Perpetual Harassment

It's been 15 years since my parent's divorced. It's been 8 years since I've seen my Dad, 7 since I last talked to him. He was supposed to pay our health care. He stopped leaving my single mother to pay for it. He was supposed to pay our child support. He stopped.

He's lived in Kansas, Massachusetts, California, Mexico. Once we get a hint as to where he is and start the legal procedures necessary to bring him to justice, he's already disappeared. For the past 4 years no one has been able to find him.

However he knows where we are. Always.

People who have never dealt with an abuser think we're paranoid. I remember that movie Sleeping With the Enemy with Julia Roberts. There are moments where she thinks to herself "No, I'm just being paranoid" and it turns out, no, her husband is in fact in her home. He's found her and ready to punish her.

This is exactly how it is. They leave hints, clues that they are always close by.

My family moved to a new town for a better job for my Mom. We find out a few years later that my Dad had gotten a drivers license with an address only an hour away from where we were living.
For those years that we lived there and he lived there too. For years we had horrible car problems. As soon as we got one fixed a new one popped up. Occasionally we'd smell his cologne, or see part of a cigar (he smoked one occasionally). And once, written in blood in front of our apartment were the words "Hi dead dog"

Whether or not he followed us, watched us, or even wrote those words or not. Someone did. Someone was harassing us. We'd have problems every time they nearly found him. They found out who he worked for and put a hold on his checks, the radiator in the car went out. I'm not saying he did this per se, but it is a little suspicious to say the least. Especially when he was supposedly living so nearby and all the while we had no clue.

When my parents divorced, we moved in with my Mom's parents. And only occasionally received his mail, because he had previously lived there (why will be reveled later), and my sister and I were on his insurance until he dropped us. At this point, we stopped receiving his mail. We moved into our own place and never received his mail. We moved to a new town, and never received his mail, another time and nothing.

We now have moved again, and for the first time in 9 years, we receive mail for him. Why? Why for the first time in nearly a decade are we receiving his mail? When my Mom has made sure that any connections of this sort are severed? Why are we getting his mail when he does not live here, nor as far as we know ever lived here?

We are scheduled to supposedly receive money from him this year. They may have found him and we may actually be getting the money he's required by law to pay us. Any real father would pay so much more, however by state he is only required to pay $250 per month per child. And he refuses to even pay that much. But we may get it and all of a sudden he supposedly lives with us? NO!

I ask you all to contact your congressmen and governors, and attorney generals and ask them for harsher punishments for child support jumpers, for abusers. This man abandoned us, yet continues to harass us!
This man who refused to be a father to me or my sister, a good husband to my mother, a law abiding citizen is free. Free to do what he pleases, free to continually harass my family. Free. And we refuse to be held captive by this man. We escaped him before and now we have lives, lives that surely would never have come to be had we stayed with him. And he can't live with that. He refuses to let us move past him.

I know there are many many people out there with stories similar. If you read this and think that, know you are not alone. This is why we need to take action and demand that people like this are found and punished accordingly and good people are free to live their lives without that man following them in the dark, both literally and figuratively.