A question for Adult "children" of divorce?

[matt m-h]

My parents separated when I was only 5 years old. Usually the courts give the mother custody buy in my case I went to stay with my father. This was because at the time my mother had filed for bankruptcy (for the second time) and my father had the money to afford a lawyer and his family had the reputation of being very well-known in the community. So I went to live with my dad in Connecticut while my mom and older sister - who has a different father than me - stayed in Indiana.

Living with my dad from age 5 onward was tough. He abused me, physically and emotionally. He made me believe that I was not even a human being. That I did not deserve to have any friends at all. That I was not allowed to have my own thoughts or opinions. And that all I had to do was work and have a job/career in order to be "happy" and "successful" - or at least what he considered to be happy and successful. He would also physically hurt me whenever I got into trouble at school or when I did something that he deemed to be "wrong".

I also was/am disabled and he thought I was mentally retarded, so he would always introduce me to people as "My retarded son". I grew up thinking that all of this was true and I never had any friends or anything because always believed that my father was right and that he loved me. I was basically the town pariah and the laughing stock of my school.

When I was 20, I got arrested and had to go to court to face the charges. The courts ordered I go to therapy and I had to see six different therapists over the course of one year (which is how long it took for my case to be resolved). They all were appalled at the way my father treated me and they tried their hardest to undo all the mental and emotional damage that he had done to me. My mother also traveled to Connecticut from Indiana to speak on my behalf to the court and tell them how my father treated me and how he - as she described it - "brainwashed" me into thinking like him. When my case ended, I only got a misdemeanor put on my record instead of anything bigger.

Since then, my dad has remarried a European woman with three adult daughters and he spends almost half of the year in Europe with his wife visiting his new daughters. When he is in America and back home, he spends about $1300 a month to send them all really big care-packages. He has basically cut all ties to me and only calls me when he has something negative to say.