Nightmare in Hostage Hills

By Christina Mask and Margaret M. FitzGerald L.C.S.W.

“Sadly, Christina’s journey, and her children’s experience of being collateral damage, is not atypical. Kudos for her strength and bravery in putting her story out there as a cautionary tale for others.” (Dr. Susan Weitzman, author, Not to People like Us: Hidden Abuse in Upscale Marriages).


“Christina Mask’s Nightmare is constructed around fragments from a life in agony as one woman attempts to escape abuse, retain her sanity, and regain the custody of three children the family court and her husband have taken from her. It’s all here—the daily records over months, then years; the diary entries; the self-blame; the excuses; the shame; the absurdist dialogues with family therapists; marginalia from readings or lectures or religious texts; letters pleadings with judges and lawyers and evaluators; poems; letters to and from the children, real and imagined; the reports that put her claims of abuse in quotations; and so, so much more. These pieces are loosely joined by a narrative and an interior monologue that I sometimes found too much to bear. But then I realized I was scanning something akin to a Picasso painting, whose underlying truth lay not in what was on the page, not the fragments, but in the hope that put them out here, no more evident than in the endlessly reasonable letters Mask writes to intractable foes. Mask has cast her eye on what Yeats termed ‘the broken, crumbling battlement’ of the self and lived to write it. As one director famously said about the sixty women and children crowded into her six-bedroom shelter, ‘If they can manage this, they can manage anything.’ Christina’s book gives us faith that she is right.” (Evan Stark, PhD, MSW. The writer is professor emeritus at Rutgers University, and author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life [Oxford, 2007]).

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781973608820

Christina Mask

As a vibrant wife and mother of our 3 adorable children, we were blessed to have childhood years together where we sang and danced, laughed and played, prayed and praised Our Lord Jesus Christ many moments together, hugged, and kissed morning noon and night. School, homework, soccer, swimming, gymnastics, piano, friends, picnic’s, family reunions, making dinners, family movie nights we enjoyed together in our seemingly normal upscale, loving family all the while a trap was being laid for our destruction by my husband and father of our 3 children. It is now over 13 years that my 3 children have been alienated from their mother and held hostage by their father. DV by Proxy and narcissistic abuse hurts.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Christina Mask.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of my

memory. While all the events and entries in the book are true, some names and

identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0880-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0881-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0882-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916881

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/31/2023

CONTENTS

Prologue

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Appendices

Appendix A Slaughterhouse Custody Evaluation of Mask Family 2005

Appendix B Guide to Assessing Risk to Children From Batterers

Appendix C Brain Systems Diagram

Appendix D 2009 Slaughterhouse Mask Family Custody Evaluation Report

Appendix E Drs. Craven & Silence Mask Family Report August 2009

Appendix F Attachment in Parental Alienation

Bibliography

Endnotes

For my Jade, Zach, and Leonard,

May the truth set you free.

Love you forever,

Mom

PROLOGUE

My name is Margaret FitzGerald, L.C.S.W.

I have known Christina Mask for quite some time. We reconnected after she moved close by. I barely recognized the woman she had become. We were sitting together at a local coffee shop as she relayed some of the horrors of her experience through almost 6 years and over $500K thrown into the family court system fighting for and losing her 3 children. She sank into my arms through a flood of tears.

As I have heard bits and pieces of very similar stories in my private practice, it became clear to me that this story of the silent epidemic of mothers and children being ripped apart by professionals in family court system could no longer remain hidden in the dark. The stories from decades ago to these ongoing cases where mothers are being handcuffed to hospital beds for trying to contact their children must end immediately. {Mom Arrested, Handcuffed to Hospital Bed for Attempting to Contact Kids, Women’s Coalition News and Views: April 9, 2023}

It became clear to me that in order to assist my friend in recovering from all the loss and trauma she endured, Christina needed to write her story. She also expressed that she wanted the public to become aware through her true story of the profound malfeasance that is occurring in the family court system.

As this task of organizing and writing her story through all the evidence she had collected over the years from her children’s childhood pictures, love letters, artwork, journal entries, custody evaluations during the legal case, legal documents through her custody massacre, Christina requested my assistance in writing Nightmare in Hostage Hills.

Step into the nightmare Christina and her 3 children endured at the hands of the organized crime syndicate of family court system USA, crime of the century-family court exposed.

FOREWORD

"My first indication that family courts are unable to respond appropriately to domestic violence cases was seeing decisions that were not within the range of reasonable or possible outcomes. In every case the mistakes were tilted in favor of abusive fathers and placed the children in jeopardy.

One case was so egregious I decided to write my first book so I could share the story. A judge awarded unsupervised visitation to a father who admitted kissing his daughters on their privates. The father penetrated his four-year-old daughter during the first visitation after the judge’s order. Only new charges by CPS finally stopped the dangerous visits. The mother won custody and the CPS caseworker and I were invited to a celebratory dinner. The children called us believers because we believed them when the professionals who were supposed to protect them did not.

At the first Battered Mothers Custody Conference, I learned that the danger is not limited to a particular judge or location. Good and credible mothers from across the country shared their painful stories of ignorance, bias, and retaliation. Professionals and researchers supported the conclusion that the family courts are broken. And soon children who had aged out of their custody orders and called themselves the Courageous Kids told heartbreaking stories of the abuse they suffered and of courts that separated them from mothers trying to protect them.

And then I accepted a case that would end my legal career. An evaluator used the normal probability standard for the father, but a certainty standard for the mother. The evaluator said she could not accept the abuse allegations as long as the father denied them. The evaluator also said she was influenced by her belief the judge and law guardian wanted the father to have custody. Any first-year law student would know courts cannot use probability for one party and certainty against the other, but over twenty judges reviewed the case and none ever objected to the most fundamental violation of due process and equal protection.

