A failure to communicate?

Most of you, if you had been following us on the dailybs, will know my plight with the American Custody Battle.
In the 3 years since I started that series, oh how educated I have become. I have gotten beat up web wise by some of the more illustrious father's rights' groups. And the threats to my inbox have been amusing at best. Oddly enough, they prove my point about what that gender is truly like at their core.
Some of you may remember from earlier stories that I was married oh so many years ago. This man, and I use that term loosely, was the most violent of people. He wasn't always that way however. In the beginning of our relationship he was kind and loving. That changed almost immediately after we got married. No, that's not true, it was happening before we wed but not with such frequency. However, it was after we wed me being a whole 18 years old, that it really started to turn.

What I find confusing about the whole situation of victims in a violent marriage is the shame in which people look upon us. We get the gambit of questions;
"Are you stupid?"
"Why would you stay?"
"I can't believe you're dumb enough to put up with that"
"How can you be so stupid"

Ladies and gentlemen, let me ask you something. If your son or daughter, or mother or father for that matter went to war and got captured by the enemy, was held as a POW for 7 years and then finally managed to be released but not without damage.. Would you then ask that person why he stayed or how she could have been so stupid to get caught?

Guess what? Marriage to an abusive man is the SAME EXACT THING..
He beats on us, starves us, drags us out of bed for no apparent reason at all of hours of the night. Our bones get broken, we get raped and tortured... the only difference is its happening in our home and not in some foreign country somewhere. We are held prisoner for years. Threats of and actual abuse forces us to stay. And then comes the terror of knowing that if, IF you can escape, chances are he'll kill you. 80% of domestic violence homicides occur AFTER she leaves for help. That means a victim has less that a fifth of a chance of surviving.

Now here's the bloody part. We escape, and somehow manage to survive long enough to get to court and file for divorce, file for custody and basically beg our GOVERNMENT for help in protecting our children... And some family court judge, an idiot in a black robe, hands our young children off to that very same man we escape from. The one that decided raping us wasn't enough, he had to move on to our young daughters. So that now, we worry about how much torture our children are suffering. When we intercede to protect a life that cannot protect itself we get held in contempt of a court order and thrown in jail.

Why do we stay? Because its so much less stressful and damaging to be able to protect our children from him, than it is to protect them from the family court system.

That's why.