I don't know where to start. Why on earth am I at this place in my life as a mother to this 17 year old when all I ever wanted to do was love her and protect her? I wanted to give her a better life. She is somewhat developmentally delayed. Early language deprivation. She was exposed to everything you could imagine. She has been here since she was three. We have been her parents. She has been going with a boy who we have had odd feelings about since the beginning. It now turns out that he is verbally, emotionally and mentally abusive to her.

Within the last 2 weeks we have come down hard and terminated their relationship. He scares me, and his family scares me. Please no one take offense to this as I do not mean it culturally, but his family is off the screen from DELIVERANCE. Meaning, they have no respect or clue to societies rules or human law, just what they themselves want. His family I think has been wanting to get her pregnant and wants her to move in with them when she is 18 in a few months. There is no way. Why would I have parented this kid for 14 years? I want her to have a better life. She has no understanding of how they are manipulating her. She has no understanding about this boy and the mind games he plays. She is in Therapy with the same T for a long time and the T does not believe that she understands what is happening. For the past 2 weeks she has been with friends of ours who are taking care of her. They are trying to show her a normal good time and a more normal sense of activities. She isn't even trying to spend time with her brother who is here for the weekend.

Next week her sister graduates and my in laws are coming up. She told my friends that she thought that the grandparents would want nothing to do with her. I don't have a lot of extended family. I have no family except my children, spouse and friends.

I am so torn between saying forget it and letting her go, and going all out and filing for guardianship and making every effort to help her be safe and have a better life.

I am hurt as heck. She seems like she could care less for us. She has hurt her sister badly. I can forgive a lot but she has rejected her sister and this has caused her pain.

She is brainwashed by this boy and his family. She has no clue what it is like to be part of a family and doesn't know what responsibility being a part of a family is.

She has a birth sister who she doesn't seem to want contact with. I have tried to encourage them to stay in touch. She doesn't even want to do this. it hurts. I put my family through hell so many times doing foster care of special needs kids. We adopted this one and her own written story tells that she was hiding behind a tree in the park after the adoption because she didn't want to be adopted. She was 6 when the adoption occured but 3 when she came.

I went into her room earlier, something I try not to do for privacy reasons. She had notes that could be purchased by the worst porn mags around! I am mixed up a lot about all of this. I hear the voice of THE EVIL MOTHER telling me that I was dirty and bad because I had sexual parts of me. I wasn't seamless like a doll. And then I wonder if I have done that to this daughter. I don't think so, having sex wasn't the issue for me with her, it was him going around bragging about it and offering no apologies for betraying a trust. Little creep. he wrote all of these notes about wanting to do certain things some more.

So I have to figure out where to go from here. Cut my losses and turn her loose the way she wants? Do the restraining order and try for guardianship? Tell her to take her stuff that she says was never as good as her sister or brother's and get the hell out of here!

I just don't need the grief! I am hurting about it all and I have to darned much stress in my life. Time to make some decisions.