WiseWomenUnite.com

My AD, now 30 years old, is suffering severe complex PTSD, it turns out, as a result of long-term sexual abuse which ended in rape by her father when she was in middle school at her father's home right after my divorce from him. I never had any clue that he was abusing her. One of triplet daughters, the other two now tell me he abused them also--but not as severely as he abused their sister--not rape-- with the PTSD. But none of them knew that the others were being abused! MY AD with the severe PTSD lived with me for two months after being hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, and she was so cruel to me verbally (and it isn't really her, but some persona she adopts) that I could not handle having her in my home. She  had to damage things to feel okay. She doesn't cut herself, but she cuts up her clothes, bends corners of books or outright tears the jackets off of books, draws OM symbols all over the house, put a dent in the frig, cut holes in carpets, cuts UPC symbols off of everything, and washes everything, including trash before throwing it away. These are examples; she does have many other rituals I will not cover here. She has to control everything going on, so she would follow me around and criticize everything i tried to do. And she would get a kind of growly strange voice that was scary. When I put her put it was traumatic for me because she was shouting at me for no reason for two days straight and I just couldn't take the abuse any longer. She now hates me--or at least whatever personality se has adopted hates me. I a heartbroken that I was unable to help her more when she was with me, though I did everything I could to make her comfortable and meet her needs for food and clothing. She cannot tolerate touching, hugs, or contact for normal affection. I still give her money. She now lives with one of her sisters and seems to do better in relating to her, though her sister reports the same rituals. The saddest thing of all is the statute of limitations prevents us from pursuing legal means against their father and he has no attachable assets for a civil suit. My very sick AD cannot manage work or anything close to normal living and certainly needs financial help that would come for a victim of a crime. There should not be any statute of limitations on child sexual abuse because it can take years before the child comes forward. She was such a sweet kid and her life is ruined. I am devastated that I never knew what was happening when I was living with that man.