Actually the majority of the women he's knocked up are from the US. I think the only reason she told me in the first place -- she was clearly hesitant to do so-- was after she asked me how my relationship with dad was, as she wanted to know if he was treating his kids right, and before she told me about him, she wanted to ask me why my parents separated. It was only after I agreed to tell her that she told me what he'd done. And I can't really blame her for wanting to find out whether or not he has a history of abuse and lied about it, and I don't know who else she would be able to ask about it. I am glad she told me though, despite how strongly I feel about it. Based on my brothers' response to this mess, I'm not even sure if they would have let her tell them anything -- especially big brother, who is the closest to my dad out of all his offspring and is the first to defend him, probably because he's dad's oldest son -- and she might never have found out about the kind of person he is.

But what makes it harder is that like I said, dad can be really likeable, and he doesn't act like a terrible person all of the time. As much money as he has, he's very generous with it; he has a history of buying dinner for homeless people he comes across, including a large group of extremely poor children trying to sell flower necklaces while we were in the Philippines (he bought necklaces from all of them), and he donates a large portion of his money to churches (oh, funny story, he was invited to actually preach at one of the churches he donated money too while I was there, and THAT was fun; I really loved the part of the sermon where he randomly called me out in front of the whole church for not being a churchgoer and earned a lot of applause for bringing it up, meanwhile my social anxiety was flaring up). It's his seemingly selfless generosity that has made me believe all this time he actually does have a heart beneath all his issues, but then again, he might just believe that if he gives enough money away to people less fortunate, he's bought permission from God to be a complete a--hole. Maybe he thinks the only way he can get people to like him is to buy their appreciation -- that seems to have been the case when we were growing up.