A sad story about a friend of mine

I need to vent.
This weekend I will be helping a young friend (I'll call her Kate) move from her apartment into our house for a few months, so she can have surgery and recover. She's 30, divorced from an abusive husband, and has lost custody of her 10-year-old son with the connivance of her own parents.
Her mother and I have been friends since we were kids, but I can't bring myself to speak to the woman any more because of the way she and her husband treat their daughter.
When Kate and her younger sister were kids, their parents browbeat them about getting perfect grades and being high achievers. Once my husband suggested we take the girls with our daughters to an amusement park. Their father refused to let them, saying the trip had "no educational value whatsoever." I remember saying to myself that the parents were setting the girls up to be anorexia cases, with their extreme demands for perfection. The parents signed the family up for a research study on childhood cholesterol, which required everyone to carefully monitor their low-fat diet for years. They carried it to the point of obsession.
Kate started developing anorexia when she entered her teens. She's extremely intelligent, and recognized her illness at age 12, but didn't fight it because it gave her control of at least one thing in her life - her eating. As she got older she diagnosed with bipolar disorder too. She accidentally became pregnant at 19, and her obsessively Catholic parents forced her to marry the jerk and have the baby. She finally escaped him after several years of physical and emotional abuse. Her son has Aspergers, and she labored for years to work with him, and fought to get him the best schooling and treatment. She was a wonderful parent, but her parents belittled her and as usual criticized everything she did. Meanwhile her drug-using ex-husband remarried, and then the new wife wised up and divorced him. He never showed any interest in his son's condition or treatment or special education. At some point he decided to sue for custody in order to avoid having to pay child support to Kate. Kate is an alcoholic, but so is her ex. Her parents, bitterly disappointed that Kate never finished college, earned a PhD or became rich and famous, took out their disappointment and anger on her by testifying against her in the custody case. Kate ended up with one hour of supervised visitation a week with the son she raised alone, and worked so hard to help. Her parents see the boy every weekend, and the child has told Kate by phone that she will never see him again until his father is dead. She is never allowed to phone him and her calls to him are blocked.
Her parents criticize and belittle her at every turn, telling her that her anorexia and alcohol abuse are her own choices. She is on Social security disability. They paid half the rent for her apartment after she lost child support, but they caught her drinking in May and stopped paying the rent last month. Now she's gotten an eviction notice. I too might be drinking if I lost my son
The worst part is that a month ago she was walking through a parking lot one evening and a guy in a huge SUV, with speakers blasting, backed over her and rolled over her several times before horrified witnesses stopped him just in time to keep him from driving over her head. She woke up a day later in a hospital with a crushed leg and a concussion. Her leg is still held together with huge metal bars. In the middle of all this, her parents chose to stop paying rent. They wrote to her doctors claiming she was drunk when she was hit and explaining all her problems, so the doctors don't listen to Kate any more or take her physical complaints seriously. It's as if they want her to die. This may also jeopardize her insurance settlement; I don't know for sure. Now, as she faces eviction, she has to go into the hospital for more leg surgery next week. She found out the hospital won't admit her unless she has a home to return to; if she winds up in a shelter, she's out of luck and stuck with the metal bars and badly damaged leg. We've contacted all the social services; there is no room at the women's shelter, and no funds to help her in any other way.
WHAT KIND OF ASSHOLES are her parents that they can jettison their daughter like a piece of trash? The father is in a big hurry to retire in another state.The mother is a classic enabler with a bad case of OCD (compulsive cleaning and nagging; my husband has OCD so I'm familiar with it), and the father is an alcoholic, but they don't view it as a problem because he manages to keep his important job in a federal agency. I'm sure they have found her a huge disappointment, but that is no reason to make one's daughter homeless while she's recovering from a serious accident. My husband and daughters are outraged as I am.
Kate's parents both work (I've been unemployed for 2 years) and make a lot more money than my husband does, and they're not saddled with the huge student loan debts from our daughters. We have very little space in our tiny house (they have about 5 bedrooms including a downstairs suite). But we love Kate, and they don't.

I read every word and am horrified that there are parents like that. Kudos to you for helping out in this situation. :toast:

I should add that Kate's father drinks himself into a stupor every night, and I have seen him drunk many times. He thinks he doesn't have an alcohol problem because he has a job. They are very successful, highly educated professionals (scientists) but they are incredibly stupid about human beings. Their other daughter drinks too much, lives in another city, works at a menial job and sings with a band. She's the "good daughter" in their eyes because she has racked up some minor success as a musician.

I realize you can't enable an alcoholic. I warned Kate that I wasn't going to supply her with wine while she lives with us. We're a non-drinking household. She's not happy about it. She can barely walk, doesn't have a car and has no way to get to a store.

She has been talking about killing herself in recent weeks, which is one reason I'm stepping up to the plate. Mostly because 1. Her parents refuse to help her or even show any affection or sympathy for her injuries toward her, and 2. Her parents and ex refuse to let her see her son at all, even for the court-ordered supervised visits. She can't afford to go back to court, and since the accident, she is too exhausted and in too much pain to deal with it. She sees a psychiatrist weekly for med management but needs to see a counselor too.

It is so wonderful that you are willing and able to help her. I see this as a time of healing for her - in many ways. I know it is very hard for her to be separated from her son. It sounds unjust and harsh. I hope she is able to focus her energies on getting to a healthy and strong place. Then, she will be there for her son when he is old enough to make that choice.

He was in pain about it for many years.

As they grew older, they wound up living with him here in America.

They're young adults now, but much more in their father's life, than in their mother's.

Tell Kate to hang in there, and wait 'til her son can make his own decisions.

And bless you for being there for her.

Thanks for sharing that.

I've watched this woman being mentally and emotionally abused by her parents since childhood, and I can identify with her because I had a painful upbringing too.

things get at least a little better soon.

Once she's away from her parents' bullying, she'll have a chance to begin recovering. She is so fragile now, in so many different ways.

Kudos to you for helping your friend. Blessings to you and yours. :hug:

she should be documenting all of this abuse in at least some journal -- preferably one that can quickly make copies and hidden in case the parents try to cover their ass.

you as well should be making a journal of this case, with dates and times of all these abuses. attach receipts or have another write in your journal corroborating their experiences.

at the very least it is therapeutic -- at the worst it's covering your own ass in case the parents attempt further sadistic "retribution." i can fully imagine them suing you for helping their daughter attempt to live outside their "control."

Kate needs an escape plan to fully disconnect from all these sociopaths in her life. at some point a cease and desist order, along with a restraining order might be a good idea. i expect that if they are willing to defame their daughter before medical professionals in order for her to get less treatment, they are willing to attack her by defaming her through any future employers and the like. and anyone that helps her is likely a target as well.

Beware: your attempts to save her life will look to these parents like meddling in their family. they have already acted upon a strong desire to "erase their mistake;" they will have little qualms about attacking you and yours to make you back off as well. Cover your ass, cover your ass, cover your ass. they are slated to get their own medicine in the future, but it is not now -- and they WILL attempt more harm in the future. Cover your ass.

you are a kind soul LE. :hug: Hope Kate gets better, I knew someone whose wife was also run over in the same fashion and she was killed instantly. He was so devastated joined the priesthood. Seriously.