I was forced to leave the case after the trial for health reasons. The judge forced the mother to appear without representation when the father sought to move to Texas where she was likely never to see her children again. The judge held her in contempt because she kept saying objection in order to preserve her right to appeal. He never told her she had preserved her exception but only yelled and threatened her. The judge put her in jail for almost a month when she was seven-months pregnant. I wrote an article criticizing the judge and asking the legislature to pass a law so other victims would not be similarly mistreated. The judge filed a grievance against me and his colleagues closed their eyes and supported him.

Mothers’ Stories

Ben Atherton Zeman is an actor who works to prevent men’s violence against women. He often performs vignettes to illustrate how men take our unearned privileges for granted and does it in a humorous way that men can hear. Ben often says that he feels privileged when protective mothers share their stories with him. This is such a provocative formulation because the stories are often painful to hear and not always well organized. As a result, judges, lawyers, evaluators, police, reporters and others who need this information often try to avoid or cut these stories short. At the same time, most protective mothers desperately want to share their story because they believe it will help the public understand the widespread failure of family courts to respond appropriately to domestic violence custody cases.

For many decades, the media failed to expose the scandal and children continued to suffer. The conundrum for the media is that personal stories provide human interest but are too often viewed as he-said-she-said because the inadequately trained professionals don’t know what to look for to confirm the frequent truth in victim’s reports. The media avoided the stories because of the expense to properly investigate the cases, uncertainty about who is telling the truth, and the fear of lawsuits from litigious abusers. Scientific research can be used to demonstrate the frightening frequency that family courts get abuse cases dangerously wrong; but statistics tend to be boring and, therefore, are unable keep viewers’ interest.

Scientific Research Supports Protective Mothers

There is now a specialized body of scientific research that definitively establishes that a large majority of domestic violence cases are decided wrong and tilted to favor dangerous abusers. We know this from research that demonstrates the courts are ignoring important studies that would help courts recognize and respond to domestic violence and from scientific research that demonstrates the frequency courts make decisions that harm children.

The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Research, from the CDC, found that domestic violence and child abuse are far more harmful than previously realized. And it is living with an abuser that causes fear and stress to the direct victim and the children in the home. The resulting stress makes children’s lives shorter and unhealthier. Perhaps most disconcerting, when children exposed to ACEs come to family court they could still be saved, but the courts have not integrated this vital research and so standard practices push courts towards outcomes that snuff out children’s last chance to be saved from the consequences of exposure to ACE’s.

The Saunders’ Study from the US Justice Department studied the domestic violence knowledge and training of evaluators, judges and lawyers. At the same time ACE found exposure to domestic violence is far more consequential than previously understood, the Saunders’ Study found that many and, probably, most court professionals do not have the specific knowledge necessary to recognize and respond to reports of domestic violence.

Most custody cases are settled more or less amicably. The problem is the 3.8% of cases that require trial and often much more. Court professionals are taught that these are high conflict cases by which they mean the parents are angry with each other and act out in ways that hurt the children. Courts respond by pressuring the parents to cooperate and punishing those who object. The research demonstrates that a large majority of these cases involve domestic violence in which the most dangerous abusers seek custody as a way to regain control over their victims and punish them for leaving. The court response works great for abusers who sought custody to gain access to their victims but is a disaster for victims trying to escape his abuse and protect their children.

We have had research that found the courts frequently make bad decisions in abuse cases that jeopardize children. A study by the Leadership Council found that every year 58,000 children are sent for custody or unprotected visitation every year. A study by Dr. Joyanna Silberg about turn-around cases involved cases in which the courts using flawed practices initially ruled for the abuser but later events confirmed the mothers’ concerns. A study by Dr. Dianne Bartlow followed-up on 175 child murders by fathers involved in contested custody cases. She asked judges and court administrators in the communities that suffered the tragedies what reforms were created in response to the tragedy. The answer was none because the judges assumed the tragedy in their community was an exception.

The National Institute of Justice sought to determine how frequently family courts place children in jeopardy. Recently, an article was published based on the results from the pilot study for this research. The Study was led by Professor Joan Meier. Although research establishes that mothers make deliberate false reports less than 2% of the time, the pilot study found courts are ruling for fathers who are alleged abusers over 70% of the time. And in child sexual abuse cases the courts are disbelieving 94% of the reports. If this was a medical study they would stop the study and immediately implement the changes needed to save children’s lives. But the courts are not used to looking to current research for answers and so they maintain the outdated practices and respond defensively to the reasonable criticism that is now escalating.

Putting it All Together

Most of the public, like most professionals, are unaware of the catastrophe taking place in America’s family courts. This is because, until recently, the problem has received very limited coverage. This book is important because it combines the two things that are needed: an interesting and, indeed, compelling story and the research that puts the story in perspective.

President Kennedy used to speak about the ancient Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times. Stories like this one are all too interesting and make us yearn for boring times. The reader might wonder if the story could really be true, but, unfortunately, these horrors are committed all too frequently. I am glad that Christina shared this story. I am especially pleased that she took the time and effort to place her story in the context of scientific research that explains how and why it played out as it did. I am thankful you are taking the time to read about this and become informed about a serious problem that destroys so many children’s lives.

