HER LIFE TURN UPSIDE DOWN BECAUSE OF HER HUSBAND

Dear Taiwo,

Please, help me solve this problem that has torn apart and is threatening my happiness, my daughters and probably the future generations yet unborn.

I married my husband just like every other young woman and we both looked forward to a bliss full future with our children. To the glory of God, contrary to the belief of some people that I would have problems bearing children, I received God’s mercy and 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 of the womb as that was the tradition in my husband’s family, but God singled us out with mercy 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 in the future.

I am a trained nurse with a B Sc in nursing from Glasgow Scotland, my husband also trained as a 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 than my husband secured a good job too. We had it all, which was what we thought. I would have returned immediately, but since my been over there made it convenient for my family to visit on holidays and my children were not too young, I faced 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 adolescence – 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 treat their father with such impunity, but all they had to say was always talk to your husband. On a faithful 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. According to him, my eldest daughter was keeping bad company in school and she was trying to draw her younger sister into it.

Because of this, he decided to bench them, as he disallowed them from going out and attending parties. He drops them in school and 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 for now.

I was happy because I knew it was a positive development and because of their age I know 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 does not want her sister and herself to go out because he is having sex with both of them. I thought I didn’t hear her well.

I ask 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 in asked if they could repeat what they told me before their father. They said they would. When my husband came back from the office, I sought an audience with him 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 said 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, but I couldn’t leave my children with him any longer, a lot of things changed for him. He lost all his friends and even some of his family members abandoned him. People alluded a lot of reasons why 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. He tried to make me see that it was the devils machination to destroy our family but I was past caring. I raised my children alone, 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 he was always communicating with him. 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 dated. Initially, I didn’t see the situation as a problem because I felt they were experiencing psychological problems as a result of what happened during their teenage years.

They went through different counseling and other therapies but it 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 can be free of 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 church. 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 eldest sister started to deny again but her sister busted 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 does 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 can no 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.

Taiwo, 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.