sperm donor wanted

When Leanne thinks of Cyndi Lauper's song True Colors she's reminded of her ex husband, Jack, who was as proud as a peacock when she told him she was pregnant - but later discovered that it was his ability to make a baby that he was proud of, not the prospect of raising a child with her.

"When Jack started avoiding me after taking me out to dinner to celebrate my pregnancy I knew I was in trouble, " says Leanne.

"There was no way I was capable of raising a child on my own and if Jack didn't want to participate in the child's future then I needed to get an abortion as quickly as possible."

"I finally managed to get Jack to agree to a discussion," says Leanne, "and I laid my cards clearly in front of him."

"He maintained that the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy or have an abortion was entirely my decision," says Leanne. "He didn't see the life growing inside me as being a responsibility of his - even though it was his sperm that created it."

"Faced with the brutal truth I had very little alternative."

"Jack didn't say so but I suppose he had contemplated a future divorce and a lifetime spent paying maintenance for a child he didn't want."

"I was 36 and this may have been my last chance to become a mother," says Leanne, "but when I looked at Jack that night and saw what a lily-livered coward he was I didn't want a man like that to be the father of my child."

"I made an appointment to have an abortion and the counseling session was really trying for me," sighs Leanne.

"I suppose by then the hormones had kicked in and I was feeling 'clucky' and 'protective' even though my brain was totally against having this child."

"It was the first - and hopefully the last - abortion I will ever have to endure," says Leanne. "It didn't hurt and I was treated very well but I couldn't help but cry like a baby when it was all over."

"The whole male-female situation really stinks," sighs Leanne. "Jack and I hadn't planned on having a child -- it just happened, despite contraception -- and it really sucks that the woman has to pay the consequences of what a man's sperm does."

"Jack had been so proud that at 47 he was firing healthy sperm rather than 'blanks' -- which is how he put it -- and that's all there was to it as far as he was concerned."

"If he had wanted proof of his fertility than he should have got it at a clinic -- not through my misery and the murder of a new human being."

"A bad choice of man?"

"Well, tell me how to pick a good one," sighs Leanne.

"Anyway, someone else might have let me down when it was too late for an abortion," says Leanne. "If Jack has one redeeming point it is that he showed his true colors early enough for me to right a great wrong."

"After the abortion, there was no point continuing with the marriage," says Leanne. "Jack was a flake and a poor excuse for a man. He even chickened out of accompanying me to the abortion clinic. I had to go through it all on my own."

"What's the use of having a husband if he's not there for you?"

"I'm considering going ahead and having a sperm donor baby," confides Leanne. "I know it will be difficult being a single mom, but considering the woeful quality of potential husbands and fathers out there I believe it's the only option open to me?"

"Wish me luck!"

(Leanne's story first appeared as true colors and is reprinted with permission.)

the butt of cruel jokes

Up until her children left home three years ago, June endured eleven post-divorce years of abject misery because of constant interference from an abusive ex who manipulated her through the children, regularly defaulting on access visits and child maintenance and poisoning the children's minds against her and the few men she had dated.

"Becoming an empty nester ended all that misery for me," says June, "but irreparable damage had been done. My life is ruined."

June explains that her miseries started when she was about 40 and first felt affronted by her husband's cruel ageist and sexist jokes. Cruel jokes about older women are popular among most men, but women generally never take much notice of these jokes until they reach an age at which they suddenly realize that the jokes are directed at them.

Her husband thought it was very funny to humiliate her by telling such jokes in company, and he paid for this and his other follies with divorce. However, June, now 56, did not get away easily. She paid for her assertiveness in divorcing her husband fourteen years ago by becoming the butt of the cruelest joke imaginable.

During the prime of her life, from 42 to 53, June lived on the edge and often considered suicide as a way out of her misery. She couldn't see an end to the vendetta her ex was conducting against her. She felt that he would carry on until the men in white or the undertakers carried him, or her, away.

The misery she suffered at the hands of a nasty and vindictive ex totally overshadowed her 40s and early 50s. She looks more like 76 than 56. Her hair is white, her eyes are dull, her complexion is ashen and she has that jittery mannerism that is more common in elderly women than a fifties woman.

It's easy to say that the option is always there for women in June's former situation to pack up, change their name, leave the country or do whatever they have to do in order to get a vindictive ex off their backs, but as June explained this was not an option for her.

"It would have meant sacrificing the children," says June. "My ex had visitation rights and the only way I could have escaped from him was to give him the children. I couldn't do that because he didn't want the children. He was just using them to ruin my life. And he succeeded not only in ruining my life, but the children's, too. They've turned out to be as screwed up as he is."

Women who gain custody of children after a marital split rarely gain respite from the children's father, and this constant harassment not only deprives these women from enjoying a normal relationship with a man but also a normal relationship with their children. June is now resigned to never seeing her children again.

"They are ashamed of me," explains June. "One of them calls me an 'old bag' and other pejorative names that their father called me."

When children are constantly subjected to hearing their father deride their mother, it's a rare child who can see the injustice of the situation and want to put it right.

June says that all her suffering was wasted.

"I might as well have put the kids into care and fled, cutting all ties with them as well as their father," sighs June. "It will silly of me to expect the children to appreciate that I remained their mom. I should have realized that their father would have more sway over them than I would"

If her children are more concerned about what she looks like than what's in her heart, then that's due to their father's indoctrination and there's nothing much she can do about it. And yet, it is not just her ex-husband who poisoned her children's minds against June. The youth culture, and general lack of respect for older women, is to blame, too.

