Ok, where do I start? It’s quite an unbelievable story so just bare with me. Almost exactly 2 years ago I was about to check my email on our family tablet, as I go to close out of my then boyfriends e-mail, I notice the word NUDE… it kind of sticks out in a sentence. I assumed it was spam and then I realise it had many replies back and forth. So laughing to myself I click on it, thinking I’m going to see some nude famous person or something typical a guy may have in email. Let me say, at that point we had dated for 20 years, minus a few years in the middle, and have kids so we have been through it all and I wouldn’t care if he looked up nude people. Anyways, the email is from a person asking him if he had any more nude photos. First I’m thinking maybe they wanted photos of him which wouldn’t really shock me since he’s a musician and I run his business so its normal to get messages from girls asking for crazy things lol. Turns out the person was asking for more nude photos of local girls. Shocked I click on his reply and BAM a photo of ME pops up. Shocked again as he is pretty selfish and jealous, I couldn’t believe he would share a photo of me, I keep reading. Turns out they have been sharing nude photos of local girls in emails for months. Then I realise the emails are from 8 years ago. Its his 3rd email he only uses for armslist. Then I see he recently sent an email to his other 2 main emails. It is photos and collages of his best friends wife! I end up checking the other 2 emails and in each emails sent folders are tons of emails with attachments of women I know, family, friends, clients and myself that he had been sending to himself and it turns out at least 3 other strangers he had been trading photos/videos with! Now at the time I had already been fed-up with his constant verbal, emotional and psychological abuse and had left many times, always hoping he would change or mean it when he said he can’t live without our family and he swears he will go to anger management and promises he will treat me better. I always see the good in people and am an eternal optimist and he used that to manipulate me. He conditioned me since I was 15 years old to think his many types of abuse were “Love” and since he hasn’t hit me for many years, he wasn’t abusive. He constantly would gaslight me into believing I should walk on egg shells so I didn’t make him explode and its my fault I didn’t deescalate the situation when he was flipping out, and always that it was somehow my fault. So there are many reasons I had left before but NEVER did I ever think this shit would be one of them. After a few days of going through every electronic device I could fine while he was out of town on a work trip(he’s a broke ass musician so no this isn’t fueled by me wanting anything from him… he has literally nothing lol), I was in utter disbelief at what I found. He had been stealing nude photos/videos from his best friend of his wife for at least 6 years, I found no less than 15 collages made just recently of her, He was making collages of he and I side by side with a photo of my twin sister….. so it looked like she was the one in the videos with him, sending photos to strangers of our friends, my sister, people I have known for years and people I don’t even know, stealing photos of my photography clients from their Boudoir sessions(lingerie) when I would leave, posted me online requesting people to “tell me what they would do to me” and to top it off he had been hiding cameras in our home, mostly our guest bathroom and our master bathroom for at least 13 YEARS!!!! Yes I say it again, HIDING CAMERAS IN OUR BATHROOMS FOR AT LEAST 13 YEARS!! I assume around 2016 he began his interest in watching me actually use the bathroom but I know I didn’t find everything he had so it could have been long before that. Yes using the bathroom, literally hiding his old phone in the bathroom and watching me live streaming from the next room on his webcam app for sexual gratification. I am a private person when it comes to the bathroom and it was the only time I wanted privacy or even got privacy since we had kids. So to find out that the only privacy I ever had or even wanted was just an illusion and he felt he had a right to every single second of my life and my time no matter how I felt, it changed me. I honestly think I was more of a possession to him and for 20 years I was his property he could do whatever he wanted to me and it didn’t matter to him. He violated my privacy, my trust, my family, my business, my sense of security, and had no regard for how this could affect me or most importantly our children if it was discovered. So after 4 days, on the day he was set to get home at night, I packed up most of the kids and I’s things and took it to my brothers and waited there with my brother for him to pull into the drive. My brother and sister refused to let me confront him by myself not knowing how he would react to me finding out something he had been hiding for at least 15 years. In true narcissist fashion he laughed when he came in thinking I had just decided to move out and brushed off my request to talk to him. I then said ok dont talk but you will listen to what I have to say….. “I know everything you have been doing, i found the videos and photos, I found it all…..” He played dumb for a long time but eventually my details of his crimes began to sink in and he began to sweat. I mean literally sweat too…. he got up off the floor at one point and he literally had a big wet spot on the asshole of