Every year in the United States, more than one thousand women are murdered by their abusive partners. Every year, dozens of children are murdered by fathers involved in contested custody and in many cases the flawed practices used by the courts give them the access they need to kill their children. The ACE Research establishes that about one quarter of our children will be sexually abused during their minority because of our deeply flawed response to child sexual abuse. Over half of all mass shootings are committed by domestic violence abusers. They are also the most dangerous criminals for police officers. And in case anyone still doesn’t believe they have a personal stake in preventing domestic violence, every year the United States spends over one trillion dollars to tolerate men’s abuse of women. Each of us pays $3000 a year mostly in health care, crime and a weaker economy as the price for tolerating domestic violence.

The exciting thing about the research that is now available is that it can be used to prevent most domestic violence crime. We know this because effective practices were used in communities like Quincy, Nashville and San Diego. In Quincy, a county that averaged 5-6 murders every year, they enjoyed several years with no homicides. When I wrote my first book and appeared at a book store to sign autographs for my book, I did not know what to say. I had heard many authors say I hope you will enjoy my book, but that was sadly inappropriate for the subject matter. I am sure Christina will have the same issue. Buy her book. Read her book. And then please feel inspired to help create reforms like the Safe Child Act and the Quincy Solution so that books like this will no longer be needed. I know because three precious children called me a believer." {Barry Goldstein author of The Quincy Solution: Stop Domestic Violence and Save $500 Billion and Goldstein, B. & Hannah, M. (2010) Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody, Civic Research Institute, Kingston, NJ}

Dedication: This book is

dedicated to all the parents and their children who have suffered the travesty of predation, extortion, trafficking, and injustice at the hands of the crime syndicate of the family court system and to God for the saving of many lives.

By unraveling the web of lies woven through the Mask family’s nightmare of narcissistic abuse, domestic violence, DV by Proxy, abuse and battering of one’s wife and children, you will meet face-to-face a tyrant and vicious batterer – a husband and father who terrorized his wife and children decimating his own family who were a gift to him from God. Our Heavenly Father alone is the Judge and may you be the jury in one of an epidemic of domestic violence and DV by Proxy cases occurring around the world, which you will see based on evidence throughout our case, aided and abetted by rampant malpractice, abuse and corruption of law enforcement, family law, medical, educational, and mental health professionals in the genocide of children and families in family courts across the globe.

Nightmare in Hostage Hills

by Christina Mask

"I, the Lord, have called you for the victory

of justice,

I have grasped you by the hand;

I formed you, and set you

as a covenant for the people,

a light for the nations,

To open the eyes of the blind,

To bring out prisoners from confinement,

and from the dungeon, those who live in

darkness."

{Isaiah 42: 6-7}¹

For my Jade & Zach & Leonard

"I love you forever.

I like you for always,

As long as I’m living,

My babies you’ll be."

Robert Munsch

You may not believe this story that I am about to share with you truly happened.

In the United States of America.

A country that espouses the most revered and modeled judicial system in the world upholding the freedoms and rights God gave us when He gave us the gift of life and a free world in which to cherish and nurture all life: human rights to life from inception to natural death, rights of families to love and nurture their children without interference of any government or agency of the court, individual rights to enjoy freedoms which guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all men and women equally and collectively.

May this true story of evil incarnate in a family convey the truth for my children and virtues of faith, hope, and love and gifts of supernatural strength, determination, fortitude, and victory over all odds found only in a personal relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary for The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can man do to me? {Hebrews 13:6}²

CHAPTER

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1

"It is a world filled with sin. It is a world filled

with greed and self-destruction. It is a world content to

allow madness to rule and do nothing to change things

for the better. It is a world where chaos rules the hearts

of godless men who fear nothing and no one, but their

own fear of loneliness and emptiness."

Do Whatever Love Requires by Harriet Hammons & Carol Ameche

Charles, what in the world are you doing? I exclaimed, more calmly than any normal mother would, watching you, my 3 precious children: my daughter Jade, my son Zach, and my son Leonard, be literally ripped from my arms away from me by your father at ages 12, 10, and 8. I knew if I tried to intervene to stop his abusive tactics, protect you from the domestic violence occurring, that your Dad would only escalate, possibly become violent again and cause even more serious harm to me and to you if I interceded more forcefully at the moment trying to stop or reason with him yet again which never worked anyway.

Words, pleas of Stop, Charles, please flee into the atmosphere as dust in the wind and reasoning dissolves like smoke in the fear and chaos created by my husband. As he is accosting me and wrenching my middle son from my arms, our other 2 children become too scared to do anything but succumb to the tyrannical bellowing of orders of this man-my husband and our children’s father-terrorizing everyone sacred and precious in our family.

Charles had Leonard, our youngest son at age 8, in his arms who was reaching and crying for me and our daughter, age 12, already following orders from her father to head out the door into his truck to flee our family home in the frenzy he had created. Zach exclaimed with all the gumption of a 10-year-old son who missed his Mom, I want to stay with Mom. My courageous son didn’t have a chance as his father, my then husband, grabbed him and dragged him with his backpack hanging off his 4 ft. 3 frame out to the truck and sped away.

What must you have been feeling, my Loves, as you were ripped out of my loving arms by your father?

Oh God, protect my babies, I cried.

Calling the police was just not an option as I had made that call into the wind previously in 2002. The officer who responded to my call at our doorstep, although he had documented the evidence of marks on my neck from Charles choking me earlier that evening, lied on the stand in court and denied the evidence of domestic violence, battering and spousal abuse in the case. Although I called Charles several times while he was frantically driving away with you, my Loves, in his pick-up truck, pleading for him to stop his insanity and bring you guys home (besides it was a school night and you needed to be in your own beds), he did not listen.

I asked for help from the Mask family, from the Franklin family, from friends, from professionals for 6 years; yet no one helped us, nor intervened, in what would unfold into a nightmare for my children and me.

