1972- How I wished I had stayed in Canada with my family. Sandy's sister Cathy had been living in a children's home for a while and she would spend weekends with us. One evening after the kids were asleep, Gaston wanted to have a threesome with 15 yr.old Cathy and I. When I refused, he got so mad, he pushed me into the window and the whole frame broke. I left the apartment and he followed me outside to get to the pickup before I did. He got in the truck and tried to run me over. He barely missed me.

Not even a year and the "honeymoon" was definitely over. The abuse I received from the first husband was nothing compared to what I was getting from him. I could take the beating and the verbal abuse but I could not take that the children were being abused too, so I started shielding them with my own body. I would lie to him when they broke or lost something so they wouldn't get in trouble. Of course, I always thought that if I was real nice to him, that he would change, but no matter what I said or did, it got worse.

My ex André and his wife Sandy would spend some weekends with us and I think it made him worse, like he had to prove something to my ex. Sandy would try to defend me and we became the best of friends.

1972- He came home one day and told me he had a night job for me, bartending. I was too afraid of him to say no. My poor kids, sometimes were left in the pickup truck camper so he could go to the bar. I was lucky, my boss was like a mother to me. She would go get them out and bring them in the bar. He was too nice of a man in public to argue with her.

Guess where my paychecks went? To pay for his bar tabs. I did make some tips by telling the customers that I would take the drinks they offered me later and since I didn't drink, I kept the money. Believe it or not, my customers nicknamed me "Smiley".

1973- One night, the kids were screaming in the back of the truck because he was driving like a maniac and they were scared. He stopped the truck in the middle of nowhere and went to the back to shut them up. All got quiet back there and as he took off, I saw the kids on the road trying to catch up with us. I jumped out of the truck and we walked a few miles to a farmer's house and called my boss to come and pick us up.

1973- In mid august, 1973, I had a miscarriage and I almost died from it. I had been carrying a dead fetus for a couple of months. I was 6 months pregnant and the fetus was only 4 months along. I was so sick, I passed out in the bathroom. I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Doctors didn't know why my baby boy died, but I knew.

I hated the Holidays with a passion. Every Christmas that I can remember, the tree would end up on the floor. Either he had gotten mad and threw it on the floor, or he was too drunk to stand up and he would fall in it. His drinking would be so much worse during that time because he had days off from work. I had so many broken bones in my body over the years that I can't remember all of them.

1974- I had to stop working, I was 8 months pregnant. We made it through Christmas again as usual but I wasn't sure if I'd make it through New-Year's day. I was black and blue all over my breasts, black eye and choke marks on my neck. I was worried about the baby, due soon, I did not feel any movements at all anymore..

January 2, 1975, delivered a small but healthy baby girl (Tania Hélène Lachance) . I heard the doctors in the delivery room making fun of my bruises.

1975- When my other children were 9 and 6 and the baby was 5 months old, we moved into a cottage on Lake Erie, in Reno Beach, Ohio.

My son loved to be able to go fishing every day. Once he caught a big cat fish, he had some guy help him reel it in. He left it on the rocks to go get a bucket and a stray cat ran off with his fish. poor Jacques was so devastated.

1975- One evening Gaston hid his money outside the back door.There was a storm that night and the next morning, whatever money was left was pasted to the rocks by the lake.

I had gone back to work at the bar by then. One day, I was sick so I came home early from work and he was very drunk. He had left the kids alone and gone out to a bar about 4 miles away.

It was a good thing that my oldest daughter Chantal was very responsible, she took care of the baby when I was working. Of course when the kids told me he had gone to the bar for a couple of hours I got mad, and told him never to do that again. I should have kept my big mouth shut, because I really got beat up that time. He punched me in the mouth so hard, I fell on the aquarium full of fish and broke it. Fish all over the floor and the kids were crying.

After he heard me call the cops, he tried to take off in his truck and rolled it over twice off the dike. I don't know how I did it, but I made it down that dike almost as fast as he did. When I got down, I could see what I thought was smoke coming out of the truck. His door was open so I reached in, turned off the engine and dragged him out. He was so drunk, I had to carry him up the dike most of the way. I was bleeding on my legs from going down the dike and he didn't even have a scratch on him.

When the deputies got there, he told them he was the one that had called them, to report that the heavy rain had washed up the side of the road and his truck rolled over in the bottom of the canal all by itself and that he needed a police report for his insurance. After talking to him for a while, one of the deputies asked how his truck got down there and he told him some guy was coming down in the middle of the road and he had to swerve out of his way and he got too close to the edge and rolled down the dike. I'm sure they didn't believe none of his stories but he got a report for his insurance anyway. It took two tow trucks to get his truck out of the canal. Of course it was totaled, he bought another one with the insurance money. I quit my job right after the incident.

1975- During a big flood, we had to move out of there fast. The water was a few inches from the floor and the high water was chasing all the rats out of the rocks by the lake, and they were starting to come up in the cottage. The Sheriff department came and helped us pack and move to Gibsonburg, Ohio.

 

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