let you know something.

I have a friend in the states whose daughter was being sexually abused by her paternal uncle. Nobody knew for a long time and everyone saw the relationship between uncle and niece as nothing but a ‘close bond’.

Unfortunately, the uncle lived with his parents (the nieces grandparents) and when the niece would stay over night… I needn’t say more.

The mother (my friend) went to pick up her daughter from the house and ended up in an argument with the uncle. During that argument, he said something in a very similar branch to what your husband said to you. He told the mother ‘I get away with everything and there’s nothing you can do about it’. According to my friend, something in her daughters eyes (who had always claimed to be happy and nothing wrong) worried her mother and she took her straight to the hospital. From there… evidence was collected.

He has recently been convicted, and believe me when I say the evidence was STRONG.

My friend didn’t know her brother in law would go into where her daughter sleeps at her grandparents. Her daughter never said anything because she had been groomed. The uncle and daughter would play online together on the xbox and nothing seemed to be ‘off’. Regardless of this, I have spent many a late night talking with the mother, and trying to get her to understand she is not to blame. The guilt she feels over having not seen what was happening is destroying her.

You CAN see. You KNOW a grown man is going into your daughters room and sleeping in her bed late at night whilst you sleep. I am not saying his actions are your fault because they are absolutely are not. However, your daughters safety IS your responsibility, and trust me when I tell you if you don’t save her now – one of two things will happen as she gets older.

1.) She will resent you as she comes to realise she has been seriously abused and you did nothing because having a man was more important to you than protecting her.

2.) I don’t even want to detail this one, but someone else touched on it in another response… she is fast approaching an age where he knows she is likely to talk, and people who do the kinds of things that he IS doing, have no issue SILENCING their victims. And I don’t mean threatening her when I say silencing… I mean something much worse. THE worst.

Please save your daughter. This man is NOT your husband. A husband does not dismiss his wife’s VALID concerns. A husband does not tell his wife ‘you cannot tell me what to do’. A husband listens, understands, changes what ever behaviour is making his wife uncomfortable and does everything in his power to make it right. Also, no husband worth that title has ever crept into his stepdaughters room at night whilst his wife is asleep. I’m sorry to tell you this but that piece of paper you both signed to become married – means just that, it’s a piece of paper. Because there is no sanctity or love or respect in that marriage.

Please please PLEASE save her. I know you don’t want it to be true, but the fact is something very very wrong is going on and the only reason your daughter isn’t living in fear right now is because he’s trained her from a young age to believe what he is doing is normal and okay. Your daughter is in very serious danger.

I know you think you know your husband, that he ‘couldnt possibly be capable of that’. Welcome to the way most parents thought before they have been proven very wrong in similar situations to you.

Both you and your daughters have my hopes and prayers. Save her whilst you still can.