It has now been 13 years without hearing the precious voices of my 3 children say, Mom or I love you, Mom or their sweet laughter or feel their full body hugs in mine as mothers and children do once upon a time. In fact, the love once inherent and expressed so openly and genuinely by my children and me for one another became twisted into hatred and utter disrespect, fear, and contempt for me in a matter of months. I don’t know how my middle son never fully succumbed into the heinous degradation created for me until 2015. He has fulfilled another role in the abuse scenario as a conduit of information about me for his father.

The mental health, law enforcement, medical, educational, and legal systems that are in place which the public believes (and I believed) are designed to protect and serve our highest good in preserving parent-child relationships and protecting us from abuse and violence actually did just the opposite.

Why would I take the energy, time, and determined, devoted focus required to write this sorrowful, horrific journey for my own children? Why not just sit down with my 3 children now that they are now adults at ages 25, 22, 21, and reminisce over pictures and smiles at the sweet loving memories we created together before the onset of family terrorism, make amends where we had hurt one another and move on? Why not just pick up the phone, converse together, and share a precious memory or a word of encouragement or a laugh over something that happened in our day?

I have tried all the normal communication strategies available in this day and age through technology and no response. I can’t tell you the number of calls I have been either screamed at on a call during the custody battle, I hate you. You are just our birth mother. Rot in hades! from one child or no response at all or been hung up on repeatedly. Letters and packages returned to sender to me, from time to time a thank you 2 times in 13 years.

Certainly, you have had a visit together- just your children with you, their mother, after all this time, right? Children are very forgiving. Besides, it is unnatural and abnormal for children to hate or refuse to spend time with their mother unless they have been influenced or taught to hate her.

Nothing. None of these things has achieved any connection over the past almost 13 years. It’s now been 7 1/2 years since I cancelled trial in August 2009. One of my children braved the storm of threats and bullying but finally dropped off my radar too within the recent year.

It is a story that never should have happened to a battered mother and her 3 children in a town in the U.S.A. It is an account of children and their mother shredded by a narcissist batterer, his conning abuser tactics and the resulting horrific DV by proxy, brainwashing, and a cult of hatred created by their father for their mother aided and assisted by every single one of the very professionals to whom I turned to for help.

It is wrought with evil. Literal evil. Against his own 3 precious innocent children ages 12, 10, and 8 years of age at onset and their mother, their primary caregiver, their love and nurturing source who would become demonized, dehumanized, emasculated, exiled, and erased from their children’s lives for 13 years ongoing this year.

Why wouldn’t the Father of Lies target families in a society? Satan knows the ins and outs of mankind and wants to own us, destroy us, ruin the full knowledge, power, and position we have in Christ of salvation, peace, power of the Holy Spirit in and through Our Blessed Mother Mary who are just a prayer away, and the promise of eternity with Him in Heaven. We have our King of Kings, Lord of Lords, who has the final rule and say. Satan’s playground is on earth. Why wouldn’t he pick the family to target- the kernel of civilization where human beings learn the essential values, skills, and tools in which to become moral, compassionate, loving, prayerful human beings and productive citizens to create peace and prosperity as lights in the world for Christ?

This is the story of a nightmare of living with a batterer/narcissist tyrant in our home fueled by unbridled corruption, failure, malpractice, and abuse by family court, law enforcement, medical, educational, and mental health professionals in our case and in cases around the world. It is a global epidemic that should not be in the hands of professionals who routinely fail and inflict harm upon children and battered/ targeted parents.

Normal parents would intervene much more effectively or friends or teachers or coaches who have courage, decency, and fortitude to confront in the face of evil a deranged violent brother with truth and tough love to stop such horrific abuse of one’s own children and wife.

You and I would go to any length for a child and a mother being abused on the street, right? What if it is occurring behind closed doors: doors that are just a shroud over the darkness and violence, programing and brainwashing of children against their own mother, just a veil between civilized society where parents and children play, laugh, read stories together, sing, dance, pray together, and love on both parents and the hidden dark side which is skillfully dominated by a narcissist abusive parent and batterer of his own family?

Certainly, the lawyers will straighten this out I thought.

Wrong.

I was directed by therapists at Bruised Reed Healing Center to hire a lawyer to seek custody with my children as a patient in treatment there in 2004. Into the darkness and the pit of predation I stepped, unknowingly, full of hope and excitement at the certainty that my Jade, Zach, and Leonard and I would finally be free, laughing and playing and loving on one another together again very soon. Instead we were consumed by the fangs of professionals who are mandated by law to assess, intervene, protect and treat us in a professional expeditious manner to free us from the terrorism and abusiveness of a delusional dangerous batterer.

Little did the Bruised Reed Healing Center staff know the massacre of corruption and malpractice, depletion and decimation of everything beautiful and good for my children and me awaiting us in family court and mental health which would transpire almost daily over the next 6 years. Valentine’s Day 2017 is fast approaching and I haven’t hugged my daughter nor my sons or enjoyed sharing the heart cake I always made for them in 13 years.

The cast of those professionals who cooperated with the family terrorist’s agenda in the decimation of our children’s mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well-being and relationships with me, besides the regime of family lawyers and judges, also included PhD psychologists, police officers, an art therapist, Life Coach, pediatrician, school guidance counselors, teachers, Superintendent of schools, and finally a family therapist who was actually achieving some success in reunification for my children with me until she abruptly quit our case, the agency, her profession, and moved across the nation.

The mental health and family law professionals in this arena of custody court predation, I am convinced, either operate without the innate virtues of courage, duty, and righteousness to erect a stance for the best interests of children in domestic violence and DV by Proxy cases or maybe it’s the lure of the almighty dollar consuming the values, ethics and professional responsibility within this cottage industry created to aid in the predation of battered mothers and children.

