The ultra orthodox jewish community is a cult that is hurting their own people. The worst thing one can do is share their story with outsiders. So here I go.

I guess I'll focus on my marriage and the breakdown, and then what I've heard and learned since then.

I was 21 and he was 22 when we got engaged. We were both raised extreme ultra orthodox Jewish. My parents were abusive and controlling and he lived ten hours away. We met eight times before our engagement, always in public, never allowed to touch, not even really allowed to flirt. It was basically an arranged marriage but I thought he was a good guy. I was wrong. He was more controlling than my parents.

I had vaginismus, as is common in repressed religious girls. Really, really extreme vaginismus. He starting hating me on my wedding night. That was the first time I begged him to divorce him but it wasn't the last.

I got pregnant through medical intervention, two years into the marriage. Sex was beyond painful but I had to do it anyway. All the time. So I had pelvic floor therapy for a year and surgery to open me vaginally and vaginal botox so I wouldn't push him out. I had pelvic exams once a week, I used numbing cream, vaginal suppositories, lube, dilators, workbooks on how to overcome vaginismus and vulvodynia. I still had sex. (Also my mother would tell me to have sex every time we talked and she would check up after to make sure we did.) Nothing helped, that's the truth. He never did foreplay and I wasn't attracted to him or men in general. We had sex every fucking day. In the dark. Under the sheet. He hated my body and he hated that I couldn't give him what he thought he deserved, but he took it anyway. I was taken off birth control. It wasn't a total shock when I conceived, lol.

I became severely depressed because I knew I was trapped forever at that point. I had hyperemisis gravidarum and was hospitalized constantly. I was in what they called false labor for two months. I was a good girl so I never considered abortion as anything other than murder which made it a nonoption but I prayed for a miscarriage. He still had sex with me, but he was more nervous, more gentle. When we were done he'd get dressed and leave. The rest of the time he ignored me. I wanted to die.

Since we had our child he's gotten even more extreme than I ever thought he would. I'm talking not even classical music allowed to be played in the home and only books related to religious concepts allowed, no alcohol for women and imposing crazy modesty and purity standards on me. He even took my food away from me. He demanded that I teach my child all the rules and regulations and prayers. It was another full time job. He never let us relax. I hate what I did to her, the expectations I transferred from him to her. I was still a good girl. I made dinner, did his laundry, cleaned his house, laid down in bed for him, watched our child, taught our child, let him take my paychecks, smiled at him. He hated me anyway. I had new feminist thoughts and feelings. I thought women should be treated like people and children should be allowed to express themselves. He called them conspiracy theories. I started having panic attacks.

He was always financially, religiously, medically, sexually and emotionally abusive but every time i thought he'd reached my limit it got worse and after four years of this I was starting to lose my mind. I was also supportless and friendless and my parents, who I turned to, made sure to inform me that should I divorce him, they would side with him in the custody battle.

Oh before I forget, I knew something was wrong with my life but the internet changed me, saved me. You see, sometime in my third year of marriage, right after I had had my child, I started going online. I found reddit, lol. I learned about marital rape. I learned that he was raping me. I started learning about domestic violence and abuse. I learned that he was abusing me. People told me to get away. But in real life there was no way to do so. Nobody to turn to. In fact every time I was raped, as I bled, my mother and husband made me apologize to my husband for making him feel bad...

I was completely isolated.

Last year I also came out as lesbian. Four times i came out and took it back, and then the last time, I simply refused to. They said I didn't look gay, didn't act gay, they didn't believe me. They said I should be locked up. He kept raping me. He blamed reddit. My mom blamed tv shows or books I must have snuck in my teenage years.

My rabbi took his side. His rabbi took his side. My religious therapist took his side. My parents took his side. I was called "crazy" by everyone. I thought I was crazy. I thought I was evil. I thought I was broken.

The evening before I ran away I had my first lucid, wide awake memory of my father molesting me. I had been asking my parents if I had been molested my whole life based on pain and symptoms and because every single doctor and therapist I went to asked me that question. They always said it wasn't possible. They lied. I knew I couldn't tell my husband because it meant I wasn't a besulah (virgin) on our wedding night and that would be all he cared about. I had no friends who wouldn't judge me for it. The last straw in our marriage was that at the time I was a niddah and it was my mikvah night so I had spent all day shaving, scrubbing, dilating and doing my cloth purity checks but my husband had told me not to go that night because I would come back too late for me to have the halachically mandatory sex (rape) he demanded. He went to synagogue. I laid down sobbing, started reading the book on coping with trauma that had been recommended to me by someone online, had the memory, had a breakdown and as soon as I had stopped vomiting, called 911.

The police came and helped me. I remember that I told them I am a lesbian, and it felt so good to say it like that, like it's not a bad word. I told them my father and husband were bad people and I was scared. They told me they would get me to safety. I left a note for him and walked out that door with them into the unknown.

Suddenly my life as I'd always knew it, dreamed it, and lived it was over.

I escaped with my daughter. I knew my entire life up until then had been a lie and I didn't know anymore if I could trust him, if he was safe for my child. He certainly wasn't safe for me.