his pants…. he was panicking so much he legit was sweating out his asshole lol. After almost 2 hours and many many lies, then half truths as he admitted tiny crimes then swearing it only happened once or admitting doing one thing but swearing he didn’t do another, I was ready to get out of there. He admitted pretty much all of it in texts and In the recordings my brother took of the confrontation, so honestly I can’t make this shit up lol. After leaving I found even more photos and videos on the tablet I took and the old desktop I took along with websites he had been using to connect with these people he had been emailing over the years. He swore he hadn’t sent anyone my photos but I proved it since it was STILL IN HIS EMAILS. He also swore he never posted me online and he never would do that and after I left I found a website he posted me on!! I honestly didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want my kids to know about all of this since it would be incredibly traumatizing and they didn’t deserve to pay for his mistakes. So I tried my best I could to act normal since moving out was a big enough adjustment for them to deal with. I forced myself to continue switching the kids back and forth and picking up the kids at his house as if it wasn’t incredibly traumatizing every single time I had to go there. I knew I would rather deal with the trauma than make my kids aware of it. Then I found the video….. the one that broke something in me I dont think i’ll ever get back. It was a video from a couple years before and he and I were in bed, but as I watched it, I didn’t remember recording it and then I see my face and realise I am completely unconscious. As the video continues I never once open my eyes, I am completely limp and he even has to put his phone down to pick me up and flip me over more than once. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and my mind had been so filled for weeks with images and videos of everyone from my sister to my clients, that I don’t think my mind would even let me comprehend what I was seeing. It was my sister that first used the word rape…. I had thought it deep down but its like my mind refused to let that be an option. It wasn’t till I spoke to a lawyer 2 months later to grasp what I really should or could do to protect myself, my kids, my clients and anyone else involved, that I could truly see what had happened to me. In black & white on my phone I read an email the lawyer had sent me of a draft letter to my ex, that read “Rape of my client….”. I don’t know why it took seeing it right there in black and white for something to click in my brain, but it was like a light switch flipped and I could see all of it so clearly. I could see all of the years of abuse and all of the lies he told and all of the promises he broke and all of the ways he had used my kids and I as props to give off the persona he wanted to portray as the best boyfriend, the best father, the best friend and the best person anyone had ever met. When i look back no i see that he wasn’t a loving and caring father…. he wanted us to always do things together because he needed to control everything and if he didn’t get to be there then we didn’t get to go either. Every second of our lives was molded in a way to make sure his friends saw him with his kids, saw him turn down girls at shows who hit on him, give the illusion of the best friend and give the illusion that he just wanted to be there for all the kids firsts. In reality unless he could use it to perpetuate this idea of being the perfect father… then the kids missed out on it too. All of these things began to flood my brain over and over, all of it swirling in the background as I just kept seeing the word “Rape” over and over again as it tore through my body, as it touched every memory I had with him over the past 20 years, as it sunk into every single inch of my skin and echoed deep down into the depths of my entire being….staining the very edges of my soul. You see the assault is only a small part of the trauma a victim as to live with. The real bulk of the trauma is the perpetual fear, anger, depression, confusion, anxiety, paranoia, sadness, guilt, self blame, terror, helplessness, regret, bitterness, untrust and vengeance that you have to survive everyday for the rest of your life. Everything you do is harder from getting out of bed to going to work to doing homework with your kids. It seeps into your mind without warning and finding out your triggers is a new trauma all in itself. I dont know my triggers until hit happens and I’m on the floor in a full on trauma induced panic attack unable to catch my breath, barricading myself in my bathroom because my oldest kid came into my room and asked a question about school and the last thing you remember is begging her to leave your room as you look at the face of the man who broke you on her phone because she chose not to listen when you asked her to please stay in her room when she facetimes him and NEVER bring it in your room…. the only place you feel safe knowing he has never ever ever stepped a foot into your room. Its like just seeing his face on video chat on her phone in my room made it a place I didn’t feel safe and I felt like he was here watching me like he did for so many years. I could feel the fear and disgust wash over me as it coated every inch of my room and my skin. My safe place, my home, the only thing in my entire life, in my entire memory, that he didn’t touch or was never a part of, had been tainted by even