I married my husband just like every other young woman and we both looked forward to a blissfull future with our children. Contrary to the belief of some people that I would haveproblems bearing children, through God’s mercy, my three children came few years into our union.
A lot of people believed we would have to wait on the Lord for the blessing of the fruit ofthe womb as that was the tradition in my husband’s family, but God singled us out and we had our children without any hitch.
With these, our joy was complete and we never envisaged that these children would be a source of discord in our family now.
I am a trained nurse with a B.Sc in Nursing from Glasgow, Scotland and my husband is also a trained professional engineer. We both had good jobs until my husband lost his job and getting another good well paid job became difficult. We both decided that I should travel out of the country to practise and when I am stabilised, he would join me with the children.
As luck would have it, I secured a good job and no sooner had I got to England that my husband secured one too. We had it all, which was what we thought. I would have returned immediately, but since my being over there made it convenient for my family to visit on holidays and my children were not too young, I stayed on my job and sincerely my husband did a good job taking care of the children.
The summer my first daughter turned 18, it was my turn to visit home. When I arrived, I noticed a tensed atmosphere between my daughters and their father. I forgot to mention the fact that I am blessed with three children, two girls and a boy, the boy is the last.
Initially, I thought it was the adolescent – parent’s issue, so I ignored it. But when I noticed that apart from the tensed atmosphere, my first daughter sometimes would be outrightly rude to her father, I demanded to know what was going on. This became a matter of concern because, both of them were very close and my husband addresses her as Iya Mi (My mother) because of the uncanny resemblance she has with my mother-in-law, so I wondered what could have happened.
I tried several times to get my daughters to speak with me and tell me why they treated theirfather with such contempt, but all they had to say was always “talk to your husband.” On a fateful day, I had to call my husband’s attention to what I saw and asked him what was going on. He told me it was nothing he couldn’t handle and that I shouldn’t worry myself. He, however, told me that my eldest daughter was keeping bad company in school and she was trying to draw her younger sister into it.
Based on this, he decided to bench them, and placed embargo on outing and parties. He dropped them in school and made sure that whatever he was doing he created time to pick them from school. On days that he had to travel, he made plans to get them home. This, of course, did not go down well with them and he wasn’t ready to bend the rules.
I was happy because I knew it was something positive and because of their age, I knew this wouldn’t go down well with them. I then ignored their attitude until few days that I wanted to travel back to the UK. I called my eldest daughter first to speak with her. When I raised my observations and my husband’s response with her, her reply threw me off balance.
My daughter told me that daddy did not want her sister and herself to go out because he was having sex with both of them. I thought I didn’t hear her well. I asked her to repeat what she said, she repeated herself again and asked me to confirm from her sister.
I summoned my younger daughter immediately and she said the same thing. My life crashed that very moment and I asked if they could repeat what they told me before theirfather. They said they would. When he came back from the office, I sought an audience with and told him what the girls said. He said I was joking and said I should call the girls. I did and they repeated what they told me.
My husband denied vehemently and the girls insisted that it was happening. I was confused and I sought the counsel of our pastor, he called my daughters and they told him the same thing. I was confused and I didn’t know who to believe. This shattered my world and my husband became something else. He was hurt that I of all people refused to believe him.
I made arrangement and took my children back to the UK with me. Although it cost me a lot moneywise, I couldn’t leave my children with him any longer, a lot of things changed for him. He lost all his friends, even his family members abandoned him. People alluded a lot of reasons he would sleep with his daughters. Some said he did it for spiritual purpose. Some said he was using them for money ritual and I also had a reason to think that his fortune changed just after I left, automatically, he must have used my girls.
I didn’t want to have anything to do with him any longer. He tried to make me see that it was the devil’s machination to destroy our family, but I was past caring. I raised my childrenalone, although he offered to help several times, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I learnt later that he remarried years after we left him. He became ill with psychiatry problem and he had to be remanded in a home.
My son cared about him and they were always communicating. As soon as he finished his education, he came back to Nigeria to stay close to his father and it was through him that we learnt of all that was happening to him.
My problems started when it was time for my daughters to get married and they couldn’t find suitors. It wasn’t even an issue of having relationships and experiencing disappointments. They never had dates. Initially, I didn’t see the situation as a problembecause I felt they were experiencing psychological problems as a result of what happened during their teenage years.
They went through different counselling and other therapies, but all these didn’t help. One of my friends suggested that we seek spiritual help when my first daughter turned 36 years. We sought spiritual assistance from our pastor in London, a white man. After prayers, he said my daughters were suffering from a curse and they needed deliverance. Probably because he was not explicit, we went through several deliverance sessions, but the situation didn’t change.
My elder sister asked us to come back home. After visiting several pastors, we went to see one of the popular pentecostal pastors in the country. After prayers, he asked my daughters to confess their sins so that they could be free from the curse they placed on themselves. They denied knowledge of what the pastor said.
We left but their situation remained the same. Another friend of mine took us to another church, this time a spiritual one. After prayers, the spiritual head told my daughters that they had destroyed someone’s marital bliss and someone who wasn’t supposed to cry over them shed bitter tears because of what they did. He told us that the only way out is for them to seek the person out, confess their sins and ask for forgiveness.
My first daughter started to deny again, but her sister burst into tears and said she would confess. She said they both lied that their father did not have sex with them. She said her sister asked her to collaborate her story years back because their father did not give them the freedom to do what they wanted.
I was devastated by their confession. The man of God asked them to confess and let everyone who heard what they accused their father of know that they lied. Some of these people are dead. Apart from this, their father is mentally ill and cannot identify with his environment. Would he be able to understand and forgive them? I am yet to come to terms with why they destroyed all of us. Right now, I have suffered a partial stroke because I still cannot fathom why.
Please, where do we start from? My life is full of regrets. Probably, I should have trusted my husband, but as at that time, I couldn’t have done otherwise. Please, help me.
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