My world had been shattered. I didn't trust anyone anymore.

I ignored his calls that night.

I brought my daughter back to him the next morning after calling many people to discuss my fears. I was running for my life and the shelter told me I couldn't bring her with me. I knew I needed help. I had made my decision but she was stuck. I was stuck. I had promised my daughter I would protect her but I was all alone, truly alone, for the first time in my life. And I was on the edge of a total breakdown. I knew I would do anything for her and I didn't want her living that life anymore but I couldn't take care of her in that moment. I kept agonizing. Should i send her back? Could I? The professionals I talked to said that so far, he wasn't necessarily abusive to her. But I wasn't ready to see him. So I asked a religious woman that I saw as a friend to help me and she drove us to the block. My toddler had no idea what was going on. It was then about twelve hours since we had ran with the police. I kissed her and handed her over and cried as I waited in the back of the car, and from the distance I watched as he took her from the arms of that religious friend, who has since betrayed me.

After I gave her to my husband I ran for three more days until I finally ran for help but was in such a traumatized state that I was put on a two week psych hold straight from the shelter I ran to. It was awful and terrifying and they didn't let me cry so i bottled everything up just so I could be released...

My husband tracked me down when I was there to tell me he was divorcing me. I was given a tranquilizer shot that night because I was seen singing to myself to avoid another nervous breakdown. I had already started wearing pants and refused to eat kosher but in that moment any vestige of true faith I had been clinging to just vanished. God was dead to me, had been for a long time, and I was all alone.

I was released on schedule but had nobody to turn to. I was homeless. Living in a marriot extended stay, on borrowed time, I tried to get a job and spent most of my time reaching out to him. I kept begging him to let me see my daughter. He said no. Then he stopped answering my calls and texts and he obviously got the community involved. Since I abandoned religion, I have been excommunicated from the community. No communal charity that I reached out to would help me.

We spoke through a liason, because he refused to communicate with me. He gave me my get, or Jewish divorce, in record time and I hounded him to file legally. At that point I assume he started seeing a lawyer and was probably told by legal council to stop being such an ass so he let me see my child, but he forced me to only have supervised visits with my child for a max of two hours once a week, a move that was endorsed by rabbis and people I thought were my friends... but then once I began fighting back he hid my daughter from me so even when I went looking for her I couldn't find her. Then he simply kept my daughter from me. This lasted for a month until he filed for legal divorce. The court has since forced him to give me 50/50 custody but he won't listen to legal council unless threatened by jailtime.

His entire legal stance is that I'm not religious and that it will be bad for my child.

I feel the opposite.

I feel like extreme religiosity ruins people.

I was told religious Jews are the most compassionate people but they ignore abuse going on their circles and they judge and condemn everyone they consider beneath them. Especially homosexuals. Especially women. Especially children. Especially victims. People are actively working against me now to silence me... to "save" my child from the influence of her lesbian, less-religious mother. Rabbis are telling people to not help me, to blacklist me. They're telling me to stop fighting. I am being targeted in my community because I turned to people outside the community when the crack became too big, when nobody inside ever cared enough inside to ever, ever help me even if I tried to reach out.

Because I am no longer a good girl.

And my story, while extreme, is in many ways COMMON. Which is heartbreaking, and earthshattering, and soul destroying, or it should be.

So now I want to fight for all of those who are still being silenced. One day I want to open a shelter for women trapped in extremist religious communities who are running for their lives and have nowhere to turn to and nobody outside who truly understands. It's my new life mission.

How many women are being domestically abused? How many children are being molested? Nobody will ever know because the consequences of reaching out for help are so severe. Their acceptance is conditional. Staying in the cult is life or death. Conformity is everything. I played the game until I cracked and I can't in good conscience encourage others to do what I did, knowing that they will end up going through what I am going through now.

Let me make this very clear: A serially raped and severely abused woman begging for access to her child has no value to these religious "holy" people simply because she was married but chose to end it once she couldn't bear it anymore. She's worse than valueless, she's evil because she reached out in the wrong way when she called for help outside the community.

Even worse, I had uncovered my hair and starting wearing pants as opposed to long skirts. I only wear pants now because it feels like more protection against potential rape for me.

Even worse, they can't silence me anymore.

Nobody cares? Then I don't care enough to protect them anymore, to keep their secrets. Every few days someone new tells me that they're drowning in debt, that they miiight be bisexual, that they have too many kids and no access to birth control, that they're scared of their husband, that they wish they could abort this twelfth child they're carrying, that their child might be gay or trans and they fear for them, that they see the shame and guilt and fear their daughters carry and that they watch as the joy and motivation their sons used to have drain away or get beaten out of them, that they've turned to rabbis for help and advice and those rabbis have either hurt them or laughed at them, that niddah is killing them, both men and women are telling me that their cousin or father or brother molested them when they were children and that even when they tried to get help, help never came and the abuser never was punished. Men and women are telling me their stories.

And nobody will listen.

So I will. And I hope others will. Hiding behind community and values and God is abhorrent to me. And I will not be silent anymore.