We had many beautiful times together, my Loves, for which I am very grateful and remain in my heart every day. The privilege of being your mother and staying home to raise you during your formative years until your tender ages of 12, 10, and 8 when evil entered our family, I will never be able to thank God enough for this precious time together-the joy of loving and nurturing you and watching you grow and blossom into the wonderful human beings I was witnessing before my eyes, unique and special just as our wonderful God created you 62507.jpg

This story is the window into the terrorism my children and I experienced enduring the predatorial journey of battering and domestic violence and the failure of all professionals involved on our case who were bound by law and professional edict to stop it and protect us. It is the light of truth shining out of the darkness of years through webs of lies a narcissist creates and the shards of what remains of my heart without my children in my life for over 13 years. It tells the truth of what happened to silence our voices crying out for one another to live, love and laugh, play, pray, and enjoy the sacred relationships God gave to all children and fit parents to enjoy and cherish throughout their lifespan.

I just celebrated Christmas with Grandpa at age 83 and Noni with not even a peep from you, my darlings-no texts, no calls, no visits, no holiday celebration with your Mom and grandparents as we go into year 13 of your being ripped from me and half of who you are.

What’s going on?

I missed you at our Christmas celebration and gatherings again. Our last one together was in 2003.

It’s 2017 now.

I miss you every day, my Loves.³

My journal entries from as far back as 1996 reveal the seedlings of power and control, disrespect, disregard, dismissiveness, terroristic tactics, violence, and extreme selfishness experienced in the home of a narcissist batterer and my commitment to love God, my husband, and our children and go to any length for our family.

Our journey together began in 1991 with me being steadfast and strong in who I was as a young woman in recovery from alcoholism, wife, and mother but finally sinking into the pits of battered woman syndrome after 13 years between periods of fun and love and happy times to progressive dripping into my soul of cruelty, belittling, degradation, hostility, and eventual falling prey to the evil talons of family terrorism in the nightmare our children and I experienced in our home in Hostage Hills.

CHAPTER

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Marry me! 1990-Marry Me!

Charles Mask

Even on our wedding day, my Loves, although I was excited and was in love with your father, I shook inside on the altar. Everything had been so fast and our courtship a whirlwind as I moved from D.C. up to Hostage Hills after graduate school to be with your father. We met in 1989 and married in 1990. Notes and songs your father sang to me, Marry me. 1990 marry me! and sticky notes he placed on our bathroom mirror marry me. 1990- Marry me! were very sweet. Happy times!

I remember that I thought it was unusual that I felt shaky and emotional during our wedding celebration. I thought it was just gratitude and excitement; however, they were signs my body was showing me of future issues that would eventually lead me to desperation and a sorrow that has changed me forever upon losing your precious presence, my now adult 3 children, in my life.

God even tried to warn me Himself when one day I was driving home from work at Catholic Charities in Bunsen, NY. I heard a quiet voice inside my heart you need to move out to your own apartment for 2 weeks. We had already planned our wedding. I didn’t identify the voice as the Holy Spirit back then. It was an exciting time for us so this warning just didn’t make sense to me at the time. I did not heed that guidance from God who is always protecting us and guiding us as we seek Him in prayer and seek to do His will which I had learned in my recovery from alcoholism where I met your father, but I didn’t follow this direction for me.

I loved Charles Mask. He was sober (our sobriety dates were a few days apart which was special), handsome, made me laugh, was my age, was so sweet to me at times, and had a nice family from the little that I knew in meeting them. He was just beginning a successful career as I was beginning mine too.

We had fun together. Sure, he could be controlling at times, but I had a sense of myself as a young woman in 12 Step recovery. I enjoyed my new job and new friendships in the 12 Step community in Hostage Hills, NY, and just didn’t notice incidents that I would later realize as battering tactics. His attitude was sometimes demeaning, dismissive, and dic-tator-ish in nature. I would call him out at times on this behavior towards me. It was just funny back then. With a program of recovery, that I believed we were both committed to, certainly our relationship would be wonderful as we would continue to both grow spiritually and conquer any obstacles that would arise in our marriage till death do us part.

Charles loved Dr. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled and used to quote to me, Love is an action of supporting another’s spiritual growth. I liked his seeming interest in spirituality. We went to church together. He was rather demanding that I take his name which I never really liked, but I did. I would have happily made the choice to take his name without being pressured by Charles, but would have appreciated support and encouragement from my soon-to-be husband to do what was right for me. I have a commitment to Our Lord Jesus Christ and wanted to honor and obey Him above all things.

My sister had shed some light on concerns about the controlling nature of my husband, but I didn’t listen. He made fun of me once when we were playing ping-pong at a family get-together because I was barefoot. He told me to put shoes on. I just ignored him. This is me! This is who I am. I am playing barefoot and I did. No big deal. That was that.

He was very charming on our engagement weekend in Martha’s Vineyard. He was romantic and loving with me, getting down on his knee asking me to marry him. We had fun together that cold snowy weekend on the island. I felt an authentic connection with him early on and loved him dearly.

There were times though where there was something just not quite right- an inauthenticity in my experience of my husband. On our wedding night, I remember him telling me he loved having such a beautiful wife, but he didn’t tell me he loved me. Did he love me or the object of me being his beautiful wife? In fact, rarely did Charles ever tell me he loved me. There was something a little awry, a glitch in the genuinely loving another human being system and I noticed it. In recovery, that is a spiritual principle of growth to develop skills in intimacy- In-To-Me-See so I knew he would change and grow as would I, too, through our work on our 12-step program with our sponsors during our recovery journey. He would change. I would grow. It would all be good. Right?

