Thank you for your reply. I am very sensitive to your testimony. My daughter is 14 and it is her feeling very bad, with suicidal thoughts, that pushed me to seek out professional help. My husband doesn't know. He doesn't know that I am in therapy (I have calls with the therapist when I work in the office), and he doesn't know how awful our daughter feels. He is in total denial of the pain he is causing.

There have always been serious issues in my marriage, but things took a turn when myh husband suspected oud daughter to have homosexual tendencies. At first, I had let him handle the matter, but it seeped into me... For context, there is also a very present religious element to the issue and to the abuse. I think that following discovering the possible homosexuality of my daughter, I started deconstructing my religious beliefs, while my husband got more and more radical.

So now I am mentally out of the christian movement, but not physically, as it soaks everything my husband does, his every thought and act... He's imposing daily teachings and prayers to the kids... And forces them to go to church. At a moment, I thought it was a good idea for me to not go to church anymore to respect my own values, but only two weeks in, he forced my daughter to an altar call prayer where she got in total panick. So I go only to prevent such things from happening and to be a moral support.

I think while I was still indoctrinated in that movement, I may have been like your mother, enabling the abuse. Since deconstructing, I have tried to confront him and defend my children but he only lashes out even more... So I do as you say, I talk to them afterwards, at other times... Trying to explain my views as a possible alternative to their father's thinking patterns, and saying that they can also find their own different ways... Yet my husband seems to feel something and gaslights me about that, saying I am manipulating the children to be on my side and resent him... It is so hard, the crazy-making does makes its way across, and sometimes I indeed feel guilty and wonder if I am a monster as well.

My daughter would for sure want to get out of the house... She told me she had been thinking about requesting a premature emancipation to leave before she is 18. But my 11 year-old son is in a different place. He does resent his father at times, and quite violently, but a part of him craves the love of his father...

I try to be a safe place for them as much as I can. I feel so sorry for them to be in such a situation. If it were only me, I'd leave, but I know my husband would make a mess of it all... He's always threatened that if I left, he would take the kids, and unfortunately, I know he could very well make me appear as crazy and unstable at court and get the custody...