td;dr: my daughter has been suicidal in the recent past. She recently ran away from home. I don't know where she is living or who with. Two key adults in her life are enabling this, telling her she doesn't need to tell my wife and I anything, and telling us we're overreacting. As far as I know she is still attending school full time and her last report card was good. When cleaning her room I found essentially a diary entry on plain lined paper in a manila folder sitting on top of her clean bookshelf, which might mean she wanted me to find it. Her boyfriend sexually assaulted her a year ago, he blamed her, so she blames herself and hates herself and her body now. I think the incident was a month after the suicide attempt, but it's possible I got it backwards.
-----
My 16 year old attempted suicide last spring 2021. At the hospital, the attending psychiatrist said he had a high degree of certainty after spending two hours with her that she likely suffers from BPD. Last December she ran away from home after an argument with me and my wife. She moved in with her mom. It turns out she was seeking out a place to live completely independently and after a few weeks with her mom, abruptly announced she was moving in with "friends."
Her mom, my ex, have had a mostly very good cooperative co-parenting relationship for the past 15 years. My daughter has stayed overnight with me more than half the time since she was in grade school, and full time since she was about 11 years old, in 2016 when my current wife and I moved in together.
December 2021 is where it all started to break down. After a week with her mom, they got in a huge fight and my daughter begged me to come home "just for two weeks while I find a place. Mom is threatening to throw all of my clothes and things down the stairs." In hindsight I would have handled this differently, but at the time I thought she was being over-dramatic. I saw no chance of her being able to secure a safe place, pay for it and still be able to show up for school and work.
She works a lot of hours and his great with saving money, and has done very well in school. But we live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada and she earns minimum wage and attends school full time.
The fight blew over and my ex was invalidating my worry and my concern over being completely cut off from communication with my daughter. "We don't have those problems. We're getting along fine over here. Why don't you think about what you must have done? She's obviously punishing you for *something*.
Then, my daughter moved out as promised, and my ex was "completely shocked and devastated."
My ex insisted we contact the school, contact my daughter's boyfriend's mother, and try to find out what is going on. But, she said, at least she was
So she moved out but continued to work 3 nights a week at the same restaurant as her mom. Her mom would tell me 'she doesn't want to reveal her address yet, but she says she's doing well, and she worked hard tonight, and she looks healthy. But I will keep trying to get her to tell us where she lives.'
Then one night my daughter came to work at the restaurant wearing a very low cut shirt with her large boobs hanging out. Her mom said, we have a mostly elderly clientele here (ex has been working there almost 10 years, my daughter about 18 months). You need to cover yourself up a bit.
So my daughter went to the bathroom, removed her bra and came out and shoved her bra in her coat pocket, and went back to work, now with her breasts swinging from side to side.
So my ex confronted her again and said she needed to wear a jacket. She borrowed a jacket from someone and told her to wear it. My daughter put it on, and then soon after went to a manager and accused her mother of "sexual harassment" and said she should be fired.
As you can imagine, my ex called me after the shift, "absolutely shocked and devastated." She also expressed great worry, 'for now she would no longer be able to see her 3 times a week guaranteed and interact with her.'
Meanwhile her boyfriend blocked both my wife and I on our telephones and on Instagram. We asked his mom about it and she said "oh I'm sure that's not true, he wouldn't do that!" She also told us she sees our daughter frequently but that her son was now staying at her place instead of their's, and that she didn't know where that was. She basically told us "not to worry; I think she just wants her space right now."
The school Vice Principal and head counsellor advised us to connect with a social service called Family Reconnect. They promised to keep an eye on daughter and alert her teachers as well, and they promised to notify us right away if anything seemed unusual or if she missed a class. They said as far as they could tell she was doing very well in class up to that moment.
Reconnect told us teenage runaways were common but usually in the case of parental abuse and neglect, or getting in with a bad crowd (drugs, prostitution, etc) and isolating from family for one of those reasons. They promised to try to make contact with her. So far we've spoken to them a few times and attended a family support group once (off for spring break and Easter, resumes this Thursday), but we've heard nothing back about our daughter. The last series of exchanges with two social workers from Reconnect suggested we contact local police to simply do a safety check on her, if she's not responding and no adults are giving us regular updates on her.