A sign from God again that I missed? Is he saying, I love you, Christina in just a strange guy kind of way? I guess that meant he loved me and was just expressing his love in a masculine way of saying it. Truthfully, now I see this example as a kernel of essential awareness and understanding of the characteristic of someone who is a narcissist. There is a missing capacity of genuine love and empathy of another human being. They may say they love, show it at times and at rare times seem to adore you but not in a caring, empathic way, but in a self-serving way.

The term I would later say to him at times when he became remarkably cruel and callous was you have the compassion of a tic. Little did I know how accurate that statement really was. His love was not sacrificially as a husband for me, his wife, but about him having a beautiful wife, a trophy wife, a trinket to show off. Hmmm. Ok. I didn’t know that these seeds would someday blossom into a jealous, controlling, abuser/batterer husband who would turn against me, who would become a predator towards me and my children in his violence and abuse upon us, his own family.

Today I am grateful that we married, despite the deep heartache and evil abusiveness that was to come. I have been transformed through the pain and expanded beyond my heart’s capacity to love in becoming a mother to the 3 most amazing children on the planet 57575.jpg God blessed us with some wonderful times together. Most of all, because through our marriage came my 3 most precious gifts after my relationship with Jesus Christ and my recovery I have ever received in my life- our 3 children: Jade, Zach, and Leonard.

God completely outdid Himself when He created you, my darlings! Thank you, Lord!

So, one day at a time, we embarked on our sober adventure of marriage and rapid creation of our sweet family. I became pregnant with Jade on our honeymoon. We were so excited! We let God surprise us with each new baby. If she would be a healthy baby girl or he would be a healthy baby boy, we would thank God, no matter what! We were totally blessed with each baby.

Life was good. Charles was growing his business. I was loving my husband and daughter and relishing in the joy of my new family. I was even, despite being intimidated by my mother-in-law’s talented cooking skills, becoming something of a cook myself. I did not measure up to the amazing decorating ability of my mother-in-law’s expertise for which I was often ridiculed and criticized, but I was developing my own God-given gifts of loving and nurturing, teaching and mentoring other women in recovery who were also becoming young mothers with children.

I began to blossom into the woman, wife, and mother God created me to be through continued 12 Step work, prayer and meditation, attending 12 Step meetings, and even beginning a 12 Step meeting for Moms and kids. Loving my husband, nurturing and raising our 3 children under the age of 4 as a stay-at-home mother was fun and a lot of work too! I was totally blessed to have the love and support of my family and friends in the neighborhood, recovery and church community. I was able to use my gifts to create fun memories with my family, love and nurture them, praise and encourage my husband and our children, and offer our children opportunities to develop their own innate gifts and talents. I prayed, sang, and thanked God for my four sweethearts and loved on three of them even when they were still in my tummy 57573.jpg I prayed with our Jade, Zach, and Leonard every night and began a tradition that I am grateful to have etched in their hearts of saying 3 gratitudes to God every night-even in scary times like the 9/11 Bin Laden terrorism attacks. My husband and I would begin our day before he left for work saying the Lord’s prayer together for many years. It was good many moments. I was grateful.

A little about my own history which may have left me vulnerable to attracting an abusive narcissistic husband-

My name is Christina M. Mask, M.S.W. I am the oldest in a family of 7 children in an upper middle-class family from a beautiful area of the country and small sailing community on the New Jersey shore. We have a loving dysfunctional family like most families. (Bruised Reed Healing Center reports 95% of families are dysfunctional and 5% just don’t know it yet 57571.jpg ) Outwardly very successful and a big beautiful home on the water, my father worked hard as a respected physician in building his medical practice and serving the local communities in the area to support us, his family.

As children, we were raised at home by a mentally ill, disturbed woman and our father who worked hard for us. Our father’s wife, our stepmother, had free rein upon us children during the day in her abusiveness after my mother left us when I was 12 years old.

This woman was 26 years old at the time she trapped/ married my father and entered our family. She was an active Valium addict and exhibited signs which were scary to us children from day one.

She came into our family after my parent’s divorce when I was 12 years old. She seemed nice sometimes but very strange and immature at other times. She then progressed into a very cruel stepmother. Being already heartbroken at the loss of my mother who moved out of state without us, I had tried to take over the role of Mom to my siblings and confidante to my Dad after my parents’ divorce and arrival of new stepmother in our family whom none of us children liked one bit.

I did not handle the cruelty of my stepmother nor her abusiveness very well in my teenage years and ran away a few times. I began smoking marijuana and other drugs as an escape mechanism. It also was common for us in high school in the 1970’s as we enjoyed smoking marijuana at lunchtime on the lawn of our high school avoiding the on looking principal usually with much success.

I always excelled in academics and sports during my school age years but got into drugs in high school which allowed me to escape the pain and insanity, loss and confusion of life with a borderline personality, cruel, valium addict stepmother and loss of my Mom who had moved 400 miles away. As a result of my acting out my pain in the family and having no tools with which to deal with outrageous cruelty by my stepmother, fear of being unable to stop her insane abusive behavior and being utterly unable at- what I perceived- failing to protect my younger siblings from her abusiveness, I created chaos for my family by my own behavior in my addiction by getting into legal trouble. Ultimately, I went to live with a very kind, loving couple and their children nearby for a time after my first addiction treatment experience in 1979. Had the adolescent halfway houses and aftercare options of further support been in place as they are today at Bruised Reed Healing Center and other treatment centers, I may have been better able to sustain sobriety with support in place, but I went back to my family whom I loved-except her-and was unable to sustain long-term recovery there. I love my father and my brothers and sisters but it was a sick environment for me with my antagonistic, cruel stepmother there.

