My name is Kelli Elizabeth Cabana, daughter to Nancy Patrick and Cory Cabana. My parents married in 1989 in WA state. I was born in 1990. My parents divorced in 1992. Everyone tells me that when I was very young my dad was the one who mainly cared for me, so at one point he must have cared. I don't know what happened but eventually he stopped and shut down.
In 1994 my dad married my step-mom Stacey. Stacey is the one who raised me, starting in 1995 she stayed home to care for me and my dad went back to work. Most of my childhood I just have memories of Stacey and being together, or being bounced between my birth mom and my dad. My dad was very passive, he didn't get onto me much or go out of his way to spend time with me. As an adult I've learned that most of the time he did spend with me was forced upon him by Stacey as she was trying to nurture a healthy relationship between me and my father. In my middle school years dad and I visited a lot of civil war battlefields and that became our thing. I think he possibly enjoyed it even though it wasn't his idea, so it was not all terrible.
But I did start to notice a change in the house as time went on. My dad and Stacey set out to buy this house we were living in (I'll call it the Blake house) and I think that's when things started to really get ugly. I was young, I think I had just started or was about to start high school when this was going on, so I didn't pay too much attention to the tense atomosphere until it began to effect me. My stepmom had started to act like a totally different person, I had known her for 10 years of my life and all of a sudden she was treating me awful and I didnt know why.
She was mean, she yelled and screamed about nothing, and she even got physical with me a few times. My dad even witnessed one time where she was screaming at me for no reason and she slapped me across the face, he did nothing. LATER, as an adult, I found out what was really going on back then: My stepmom had caught him conversing with other women online and had suspicions that it was not just all online as he had been out late after work a few times (my dad worked night shift most of my life btw). So she rightly was very upset and depressed and my dad did not want to deal with the mess he had made, so he DOCTOR SHOPPED (and I do mean that literally) and took her to all kinds of DRs and therapists and had her committed at Snowden (psych ward in VA) playing the ROLE of concerned husband and that he dotes on her but she's so sad still so she needs medication.
If she tried to defend herself, he would talk over her. Until he finally found one to listen to him and diagnose Stacey as bipolar and give her lithium (which is when she started acting out and becoming aggressive and violent towards me etc---VERY NOT HERSELF). 3 months after getting her on the medication, she for some reason had a checkup with our regular family dr, that had been seeing us for years and knew us well, and he told my dad he was fucked and to get her off all that medication because she was NOT bipolar. Stacey seemed to have a wake up call because she shook off my dad's control, listened to our family dr and weaned off the meds and she was back to herself mostly but with 0 memory of what she had been doing those months.
And me, not knowing WTF was happening I had told my friend my stepmom was hurting me & her mom was a teacher (I was in 8th grade at this point I remember my friends mom was my english teacher) so we had a visit from CPS in which dad denied there being anything bad happening (despite that he did witness it at least once) and he didnt know what I was on about.
Not too much longer after all that happened we lost the deal on the Blake house and were evicted, had to give up all our pets except 3 to a shelter and move into an apartment, as well as our car disappeared. My dad told me that the engine had siezed up on his recently purchased (by my grandma) chevy cavalier and that it was stuck at an auto shop 30 mins away. I found this to be odd because it wasn't a very old car and I suggested to allow my friend to tow it down to his house and fix it, since my friend was very handy with fixing cars but dad had said no dont worry about it. I know for sure the car thing happened around 2006 or 2007 as that was the times I was friends with the mechanic boy.
I tried to commit suicide in 2007 because I felt so alone and ignored and Stacey was off in her own problems with my dad. I took over 40 tylenol and some nyquil and tried to go to sleep, I remember waking up around midnight when my dad came home from work & I ran to the bathroom and tried to be sick but couldnt so I just laid on the floor. Dad came in suprisingly and asked if I was ok, noticed the pills on the counter and I heard him say "wasnt this bottle full?" and after that I guess it clicked for him.
He drove me to the hospital, refused to call an ambulance or anything, and he stayed with me at the hospital while they worked on me but he was 100% unsympathetic and unhelpful. He made comments about when I was going to throw up again, while laughing. Not once did he make any effort to comfort me, or ask why I did this, or say things were going to get better or anything a concerned parent would do.
After that incident nothing changed at home. I spent a few days in the hospital I willingly went to a psych ward for I think a week or so then they sent me home like I was all better. Dad never discussed it. A few months later dad and I got into a heated arguement about a boy I was dating and it turned into a phsyical altercation where my dad was trying to toss me outside our apartment in the middle of the night (during winter) with me only wearing pj's.