So I suggested this to her mom, who has mostly been "yes therapy, yes school counsellor and teachers, yes social workers"... but when I suggested we ask the police to perform a wellness check on her she completely turned on me!
She works part time for the local jail, basically she takes fingerprints and mug shots of the arrestees as they come in and put their belongings into a ziplock bag. She told me it would be very embarrassing for her "at work".
My ex then told me she knows where my daughter lives, she's healthy, happy and safe, and that she wants nothing to do with me. She said I was a control freak and my actions were going to *guarantee* my daughter would never speak to me again.
I didn't know what to do. Instinct told me to go to my daughter's bedroom to see if I could find anything. After her suicide attempt we found a suicide note, addressed to her boyfriend. It was a clear sign that it was premeditated and not spontaneous. I thought that in the circumstances, I should see if there are any clues there so I can decide how to act, call the police or just wait it out for a few more weeks.
That's when I found that her boyfriend sexually molested her, "fingered her" and penetrated her while she was passed out from exhaustion (alcohol?) when they went to his parents cabin (second time? "we've been there before and nothing bad ever happened"). My daughter confronted him in the morning and he repeatedly denied it. They had sex "consensually" because she thought it must have just been a dream, he was so convincing.
Later, after "my dad" (me) picked her up from his place after the camping trip, she asked him one more time. (Paraphrase): "sorry to keep bugging you about this. It just seems so real in my memory and now I'm really afraid to fall asleep and I'm afraid of the dark like I never was before in my life." He confessed it was true! She asked him why he lied and he said, "because I wanted you to believe that you are schizophrenic."
This little creep was thought by all of us to be a super polite, very kind, beta male who would probably ask permission to hold her hand or kiss her on the cheek. In hindsight though we can see some very creepy behavior from him which we chose to ignore at the time.
Upon this discovery, I told my wife who was at work at the time. I also told the school counsellor, Vice Principal and my ex who were all on the email chain about the situation with my daughter and running away from home. I didn't give them all the details. I just said it turns out she was assaulted last year and she blames herself and she hates herself, and that I am very worried. I didn't want anyone to confront her with this necessarily. I just wanted some advice as to what to do. I told them I was going to do as the two social workers suggested and call the police.
The police officer called me and asked for the run down. I tried to summarize as best I could. He called my daughter and then called me right back. Said she was laughing, in good spirits, said she was totally fine, has a good job, lots of food, and that she was sitting right next to her mother at the time, who knows where she is and that she is totally fine. In other words, her mom knew this call was coming and was coaching her.
One of the most shocking aspects is my ex's reaction to me finding the note about the sexual assault and the *emotional* abuse, lying to my daughter and confessing he wanted to make her believe she is schizophrenic. Her response? No response at all. Total silence.
Two days later I got a notification from the school. "Parent excused absence" for the entire day. I texted the ex:
Just got the notification, is she ok etc.
"You were stressing her out. She asked me if she could take the day off to rest at home and I told her she could."
When we got a little bit of counseling after the suicide attempt I was told by therapists and counsellors and I have read many times, that intentional isolation from close friends and family is a huge red flag for suicidal people. My daughter no longer talks to her sister or her two step sisters, or her stepmom or me, or her former best friend. With some of us she gives one word answers. Eg a few weeks ago: "Happy Birthday (daughter)!" Response: either total silence or "thanks".
I am alternating between despair and great anger. Neither her mom nor her boyfriend's mom even asked her WHY she ran away from home. They are acting like "she just needs her space" and there is nothing wrong. I have to believe their intentions are good although ignorant and misguided. They seem so terrified to "set her off" they won't insist she gets any help or talk to anyone. They make my wife and I feel like we are overreacting and should have no cause for concern when we simply express a desire to know how she is doing.
I have vivid nightmares about getting a horrible call from the police or the hospital and her mom and boyfriend's mom crying and shrugging their shoulders at the same time. I jump out of bed and go walking and get busy with studying or reading something I enjoy or that is educational, and it usually calms me down after a while.
I have thought about calling CPS, calling the police again, or hiring a family lawyer to sue for child endangerment, interfering with a court order (I have joint custody since 2006 and primary residency for over a decade), and even retroactive child support from her mother, who lives in a luxury 3 bedroom apartment, takes vacations and has stolen from my daughter's education fund, and never tried to help us or my daughter financially even though we have raised her full time.
