Glad mom left my deadbeat dad

Dear Pastor,

I enjoy reading your column and I listen to you every night on Power 106 FM. I grew up in an abusive family. My parents were poor. Four of us children slept on one bed.

I had three brothers and one sister. When I complained to my mother that our brothers were touching us, she told us to let that stay in the family.

When I was about 15, one of my brothers took my virginity. I cried. It was then that my mother believed me and told my father what he did. My father ran him out of the house and he has never come back.

My father used to drink a lot, and my mother used to say that God would take her out of misery. If my father was not pleased about something, he used to beat my mother. She used to threaten him and tell him that she was going to leave him. He told her that when he was finished with her, no man would want her.

My mother got a job in a guest house, where she met one of the guests and he liked her. She related her problems to him and when he went back to America, he sent back a barrel of goodies and shoes for her and the children. My mother lied and told my father that it came from our aunt. The man came back to Jamaica and my mother told us that he proposed to her and she secretly got married to him.

My father noticed a difference in my mother and told her that he didn't want her to work at the guest house any more, but she continued. Every correspondence from this man went to our uncle's house. My uncle knew what was going on, so when this man came back to Jamaica for the third time, he stayed at my uncle's house. My mother is now living in America and she is trying to get us to live with her.

This man is much older than my mother. My father curses my mother every day and calls her wicked and a whore. He tells everybody that my mother was whoring down the place. But we know better. I hate my father. We are looking forward to going away. Sometimes he does not come home at all and we do not know where he is.

When I started working, I bought a bed, so my sister and I share it. We also bought a two-burner stove and if we are out of gas, my father does not even buy a cylinder to help us. But we still cook and leave food for him. Last Christmas my mother sent money for us and for him, and he took the money and bought rum.

I have a boyfriend, but I have learned not to trust men. I am trying to be very careful about how I live. I have told myself that no man is going to treat me the way my father has treated my mother.

Anonymous

Dear Writer,

Your father is a very silly man and your mother had to find a way to leave him. An intelligent man should know that he should not physically or verbally abuse his woman.

Any man who does so is likely to lose her, and that is exactly what happened to your father. Your mother could not take the abuse any more, and she found a man who rescued her. Your father drank too much and he did not care.

I don't mean to imply that your mother should have got involved with another man while she was living with your father, but she did not allow this other man to slip out of her hands, so to speak. He meant her well. He kept his word and married her. Now she is hoping to have her children live with her in the USA.

I wish you and all your siblings well. You say you have a boyfriend. I hope he will treat you with respect. Take good care and let me hear from you again.

Pastor