Stacey came flying out of their bedroom screaming at my dad to get off of me. I had fallen while he was dragging me by my hair to the front door and I remember kicking him because his hands were on my throat. After Stacey showed up, dad changed his tune and said fine I needed to go into my bedroom then and he picked me up and shoved me into my door frame. I called the cops, to no avail.
I didnt notice that I had a bruise on my rib cage from where he shoved me into the door frame, so since I didnt see that (it was under my bra) to show the cops they had no reason to take him to jail or do anything useful besides send CPS (but I feel like there was a gap in time to when CPS showed up because Stacey was gone by the time they did a visit). And one cop sat me down and said "I would have slapped my daughter too if she turned off my tv!".
A week after this altercation I had a miscarriage, I didnt know I was even pregnant until a few days before the miscarriage. Stacey left my dad around that time as well, and she moved to Arkansas and asked for a divorce. Stacey and my relationship had been strained ever since the litihum ordeal but apparently she had begged my dad to let her take me with her (I was 17) and he said no purely to be spiteful. I know he said no just out of spite because he didnt give 2 shits about me or where I was.
After Stacey left I moved out to my friend's house because my dad stopped buying food and he never said anything nor did he care I was gone or that he was legally responsible for me until I was 18. I also showed CPS that he was not buying any food, showed her the empty fridge and pantry and all she did was give me some gift cards to the local grocery store and get the cop suspended who said he would have smacked his daughter. So CPS and the police failed me, so all of you demanding why hasn't CPS taken such child from so-and-so blah blah well here's your answer: the system is not perfect and the system can often fail to protect people.
I haven't seen my dad on a regular basis since I was 17. After I moved out I had very limited contact with him. I visited him in Seattle in 2009 for thanksgiving when I was pregnant, and if I am not mistaken that's the last time I have seen him in person. He contacts me every now and again to talk about himself but that's mostly it.
He is about to have 4 grandkids from me and he hasn't met a single one of them, despite that my eldest and my dad lived about an hour away from each other for years before my dad moved to LA with Susan.
Since my father has been with Susan I have noticed the internet following them, and I frankly brushed it off as people being nosy and ridiculous, as people often get upset about weird things online. And there is a lot of inaccurate info floating around about them, and also me I have seen a few things said about me and my family in general so I had NO REASON to question my dad (and I know that sounds silly given all I have just said, but it just really didnt click with me that he was evil on purpose) or Susan so I took them at face value about what they said about Susan's children and all that.
And I was supportive of her book because sure from her point of view it seems... possible? And frankly I just dont know fully what is going on since I'm not there, I only see the same things you guys do and I dont follow his life heavily.... because why would I? But Here is the red flag that really got to me (see screenshots below) was that yesterday my dad was telling me about the DR phil thing and just the way he came off made it seem like it's about the publicity and the money.
He specifically said Bodhi is off his meds and doing BETTER. Now I'm not a psychologist but I do have a bit of interest in the subject and it just made me feel uneasy. WHAT SCHIZOPHRENIC PERSON DOES BETTER OFF THEIR MEDS??? That just doesnt seem likely to me. And the way he worded going on DR phil and maybe Ophrah will have them on again and maybe her book sales will spike and maybe her pilot will get picked up blahblah, just seems like a money scam to me!
So I got suspicious from there, had a long talk Stacey and I looked more into these records someone on this thread found from my dad, and how he kept owing money and getting sued etc and all the lies he told about where our car went etc and it just all added up to a very different picture than what I thought. Basically my entire childhood was a lie my dad lived a double life that no one knew about and now I'm suspicious about what is going on and his role involving these children.
Granted, I am not perfect and I don't think anyone is perfect but I just don't think this is right at all. Having these young kids on anti psychotics when they might not need them is awful to think about. BTW side note: Stacey has Parkinson's now and nobody in her family has ever had Parkinson's so her dr suspects the misuse of lithium as being the reason for her early onset Parkinson's with no genetic factors. So her telling me that got me pretty pissed too because she's the only decent parent I had. My dad was basically a non-parent for most of my life.
Please forgive me for not knowing everything and being a little unclear about the time line as I was a child and he apparently was really good at hiding all this stuff because even Stacey did not know 99% of this and they were married 12 years.
EDIT: the chevy was not broke down btw, it was repossessed but he lied about it and we didnt know for years
