Unwanted by her father, terrorized by her step dad

By Bethania Wonagseged –

Ultimately, Cait Taylor chose the Stanley knife to defend herself against her stepfather, who was beating up Mom.

“Could I hit him with the hammer?” she wondered and decided against it.

But when the police arrived, she hid the knife in the grass, thinking they might mistake her for the aggressor. In fact, the police stopped Stepdad, for the umpteenth time. Eventually, Mom came to her senses and left him for good, ending a harrowing eight years.

Cait Taylor, who as a little girl wished for a father only to fall into the nightmare of a stepfather from Hell, found her Heavenly Father at age 21.

Born in Northern England, Cait had never met her dad. Mom and Dad split before she was born. Family members had counseled Mom to get an abortion. Cait believed she was a mistake, unwanted.

Kids’ questions at school only caused the father wound to deepen.

Her illusion of having a father when her mom married turned soon enough into despair. His mercurial temperament would go mushroom cloud at the slightest provocation.

“We  had no control. We were at the mercy of this  man and his mood,” Cait says on her YouTube channel. “We had to be alert  24/7 in anticipation of his next blowup.  It could happen at any time on any day, even on  Christmas Day one year, we had a police call out.”

As quickly as his temper flared, it subsided when the cops showed up. Cunning to cover up, he himself went out to meet them with a smile and a handshake.

 “Any time that there was an argument in the car, my stepdad would lock all of the doors. He would  put his foot fully to the floor and start swerving the car onto the opposite side of the road,” Cait says. “He  would say he was going to drive us all off a bridge. He would say he was going to kill us all.

“I remember being in the back seat next to my brother who was still in a baby chair. And I would just close my eyes and think Please stop, please stop, please stop. “

Stepdad got a better job in New Zealand, so the family moved. Mom thought a new beginning would be the end of old ways. It wasn’t.

Cait was bullied at school because of her accent.

She didn’t know Jesus but randomly found worship music and it soothed her soul. One song by Meredith Andrews, she would play on repeat: “You  are not alone for I am here, let me wipe away your  every fear. My love, I’ve never left your side.  I have seen you through the darkest night and  I’m the one who has loved you all your life.”

As she would ride on the bus home from school, she would pray – every day – that her mother would still be alive. She was 11. “Every day I was sure that when I opened the front door, my mum would be dead,” she says.

When she was 13, Stepdad nearly killed Mom, she says. As the intensity of the fight and the violence reached heights previously never seen, Cait went into the garage to pick a tool to defend herself with – and possibly to defend mom. 

She took her younger half-brother outback to the trampoline and waited with the Stanley knife hidden up her sleeve. Stepdad had Mom pinned against the wall and was swinging a crowbar at her. Then the cops showed up.

“By the time  they’d arrived, my mum was covered in blood,” she says. “Her shirt had been completely ripped off of her  body and it was a white t-shirt that looked red. It was so bloody. I remember the police holding  it up and pleading with my mum to press charges. They had enough evidence to have him deported  from the country.

“But she just couldn’t do it.”

Why do female victims of abuse often cover up for their abusers? What web of confused love and codependent enabling brings this about? Stepdad cajoled by threatening to commit suicide, she says.

While Mom didn’t press charges, she eventually ran away to a new part in town, where a friend received her in her home. She found a job and eventually got a place to rent. Police got a restraining order against the man who had terrorized their lives.

But Stepdad didn’t go away. His continued to show up in flashbacks, nightmares and fear.

“Although my stepdad was no longer physically living with us, he was still living up here in my  mind,” Cait says. “I started obsessively checking the locks on windows, checking the locks on doors. To this day I still check under the bed before I go to sleep, and I sleep  with a nightlight.  I’m 27 years old. Until I went to therapy, that was something I felt  really embarrassed about. By now I know I have CPTSD.” That’s Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Her journey to Jesus began. As she was paying for jumpers at a second-hand store, the lady attendant, looking intently and compassionately at her, told her: “I have something for you.” She went out back and brought a pamphlet.

Cait thanked her. In her car, she looked at the pamphlet. It was titled “Father’s Love Letter.”

As she read it in the car, tears streamed down her face. It answered every question of her life, from being unwanted by her dad and terrorized by her stepdad. “It spoke to every hurt in my heart and was everything I needed to hear,” she says.

It was a paraphrase of many Bible verses:

My  child, you may not know me, but I know everything  about you. I know when you sit down and when  you rise up. I am familiar with all your ways. Even the very hairs on your head are numbered, for you are made in my image. In me, you live and move and have your being, for you are my offspring.  I knew you even before you were conceived. I chose you when I planned creation. You are not a  mistake. For all your days are written in my book. I determined the exact time of your birth and  where you would live. You are fearfully and  wonderfully made. I knit you together in your mother’s womb and brought you the day you were born. You are my child and I am your father. I offer you more than your earthly father ever could, for I am the perfect father. I am your greatest encourager. I  am also the father who comforts you in all your  troubles. When you are broken-hearted. I am close  to you. One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes and I’ll take away all the pain you have  suffered on this earth. I have always been father  and will always be father. My question is: Will  you be my child? Love your Dad, Almighty God.

She could not stop crying in the car. She stowed the pamphlet next to her bed and read it any time she was feeling down.

She was learning about God but still didn’t know Jesus. She watched sermons online and googled questions about God.

But before her life turned fully for the better, it turned worse. Her mental health continued its downward slide. She struggled with an eating disorder. The family even moved so that she could be close to the hospital where she had constant doctor’s visits. She legally signed herself out of school at age 16. 

“I was a shell of a person,” she says. “There was nothing anyone could do to  help because I didn’t want to be helped. They essentially had to watch me just destroying myself.”

Because of constant arguments with her mom, Cait moved out and moved in with a friend. Together, they decided to go to church because of their struggles.

“Basically from the moment we into the building I was crying. I cried through the  whole worship set. I cried through the whole sermon. I am sure people must have been looking  at me thinking ‘What is wrong with that girl?’” she tells. “At the time I couldn’t even tell you why I was crying.

“All I knew was that whatever I felt in that room was what had been missing my entire life,” she adds. “Everything changed for me from that moment. I felt peace for the first time. I  felt real hope for the first time. I started to heal from my eating disorder.”

She continued attending church. Naturally, she eventually committed her life to Christ. With her eyes closed in prayer, her whole life flashed in front of her in her mind.

“All of a sudden I could pinpoint every single moment that God had been trying to reach me,” she says. The worship music, the pamphlet, the sermons, friends who had invited her to church.

Her YouTube channel is called 828, a reference to Romans 8:28, “All things work together for the good of those who love God.”

She has met her dad and reconciled with him. 

Today, Cait lives in Los Angeles.

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