June's ex-husband very clearly succeeded in increasing his power by decreasing hers. What he did to her wasn't illegal, and because it is sanctioned by a male dominated society it wasn't considered to be immoral either.

"To everyone else he was an aggrieved dad," explains June. "I initiated the divorce and split the family. Therefore, I was considered to be the bad person and in punishing me he was seen as giving me what I deserved. Nobody cared that the kids were getting screwed up in the process."

"He was driving me mad, and screwing up the kids," explains June, "but everyone else saw him as a good guy. Nobody cared about the reason why I left him. Nobody cared that he was abusing me. He managed to convince everyone that I had left him and broken his poor little heart for no good reason whatsoever. "

As long as these guys have a mantle of approval from society, they can carry on forever. And bitter and twisted ex-husbands and ex-lovers often do.

When asked why, at the age of 56 and after three years of freedom from the kids, she has not picked herself up and started a new life - one far away from her ex, her children and all the bad memories - June shrugs and says that she just doesn't have any energy left.

"As long as I they leave me alone I feel safe," says June. "The hell is over and I just want to enjoy peace and quiet now."

When women use the word 'safe' it usually indicates that they are otherwise living in fear, and this is exactly how June is living despite the fact that the children - the only 'hold' her ex had over her - are no longer in the equation.

June said that she could not have lived with herself had she given up her children and fled fourteen years ago, and yet by doing what she considered to be the ethical and natural thing for a mother to do she exposed herself to further abuse.

freedom from domestic violence

Chantal, 48, made a proud decision 12 years ago to be poor and free rather than rich and abused, but in divorcing an abusive husband and freeing her children from domestic violence she never imagined that they would end up years later denying her suffering and blaming her for divorcing their father and stuffing up their lives.

"I deserve a medal of bravery for what I did 12 years ago," claims Chantal. "I can't believe, in this day and age, that anyone - least of all my children - would deny my suffering and wish I had remained in an abusive relationship."

"Divorcing that man was the bravest decision I have ever made," says Chantal, "and having made it I empowered myself to make similar decisions about anyone else who dared to abuse me and make me feel bad about myself. I don't care who they are - employer, friend, lover, mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter - I will not tolerate an unhealthy relationship. I will not be controlled, owned, raped, humiliated, blamed, pushed, shoved or threatened ever again."

"I was very naive when I married and consequently fell pregnant immediately," explains Chantal. "After the birth of my first daughter I went on the pill and stayed on it, despite mounting health risks, for thirteen years without a break and then finally, on strict medical advice, I took a break and fell pregnant again. My ex-husband refused to use male contraception - he couldn't care less about whether I fell pregnant or not - so during this break from the pill I refused him sex."

"He retaliated by forcing himself on me when I was asleep," sighs Chantal. "When I woke up and realized what he was doing he forced me on my stomach and continued raping me until he was done - and then he turned over and slept, leaving me crying."

"I don't know whether he deliberately raped me to make me pregnant - or just to satisfy his lust," says Chantal, "but when I told him I was pregnant he was a lot happier than I was. Imagine this happening thirteen years after the first mishap - after all my precautions!"

"During my second pregnancy the abuse worsened," sighs Chantal, "and after my second daughter was born it became intolerable. He lashed out at all of us."

"I protected those kids with my life, literally, and although they may prefer to remember one or two bad times over the thousands of happy times they spent with me, I did my very best and I'm very proud that I raised two children to healthy adulthood," says Chantal. "It was my duty as a mother to protect my children from harm and provide them with a good, strong female role model."

"I felt deep despair being stuck in a marriage where I had to take his abuse as if I deserved it, and especially so if he dished it out in front of the children."

"I didn't want my children to see their mother being abused," explains Chantal. "If they now feel, as their father encourages them to do, that I lied and made a bad decision twelve years ago that adversely affected them and as such I am responsible for everything that goes wrong in their lives forever and ever then what can I say?"

"It was such a long time ago - and neither of my children knew half of the stuff that I endured and possibly can't even remember the abuse they did witness," says Chantal, "so their father can easily paint an entirely different impression of what happened and impress it upon them."

"I suppose I can chase up the medical records, the police records, the court records and the witness statements - but why the hell should I?" asks Chantal. "If they want to believe that their father is incapable of abuse then let them believe what they want."

"It's history, it's dead and buried, it's stuff that happened between their father and I and essentially has nothing to do with them. The divorce did not affect them adversely - it freed them from domestic violence - and I can't believe that twelve years later they would blame me for something they should be thanking me for."

"It is ludicrous and grossly unfair for them to claim that their problems are a direct consequence of my divorcing their father twelve years ago and as such I must take full responsibility and blame," says Chantal. "The consequences to myself and my children of remaining in a domestic violence situation would have been abominable. Do they truly believe that my staying in an abusive marriage would have been a good decision that would have benefited them?"

"I am in my rights to protect myself, tell them to let go and mind their own business - I am not their property and I refuse to get involved in irrational arguments with them," says Chantal, "but that's all I can do. Even though I can see that their relationship with their father has become dangerous and they need to cut ties with him immediately before he does more damage to them, I've never interfered in their relationship with him - and I never will."

"It's a mantra, I know," sighs Chantal, "but no matter how hurt I feel, and how badly I can see how they are being affected by their father, I must respect their right to make adult decisions involving responsibilities and consequences for which they, and they alone, are liable."

"They must learn to let go of the past - as I have," says Chantal. "If they don't, they are liable to end up in abusive relationships themselves."

"I feel healed enough from the experience to be able to marry again - and I have been looking," says Chantal. "but finding the right guy at my age isn't easy."