an End....and a Beginning

August 1989 - My marriage of 15 years was on the rocks. I did not love or respect my husband but always felt that he was such a good dad to our five children and my son from a previous marriage that I stayed in the marriage. Besides that, how was I going to support myself and six children? In addition, over the years my husband had threatened me that if I left him, the children would stay with him and there was no way I was going to do that.

One particular Sunday in August while attending a church meeting, which Latter-Day Saints call Sacrament Meeting, I heard a talk that inspired me to want to improve my marriage. I told my husband that after dinner we needed to take a drive and discuss things. We left the children playing, with the 14 and 16 year old's in charge. We drove to the beautiful mountains of Utah and sat by a stream while we talked. I told him that we either needed to fix our marriage or help prepare me to take care of the children by myself. We discussed what we could do that would help each other. One of the things that I decided was to show more appreciation for the hard hours he worked. He had been working additional hours in order to bring home more money for our family.

Earlier in the week I had asked all of the children to write notes of appreciation to their dad or else draw him a picture or something. All of the children had complied except my 14 year-old daughter. That night I reminded her to write a note for her father. He was working a swing shift and due home around 11:30 p.m. As I was reading in bed later in the evening my daughter came into my room to talk to me. She told me that the reason she had not written anything for her father was because she couldn't. Then she said these heart-piercing, terrifying words that no mother ever wants to hear, "dad has been molesting me since I was a little girl, and now he is molesting my seven-year old sister."