I’ll go first. If I’m asking you to open up here, the least I can do is go first.
I’m Malcolm. I’m the father of three beautiful children — two sons and a daughter. They were taken from me when they were twelve, ten, and eight years old. Through the most extreme, painful and humiliating ordeal imaginable. For the best part of ten years, I fought with everything I had against impossible odds to save our bond. Despite every effort, I lost the battle to remain in their lives.
I was raised in a closed Christian sect. Married young, at twenty-two, as was expected. The marriage was a mismatch from the beginning — two people brought together by shared faith and timing, not by compatibility or real connection. When I started questioning the narrow life the church demanded, things fell apart. I left the sect. My ex-wife stayed. And in their eyes, I became a worldly sinner — a danger to my children’s souls.
What followed was years of hell. Three false accusations of sexual abuse against my own daughter. Arrests. Solitary confinement. Investigations that were eventually all dismissed — every single one — but not before they had destroyed what remained of my bond with my children. The church community turned their backs on me completely. My own brother cut me off. Friends I had loved since childhood refused to speak to me.
The system was painfully slow to understand what was happening. Professionals had no framework for the invisible forces at play — a fundamentalist belief system that saw me as spiritually dangerous, and a mother whose bitterness and fear were systematically turning my children against me.
Eventually, after years of mandated therapy and supervised visits and court battles that cost me tens of thousands, my children — then twelve, ten, and eight — told me they didn’t want to see me anymore. And I had to let them go. Not because I stopped loving them, but because forcing them to come was only increasing their resentment.
That night, something broke inside me. And in the breaking, something unexpected happened. I experienced a flood of unconditional love so powerful it washed away all the bitterness, all the victimhood, all the self-righteousness I had been clinging to. I forgave my ex. I forgave the church. I forgave my children. Not because what they did was right — but because holding onto it was destroying me.
I wrote Love Over Exile because I needed this book to exist when I was in the fire. I couldn’t find anything that was both honest about how devastating this is AND showed that survival — real survival, not just gritting your teeth — was possible.
This community is for all of us who are living through this. You are not alone. I know that sounds hollow when you’re in the thick of it. But I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
Malcolm