Besides I missed my Mom. Every child needs and deserves the loving tenderness of their parents.

College years were fun as I continued to smoke marijuana and play tennis. How I became #1 on the college’s tennis team, I’ll never knowJ Fun times and partying in college in Connecticut with my dear roommate, with whom I am still very close to today, were cut short by the death of a best friend due to heroin addiction. I later would enter my own long-term recovery from alcoholism in my mid-20’s inspired by the consequences I witnessed in the death of friends around me in my young life. I am blessed with long term recovery, despite a relapse for a few months which you will walk through with me in this story due to vicious terrorism and abuse against me and my 3 children at the hands of my then husband. It is only through the merciful love, goodness, and tons of graces from my God I found through working the 12 Steps of recovery, prayer and meditation, Mass and Eucharistic Adoration, and oceans of love of family and friends that I am alive and grateful to be clean and sober and able to tell this story of family terrorism to stop one more family from having to endure the hades on earth which my children and I lived.

My father wanted me to live closer to my Mom upon entering college at age 17 so Connecticut was the choice for me to attend college. Mom and I did spend time together. We even went to therapy sessions together. We did some great healing together although I was more focused on partying with my friends in college at that time. Had I not been majoring in partying I am certain that my academic success would have been a shining one, but I did not find the gift of recovery until graduate school.

A loving, nurturing human being with a huge heart for my family and friends, when my brother got into a terrible car accident from which he never fully recovered-being brain-damaged and paralyzed now for about 30 years, I hit a deep depression. I finally surrendered into long term recovery and healing from a lifetime of woundedness from which I stayed sober, met Charles whom I would then marry in 1990 and became a sober wife and Mom for 15 years for which I am eternally grateful.

What little history I know about Charles has been revealed through tidbits of storytelling at Mask family events over the years our family was together. His parents were 15 and 16 years old when they married with 2 sons arriving within the next few years. Rick and Hilda were drinking and partying in their early years together and had incidents of domestic violence: Remember when Dad threw a knife at Mom when she was in the kitchen and you stood there like a pillar of stone, Charles? Hahaha-that was so funny! And how about that afternoon when Stan tied a firecracker on the tail of a cat and lit it on fire-hahahaha! Things shared at family gatherings similar to these were not funny to me and yet they became absorbed into lighter, humorous tales of a family with teenage parents in the 1960’s. Rick and Hilda were more interested in building their business away from home then fulfilling their responsibilities as parents in protecting and raising their young children.

Charles was strikingly afraid of birds if they flew close to him as an adult so maybe there were incidents which created fear for him as a young boy that lay hidden in the dark crevasse of his childhood brain. Although he was a star football player in high school and in the beginning of college which gained him much popularity in the town where his family lived in Hostage Hills, the incidents of him shooting bullet holes in his bedroom ceiling as a teenager and being burned with cigarettes by a girlfriend were not conversations I ever heard until later years in our marriage.

That was then. This is now. I thought all the horrible years were behind us when we seemed to have everything going for us in 12 Step recovery together, beginning our professions, and soon blessed with a budding beautiful family of our own.

I had no idea what vicious abusiveness would eventually emerge against our 3 children and me by my husband, Charles Mask.

CHAPTER

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3

I Am Very Lucky to Have You as My Mom

Jade to Mom, 2003

1991 July * was the day we rejoiced at the birth of our 1st baby, our daughter Jade. You were such a beautiful baby girl weighing in at 6 pounds 8 ounces with a shiny crop of black hair ready to greet the world with your beautiful spirit whom I miss every day. You were my 30th birthday present, my Love. Thank you, God, for my Jade!

Our first night at home of being together, I laid you on a blanket next to me in my arms. We both laid on your bedroom floor next to your crib staring at one another all night long 63037.jpg I am so totally blessed with your coming into my life, my Love, Jade. I never knew such a deep love for another human being until God gave me you. Receiving the gift of you, our daughter, in my life opened my eyes to how much Our Father in Heaven loves us 63034.jpg Thank you, my darling. I love you and miss you dearly.

I believe a daughter, a son, are gifts from Heaven to be loved and nurtured, not used and abused. Saying our child or our daughter is embracing the gift of a child we receive from Our Father in Heaven as the outpouring of love between a man and woman in marriage. I missed some red and yellow and orange flags of being used as a brood mare to produce his offspring/ my sweethearts as I was just a trinket on the arm of a narcissist-a man who uses and abuses people for his own good, despite the collateral damage-even his own wife and children. Our family was apparently not sacred nor precious to him as the upcoming pages will reveal a wolf in sheep’s clothing emerging as my husband who proceeded to terrorize his own family behind the veil of secrecy, fear, intimidation, money, power, control, Range Rovers, and Country Clubs.

Often leaders of nations have this character which is very scary. They are initially very charming and full of promises but the key element begins to emerge which is a red flag in a relationship, family, and nation-missing a compassion button for the welfare of anyone but their own admiration and aggrandizement. Hitler is a prime example. Vicious battering parents exhibit this similar nature; yet because these tyrants, manipulative enough to lead a nation to virtually extinguish an entire race of people appear to win their game (an unfathomable agenda to a normal compassionate human being with a conscience in a civilized culture) people, even the most astute mental health professionals who are supposed to be trained in assessment and treatment of domestic abuse and narcissism fail and miss this evil, of which a renowned psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes so eloquently, albeit eerily, in his book People of the Lie:

"Theirs is a brand of narcissism so total that they seem to lack, in whole or in part, the capacity for empathy...Their narcissism makes the evil dangerous not only because it motivates them to scapegoat others but also because it deprives them of the restraint that results from empathy and respect for others.

