He may really love you more than he can love anyone else, but he has a serious problem that gets in the way of his being able to act right, and his inability to control his behavior is out of line no matter WHAT you did to provoke him (flirtation, affair, whatever, does NOT justify such a vile assault).

As his victim of choice, you are NOT the person who is in a position to change him or fix it for him, even if you still have feelings for him (whether those feelings are love or pity). He will not get better with your presence. He needs to be away from you and have incentive to change. He needs someone (other than you) to tell him that his behaivor was out of line, SO FAR out of line that it deserves criminal punishment, and he needs to not be able to weasel out of it by saying that you were a bad person or that he couldn't help himself or tha the cares about you or any of the other excuses that have caused you to forgive him and let him back... those excuses get in the way of him figuring out that he needs to fix it.

He will not get the help he needs if you do not prosecute this. Please go back to the prosecutor and ask for the help of a victim advocate. Also go to a rape support group. Ask the local police department's sex crimes or special victims unit for a referral. The support group might help you very much.

There is nothing a woman can do that can justify the nasty things he did to you. NOTHING. It's OK to get angry, to yell & storm around, to walk out... but to lay your hands on someone in anger... to intentionally degrade them, repeatedly to the point where they need hospitalization... THAT is not excuseable and he needs help before he needs forgiveness.

Please get an in person support group for sex crime victims and please prosecute him...

OK... one more thing I want to say to you. You will have a natural feeling like maybe you do not belong in a group of sex crime victims. No one feels like they belong there. Every woman feels strong enough, or WANTS to feel strong enough, to ahve control over her own situation, and the possibility that she allowed someone to have the opportunity to commit some act of violence like this makes her feel like maybe it's her fault, like she is not truly a victim. For some, it's almost impossible to even admit that they were hurt or victimized... because they believe their choices led them to the place where someone had the opportunity to do wrong things. If it helps, maybe you could think of it as that your husband did things to you that no woman should have to endure. If you do not want to be a "victim", then maybe you can be a "survivor", instead, someone who survived some pretty nasty and wrong behavior by your husband and just needs a little mind adjustment and support so that you can follow through with prosecuting him and keeping him out of your life.

REcognize that the combination of you plus him is a wrong combination and wahtever it is about you and him that doesn't work, it does NOT work and you should never allow this to get back to where it was that something like this COULD happen again. And if you slip and DO admit him re-entry into your life to the point where you regret it again, understnad that you are not a victim with the "typical" victim mind, but that you ar ethe survivor who thought you had solved the problem and simply made a mistake about it.

You can NOT do this on your own, though. It doesn't matter how strong or knowledgeable your are, you can not do it by yourself. You need someone who will sit in the courtroom that you can focus on while you are testifying so that when you look down from the witness stand, the man who needs help will NOT be the only one you are looking at. You need an in-person support group for this one.

Please get this, and let us know how it turns out. We can help you figure out what the next step is for getting on in life without him, how ot handle divorce paperwork, how to handle your kids' needs for having witnessed this at home (and recognizing that as much as you might want to hide it, they DID witness stuff)... But you need someone different for the totally separatate and inextricably intertwined issue of the sexual misconduct of your husband. THAT needs a layer of support on TOP of what we can do. So please get it.

Please report back to us when you find a group, whether or not you find one, and whether it is helping. We care and do not want you to disappear into cyberspace without getting what you need.