I'll try to keep it short. ExH moved out 8 years ago, I divorced him and he moved a long way away. He was an abusive during and after our marriage. I had years of counselling to rebuild my mental health and had a non-molestation order for a year to stop him harassing me after our divorce.
We have two DC. He continued to see them every other weekend until his second marriage broke down a couple of years ago. Contact with the DC stopped, started, stopped and then was building back up to two days a month.
My life and the DC's life is happy. They are tweens and doing well at school, with friends and different hobbies. I remarried to a wonderful man who the DC adore and who deals with exH in terms of scheduling contact etc. ExH is practically our only source of stress. DD made disclosures at school about witnessing domestic violence during his second marriage, so we put private counselling in place and social services are involved in monitoring the contact arrangements between the DC and ExH. We don't have a named social worker but they contact us to check in every so often and they're happy with what we're doing to protect the DC.
ExH moved back to our town this year and it's been a nightmare. He turns up at every single one of the DC's activities, makes arrangements directly with the DC that conflict with prior arrangements, blames me when he then can't see them and tells them to keep secrets. He's told DH that he plans to move away again, so we know that this is only temporary and it's so unfair on the DC. He won't accept this at all and says he's supporting them and building his relationship with them 🤦♀️ He's done no actual parenting for the last 8 years, put the DC in a harmful environment and cut contact with them, hasn't had contact with his youngest DC from his second marriage for 2 years, but now considers himself the expert on what's best for the DC and wants to exercise what he sees as his rights as a father.
The last straw was this week when he turned up at something the DC weren't even participating in (think along the lines of me taking them to the theatre). I cracked once we got home, sent him a piece of my mind via text and cried myself to sleep while DH put the kids to bed.
I don't feel like I can keep my children safe from him. I can't cope mentally with him suddenly popping up all over the place. My house is the former marital home and DH and I have done so much work to make it a safe haven for us all. I can't even be in my bedroom now without having flashbacks to him raping me. I can't go out without looking over my shoulder. I have intrusive suicidal thoughts. That night, I was ready to rip the curtains off the rail, tear off the wallpaper and break apart the bedroom furniture for the tip. I only didn't because it would have scared the DC. I can't concentrate on work. I'm supposed to be WFH but am just sitting here feeling under siege in my own head, with the same feelings of despair I had when I was married to that monster.
WTAF do I do to keep myself and the DC safe?