In addition to the fact that the evil need victims to sacrifice to their narcissism, their narcissism permits them to ignore the humanity of their victims as well.... The blindness of the narcissist to others can extend even beyond a lack of empathy; narcissists may not see others at all." {People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck, Simon &Schuster, 1983, pp. 136-137}

Sad that others in our case were me and my Jade, Zach, and Leonard: my husband’s own wife and children, his family.

Jade was our 1st baby, my honey-girl daughter. Jade Marie Mask opened my heart to depths of love I had never even fathomed were possible. As I enveloped her entrance into my heart, it expanded to the breadth of the universe at first awareness of her presence, her tiny life, blooming from inside my womb into the beautiful woman she is becoming today into her adulthood. I love you and miss you oceans, my Jewel Jade!

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You were such a precious baby from Day 1, my

sweetheart Jade Marie Mask 57578.jpg .

When I discovered I was pregnant with Zach and wasn’t sure about how to gently transition you off my breast when at our LaLeche group meeting, I heard advice from the other young mothers there who said, Don’t worry! As you are pregnant now, the nature of your milk will change and she won’t like the taste of it. That was not the case; however, you chose the healthiest most beautiful route any Mom could imagine. When our precious son, Zach, arrived and it was time for Zach to nurse, your precious response at 2 ½ years old, It’s baby’s turn now. And that was it. You never nursed again.

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Pony rides with my sweet Jade. 57580.jpg

It always seemed like I took you to activities by ourselves (The Dumberton Apple festival which you kids and I enjoyed every year) which I loved but Daddy didn’t go. If it involved golf or Disney or his potential clients or his own family of origin who constantly criticized or belittled others as if they were somehow better than the rest of the human race then he came with us.

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Jade and I used to go feed the ducks.

She always loved doing this. When our sons came along and were big enough to join us, we used to go after school sometimes. Remember guys? I cherish these and all our wonderful memories we created together 57582.jpg

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Zach in Mom’s tummy 57585.jpg

We loved our sweet baby Zach even when he was still in my belly, didn’t we, my honey-girl? On March * 1994, we welcomed our son, your sweet brother Zach, in a surprise hello spring snowstorm into the world. You, Jade, weren’t too sure about him joining our family at first and even threw crayons into his bassinet at the hospital. Then you loved him up and made him laugh with your joyful dancing, singing and precious silliness many moments in our days together at home. I again was and am totally blessedJ So much love! The most precious times in my life have been my moments with you, my darlings Jade, Zach, and Leonard. Thank You Lord!

As Zach was almost 9 pounds at birth, I was huge with him in my belly weighing in at 170 lbs. Even though I couldn’t see my feet at the end I would do all it over again in a second because Zach, you are worth everything to me. I miss you, honey. You were such a courageous young man during our nightmare and were the last to hang with me before the intense battering tactics became too much for you too. It’s all ok. None of it is any of your fault, my brave son. I love you, my sweetheart ZachJ forever and always my amazing son, Mom. OX

Zach was our joyful, peaceful son, who gave Jade and me 2-3 hours of girl time together at his naptime as he slept like a rock during his afternoon naps and all through the night! Being blessed to be a stay-at-home mother had its 24/7 demands, which I sometimes found difficult to juggle but I always felt totally grateful and adoring of my husband, children, our sweet family, and extended family.

Today after 13 years of severe alienation of all 3 of our children from me, I am even more deeply grateful to God that we had those formative years of love and healthy development together and that I had the opportunity and privilege to plant the seeds of Christ in them. We sang praise songs to Jesus all the time in the carJ My 12 Step recovery had given me this relationship with God Whom was to each of my kids and me our best friend and #1 relationship. Thank You God.

I learned through the unmerited gifts of having our children the unconditional indomitable love He has for us. Even when it feels like He has left us, He never does. I have never left my children. I was terrorized in front of them, demonized by their father to them and exiled from them; yet in my heart, in my prayers and in my dreams, we are always together 57587.jpg

Without Jesus Christ in my life, I would never be in one piece, sober, and sane today having been without the voices, smiles, and sweet presence of my Jade and Zach and Leonard in my life before they were marred mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually by their father and his entourage of savages in family court and beyond.

CHAPTER

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4

I Want to Be with You Everywhere

Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac

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We got our money’s worth of fun in this playroom when you guys were young.

Then, a few years later your incredible creativity flowed through this playroom too as you guys wrote and designed plays for one another and neighborhood friends who were integral dancers in your plays too!

These moments with you, my darlings, have etched memories so dear and so precious in my heart that because we were so close to each other and you trusted my love and care for you the monstrous abuse, power and control, that has occurred to us (still has you in his clutches) has made it so much worse for you to reach out to me. I can’t even imagine the pain for you 57589.jpg . Just picture me-the normal loving fun me (not the picture that has been painted of me) in a bright yellow life raft (with tons of snacks and waters of course 57591.jpg ) under a bright blue sky on crystal waves of a tropical ocean holding a space for you there always and forever waiting with my arms wide open for you!

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Mom and Jade wore matching Laura Ashley outfits together (twice 57593.jpg )-beautiful mother and daughter!

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Jade loved to adorn herself in jewels while hanging out with Mom at our condo 1992 57595.jpg .

My princess 4ever! I love you, Jade! OX Mom.

Jade was always so full of joy! Her beautiful spirit and love for singing and entertaining began with us at home on just another