Firstly, sorry for the essay. Some of you will be familiar with my story as I’ve posted about it for some time on MN, and have been given amazing support and advice. I have always said I'll check back in and and I have an update.
To recap a little - my mum married my stepdad when I was 4, and on a few occasions as a child he touched and rubbed my private parts and once tried to put his penis in my mouth. I was six years old at the time. There are a few other memories of sexual abuse I have.
Then when I was 16 until I was 19 and left for Uni, he sexually harassed me on a daily basis. This includes:
⁃ exposing himself to me regularly
⁃ Standing naked masturbating in the hallway when I came out my the bathroom (he must have been listening for when the shower went off)
⁃ Talking “dirty” to me through the walls of my room
⁃ Putting the adult channels on my tv so they were there when I turned it on
⁃ Offering me money for sex and leaving sex toys in my room
Some of the above even happened when my mum was in the house, and is only a tiny proportion of what he did. I cant begin to express how utterly terrified I was for 3 years in my own home. I was rarely in the house, I spent a lot of time with friends. And I never told anyone for fear of being hurt by him or not being believed.
One day my mum told me she knew what was going on. She’d seen him grab my bum in the kitchen one day and saw me look upset. She confronted him and he confessed to the harassment (but played it down and lied about how long it was going on for). She said she was going to leave him, that it was over etc. It wasn’t, she stayed, and it was never spoken about for years (but the harassment did stop) and after I left for Uni they moved abroad.
In the years following she really tried to push a father/daughter relationship on to me WRT stepdad. She even forced me to let him give me away on my wedding day, which ruined the day for me, I can’t even look at pictures. She emotionally blackmailed me into buying him birthday and Christmas presents. It’s like the abuse never happened.
Then I had my DD. And my mum sent personalised presents with “gran and grandad” and talked about how SD was so excited to meet ‘his granddaughter’. It turned my stomach, and when DD was a few weeks old (she had met her by then, he hadn’t) I emailed her to say that he will never ever meet my daughter, under any circumstances, and that I’m furious at both of them for the abuse and the minimising and pretending it never happened. She replied to say she understood and still thought about it but doesn’t like to talk about it. The next day she was hospitalised with a “heart episode” and I felt terrible as I felt I caused that. But I’ve stuck to my word he has never met DD nor my DS who came along 3 years later.
A few years later when I was pregnant with DS she left him and moved back to the UK - not because of what he did to me but because he said she was turning into her mother, that was apparently the final straw 
when she came back, i had grown a lot more confident and realised none of the abuse was my fault, and my mum staying with him doesn’t mean that what he did was no big deal. So I started talking about it with her, I wanted answers and explanations. She kind of spoke about it with me but would often throw her hands to her face and say “I just can’t speak about it it’s too much” despite me practically begging her to engage with me on this. I told her about the abuse in child hood (she never knew before, she only thought I was harassed as a teenager) and told her everything that I remember he did in later years.
After living back in the UK for about 4 months (he was begging her to return BTW) she went to visit a friend down south and took her dog (this is relevant). her friend who lived abroad called her to say that her (the friend’s) husband had died suddenly. Mum booked a ferry back to attend the funeral and rang us to ask if we’d come and collect her dog and watch him til she got back. We said no - I was heavily pregnant with a very high risk pregnancy and it would have been a 6 hour round trip. Plus DD was only 3 and the dog was old and didn’t like children and had a tendency to bite. She refused to put him in kennels So she took the dog back - and never returned. Went back to her husband (though insisted at the time they weren’t together, she was just there to help sell the house).
We basically after this went back to square one - stopped talking about the abuse, pretending it didn’t happen again and never mentioning it. She talks about him all the time like it’s normal to be with a man you know is a paedophile. It sounds stupid but my mum intimidates me and it’s not as easy to confront her on issues as you might think.
I started counselling after this, and realised I needed, if not closure, at least answers, explanations and apologies. For the first time I considered going to the police.
Well she went back to him 2 years ago now, and she just visited this week. I mustered up the courage on her last night to say “I NEED and deserve answers from you both, I will not spend the rest of my life in distress because you two would rather pretend it didn’t happen, you both owe me this”. After about 30 seconds she dropped the bombshell that, abut 18 months ago, she tried to kill herself in her garage using the car and exhaust. And of course hero stepdad came to the rescue, pulled her out and gave her a good talking to 🙄 I did suspect that like the “heart episode”, she would have something saved for me which is another way of saying “you can’t be too mean to me because then I’ll hurt myself/have a heart attack/kill myself.”
I repeatedly pulled the conversation back to the abuse, and she just circled round to make it about her every single time. Seriously should could win an Olympic gold medal in narcissism. For example at one point she said “it’s all my fault it happened I should have known what he was doing”, I replied that I didn’t think I’d be believed so didn’t tell anyone and that isn’t her fault - and mentioned that maybe if it happened now, what with #metoo and Time’s Up etc I would probably have the bravery to speak out. She said “well yes it’s a bit like me as a teenager my mother was so nasty to me, these days kids can speak up say something” then started to talk about her mum and how awful she was . Then when I said I can’t believe she could go back to a paedophile, how can someone do that she said “I know, I often wonder how someone could kill themselves but I tried to” 
. Every single sentence was rebutted with a “me me poor me” statement.
I finally pinned her down and asked “why did you go back to him, how can you do that to me?” and she was crying and saying “I just can’t explain, I’m not good with words” and other vague answers.
But in the end she revealed: it’s MY fault! When she was back in the UK, she didn’t feel she saw us much (we went round once a week) and she was disappointed because she asked numerous times if she could babysit DD and we always said no (I don’t let my kids be looked after by paedophile apologists thanks, thought that was obvious). Then she WOULD have come back to the UK had we looked after her dog, but the journey back was so hard on him she couldn’t face driving back so she HAD to stay. So if I had been a better daughter she wouldn’t be with him now, she’d still be in the UK.
I said actually I think we both know you were always going to go back, you’d done it before. She said when she found out the first time what he was doing she didn’t realise it was that bad, she thought he was just “being a bit letchy” with me. I said you should STILL leave a man if he’s being letchy with your daughter. She cried some more and said when she gone she’s going to have to call her therapist again as she can’t handle all this.
So my mum stays with my abuser because we didn’t look after her fucking dog.
She also said being with him means she doesn’t have to work but can buy what she wants - I said I can’t believe any pair of shoes of material lifestyle is worth being with a man like that and there are plenty on non-paedophiles who would work while she didn’t.
I’m broken, and hurt. Despite me saying I wanted an apology, she didn’t give me one. I told her my therapist said how strong i have been through this whole thing and that really seemed to piss her off, that I’d been paid a compliment. She just said “hmm ok”. I never ever went to the police because I knew it would destroy my mother to see her husband arrested and questioned. I just couldn’t do it to her. Now I’m thinking who the fuck am I even protecting by keeping it quiet? Two people who don’t give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves.
DH says he will drop the kids off at his mums and take me to the police station today to file a report and will hold my hand throughout. I have written down years ago a document of all the abuse I suffered (it took me ages to even acknowledge it was abuse and not him “just frightening” me which is what my mum calls it). I don’t know what I expected when I asked her for an explanation. But I feel even worse than ever.