I’m not sure what emotions I should be feeling… but right now it’s a mix of very real anger, exhaustion, deep frustration, and a deep, deep desire to just walk away from everything and just breakdown.

Nineteen months ago I began the process of revising the separation agreement that my ‘soon-to-be-ex-wife’ (STBEW) and I signed off on in 2015, as a first step to finally getting a divorce. She had, according to both the courts and Children’s Aid (CAS), been abusing our child, myself, and her son from a previous marriage, for years. My leaving her in May of 2015, and taking the children out of the house, was the idea of the CAS, they actually forced me out because I had become so trapped in the daily chaos left by STBEW.

Because of the abuse, she was forced into supervised visits with the kids — including with our 1-year old. That arrangement lasted for almost three years. Even with the CAS involved in her everyday life, she continued to refuse to follow the original separation agreement… until, finally, the CAS gave up and in late 2017 forced us into binding mediation. I told them the abuse would continue, and they basically said ‘we’ll take it case-by-case from here on out’.

It was less than six-months until she was physically assaulting her oldest son in front of our two sons, as well as constantly yelling at everyone close to her. CAS was called into her life, and the lives of our children, three or four times from 2018 until 2020.

Finally, in 2023, she stopped her regular visitations with our two sons. For two years, she only visited with our kids a few times a month. Quintin, our youngest, had begun missing school because of the stress and anxiety of not seeing his mother regularly, our oldest, Victor, had become angrier and angrier at her, and me, because of the same reason. All of that led up to my decision to finally get full custody over the kids with the idea of forcing her to spend more time with them.

My intention was to make it very easy on the kids, and deal with it as adults. She had other plans, which involved getting the ‘Office of The Children’s Lawyer’ (OCL) involved in their lives… and that’s when everything went to shit.

…in Ontario, the OCL is an independent arm of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, and is meant to represent kids — specifically in this case when it comes decisions around parenting time, contact and decision-making responsibility for my sons.

Despite my protests, the judge in our case, after agreeing to my STBEW’s request for the OCL to get involved with my oldest son, Victor, decided that due to the anxiety and stress Quintin had been living under for so long, he should be covered by the OCL as well.

After a little negotiation, I finally acquiesced, and agreed to the process after being guaranteed the OCL representative would speak with Quintin’s teachers, principal, and grandparents who were all aware of the difficulties he was facing, also that the interviews with Quintin would take place in our respective homes, and not in a lawyer’s office.

After several months of waiting for the local OCL lawyer to get started, he finally got around to interviewing Quintin and Victor… not only did he insist on doing the interview in his downtown office but, in all that time he never contacted my son’s teachers, principals, or even their grandparents.

When Quintin’s interview was over, I asked the lawyer point blank if he had any intention of interviewing Quintin’s teacher, I was told that those interviews would not take place.

Which just pissed me off. The only reason I agreed to the entire process was that those people would be interviewed as well. That it would be more than a “…so ,who do you most want to be with” bullshit exercise that it has turned into.

Because the first thing Quintin told me when he got into the car immediately following his first interview was “Daddy, when he asked me what I thought about being with you, I said somedays are good, and somedays are bad”. He thought it was a joke. I just about started crying right then.

The entire case is going to be decided through the memory of a 11-year old who doesn’t realize where and when he’s been abused and when he has been helped, who doesn’t remember crying for days because he missed his mother, who doesn’t realize he’s supposed to be with his mother two weeks out of every month, who doesn’t understand that constant yelling in the background is not normal. A kid who, in his 11-years of existence, has spent three of his first years unable to be with his mother without someone else in the room, and for two of his last three years being ignored by that same mother. Whose mother has moved five times in the past two years.

His teachers understand the stress he’s been going through, probably better than he does. His grandparents can attest to the fact Quintin spends entire days with them when he’s supposed to be with his mother… their combined answers to the OCL questions would provide the lawyer with some intelligence, and therefore better questions for Quintin.

But now my future with both my sons lays entirely in the hands of an 11-year old who has been sheltered from the realities of his mother’s abuses — when he cried, desperate for his mother, I would tell him she had to work, that she was sick, or that she just couldn’t be there for him at the moment. I’ve lied countless times about her relationship with him, and now it all comes down to his recollection of events he never really experienced.

This situation is now completely off the rails, and there’s a very real risk the person who has been abusing my kids over their entire lives, will come away with shared custody and no repercussions for her behaviour.

…this is just nuts.