the presence of him on her phone. So if you ever meet someone or know someone who has been assaulted….trust me when i say you will never understand how they feel, they don’t even understand it, and it’s ok if you don’t, they would never ever wish you did, just make sure you don’t hold their reactions against them or judge them for trying to just survive a situation they never asked for and do NOT want. I know I am a survivor but after 2 years of ……custody court delays, a lawyers whos done more harm to you than good, dealing with a dispatcher who violated the most important part of her job, a detective that never did his job, a prosecutor who has clear bias towards women and couldn’t give a shit about your case, an ex who admitted it all then 48 hrs later was denying it all and calling you the rapist and then bringing your oldest child into the situation and traumatizing them, and your little one who knows nothing of the truth but is traumatized by the world turning upside down & not understanding things, and dealing with panic attacks and every single thing life seems to throw at me that honestly you wouldn’t even believe…… I am a survivor but half the time i am so sick of having to survive it everyday. Its unfair and you never had a choice in any of it and some days that’s the hardest part, trying to get back the power of just having a choice. Most days I wake up feeling a little homicidal and sometimes I think its a miracle after 2 years that I still make the choice to be the person I teach my kids to be and let the system get me justice and karma settle the score. Unfortunately that has become an incredible burden on myself and my career and my kids. I have had to take so much time off to fight him for custody of the kids and keep him from getting more than supervised visitation. It has caused me to loose entire days and nights to searching through electronics and websites to make sure myself or anyone else wasn’t posted on them. It has stollen days, weeks, months and years of my, life, time and my sanity keeping me from being able to work and when i do keeping me from being able to even focus on the job. I have had night terrors and cant use a bathroom without checking for hidden cameras. I haven’t let a single guy touch me since I left and this entire thing has consumed every single day for the past 2 years. I don’t sleep more than 4 hours a night, I don’t take any time for myself and I put on a good front and I am able to laugh it off most days but still almost every single day I break down and cry. I had to buy pretty much every single item for my entire place when I moved since i left every bit of furniture there even though we had just gotten a brand new bedroom suit and remodeled the entire master bedroom and walk in closet and laundry room. So I left with no money too. I’ve had to take so much time off and I now am the sole person responsible for raising and taking care of my kids including driving to and from school and sports and events and paying for all of the things they need every single day. I had just paid off 15k of my debt before I moved and after furnishing a 3 bedroom place…. my equipment broke and i had to invest 15k intol getting all new equipment. So now I’m 30k in debt…. have paid my lawyer 15k to do absolutely nothing but put me in contempt TWICE, ignore my requests for 6 MONTHS to get child support that he doesn’t pay, to ignore my calls and emails yet bill me for “reading them” and acting more like he works for my ex while never once treating me like i’m a victim. We haven’t even been in court the whole almost 2 years so 15k for telephone status conferences, not sending me magistrates orders and I get served with contempt papers because I didn’t know I had to even do anything and to this day I still haven’t even signed a contract with the lawyer because he is the worst lawyer I have ever seen!!! So after trying every single program or outlet for help I can possibly find without making this all public and putting my kids through the public shame of everyone finding out…. I have come to literally beg for anyone and everyone who wants to help me try to survive this nightmare, to please, please help me try to pay for my overdue balance with my lawyer, make payments on my credit cards I’ve had to use just to survive and pay my rent, help supplement my income for all the time I’ve had to take off to try to meet with detectives, prosecutors, lawyers, counselors, Dr.’s and therapists for myself and both of my kids since we are all in specialized therapy for trauma victims. I haven’t taken off more than a 10 days in 2 years since I don’t get vacation pay or overtime or holiday pay or anything at all since im self employed. So i literally work 7 days a week from around 8am to 2am most days of the week. Even now Its 3:14am and i have to be up at 6:45am to get up with the kids but I am so stressed and afraid about how i am going to make it another couple months let alone 2 more years that I’m staying up after I am done working to try to find some help. This is just part of my story and honestly Part 2 may somehow be even more unbelievable but i’ll save that for another day. In the mean time, please if you can afford to give any financial help, You have no idea how much it would impact my kids and myself. Im struggling to find hope most days and Im starting to get really hopeless so please for my kids sake so I can be here for them and be the mom they deserve without the crushing stress I feel every single day, please help me if you can!